EVIL

Caligula, Hitler, Idi Amin, and Osama Bin Ladin, all of them strike resemblance to Evil as has been perceived over time immemorial. Evil, they say from the Abrahamic patronage was first recognized as the serpent that tempted Eve. So was every other divine philosophy that has its own interpretation of evil. 

The definition of evil given by the Oxford dictionary is, an act that is profoundly wicked or immoral. Interestingly a secular definition puts man’s action as a precursor to an evil deed, however from a religious perspective it shows the existence of a higher order that commits man to such act.

Socrates states that the choices of right or wrong, serves the ends the chooser seeks to obtain and not the means through which the ends are realized. This is interesting as it appears now that the evil called Satan (or any other name) has become a scapegoat for all evil actions man does. Carl Jung theorizes that “people tend to believe evil is something external to them – yet it is a projection of the shadow onto others. As one projects the principle for absolute and unresolvable evil onto others – it is to the degree that one condemns others and finds evil in others, that one is unconscious of the same thing within oneself, or the potential of that within oneself. It is a projection of one’s shadow.”

Thus this moves to the next question, is the concept of evil globally homogeneous? Who decides then whether an individual, group of people, or even a nation is evil? What framework does one use to make such references? Is Mao Tze Tong an evil man, he was responsible for the death of millions of Chinese during the cultural revolution, and today the very foundation that was laid by Mao serves the testimony of the Chinese success, where the so called western moral propagators are sucking up to now.

If such an entity called “Antichrist”, exists, then that entity would be fuming in “Hell”, cursing man for using his name in vain, for the brand “EVIL” definitely have been hijacked by man to serve his own agenda.

From the Advaita (non-duality) philosophy, it states that there is no such thing as good or evil, but the concept itself describes man’s state of realization.

In this respect, Alexander Solzhenitsyn echoed “If only there were evil people somewhere, insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart.”

So why blame Antichrist, Satan ,Devil, Ogi, Gidim, Zyn, Otakhon, Mazu, Bhoot, Bunyip, Aniti, Yurei, Momo, ………………… for the deed that man is solely responsible for?

  

“I was inspired to pen (I mean type) on this topic after chancing upon this poem below by Dylan Thomas:

Incarnate devil in a talking snake,

The central plains of Asia in his garden,

In shaping-time the circle stung awake,

In shapes of sin forked out the bearded apple,

And God walked there who was a fiddling warden

And  played down pardon from the heavens’ hill.

When we were strangers to the guided seas,

A handmade moon half holy in a cloud,

The wise men tell me that the garden gods

Twined good and evil on an eastern tree;

And when the moon rose windily it was

Black as the beast and paler than the cross.

We in our Eden knew the secret guardian

In sacred waters that no frost could harden,

And in the mighty mornings of the earth;

Hell in a horn of sulphur and the cloven myth,

All heaven in the midnight of the sun,

A serpent fiddled in the shaping time.”

OM TAT SAT.