| From the Archives |
| SUMPTER ON BASIC GOODNESS AND NATURAL GUILT Page Three |
| The material in the archives was not originally written for a website, but is nevertheless well worth reading. It was all written in New Zealand, and you will occasionally notice this. |
| (After Sumpter had given us the preceding material, people had questions for him, which led him to write these further comments.) I am aware that my dear friends have asked me to comment further about point one, EVERYONE IS BASICALLY GOOD, so I will do that. For the spiritual or religious person, the argument can include such expansions as pointing out that in the Beginning, there was God, and only God, and God is wholly good, entirely without evil. Next, God is the cause of all Creation, and moreover since, at the Beginning, only God existed, all Creation is made entirely of God's own substance, and as there is no evil in God, there can be no evil in God's Substance, and therefore there is no evil in all of Creation either. Where, then, could evil come from? If there can be no evil in all of Creation, it follows that humans too are without evil, are entirely good. Yet that which appears evil still needs to be explained. Pain, suffering and violations of a general or personal nature are seen as evidence to argue against this truth, that there is no evil. The best response is to reply that these have no eternal validity, but are mere passing shadows, dreams which are sorely felt, but from which the soul awakens in its eternal home, unharmed, and much the wiser for its experiences. It can be explained that much of what is experienced as evil, or considered as evil, is but ignorance, and that someone who is ignorant is not a bad person, merely a good, ignorant person, who will grow wiser in time, and has all of eternity to grow wiser in. The secular person is likely to stick to the view that there is good and bad in everyone, and cannot be persuaded of the basic divinity of all creation. If you can turn them around to a spiritual point of view, you will have made a great step forward! For them I would point out that humans are a different kind of innocent natural animal. There are many causes of pain and difficulties in nature which, while having unpleasant effects, cannot be considered the deliberate bad behaviour of any natural or animal agent. Storms, earthquakes, plagues, stinging insects, carnivorous beasts, all can cause ill-effects for others, yet without being considered evil themselves. Why should humans alone be considered evil, or tainted with evil? Then consider motivation. When someone does something bad or wrong, why did they do it? In all cases the original motivation will be found to be of good intent. Yet the action taken in situations where harm is done, does not do justice to the good intentions. Again you come back to ignorance, for if a better way, which did not involve wrongdoing, was known, and considered to be equally effective, that would be the chosen action. So apparent evil, in human action, can be ascribed to ignorance. ************************ Now, FREEWILL: In this reality, whether physical or between lives, there is a certain development of consciousness which is considered human, and recognised as being different from the consciousness of the animals. Any specialisation of consciousness is a brave adventure and has its own challenges and rewards. The kind of consciousness here called human (which has its counterparts in other places and planes of existence), is a kind which ventures bravely into new mental ways that seem to separate it from nature and allow it to consider nature objectively in a way the animals cannot. The achievements gained in this new dimension are immeasurable, you see them everywhere as obvious human achievements of art, science, music, architecture, technology, etc. This kind of consciousness is not possible without freewill, the ability to freely make a multitude of conscious choices, including the choice to violate against others or against nature. If freewill did not exist, the necessary objectivity would not exist, as it does not in the animals, and there would be no human dimension of consciousness at all. Objectivity and freewill, then, go hand in hand, two aspects of the development of human consciousness, rising, in this reality, upon the foundation of consciousness of the animal species, and also upon all the other consciousnesses involved in the Earth gestalt. You have then a curious, yet important development, of a creature, couched firmly in the gestalt, yet able to consider itself as separate from it. The separation, however, is only a point of reference, not a point of independence, as the human creature finds out when it violates against the gestalt. *************************** There is hardly any clarity in your society and in your time concerning the nature and the proper handling of those behaviours I call violations. A violation is not a violation simply because a person or group of people decide it is. It is not a matter of opinion. Violations are recognised as such at the natural, or, if you prefer, spiritual level within each person. Conversely, no matter how much people wish or pretend that certain behaviours are not violations, when in fact they are, the natural or spiritual person under the layers of social beliefs and conditioning continues to recognise them. When someone violates against another, causing them harm and hurt, in very basic terms they also harm and hurt themselves, so the pain may seem to belong only to the designated victim, but the pain belongs equally to the offender, and in that sense they are a victim too. Then weep, my dear wise friend, weep rivers of compassion for all victims and all offenders and wash away from them in your mind all their violations and all their pain until they stand in all their natural goodness and glory, there in your mind, joyfully free of the violations and the pain alike. ************************ I will just mention why it is a continuous violation to run a bordello. The exchange of sex for money is a violation, and the prostitute violates on each occasion s\he does this. In between, however, s\he is not violating, or at least not in that way. Keeping premises in which others are encouraged, nay, expected to violate, is to insist upon the continuous corruption of those underlings, and as such is a double-layered violation, consisting of the proprietor's own violation of the prostitutes, as well as the prostitutes' violations. The expectation, or insistence that the prostitute work in this way, is a continuous expectation and corruption, and thus constitutes a continuous violation. This is significantly different from the prostitutes' own intention to "do it again". That is an intention to violate, but it is not an actual violation. One of the effects of freewill is that violations can be considered, this freedom is safe, protected, it is part of the human condition. If every consideration or intention to violate was itself a violation, the development of freewill would not have been possible, no gestalt of consciousness could withstand such self-inflicted destruction. ("Sumpter, several people would like to ask you, why is it a violation when a prostitute has sex with a client? Surely it is because those sexual acts are obviously not an expression of love. One person thinks it cannot be a violation because both parties consent to it. Your comments please.") First, let me emphasise that when a prostitute has sex with a client, it is most definitely a violation. The issue of consent is not, in this case, nor in any other, any kind of guideline for the recognition of a violation. Many violations take place with the consent of both or all parties. Another example, boxing. Consent is given by both men in the ring to the violence that is there perpetuated, however it should be reasonably clear to anyone who cares to think it through that this is a violation, simply because of the violence involved and the intention of both men to do damage to each other. Furthermore, it could be argued by someone who has read philosophies which explain that each person creates their own reality, that even a rape or murder cannot happen without the consent of the putative victim on inner levels, and if consent were an indication that this is not a violation, then it could be further argued that there are no real violations at all. And this is a false argument. I understand that in your law, sex forced on another without consent is illegal, while sex between two consenting adults is legal, however this is not a reflection of "natural law" and it is natural law and not the reasoned laws of your society by which any action is judged to be either gracious or a violation. I have told you before that violations are not a matter of opinion, they are not decided by people, a violation will not cease to be a violation because any particular group of people makes it legal, or even promotes it as right. The reasons why a violation is a violation have to do, again as I have told you before, with the natural requirement of any consciousness in a gestalt to cooperate with all the others which form that gestalt. That requirement exists even in gestalts which have no human consciousness in them. That requirement is, in certain terms, more ancient than human consciousness, more powerful than human decisions, greater than the human dimension. It is completely binding upon each member of the gestalt, human or otherwise, it precedes all humanly applied laws or customs and cannot be altered one whit by human intervention. As a member of the Earth gestalt, each human has an inbuilt ability to recognise whether their actions are cooperative with the rest of the gestalt or not, and this recognition is at the natural, or spiritual, level of their consciousness, and while it is certainly very reasonable, this recognition cannot be altered by the reasoning mind, although it can be clouded by it. The requirement to cooperate with all the other members of the gestalt means that all actions taken on the part of one member, should, now, should, increase the quality of life of all the members, should add to the fulfilment of all members, and should not cause any harmful damage to the gestalt or any of its members, harmful damage being those actions which decrease the quality of life of any of the members, or deny any of them fulfilment. Remember, however that the human situation differs from that of the other members of the gestalt, plant, animal, molecule, atom, etc., in that only with freewill is a consciousness even capable of violating that requirement to cooperate. I would like to point out here that when it comes to human behaviour, there are only a few actions which are always violations under all circumstances, in many cases an action which is not a violation under one set of circumstances becomes a violation in another. It is not a violation to chop down a few trees to build a house, but it is a violation to cut down an entire forest, for example, even if every tree is used for housing. It is not a violation to kill one rabbit for your food, it is a violation to introduce a disease intended to wipe out the rabbit population. Male\female divisions and inequalities are a violation and clinging to them decreases the fulfilment of all. Those divisions were invented as a bold human experiment, which, unfortunately, has failed to meet the hopes invested in it; and from the beginning, violations were committed which should not have occurred even in the terms set for the experiment, just as Christianity, which was conceived of as a beneficial religion for all people, has been used as an excuse for the most terrible atrocities. A popular singer who becomes very rich because many people spend a small part of their own personal wealth - be that much or a little - on their recordings, is not violating, but a person who becomes very rich by paying their workers very poorly is violating. You are lucky the reasoning mind does not have to work out which actions will cause violations, or you would all be so tied up in trying to decide whether any one simple action would be good for all consciousnesses or not, that none of you would ever do anything! Be grateful, then, that you have the natural guidelines of compassion and natural guilt to help you. Nevertheless, I have already explained how these natural guidelines have become overlaid with difficulties, in your society, so some appeals must be made to the reasoning mind to help clear away the weeds. Back then to your question, why is it a violation when a prostitute has sex with a client? It is not possible for prostitutes to pervert natural sexuality into a bartered commodity without feeling a very great contempt both for themselves and for their clients. They see themselves as commodities, not as fully human people, and they see their clients as weak, abusive, and lacking the finer human qualities. The clients return the favour, they see not just the sex, but the person offering it as a commodity, less than fully human, and they see themselves as a prey to their own sexuality, which in that moment appears to rule them like a voracious vice they cannot control, but must give in to, instead of being a joyous and fully human expression of love. The entire exchange, then, diminishes the quality of life of both parties, and is therefore a violation. ****************************** There are some comments I would like to make concerning the way some people talk about "the dark side" of humans. Now to suppose that a human has a dark side is simply another way of saying there is evil within the person. It does no good to reject the word "evil" if it is then replaced with another concept which still states that the human is not wholly good, but has some badness in them. Now as you know, I teach, as do others of course, that humans are wholly good, and so, to rephrase this point, there is no dark side to them either. I know that confusion can creep in because when we recognise it is possible for us to violate, we realise we are all capable of doing "bad" things. You and I and every other human being has the capacity to be violent, to be abusive, to harm and damage others, and this capacity is perceived as evil, or the dark side, or whatever term is used. But far from being evil, the capacity is itself good, it is an integral part of freewill, the power to choose, and that is a wholly good power with no dark side to it, it is simply powerful. Let me provide an illustration. Let us imagine a person who is handed a flaming firebrand. This flaming firebrand to symbolise the freewill. They can use the firebrand to light a friendly fire, to keep themselves and their family warm, or to provide heat for cooking. However the same flaming firebrand has the power to burn down their neighbour's house, or to destroy vast tracts of the countryside. But the firebrand is not bad or evil because it can be used in this way, it is simply powerful. Knowing that the flaming firebrand gives its holder that power is not bad either, it is wise, so that they use that power sensibly; without that knowledge, they may in fact cause havoc with it, out of their ignorance. And the knowledge that our power to choose gives us the power to be violent and abusive and harmful does not mean that we are, in our nature, violent and abusive and harmful, that is to confuse the holder of the flaming firebrand with the firebrand itself, we hold the capability to choose to do bad things, and knowing we have that power is wise and good so that we can avoid such bad behaviours and use our power wisely and well. It is essential in order for us to be this wise, that we are able to think of the violence, abuses and damage of which we are capable, and such thoughts are not in themselves violations. When the holder of the firebrand thinks, "this firebrand could burn down my neighbour's house.", they are wisely aware of the power they hold in their hands, a necessary wisdom, so they can use the firebrand with care. There is, then, no need for anyone to throw up their hands in horror if they find themselves thinking thoughts of the violence and abuses they are capable of, they are not a bad person, they are not evil, this is not evidence of their dark side, it is evidence of their wisdom, that they know and understand what damage their power to choose is capable of. Copyright © Z Smith 1993, 1995 (edited in 2004) Unaltered copies may be made for free or non-profit distribution All other rights reserved |
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