Larry: What is good, and what is evil?

SWAMIJI: Whatever you have understood, you tell me. What do you mean by good and evil, according to your studies? What exactly is it?

Larry: What I understood was that while the world, the way we experience it, cannot be other than a manifestation of God, we still experience ourselves as separate from God. We experience ourselves as individuals and because we experience ourselves as individuals, we have likes and dislikes; we experience likes and dislikes, we experience opposites. In the end, I understood that good and evil are the same—that all of it comes from God.

SWAMIJI: Good and evil are the same? How do you say they are the same?

Larry: Good and evil are the same in the sense that everything, every experience we have, is from God—is a result of God’s world unfolding.

SWAMIJI: If every experience is from God, how do you make a choice between right and wrong?

Larry: The choices, according to the Jewish perspective, are that you are given guidance through the Torah.

SWAMIJI: Forget the Torah, now. I am asking you directly. How do you make a choice?

Larry: How do I make a choice? Or, how does one make a choice in the Jewish perspective?

SWAMIJI: From your perspective, not the Jewish. Yes, from your perspective. If both are coming from God, they will be identical. One will be identical with the other, and then choice cannot arise.

Larry: We have innate responses. If I see something that I think is bad . . .

SWAMIJI: Why do you call it bad? You see, you have contradicted your earlier statement that it comes from God.

Larry: Yes, but two things come from God. You see, you are asking me what my personal reaction is, but I can’t give you . . .

SWAMIJI: You cannot be outside the perspective of correctness.

Larry: You asked me what the Jewish perspective of good and bad is . . .

SWAMIJI: Is your perspective different from the Jewish perspective?

Larry: Yes.

SWAMIJI: Then, why did you study Jewish philosophy? You are studying unnecessary things, which are not connected with you.

Larry: I feel (for one reason or the other) I have been connected to the Jewish religion.

SWAMIJI: You see, as an academic exercise, you can study anything. There is nothing wrong with it. But for your practical purposes, what is the conclusion? That is what I am asking. Listen to me.

Larry: I haven’t drawn my conclusions yet.

SWAMIJI: I understand. My question was simple: Is it true that both good and evil come from God, or are your making a mistake in your statement?

Larry: Is it true that good and evil come from God? I believe it is true.

SWAMIJI: Does God create evil?

Larry: God creates the circumstances that appear to me to be evil.

SWAMIJI: You are a lawyer, and talk like a lawyer. You want to protect God somehow from any imputation of evil to Him.

Larry: To me, there appears to be evil. From God’s perspective, if God is perfect . . .

SWAMIJI: You are arguing on behalf of God as a client. You don’t want to give any trouble to Him unnecessarily.

Larry: That’s true. That’s where you have to tell me who I am being retained to act for.

SWAMIJI: How much fee have you received from God?

Larry: My daily existence.

SWAMIJI: You are perfectly right. Both forces which you call as good and evil emanate from a single source—like day and night, for instance. You cannot say day and night are two things. It is one thing only, looking like two things. You cannot keep day somewhere and night in another place; that is not possible. It is one compact phenomenon, which looks partially like day and partially like night. Who creates day and who creates night? Can you say the sun is the cause of night? If the sun is the cause of day, he may be the cause of night also, because due to some phenomenon connected with the sun, night takes place. Nevertheless, you cannot say the sun is sitting there and creating nights. It is an automatic correlative of a particular situation that looks like dark night on the one side and bright day on the other side.

Good and evil do not exist in the kingdom of God; they exist only in a realm that is much below, and the concept itself involves a duality of perception. God sees with one eye, whereas we see with two eyes. God’s vision is integral and the ethical mandates, the do’s and don’ts of religion and morality, arise on account of a perception of one phenomenon as two phenomena.

We always say that there is day and there is night, while I would like to say there is no such thing as day on one side and night on another side. Something is happening, of which one aspect looks like day and another aspect looks like night. Now, you can say something is good and something is bad. Like children, we make a statement that day is good and night is bad. There is no harm in making this statement, but it is not true that night is bad and day is good. Who can say that night is bad? Let there be no night—we should have only day, eternally. Will it be all right? We will perish if there is only day without night. And suppose there is only night without day; then also we will not survive. So, two aspects blend together to create a phenomenon of an experience which looks dualistic, while it is integral from its own point of view.

Any impact upon consciousness—listen to me, lawyer! Any impact upon consciousness which will sunder it into a dualistic perception of subject and object with emphasis laid on one side more than the other can be regarded as not correct, if you want to use an ethical word here. Any impact upon consciousness which will enable you to see an integral phenomenon operating between both the subjective side and the objective side can be regarded as correct and right.

When I see you and you see me, it looks as if A is seeing B, and B is seeing A. This is the dualistic perception, as they call it. But there is another factor that is always bypassed in this process. My perception of you and your perception of me is neither my act nor your act. I am not seeing you and you are not seeing me. There is a consciousness between us which keeps the balance between the perceiver and the perceived, and observes both of us. That is why it is possible for a simultaneous perception of you by me, and of me by you. This vision, the so-called dualistic perception of the subject by the object, or the object by the subject, is a phenomenon created by a transcendental consciousness operating between both. But, anything that emphasises one side only is not right perception.

You need not use the words ‘sin’, ‘evil’, ‘bad’, ‘ugly’ and all that, because they are not very pleasant to hear. We can only say that there are proper and improper ways of perception. Anything that is contributory towards the movement of consciousness to an integral perception between the subject and the object is right, and anything that is opposed to it is not.

There is an illusion, and so you are asking a question like that. God does not create evil and, therefore, He also does not create illusion. It is only a mistaken squinted-eye perception. I told you earlier, a straight pencil looks dented when you dip it in a glass of water.

Larry: Yet He created my eyes to see it this way.

SWAMIJI: He did not create anything. God never creates anything outside Himself.

Larry: All right, but my eyes are there that see it this way.

SWAMIJI: It is something like a paralytic stroke of consciousness. It is a severing of a part of consciousness from the whole that creates all these problems.

Larry: But why was it necessary to do that?

SWAMIJI: It was not necessary, and finally you will find that it has not taken place also; it never happened. You will realise that you are under a delusion that it has taken place, and you will answer that question only after it goes out. You are asking in dream, “Why should I wake up?” because there is no such thing as waking for you when you are dreaming. Only when you wake up will you know that something has happened, and you will not ask a question afterwards.

Consciousness that is bound cannot know why it is bound, because the moment it knows it, it is no more bound. It is like seeing darkness with a torchlight. If you want to seek darkness, will you flash a torchlight and see it? You will find that darkness is not there when light is there. The light of knowledge will abolish the very question itself, so you cannot have a question answered. The question is darkness and you are flashing a light of knowledge over it and you will find the question vanishing immediately.

There is a story. They say that night went to God and cried, “The sun is pursuing me wherever I go, and I have no place to stay.”

Brahma (the creator) called the sun and asked, “Why are you pursuing the poor darkness?”

The sun said, “I have never seen it. And how will I pursue it? Unnecessary complaints.” He said, “I have never seen the thing.” So, likewise is this question, why has God created the world. You are assuming that He has created, and is then unnecessarily pursuing it. It is like the sun pursuing darkness; it never existed. He said, “I never committed the mistake of pursuing darkness. I never saw it. Why are you making complaints?”

Like that, knowledge will tell you that these questions do not exist to knowledge and, therefore, you should not bring knowledge in confrontation with ignorance. The moment knowledge confronts ignorance, ignorance ceases. This means to say, your questions cannot be answered through knowledge; they can be answered through ignorance only. Ignorant questions are answered by ignorant answers. Right knowledge cannot give answers to misconceived questions.