Q: If Being, or God, is the creative source of all energy and thoughts, and thoughts from the ego are a negative form of energy, don’t these negative thoughts originate from Being?  In other words, did God create evil?

A:  That kind of question has been asked and talked about by many philosophers and it has remained a kind of stumbling block in the Christian religion.  So let’s see what the intuitive answer is.  In this sense-perceived universe, if you want to use anything here to compare God to, the most appropriate thing would be the sun.  The sun is the source of seemingly inexhaustible energy, and the giver of life.  The very heat in your body comes from the sun indirectly.  The sun of course is not eternal, but compared to the human life span it can be considered virtually eternal, it’s so much vaster.  And it gives freely of itself, millions and millions of years of pouring out energy.  Now let’s say the sun is in a process of becoming conscious of itself, because my intuition is the Universe, or rather that which underlies the Universe, or the One behind the many, is in the process of becoming conscious of itself in the dimension of time.  The One also exists in the timeless dimension, where there is no past and future.

So God, to use that word for a while, in the timeless, God is already complete and perfect.  But it seems that in the realm of time, God is becoming conscious through all these life forms.  Now if that were the sun, then in the process of becoming conscious, the sun continuously emits zillions of photons, light particles.  Let’s say the individual photon is part of the process of becoming conscious for the sun.  Now in that process, the individual photon would undergo a change of consciousness arising.  Temporarily, the individual photon, as it becomes together with the sun, as consciousness arises it mis-perceives itself as a separate entity.  It no longer realizes its oneness with the sun.  There’s a continuum, it never really loses connection with the sun.  So temporarily, as part of the process of becoming conscious, it believes itself to be separate.  It’s a temporary thing.  While it believes itself to be separate, it creates all kinds of illusions that reflect the basic illusion of separateness.  That’s basically where we are at, where humanity is at.  The human being is the photon, the sun particle, so to speak.  The consciousness within is the consciousness of God, there’s only one consciousness.  And that consciousness, in the process of the whole becoming conscious, mis-perceives itself temporarily.  And that creates the illusion of separateness in the individual human.  That creates the illusion of the identification with form, which is the illusion of separateness.  That’s seeing oneself as a separate entity.  The stronger that illusion is, the more that gets reflected in its actions outside, which then become deluded.  And that’s called evil.

Ultimately in evil, nothing is destroyed.  The essence of all life forms is eternal.  But on its own level, it’s not pleasant.  From the point of view of the larger whole, it’s only a brief dream episode that takes place as the One is becoming conscious.  So that is the answer to “Did God create evil?”  So the teachings that say that evil ultimately is not real, of course that is correct.  But it’s a question of levels.  If you look at it from one level, it has a certain reality.  The fact that it ultimately is not real does not mean that on this temporary level it does not appear very real.  But it must be recognized as deluded.  Evil can be defined as complete identification with form – that is the illusion.  The more an entity is identified with form, the more evil the entity seemingly creates, and the more suffering is created.  What’s the answer?  The answer of course is why we’re here.  We are the arising of the answer.  The answer is not just the answer, it is the end of the illusion of separateness and the end of so-called evil.

There’s a particular dimension where creativity arises.  It’s a little bit like the wick burning the flame, and its sustenance is the oil – it’s in an oil lamp, and you are the flame.  All the analogies, by the way, are very deficient, but it’s just a distant approximation to get you into a sense of what that place is.  So you are the flame, and you feel your way into the very source – down the wick into where the oil is, inside yourself.  That’s the place, the source, so if anything is new, creative, then it has a fragrance of the source.

Somehow, humans, even humans who are still very much identified with their mind, many of them are touched by when they see or hear or whatever – come into contact with – something that came out of that deeper level, whether it’s a work of art, or a piece of music, or it could just be somebody talking.  And the words come from that deeper level.  It could just be somebody who has a good sense of humor – even that is already a form of creativity.  Spontaneous humor is to suddenly see something that one wouldn’t normally see – a connection between two seemingly unconnected things, and suddenly you connect them and everybody laughs.  Some people have that. Some people have one small area in which they can be creative, and that can be enough to provide you with fulfillment and an income, for the rest of your life – and to contribute that gift to others.

Great stand up comedians, for example, have that gift.  Of course, not everything they say is spontaneous, but when they prepare their stuff, they have to be creative.  Now I don’t know if anybody here has tried to be a standup comedian, but it’s difficult.  Many people try.  It’s hard to be funny.  But some have it, and it’s amazing – those few that have that gift.  And there too, the sense of humor is spontaneously something arises, and there it comes.  It’s being in touch with that.  It’s wonderful to be able to be in touch with that, and feel the power that flows from there, out into this world.  Now for that, of course you need some kind of vehicle, because the power needs to flow into some kind of form.

You can touch that place also, within, and it may not flow into creativity, because you have not developed a vehicle for it.  The very same power that gives rise to creativity can also manifest itself in different ways that we would not call creativity.  It could be a healing power that comes into effect the moment you enter into relationships with others.  Healing in a wider sense, not just physical healing.  You will not suddenly become a great musician if you have never touched an instrument, just because you touch that place within yourself.  It’s not going to manifest as a great scientific discovery in my case, because the vehicle is not prepared for that.  My mind is not prepared for that.  It doesn’t even work that way.  So for me to expect to come up with the Unified Field Theory that Einstein didn’t come up with – he tried after the theory of relativity, he tried for the rest of his life to come up with that – I am not going to come up with that.  It’s very unlikely.  The vehicle has not been prepared. I am not going to be a great pianist, because I don’t know how to play the piano.  So no matter how deeply I go within, it’s not going to flow into that.  You need to prepare the vehicle for creativity.

More important than that is the place – to be able to go within to that place of vibrantly alive stillness, where creativity arises.  And you can go in there, and if there’s no vehicle, it will not express itself in any form of creativity, not any conventional form of creativity.  But it may actually express itself in different ways.  I just mentioned one, which is an outflow in human interactions – and outflow of – very hard to put a word to it, but you can sense it, when you meet a person who is present in the interaction.  It’s a different energy frequency that operates.  And that is healing.  It is so formless that it does not require a previously prepared vehicle.  You can just be.  And you emanate Being.