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Video Description
Does evil actually exist, or is that word just a handy drawer we open for things we do not understand? Lyam Christopher takes up the question with care, starting at the simplest level where good and evil mean little more than obedience and disobedience, like calling a well-behaved pet a good girl. From there he climbs through college-age relativism, where every culture gets its own rules, toward something more sturdy: integrity in the sphere of Beauty on the Tree of Life, and the quiet honesty of simply knowing what you are not.
Then the lesson opens into wider dimensions. Kabbalah speaks of a fifth dimension beyond length, width, height, and time: a moral dimension where each choice steers toward some possible future. Here evil is not a lurking monster but a direction that can be turned away from. He notices that true evil in people often looks like emptiness, the missing echo of empathy we now call psychopathy. Even a crowd at a late-night club can show it, he says, in the same leering faces and lolling tongues old horror films borrowed from real life. It feels strange and a little sad rather than purely frightening.
Then comes the gentlest and most useful turn. The great work, he explains, is not really becoming divine, because you already are; it is only clearing away whatever hides that from you. In this Hermetic light, anything that helps you see your own wholeness is good, and anything that keeps you asleep is, for now, evil. A demon then is not an enemy to slay but a force to look at and say thank you for sharing before it loses its grip. The whole path is laid out clearly in Kabbalah, Magic & the Great Work of Self Transformation, and the video ends with a strangely freeing idea borrowed from an old Zen tale: when the boat that bumps into yours is empty, there is no one left to blame, and suddenly even harm softens into just what happened.
Full Video Transcript
Alright, it’s time to begin. This week’s video is about evil. A very fun topic, at least when you’ve got some distance from it, or if you’re studying literature.
and i do notice that there is a great concern about evil and banishing evil and
fending off unfortunate results from your work and people who are out to get you
um so the i’ve already gone over some of the effects of the lbrp and as you guys uh know if
you’ve seen that video that that ritual does seem to intensify paranoia about evil or harm
so i’ll start out with a question can anyone deliberately hurt you can somebody really do
that because the i find it uh amazing that people don’t even question uh this principle i’ll pretty
much when i walk up to somebody and say you know what do we talk about you know problems problems
with the world and and uh i might pose the question uh oh do you think that uh people really
want to hurt you like they’re talking about terrorism what do you suppose terrorists want
do they really want to hurt people and the assumption usually or the knee-jerk reaction
is yes of course there’s something called schadenfreude right which is a german word
for deriving pleasure from other people’s misfortune okay and that so that seems to
be possible or sadism seems to be possible we have a word for it don’t we therefore it must exist
so we’re going to explore this idea of evil because it comes up so much in magic and it
really is a way cool topic even though ultimately it’s um an idea that it needs to be transcended
not ignored though okay just like you wouldn’t ignore uh physical laws even though physical laws
of this physical world aren’t really what’s happening they only appear to be happening
but if you’re going to be operating within physical parameters then physical laws for
all intensive purposes do exist okay so there’s a way of looking at good and evil that really
goes ultimately beyond it and um and the ultimate truth is that uh evil is not real
neither is good in that context all right um so the most basic concept of good and evil is good
boy good boy oh you’re so good oh you rolled over one and now i’m going to give you a treat you know
so if a pet is well behaved uh you call the pet a good boy or a good girl i have ferrets who are
house trained for the most part and uh so when i’m training them if i have a new ferret if
if it’s a baby ferret then you really have to put a lot of effort into house training them because
they’re not natural at it really like cats are but you can train them to be house trained and
they can be pretty consistent about it and when well and when they obey it’s like oh good girl
i have two girls right now good girl and give them a treat or something like that and if they
break the rules oh bad girl i don’t do that though kind of pandering to them right uh i just i tend
to reward i don’t tend to punish the the ferrets um other than i will put them in their pen if
they’ve done something disruptive so that’s the idea of you know good and evil as just being you
know obedient or disobedient and that’s at the level of a child many adults uh don’t seem to get
beyond that level of good and evil uh and that tends to be or it used to be what was considered
conservative you know where pretty much everything was about you must obey and respect god and that’s
all you need to do obey the ten commandments and and if you break the ten commandments then you
must be punished good boy bad boy good girl bad girl and then along comes critical thinking so
the kids go off to college and then the parents get super alarmed because this whole idea of being
obedient is no longer enough the the child has grown up and basically now begins to adopt
ethical relativism oh so in other words what’s good in one culture might not be good in another
culture or even more annoyingly well what’s good for you is not necessarily good for me
and then the course of the woke ideology comes into that and um uh oh if it’s real
enough for you, then it’s real enough for me. That kind of relativistic thinking, even in terms
of existence of things or reality. Oh, if you believe that, then it’s real for you. That’s the
sort of relativistic mindset. And what happens when, is ethical relativism important? Of course
it is. It’s extremely important. And it’s quite shocking to learn about it, especially if you’re
taking an anthropology class because you just can’t believe what other cultures have done
throughout history or are currently doing in regard to their moral code of ethics and good
behavior it can be quite shocking uh and uh but but then what happens is the student at you know
beginner college student tends to adopt the view that all ethics are relative so morality is simply
a relativistic phenomenon and what’s good for you might not be good for me and then we are
also sort of free to make our own systems of morality and so um that causes a lot of problems
naturally because um apparently morality is not entirely relativistic it just has a relativistic
dimension to it all right and so eventually when when uh students develop more refined critical
thinking skills they will look at all the various systems of morality out there and the next level
usually is they adopt one they choose one and then they stick to it or you know try it out and
this can be very annoying you know for especially for parents of college students because uh last
week you were this and now last week you’re a vegetarian and now what are you doing like you’re
trying out all these um moralistic systems yes um vegetarianism tends to be moralistic not
necessarily based on nutrition or health science yeah of course the two get tangled up with each
other and and the assumption being that if i uh eat healthy food or if i eat um no if i if i if i
eat food that where murder of animals isn’t involved then i’m not a murderer and that’s
also nutritious for me that is actually quite absurd logically okay so anyway um but anyway
so to get back into good and evil here um eventually the student goes beyond ethical
relativism and then sort of picks a system of ethics something he or she stands for this used
to be a very big deal actually in college systems and um and the each individual would choose a
motto that set of like basically or set of principles that he or she would abide by or
they would even join you know this or that society which had a code of ethics that they would um
maintain for each other and with each other and personally okay and this is something that is
echoed in the golden dawn where uh each student of magic comes up with a motto yeah and then he or
she is known as freighter or soar or so and so okay um and usually the motto is a saying uh like
let’s say seek luke at luke’s which is in latin latin for thus let the light shine uh and that
would be sll and if somebody adopted that motto the uh they would be referred to as freighter sll
soul uh so that’s why you’ve probably seen some very strange golden dawn names this was written
by freighter so-and-so or soar so-and-so and with some strange initials like that i think dd ddfc or
ddcf or something like that was um mcgregor mather’s motto um so we move beyond ethical
relativism and then we’ll pick a system of integrity okay to to stick to and that’s usually
as high as people go in critical thing in critical thinking as far as ethics and things like that
Uh, but that’s not all there’s other things to consider here. Now, what about evil atmospheres?
So I went to that house, you know, that house where a murder was committed,
something was really creepy about that place. So is it really possible to have a, um,
an evil atmosphere? Uh, when I was in my twenties and I began going clubbing like out to dance clubs
and bars and stuff like that i was very naive about it and but of course i didn’t i was pretty
much an ethical relativist at the time for the most part and didn’t really believe in evil and
then lo and behold i was already doing the grade work um and uh for the golden dawn and i was
shocked to sense the atmosphere of some of these nightclub environments and it wasn’t really about
the place as far as i could tell it was more about the people who happened to be there right then
uh and uh but this whole set of behaviors that goes around this sort of clubbing lifestyle with
the drugs and the um trying to extract pleasure out of this or that situation um sort of mindlessly
seeking entertainment at other people’s expense sometimes it becomes it it was astonishing to me
because people would actually take on lurid demonic um behaviors and facial expressions
the lolling tongues and things like that and it was just like this stuff is real all the stuff
you see that you know like um if you’re watching the exorcist a lot of the the um the gestures and
the facial expressions and the the uh the language um that the demon or one of the demons speaks
is uh it’s pretty much an echo of the lewd behavior that exists in real like nightclub
environments uh so um are there is there such a thing as an evil atmosphere uh sort of uh but
evil is a much more you know versatile tenuous um uh thing going on okay so but now the question is
is it really like a thing is it like a dimension can it permeate a space and sort of infect it or
something like that hmm so let’s talk about the evil dimension so um in Kabbalah uh in the
Sefer Yetzir they pretty much that text acknowledges that the universe is multi-dimensional
and as you guys probably know in physics Einsteinian physics there are at least four
dimensions and uh so the first with the first uh zero dimensions is a point in other words uh like
the neophyte meditation a single geometric point and then one dimension is a line okay all it is
is length no width no depth just length and then of course the two two dimension as you know is a
like a flat sheet of paper or like a plane two dimensions and then three dimensions is like a cube
or a sphere any three-dimensional object then right and the interesting thing is that oh all
you really need is three dimensions for something to exist right no you need more than that you need
more dimensions than that um because in order to notice something exists it takes a little bit of
time to say oh there it is okay so there’s another dimension and and the way you can look at this is
um it’s a very basic uh example if i want to meet you somewhere downtown i might meet you at the
corner of 5th and Elm Street, 5th Avenue and Elm Street, let’s say, right? And so those are
basically two dimensions already right there. So on the plane of the city, on the plane layout of
the city, I’m going to meet you at these coordinates, okay? So we’ve just done two
dimensions of coordinates right there. But then I might say, well, I’m going to meet you on the
corner of 5th and Elm, but on the third floor of the building there. So that’s also got an
elevation to it. So that’s the third dimension. Okay, so I’m going to meet you at the corner of
fifth and elm on the third floor. So meeting you at that elevation on the third floor is another
coordinate that I’ve had to add to that, and that adds a third dimension. But the three dimensions
is not enough, because when are we going to meet? Okay, so not only is there a dimension in
length and width and height but there’s also a dimension of when before after during so there’s
a dimension of time that is the fourth dimension according to einstein okay and so uh this here
is a tarot spread okay um this is the celtic cross tarot spread and i’m not going to go into
the details of it but the really cool thing is that the celtic cross tarot spread can be used
to anticipate or to predict the future to look at the past in the future and the present moment
it’s really mostly about the present moment but it’s got coordinates for also the future
and the past in it okay so cards number one and two are pretty much establishing that the three
dimensions okay this is where you are right now this is what’s happening right now just three
dimensions but then there’s the dimension of the past and the future and that’s those are
cards five and six five is normally the past six is then the future six represents the future so
that represents the fourth dimension of your current situation the past and the future and
suddenly we have oh my goodness what is this number three and number four cards number three
and number four what are those that’s the fifth dimension that’s the dimension of providence
this is also a kabbalistic concept but it’s not it’s not unique to kabbalah it’s even mentioned
in quantum physics as far as i can tell uh so um the dimension of providence is uh it’s it’s not
hard to understand because you pretty much have a a future that’s coming and a past that has already
been okay if you’re going to think linearly about it um do lines actually exist no but if we’re
going to think about line time as a line okay so we got the future up ahead of you and then the
past behind you okay now the so the vertical dimension in the tarot spread is the fifth
dimension and that is the element of choice because i don’t need to pick the path that’s
straight ahead into that future destiny i can tilt it i can pivot it i can turn my path and go
somewhere else so the fifth dimension is not only the dimension of providence but it’s also
also the dimension of good and evil okay you’ve got a dimension of you know width and length you’ve
got a dimension of height and depth you’ve got a dimension of past and future and you also have a
dimension of good choices and bad choices good and evil the fifth dimension according to kabbalah is
a moral dimension so it’s a dimension of not left and right not past and future but a dimension of
other possible futures some of them good some of them evil and you can actually kind of look at
this like uh you have the two angels one of them on the right shoulder is the good angel and the
one on the left shoulder is the bad angel these are the steering apparatus so you can steer towards
a bad future if with the left shoulder or you can steer towards a right future with the right
shoulder um well anyway uh those are very crude you know configurations but they all kind of try
and get at this sort of dimensional component of um destiny and uh beingness and actions and
uh free will or at least the appearance of free will we will so there is apparently a moral
dimension hmm now in quantum physics they would say well it’s more like a dimension of choice and
each time you make a choice you create an alternate universe and there’s one universe where
you made the other choice and that proceeds in this direction and then and there’s a universe
that you are in that that you kind of went for it was that’s the one you’re in so every time you
make a choice another universe is created yeah yeah well that’s an interesting idea what about
the dimension of consciousness awareness some people would say that is the sixth dimension
a dimension of light light and darkness or awareness and oblivion um it’s very in vogue
to simply refer to evil as unconsciousness so if somebody especially if you’re a buddhist
who it’s everything’s about awareness or mindfulness um and there’s a lot of value to that
but it does tend to dismiss a lot of the flavors of good and evil and of the moral dimension
by just saying it’s a matter of being aware or unaware it’s not quite it doesn’t quite catch it
okay but being aware is very important when it comes to the moral dimension as far as um
oh yeah we can talk about that as far as demons are concerned and there is a the kind of good
and evil of authenticity or integrity so there’s all kinds of different good and evil and so you
might meet somebody who’s operating under a different morality or a different kind of
consciousness around good and evil okay some many people think of good and evil simply in terms of
honesty and dishonesty okay or some people think of good and evil simply in terms of obedience and
disobedience okay and for most of us the higher kind of a higher kind of morality is authenticity
and integrity uh which is which really was what that college student was opting for they kind of
choose their own code of ethics and then of course if they can stick to it that’s the sort of
authenticity okay but there’s a bit of a trap there too because there’s another system of morality
they can fall into and get stuck in uh if it comes and so um what we have here is the tree of life
Kabbalah. And there’s authenticity and integrity. Shouldn’t be any surprise that that’s in Tifereth.
Tifereth in the center of the tree of life is the sphere of beauty. And in order for something to
have beauty, it’s balanced and it holds together, kind of has a hold together kind of property to
it it’s all unified and naturally wholesome naturally naturally holy maybe and um so it
has that integrity to it in other words something has integrity it means it holds together like
structural integrity or authenticity it is true to itself that’s you know when people try to or
when people pretend to have authenticity they’ll say i know who i am and you know they’ll adopt
some identity and say that’s who i am and that’s i’m going to stick to that you know so authenticity
Authenticity is more about, at the Tiff-Arth level, is more about knowing what you’re not.
You’re knowing I’m not any of these things.
All I know is that I’ve chosen to sort of operate in this mode a lot.
Okay.
But I also know I’m not that either.
Okay.
So, but I know what my propensities are.
I know what my preferences are as me as an individual.
Okay.
And then if I am true to that, then I have authenticity and integrity.
and often that’s very very well respected but many people are not at that level and they
and you can get in a lot of trouble for being authentic or having integrity and of course you
can be a pain in the ass too if you point out to when people are not authentic or when they’re
corrupt in other words when they lack integrity not a good idea to do that so um so if you choose
a code of of behavior and you kind of stick to it cling to it then you can end up in this um
in gebura which is the honor and duty uh that these are all virtues of the sphere of honor and
duty would be that’s the sphere of mars naturally and then on the other side of that the sphere of
jupiter where you have generosity another virtue uh and that’s the benevolent king who always sees
the best in you okay and uh and generously rewards you that kind of thing um uh yeah great
to have at a party that kind of person uh yeah authenticity integrity is kind of like between
those two okay and then you have this sort of lower down kinds of morality it’s simple honesty
in other words truthfulness versus dishonesty okay so some people think that’s uh evil is simply a
matter of lying all the time and as you can tell it’s more truth than that um and uh then the in
the talk we have the sphere of affection expressing love caring for each other the expressing of
caring hugging you know and uh then below that uh which is where a lot of people are in their
morality a lot of people um really operate within the realm of self-care and family values uh and
And so they’ll tell you that they know what they stand for, but they really are just kind of habitually sort of maintaining their family.
In fact, maintaining their family at the expense of others or maintaining their only sticking, only helping their friends.
It’s kind of natural to be that way, too. Self-care and family values are very important.
It’s very healthy for us to stick to those we know and care for them, because if we try to help everybody, we are depleted.
Okay, so it’s very important to have this sort of, you know, selfish sort of morality where I’m just looking after the people that are close to me.
That’s actually quite important because, yeah, if you try to fix the world, then you’re going to be all over the place and you’re going to run out of energy.
You’re going to deplete yourself.
But to be stuck in the level of self-care, obviously there’s problems with that.
There’s chauvinism, tribalism, family feuds, selfishness, hedonism, you know.
Okay, and then down at the bottom there, that’s important too, having discernment.
In Kabbalah, in Hermetic Kabbalah, the primary virtue ascribed to Malkuth, the bottom sphere there, is discrimination.
but i didn’t want to use that word because discrimination over the past few decades has
taken on a very negative um connotation but we can say discernment the ability to discern
to have good judgment okay or to have good taste sophistication okay and so yeah it’s actually
quite important to have good taste to surround yourself with quality objects healthy food
comfortable furniture um uh aesthetic good looks and things like that you know and you can tell
like if you get stuck in that sphere um it it uh it there’s that can be a problem too it’s
sort of like that real estate agent who walks around the house and adheres to the services
and caresses things and said you want this don’t you it’s all about the property and yeah um so uh
But that kind of sophistication and discernment is also a good type of good and evil, good taste and bad taste.
Okay, so there’s all different like virtues and vices that you can adopt.
Now, so for many people think of good and evil in terms of benefit and harm.
So if something bad happens, it’s evil.
And if something good happens, it’s good.
Alas, that these evil days should be mine.
so um and in fact when you learn fortune telling systems and divination uh like geomancy and the
tarot many of the old-fashioned interpretations of various cards and geomantic figures is that’s a
very evil figure very unfortunate yeah and even um like the planet saturn is the great malefic
the great evil one and when in fact in fact saturn is not evil it just has a character that
can bring misfortune with it can bring misfortune with it that doesn’t mean it’s evil necessarily
all right so if evil is not a matter of good results and bad results is there a hermetic type
of good and evil or a system of good and evil that you can adopt as an occultist or as a magician
Why, yes, there is. And it primarily involves the great work. So the great work is the fantasy of you moving from your sort of imperfect, an imperfect fallen state to a more exalted divine state.
and um as you would probably guess uh i don’t necessarily believe in that um it’s simply a
matter of uh the great work the great work is really more a matter of you recognizing the
exalted state that’s already there the problem is you don’t see it okay and so in that sense
no transformation really happens in the great work let’s say if you’re doing an alchemical
transformation i’m transforming myself into gold i’m becoming an adept i’m or i’m becoming a saint
i’m becoming angelic or godlike well no you’re not you already are but there are things going
on that are preventing you from realizing that and experiencing it so in a hermetic in a hermetic
sense anything that’s preventing you from recognizing your inherent divinity can then
be regarded as evil yes and that would mean that yes unconsciousness is then a type of evil in a
hermetic sense great or ignorance um so yeah so anything that is sort of hindering you but you
have to remember that there could be aspects of ignorance and aspects of unconsciousness that
could help you you know here and there maybe so they’re not necessarily evil in her in a hermetic
sense okay so anything that is helping you recognize your inherent divinity would be
considered good and anything that is beguiling you into not seeing your inherent divinity
could be considered evil what you might notice then is that once you become permanently enlightened
you literally do then transcend good and evil because nothing can hinder that realization
anymore okay and that’s not so hard to understand because if you have an unconscious behavior that
kind of takes you over now and again it’s like i don’t know what came over me i’m so sorry
um eventually as that tendency comes up you become aware of how it feels as it’s rising
it’s like there it is again and then you it can’t take you over anymore okay so and when that
happens that tendency is no longer evil it simply is it’s simply something that was trying to do
something it’s like i see you again and it rather than say you’re evil and i banish thee to hell
it’s more like oh i see i see what you’re up to and i and i understand why you are automatically
stepping forward to try to take care of this for me that’s not always the appropriate thing to do
in this situation but i appreciate you coming up to share okay and so that’s the idea of that’s
basically a demon that has come up and basically um tried to possess you and make you do something
to defend yourself or to um to go out and get something compulsively um and when you notice
that thing coming up and say oh you know what i don’t really need to do that right now but thank
you for sharing and that demon no longer is evil anymore it becomes a friend and when it crops up
and you could benefit from its energy then you can use that energy can it take you over anymore
not really but it’s still there okay um that’s why i say sometimes these demons um they dissolve
completely because you simply don’t need them at all anymore or they simply become you know
uh subroutine programs that continue to run but as they when when they’re triggered you can say
oh no no i don’t need that right now um okay that’s what it means to be enlightened as a human
being because we’re yeah we’re all riddled with little subroutine programs that keep popping up
and trying to do things uh but if you are are you know permanently awakened none of those programs
can really um take you over anymore they’ll crop up and say do you need me and you’re and you’re
like well i could use some of that energy but no i don’t need you to take me over nothing can take
you over anymore all right anyway so but in in the meantime when you’re not enlightened yet
anything that is sort of keeping you from recognizing your inherent um divinity or
enlightenment uh could be considered evil and anything that helps you would then be considered
good okay this can be very painful by the way so if you’re if you’re taking up the great work and
you’re you’re you are seeking enlightenment and you’re using these sort of tantric or magical
practices to do it you begin to become aware of the hermetic dimension of good and evil
the reason it’s so painful is because the person you’re with your spouse your girlfriend your
boyfriend might be a hindrance they might be keeping you from realizing your potential your
divine potential or your divine you know nature uh and they become a hindrance and guess what
by the time you recognize that there’s nothing you can do about it it’s too late you’ve already
seen it okay uh either they’re going to have to change which they will not do don’t hold out the
hope well there’s this smidgen of a possibility but really i know he can change he can change i
no you can change no um so it can be very painful because you begin to notice again and again that
this person is a hindrance there there’s a jealousy they see they kind of sense what you’re
doing that you’re moving to a different level and they become a nag or they you know um they try to
guilt you into staying the way you were it can be very painful experience to have to let people go
people come and go in your life you know and that’s kind of part of the hermetic path other
people will come into your life uh but um they might disappear as well too as you move beyond
their you know um type of morality or their their code of ethics or whatever yeah so it can be uh
it is a solitary path for the most part but it’s a path in which you get to meet all kinds of
different people and uh can you keep a friend for a long time of course it’s possible but i’m just
pointing out that um the most painful aspect of moving to a different level of morality is that
suddenly there are people in your life that you will have to move away from and they can be
most painfully they can be a spouse they can be a boss they can be co-workers they can be family
with me it’s family yeah i don’t i don’t associate with family nothing’s wrong with any of them
really but they’re very unconscious so they um and they have they have opted to stay that way
apparently or that’s how it’s turned out um so yeah i don’t have relations with my family
not that i didn’t try you know um like with my mother i basically said uh i really just want to
be your friend and she said yeah i can be yeah let’s be friends and it was pretty cool we had
some really heart-to-heart conversations with each other sometimes but she would always tend
to drift back into being a mom and then you know guilting you into why don’t you call me and like
you know things like that um it’s like i i’m not functioning that way anymore i’m sorry um and uh
it’s not to say that you’re going to let go of that behavior if if you develop further in the
way it worked but it’s a warning that you it could happen and that there that there are types of um
helping influences for your enlightenment practices and there are hindrances and there’s
a reason why in kabbalah some there’s a whole class of demons called the hinderers no where
are the hinderers anyway probably in saturn i imagine probably in that sphere of saturn
uh yeah all right hermetic good and evil so ah yes there’s also psychopathy sociopathy and
narcissism i’m spelling narcissism narcissism with a capital n because it’s named after a
Narcissus. Yeah. And I’m very fussy about proper nouns and proper adjectives. Um, so this is an
element of evil that we didn’t have clinical words for until maybe 1970 or so. And so, uh,
but people have been exploring these ideas, especially psychopathy for, for, uh, a thousand
or so years really um let me see uh if you think of edgar allen poe he wrote several short stories
where he really explored in depth the character of a psychopath the telltale heart is probably
the most interesting one also um the cask of amontillado and the black hat is another one
um where he explores psychopathy it’s where the actual horror like for the for the cask of the
montiato um the actual horror of that story is not to be the victim who’s killed it’s actually
to be the killer if you look at that closely because you can’t believe it like that’s you
you’re joking right you’re just gonna do that with no feeling at all except of vengeance that’s all
you feel you know so psychopathy is a lack of empathy essentially so that the the ability to
imagine how somebody else feels is simply not there or it’s stunted to a great deal okay and
a person who’s a psychopath does not have a full spectrum of emotions apparently this is a very
real thing some people say it might even be up to five percent of the of the um population who are
psychopath or psychopathic you know and they were born that way they were born with without the full
spectrum of emotions and there are they are particularly lacking in empathy um all these
three conditions that all these three conditions here are the three types of antisocial personality
disorder uh i would say the worst one probably is psychopathy because there’s no cure for that
the brain simply will not process empathy or emotions if they’re one of the big lessons about
dealing with psychopaths and narcissists is that they cannot change they will not change and if you
think the themes and literature tend to explore that really if you notice um this was actually
a theme in literature before they had the word psychopathy and one of the main things we learn
like pretty much in all of the james bond novels and short stories it’s about how to deal with
psychopaths because all of the james bond villains are psychopaths the james bond himself is not a
very interesting character it’s pretty flat actually but the villains tend to be really
bizarre caricatures different types of psychopathy and um yeah if you think about it there’s lots of
very interesting characters in movies and literature that are who are psychopaths hannibal
collector uh very interesting psychopath um but they’re all characterized by the same thing
and alistair crowley was very likely a um had narcissistic personality disorder it’s pretty
clear to me i’ve scanned through his writings to find any trace or um hint of empathy for anything
or anyone and all i can either he comes close sometimes but he only gives it lip service
he talks about love and usually turns it into sexual love you know um it’s yeah usually the
love aspect of the work becomes more hedonistic and uh you can tell the way he treated people
he was quite a toxic person um and he apparently couldn’t never not be that way it was
narcissistic tendencies uh and that really stood against him in the great work because
in the great work, at least in the Kabbalistic scheme, it’s important to receive the initiation
of Tifareth or that center sphere on the tree of life. And if you don’t have empathy, it’s not
really possible to be initiated into that sphere. And people who have narcissistic personality
disorder or psychopathy or even sociopathy, they do sort of know something’s wrong with them,
but they tend to be in denial, and they try to exert a lot of energy to prove that everybody’s
just like them. So in other words, those feelings you have for other people, you’re just faking it.
You’re just pretending to do that, like I do. And I’ll prove it to you. And they’ll try to set up
little scenarios where they, see, you’re just pretending to care about them. And it’s hard
for us to understand that they really don’t have those feelings. It’s bizarre. And we keep
expecting they can change i know they can change but they can’t this is one type of evil okay and
it simply involves um not having uh empathy or care for others but not it’s simply not being
able to do that and um it does sort of apparently create a sort of private hell for these people
that they don’t quite realize that how hellish it is for them some of them do i think but the
impression is that they’re living in their head all the time i’m so tired of living in my head
all the time like all i can do is calculate and think about how to how to try to get ahead and
how to be on top and how to be superior to everybody but it they can tell something’s
wrong because it’s not satisfying yeah they can pretend but it’s always yeah there’s always
something some always something wrong so that’s another type of um evil unfortunately that exists
sociopathy um there apparently is hope for that and so sociopaths are apparently um created they’re
not born that way. They are abused into being sociopaths. Not much hope for that either. It’s
hard to rehabilitate one, but at least a sociopath wasn’t born with suppressed empathy. It was kind
of conditioned into them. At least that’s the way it’s usually described. I know many psychologists
sort of verge all over the place the way they describe things. All right, that’s a very important
type of evil can someone deliberately try to hurt you so there’s an old zen story about a
a guy who he buys a boat and it’s kind of beat up it’s an old boat but he fixes it up he really um
he sands it down he repaints it it’s gorgeous he loves it and so he takes it out on the lake
one morning when it’s all foggy and the water’s like glass you know he’s just coasting along on
the lake and it’s very serene he’s having a great time uh doesn’t even have to just kind of stirs
the water occasionally with the oars but you’d be just kind of coasting across the water and then
suddenly out of the fog another boat comes bam side swipes him puts a nasty gash in the side of
his boat too and he’s like what the hell why don’t you watch where you’re going reckless you’re a
reckless driver or reckless rower right um and he’s like really prepared to like give this person
hell for damaging his boat and then he looks in the boat and the fog sort of clears away
there’s nobody in it the boat was simply adrift and he either he ran into it or it ran into him
he can’t quite tell anymore what what actually happened uh and once he realizes there’s nobody
there’s nobody in that boat he’s his demeanor completely changes he’s like oh it’s like nobody
to blame okay so he rows the boat back to shore um uh sands it down again um uh fills in the gas
you know and repaints it good as new no problem uh so the the first reaction was that there was
somebody in that other boat that person is evil or you know stupid or ignorant or blah blah blah
right so assigning some kind of motive to that person you deliberately did that or you’re just
so dumb you know that you there’s something wrong with you that made you do that and then there’s
nobody when there’s nobody there it’s like oh it’s just stuff happening there really isn’t any evil
there at all i’m still frustrated because i loved my boat and now i have to fix it but of course
there’s no there’s no universe out to get me anymore is there and so the lesson in that is
that whenever you uh whether there’s a person in the boat or not it’s still empty because if that
if the boat doesn’t have anybody in it it was simply a bunch of forces that were already in
motion that led up to that unfortunate incident of the collision nobody was trying to do that
there was no motive or intention this kind of damages the whole premise behind the criminal
justice system because they try to prove motive right that’s fine but is there really any true
motive there. And so if somebody appears to be deliberately hurting you and deriving pleasure
from it, what’s really happening? There are a bunch of forces that are in motion that are
leading to that unfortunate situation. And if you really look, if you empathize with what it’s like
to be somebody who is deriving pleasure supposedly from hurting you, they’re not really deriving
pleasure from hurting you it looks that way but it’s more like there’s an insecurity there it’s
like i really don’t feel good about myself and but when i put this person down or victimize them
i feel like i have some power now now i feel better so these are really just forces that are
kind of in momentum already they’re they’re trying to work themselves out there isn’t any
deliberate intention to hurt anybody even though that person who’s hurting you might believe that
i’m deriving pleasure from hurting you that’s not what’s happening they’re just trying to feel
better about something look at that closely look so when somebody when somebody cuts you off in
traffic um uh and it might have even looked like they’re driving aggressively they saw you but
they they’re like being aggressive right it’s like but yeah is that really about you are they
really trying to hurt you or is it just stuff going on with them that’s working itself out
these are forces that are already in motion that are playing themselves out okay it’s kind of
important to to to perceive that way so that this is why enlightened beings don’t get offended
that’s they’re notorious for not getting offended by anything because they know that nothing’s
really trying to hurt them even when it appears that way yeah maybe really hard to swallow too
because many people build up their entire sense of self based on who’s out to get them who’s after
them who the who their enemies are who whatever who’s jealous of them or who’s who’s trying to
one-up them and when none of that stuff is really actually happening then oh well then who i am who
am i then if i don’t have these things to strive against or fight against if there’s not a legion
of evil demons out there for me to fight well then i don’t exist really do i they’re just there’s
nothing to there’s nothing here to defend and to maintain against all those things yeah that’s
right all right so i hope this clarifies the notion of evil or the problem of evil is evil a
problem well yeah of course it is on a conventional level or in a relativistic level um uh because um
because people perceive evil as something real and then um suffer because of it so evil then
becomes a problem but ultimately no as we’ve just explored it’s not really there okay it’s just a
convenient label we slap on something that is pretty much oh that’s unfortunate or that seems
to be unfortunate okay but there’s nothing really there trying to do anything to hurt you i guess
one more thing to say is that well do demons really exist well of course they do but they’re
just forces trying to play themselves play play things out there are even forces out there that
kind of um struggle against each other but that struggling against each other is um it’s not the
true nature of those forces it’s just something about those forces that still is turbulent and
eventually going to exhaust itself and disappear eventually. All right, so I probably just made a
difficult topic even more difficult, but there you have it. Until next time.
Source: Lyam Christopher