The Theosophical
Society in Australia

The problem of good and evil and the nature of desire as an influence on human behaviour are often asked about in letters from newer members. Many say they are bewildered by the appalling evil in the world and wonder how much desire has to do with bringing it about, since desire seems rooted in the human psyche. Some ask, if God is good, all-loving, how can we explain the great natural disasters which bring suffering and distress to millions of human beings and other creatures?

These are indeed profound mysteries which have engaged the speculations of the wisest minds throughout the ages. Some concepts of the theosophical philosophy may throw light upon such questions, although we certainly do not pretend to have a final answer.

As we know from our studies, Theosophy postulates a Primal Cause in the universe. This is spoken of in the First Fundamental Proposition in The Secret Doctrine, to which we referred in our last letter. If we accept this postulate, then all that exists must exist within that Primal Cause.  Throughout the manifested world, however, there is duality, the constant play of the opposites. (Someone has said: 'It took two to image the One.') The very nature of manifestation is based on duality, for there can be no dynamism of any kind without polarity, without the constant interplay between the positive and the negative aspects. Even at the level of the gene, in the DNA, there is a polarity, we are told. Now it is out of this play of opposites that consciousness - and eventually self­ consciousness - is born. We must thus posit that nothing exists outside the Divine Mind. Nothing is separate from the Divine Plan.

To a considerable extent, in the West, the concept of a personal deity is at the base of our dilemma. We are told that God sees the fall of every sparrow, yet we are shocked (and rightly so, for it is often that 'shock' that awakens our own sense of caring and compassion) by recurring and natural disasters. Somehow we want God to be 'nice' in terms of our understanding and we are distressed that God or the Divine should be so unconcerned about what happens in 'his' or 'her' universe!

Actually, the Bible has numerous references to the duality of God. For example, in Isaiah 45:5 & 7, we read: '...I am the Lord and there is none else. I form the light and create darkness; I make peace and create evil; I the Lord do all these things.' Then in Isaiah 54:16, we find: 'Behold, I have created the smith that bloweth the coals in the fire, and that bringeth forth an instrument for his work; and I have created the waster to destroy.' In Amos 3:6, there is the question, '...shall there be evil in the city and the Lord hath not done it?' These are just a few of the specific statements in the Christian tradition. The same duality is expressed in other traditions also - in the literature of Gnosticism, in the Koran of Islam, in Hinduism, particularly in the Bhagavadgītā.

The problem of evil is dealt with in The Secret Doctrine (see Vol. I of the Original and the 1978 edition). H.P. Blavatsky points out that the Christian religion did not invent Satan, even though it has anthropomorphised a principle, just as it has with the concept of God. From the beginning, she says, the 'adversary' has been an essential and necessary balancing force in nature, and 'only in That which is eternally beyond human comprehension is they're eternal Good.'

It is, of course, not possible to examine this subject completely in a letter, for it is really dependent upon detailed study and much inner reflection. A useful line of investigation, if one is interested, is found in Jungian psychology, in the concept of the 'shadow' as an element in the unconscious, complementary to the 'light of the Self. This is basically the same concept as the 'adversary'. The entire endeavour of consciousness, as of evolution in general, is in the direction of bringing into the full light of self-consciousness all the elements within oneself. This is analogous to 'redemption' for it is the redeeming of the whole of our nature into full participation in the Self. In other words, the shadow must be acknowledged and then transformed and assimilated, made a partner in our spiritual enterprise. Thus it is said that no one is irrevocably lost, nor is any force in the universe outside the universal order.

In The Mahatma Letters to A. P. Sinnett, we find one of the Mahatmas  quoting, with approval, the statement: '...there is hope for man only in man'. This may seem a hard saying, but seen in another way it states a glorious truth: the working out of the Divine Plan is dependent upon our human effort and cannot be achieved without us. Again we find the responsibility squarely on our own shoulders. But, as we know, we are much more than we seem on the surface. We are, it has  been said, 'gods in the becoming' and there are in us spiritual forces of inconceivable power. We may feel that by our own unaided efforts we cannot remake the world, but surely we can begin on ourselves. Each of us can, if we will and if we strive sufficiently, become a centre, a nucleus, for the outworking of that Will of the Logos which is at the heart of the evolutionary process. When enough people do this, evil as such will begin to disappear.

As with good and evil, desire and its influence on human behaviour has been the subject of speculation for centuries. In that commentary on The Secret Doctrine, Man the Measure of All Things, Sri Krishna Prem and Sri Madhava Ashish have some extremely illuminating comments on the subject of desire. After pointing out that there is a great deal of misunderstanding on the subject, they refer to desire as Fohat - a term which you have probably encountered in your studies and which, in many guises, may be said to constitute the dynamism of the universe. As Prem and Ashish put it, 'Fohat ... relates all parts of the Cosmos to each other and tends to draw all things together into states that, as nearly as possible, represent that unity, ""colonies of souls bound together by love".' Then they add, 'We can just as well call it the divine Desire, for desire is in fact a creative movement, and it is only on the path of return that it is said to be an evil or a hindrance. Even this needs qualifying, because it is a sort of desire which makes anyone want to travel that path.  Desire in itself is neither good nor bad, and its almost universal condemnation is not a true judgment of it, but arises from human resentment against a power whose exploitation for selfish ends always leads to disaster ... Desire, it may be repeated, is essentially creative.' In fact, we might consider even the monadic impulse to 'moreness', to 'know itself'', as an aspect of that divine desire. Our difficulty with this power arises primarily from our incompleteness and so our personalising and distorting desire into greed and selfishness.

So it would seem that the principal reason for striving to achieve what has been called 'desirelessness' is not that desire in itself is wrong, but that so long as we desire anything, we are creating attachments for ourselves that bind us to the 'wheel of rebirth'. Desire is a cosmic principle and therefore a principle in us. We could no more take it out of our nature than we could take the water out of our blood and still function. But we can begin by finding a new direction for desire (away from all desires for the separated self) and by eventually achieving a consciousness that transcends all personal attachments. It is really freedom from attachments that is true desirelessness, not a crippling of our inherent creativeness. When we realise that for the true Self there is nothing to be desired and nothing to which to be attached, then we are truly free. The universe is what it is; what we do with our share in it is up to us.

A final thought from the little book, The Wider View, by E. L. Gardner, may serve as an appropriate closing for this letter: 'For every important change in human thought, morality or action, an individual always is the pioneer.' 

Some Suggested Reading

References to evil, desire, and Fohat may be found by looking at the Index of The Secret Doctrine. There are also several references in The Mahatma Letters to A. P. Sinnett that are useful.
The Wider View by E. L. Gardner
Theosophy by Robert Ellwood, Chapter 5
The Key to Theosophy by H.P. Blavatsky, Index under 'Evil' 
Desire and Fulfilment by Hugh Shearman