Can an Enlightened Person be Evil?

[Osaid]

21 minutes ago, ChrisZoZo said:

define enlightenment 

I could define it in many ways, but it is simply just realizing that you cannot imagine yourself. You are nothing, as in, not a thing. You cannot be defined by anything you imagine that you are.

This is the same as "realizing what you are" or realizing exactly what your experience is.

Edited February 14 by Osaid

[Davino]

Can an Enlightened Person be Evil?

Charles Manson

He is a very peculiar person to say the least. If you hear him talk you can see his more conscious that 99% of people, he is very sharp and sees clearly reality. Having said this, he has many many many psychological problems. I find his case very interesting, I'm still making my mind on it and investigating it. I wanted to share it with you as it may be of interest. Many times conversations here get too abstract and having a real case scenario to study can greatly help

[Razard86]

18 hours ago, AtmanIsBrahman said:

@Osaid I guess I am talking about Leo’s model of reality. When I used the term enlightenment, it was a loose use of the phrase. Still, any model of enlightenment has to involve higher and lower consciousness (unless enlightenment is an instantaneous 0-100 type of thing, which I don’t buy into). 

High Consciousness is a recognition that everything is you. As such you would be unable to be a serial killer and be high conscious because if you killed someone you feel all of the pain of that person. This is how High Consciousness stops you from harming other, as you recognize other as self.

[Ishanga]

@AtmanIsBrahman

No they cannot!

[Soul Flight]

@AtmanIsBrahman Good question. There is no free will and there is no self. An enlightened person like Buddha knows everything is perfect just the way it is. And Buddha would be free to murder or kill or whatever but would not take these actions because he would just "be" and let the universe "be."

In your example the high consciousness serial killer might be more good because he is self actualized. The low consciousness moral citizen might be evil because he is simply following the orders of society and culture without discovering himself and actualizing himself. The good is being yourself, finding yourself, and actualizing yourself. The evil is repressing yourself and following orders.

[Paradoxed]

You can contribute to evils of the world without thinking about it, simply through self bias of your own direct experience. For example, you may decide to take a 10-15 minute shower every day. A serious environmentalist would find that evil when you could do it in 5 minutes. To the people who don't have accessible water this could come off as evil that you shower every day in the first place like this. Now I ask you is it evil? In a sense, no, it's not evil because you're unconscious of the widespread implications of what you're doing, but in a much realer sense you are contributing to evil. Same with buying shit off amazon or from Walmart when you could support a local business.

This goes deep to the point of you even having strong opinions on how the world should be, and working towards making those beliefs a reality, is a contribution to divisions in the world, because others will want the world to look different. Then there are competing ideologies in the world, which causes deep conflicts like war, aka what most people consider evil. Or people say one side or the other is evil in said war based on their own interpretation of events through their ideological framework.

It's close to impossible to not be evil in some way. That's because evil is not a real thing, evil is subjective and changes with the interpreter. 

Evil is better defined as selfishness, acts of extreme self-bias while not knowing yourself in others. These people haven't realized that separation between themselves and others is imagined, so the most cruel and evil people can intentionally hurt people for their own personal gain without caring. But most evil is more subtle convenient ways of self biased actions and thought. This is all defended and protected by the ego mind, to the point where it is basically happening unconsciously and nobody realizes they are doing it. Collective unconscious behavior lead to great "evils" in the world.

It seems that good is better defined as extreme selflessness while evil is better defined as extreme selfishness. A truly actualized individual who knows themself as God does not hurt others because he is at a higher level of awareness to his or herself as everything. Those that do hurt others are out of alignment with God in that sense.

So it's not really that Hitler was a good person, it's more that Hitler was just a person. He was a person who was corrupted by ideology and doing what he thought was justified and right and inflicting that on the world. In a sense it is not much different than what many countries or individuals do on a much smaller scale, in their own daily lives. And in that sense, we are all evil, because we all have self bias towards our ideologies, beliefs, etc and a preference for that. You will never get to understand someone on psychological level by demonizing or writing them off as evil. You have to come to some sort of understanding and agreed upon definition of what good and evil actually are. When you dig deep enough you realize that good and evil do not exist and are completely subjective. So it's not that rape, murder, and Hitler are good, it's more that they are simply happening, not inherently good or bad, but you as a selfish human being with self-preference and bias and ego will label and conceptualize such things as evil because you would not want that inflicted upon you. You could also lack this awareness, and not see yourself in others, and go around raping and murdering people.

It's more important to understand that Hitler did many things that you see as bad because of your perspective, but to his perspective and other Nazi's at the time, they were doing what they "thought was right", and that is how evil is typically played out IMO. The point is not that "Hitler is a good person".

I don't think a truly enlightened person is capable of rape of and murder like you're talking about.

[Hojo]

Can  painting be evil?

[Salvijus]

All evil is driven by fear. Not by love

Your nature is love. 

You being but love, can you be evil? 

Only if you forget yourself 

Edited February 16 by Salvijus

[Yimpa]

The assumption here is that there is a person that becomes enlightened.

[Salvijus]

Your behavior is a reflection of your belief system

Every action is a statement if you believe in seperation or in all pervasive union. 

One who knows the truth, the pervasive union in all things, acts accordingly in a way that serves The Whole system and not his little identity. 

If the implications of the above are undetstood. Evil(selfish) behavior and enlightenment are impossible to combine. 

Edited February 16 by Salvijus

[Razard86]

On 2/14/2024 at 6:18 PM, DefinitelyNotARobot said:

They can be according to your own definitions of evil, but that's not something which is fundamental to their essence, or in fact, your essence. If a person were to define "life" as evil, because us humans take so much away from nature in order to survive, then even a baby would appear as evil to them. Realize that how a baby appears to such a person isn't how it appears to you (hopefully). Similarly, how an "enlightened being" appears to you, isn't necessarily how it will appear to others or "itself".

I don't know if that argument works because if the baby is evil, then the person who thinks that way makes themselves evil. Also the person has to separate the baby from nature for the baby to be evil. Because a baby is one of the purest expressions of human nature, of life itself. It hasn't been socialized yet, so it literally can't be evil because it acts no different than a wild animal. It has not yet developed its human intelligence to act like a human. All it does is poop, eat, cry, sleep, and scan its environment and its body trying to figure out what is going on.

[Breakingthewall]

We all feel tied to the human hive, practically no one is a true loner. Being part of the hive and being tied to the mental matrix, like all humans, we see killing a human differently than killing a rat, we are aware of the implications that this will have on the matrix. That individual will leave a hole, perhaps there is something called grief, perhaps some children vibrate with something we call "sadness." If we catch a tuna in the sea we do not think about the hole it leaves, but on a cosmic level the reality is that both died when they had to die, within the perfect dance. Maybe one day a guy completely enlightened to an unimaginable level will find it wonderfully appropriate to unleash a nuclear holocaust. Do not confuse the gregarious feelings of the mammal with the will of the cosmos, it is implacable.

[ici]

Evil is what you consider evil. Are black holes evil?

People desire what they find valuable.

Your morale is governed by your values.

(People discover/know what's valuable through experience, evolution and survival instincts.)

Edited February 16 by ici

[Inliytened1]

You guys don't get it...oneness means the devil is none other than God.  Only GOD can do the evil. 

[Yimpa]

I hurt someone I loved today. It’s part of the process of understanding your shadow.

(I am not claiming to be enlightened by the way)

Edited February 17 by Yimpa

[Inliytened1]

42 minutes ago, Yimpa said:

 

(I am not claiming to be enlightened by the way)

No need to claim.

[Razard86]

23 hours ago, DefinitelyNotARobot said:

According to your definition of evil. Such people may not see themselves as evil. What if there is a Schizophrenic and they believe that they've got to kill babies in order to keep the anti-Christ from being born? Would they believe themself to be evil?

Its not according to my definition of evil, if you fall within the definition you are evil yourself. Adults are grown babies, why stop with babies why not adults too? Also how do we know that the Schizophrenic isn't the Anti-Christ? Wouldn't killing babies be something an Anti-Christ would do? So essentially the Schizophrenic is the Anti-Christ justifying killing babies by telling you it is to protect you from the Anti-Christ. 

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew 19%3A14&version=KJV

Only an Anti-Christ would justify killing babies. So your example defeats itself.

Edited February 17 by Razard86

[Yimpa]

2 minutes ago, DefinitelyNotARobot said:

From your perspective! I agree that killing babies is evil, but that's my human bias. It's literally wired into our bodies. Do you ever hear a baby crying in public and you feel distressed? You probably can't help yourself but to share the baby's distress in that moment.

What about a baby chicken? This is why slaughterhouses are not located right next to your local strip mall.

[Yimpa]

1 minute ago, DefinitelyNotARobot said:

@Yimpa f you showed young children an actual slaughter house for like a school trip or something, they'd surely be traumatized. There is a reason the vast majority of children would react this way.

I think they would prefer that than sitting in a boring classroom all day

[Razard86]

31 minutes ago, DefinitelyNotARobot said:

@Razard86 From your perspective! I agree that killing babies is evil, but that's my human bias. It's literally wired into our bodies. Do you ever hear a baby crying in public and you feel distressed? You probably can't help yourself but to share the baby's distress in that moment.

But that's you and me. Some people are wired differently. You could say that they're color blind when it comes to the feelings of others. They don't have the capacity the get a true insight into the feelings of others.

The point is that you project your relative point of view onto the "evil" person. If you were them, you would not perceive yourself as such. If they were you, they would understand themselves to be evil.

Don't take your ability to distinguish between good and evil for granted. It's a gift of the highest love, allowing you to perceive dimension of reality inaccessible to some. Think about what kind of lonely existence it must be to not feel anything even for a baby. That kind of existence doesn't allow for any true intimacy to occur.

So meet this gift with love rather than to impose it onto others. There is nothing wrong with judging something to be evil, but we should so from a place of mindfulness and acceptance. That way we can start to approach this problem and find long term solutions. There is nothing you can do for an evil person, but there are things you can do to help the mentally unstable. Preventive measures have to be taken in order to help these people develop into functional human beings, which simultaneously benefits their potential future victims.

The other person wouldn't see themselves as evil because they are liars. The example you gave was self-defeating. I was telling you to use a better example. You just took this somewhere else. Also there are people who consider themselves evil, they just justify it by saying everyone is evil. So there is that as well.