An Essay by John W. Hawkins

Copyright © 1998

Let us begin our discussion of the nature of evil with a simple dictionary definition of the word evil and its etymology:

Evil: (n) 1. That which is destructive, corruptive or fallible whether from natural circumstances, or by human ignorance, error or design

2. That which is morally bad or wrong; wickedness; sin 

3. That which causes or constitutes misfortune, suffering, difficulty
or the like; woe.

Derivation: Middle English evel
Old English yfel
Indo-European upo 

To get at the essence of the word evil let us turn briefly to its derivation from the Indo-European root upo. The branch of knowledge which gives us this information is called the science of comparative linguistics. It has its foundation in the observation that words in different languages with similar spelling and the same or similar meaning occur so frequently that they cannot be explained by chance. Therefore, they adopt the hypothesis (or theory) that these languages descend from a common, if no longer extant, original language. From this hypothesis it can be deduced that languages as disparate as English, Russian, German, Latin, Greek, Iranian and Indian all spring from a common prehistoric language known as Proto-Indo-European. 

From the root upo we derive such common English words as up, upon and over. However, etymologists also trace from upo the Greek prefix hypo which means under. From hypo we derive such English words as hypostasis meaning a person or thing which stands beneath another person or thing. They also say from a variant, ups-o, is derived the Greek suffix, hypsos, meaning height or top. Thus from the very same root we obtain words opposite in meaning: over and under as well as above and below. Nor is this a unique occurrence in studying the meaning of words. For example, in Johnson O'Connor's book on vocabulary he points out that people guessing the meaning of an unfamiliar word from a list of possible choices pick out the opposite meaning almost as often as they choose the correct one. 

This all serves to remind us that at a certain level of mind (whether subconscious or superconscious) concepts opposite in meaning are closely connected. In the very act of learning words in any language we begin by differentiating that which a named thing is from that which it is not. For a thing to be hot is opposite to its being cold ; day is opposite to night; light is opposite to darkness and so on. In my last essay, Faith and Salvation, I developed the concept of the circular nature of time with particular emphasis on the universal cycles of involution and evolution whereby over time everything turns into its opposite. This is the rationale behind the Chinese philosophy expressed in the I Ching (The Book of Changes) using the two primal concepts of yin and yang. The ancient Greek philosopher, Heraclitus, expressed a similar idea with his concept of enantiodromia (the running of opposites). In that essay I also mentioned Cardinal Cusa's conception of God Himself as a complexio oppositorum (a complexion of opposites) as well as the ascensus and descensus featured in the alchemical process of producing the lapis philosophorum (the philosopher's stone) and Jacob's dream of the ladder stretching between heaven and earth on which the angels were ascending and descending. 

In the preface of Faith and Salvation I also cited a quotation from Niels Bohr, the well-known Danish physicist who was instrumental in developing the first atomic bomb:

"The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement, but the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth." 

On his escutcheon in the Knight's Chapel in Frederiksborg Castle in Denmark, which we visited several years ago, are the words, contraria sunt complementa, (opposites are complementary) and his coat of arms displays the familiar symbol of the Tao with its primal pair of opposites, yin and yang, in perpetual embrace. In the Appendix of that essay I reproduced the children's poem, The Blind Men and the Elephant, in which six blind men went to see the elephant. Each of them grabbing hold of a particular portion of it was convinced that he had found the truth about what the elephant was like. It concluded with this little verse: 

"And so these men of Hindustan disputed loud and long.
Though each was partly in the right all were in the wrong." 

Carl Jung, commenting on the discovery by psychologists in 1886 of a subconscious component of the psyche, which revolutionized the science of psychology, reminds us: 

"The moment one forms an idea of a thing and successfully catches one of its aspects, one invariably succumbs to the illusion of having caught the whole. One never considers that a total apprehension is right out of the question. Not even an idea posited as total is total, for it is still an entity on its own with unpredictable qualities."¹ 

In another of his essays Jung discusses the problem of evil by citing a dream of a young theological student who dreamt he was the pupil of the "white magician", who, however, was dressed in black. After some instruction the white magician told him that they now needed the "black magician", who then appeared clad in a white robe. As Jung points out: "This dream obviously contains the problem of opposites² - i.e. the eternal conflict between our conceptions of good and evil. He then goes on to interpret the dream as a compensation for the conscious formulation of the problem: 

"Just as the conscious mind can put the question, 'Why is there this frightful conflict between good and evil?', so the unconscious [the dream] can reply, 'Look closer! Each needs the other. the best, just because it is the best, holds the seed of evil, and there is nothing so bad but good can come of it.'"³  

So there you have it! Good and evil are opposite concepts bound together, at least at the level of the unconscious mind, like two siamese twins. The symbol of the Tao referenced above becomes a fitting symbol of this relationship: the yang half, white in color, (representing male, spirit and fire nature) contains within it the black dot or seed of the yin while the yin half (representing female, matter and water nature) contains within it the white dot or seed of the yang. The word good is similar to and derived from the word God just as the word evil is only one letter removed from the word devil. Some even say that the word devil originates from d'evil, i.e. derived from evil. It has also been noted that evil spelled backward produces the word live. At any rate an ancient hermetic saying states that Daemon est Deus inversus (The devil is God turned upside down.) - opposites yet complementary in nature. 

Please note that I am not suggesting that God and the Devil combine to form one composite being, but rather that one cannot conceive or define the one without also conceiving and defining the other, its opposite in meaning and action. As the French say: "les extremes se touchent" (The extremes touch). What I am also suggesting is that man finds himself positioned equally between the poles of good and evil or, if you prefer the personified concepts, between God and the Devil. Man, therefore, as "the measure of all things"⁴, is the being who strives to reconcile these opposite natures within him.

The Origin of Evil 

The biblical story in Genesis places the origin of evil with Adam and Eve shortly after their creation in the Garden of Eden when, in disobedience to God's command, they ate of the fruit of the tree of good and evil. For this transgression they were banned from paradise and were sent to the earth to begin a life separated from the companionship of God, in whose image they were created. From this story comes the doctrine of "original sin" whereby all descendents of our first parents are born with a sinful nature. As the poet sums it up: "In Adam's fall we sinned all." This then provides the framework for the need for all men to be saved from this universal and innate sinful nature; and it sets the stage for God's incarnation in the form of the man, Jesus, who by His death on the cross makes atonement for the sins of all mankind. 

In Faith and Salvation I considered the story of Adam and Eve to be largely mythological albeit with a very valid conclusion about the status of modern man vis-a-vis his creator. Theologians, following the biblical story, define sin as "a condition of estrangement from God as a result of breaking His law" - the proverbial fall from Paradise being equivalent to a separation from God as a result of disobedience. They, of course, don't mean by sin eating fruit from a literal tree of good and evil but rather the failure of modern men to adhere to the commandments given by God to Moses following the exodus of the children of Israel from more than four hundred years of slavery in Egypt, the land of the Pharoahs. 

For orthodox Jews these commandments include not only the original ten commandments inscribed on the tablets on Mount Sinai but also hundreds of other rules and regulations governing their daily lives as well. By the time of Jesus' ministry in Palestine some 1,300 years later the elaboration on the laws laid down in the five books of Moses (the Pentateuch) had grown to the point that scarcely anyone could fulfill them all. As St. Paul, who had been a very strict Pharisee before his conversion experience, observed: "Law came in to increase the trespass."⁵ and "if it had not been for the law, I should not have known sin . .. . . Apart from the law sin lies dead. I was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin revived and I died."⁶ 

So the harder we try to live up to the moral codes set up for us by religious or other authorities (the white magician) the more pronounced becomes the potency of and the temptations brought forth by the subconsious mind (the black magician). It is notorious that the dreams of saints are filled with lurid visions and temptations while those of the hardened criminal are often visions of paradise and angels. St. Augustine one time remarked that he thanked God that He did not hold him accountable for his dreams. Here once again the subconscious mind acts as a compensation for that which fills the thoughts and actions of the waking consciousness. There is no running away from the darker side of our nature. As one of Walt Kelly's comic strip characters reminds us: "We have met the enemy and he is us!" Omar Khayyam more eloquently makes the same point in one of his quatrains: 

I sent my soul through the Invisible,
Some letter of that After-life to spell;
And by and bye my Soul returned to me,
And answered "I Myself am Heav'n and Hell." ⁷ 

The real culprit, therefore, in this universal condition of estrangement from God is not the mythical Adam but rather ourselves and a quickened awareness of the gulf that separates us from Paradise. As the prophet Isaiah laments:  

Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips,
and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my
eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts!⁸  

No one would characterize an animal as evil for killing another animal either for food to preserve its own life or even for killing a member of its own kind in following the instinctual drive to propagate the species. As the mythologist, Joseph Campbell, observes: "Life feeds on life." Neither, therefore, can primitive man be considered evil in striving for self-preservation and tribal perpetuation. "Survival of the fittest" is a law of Nature much older than the the laws of moral conduct handed down by God to Moses about 3,300 years ago. There were, of course, other historical codes of conduct and lawmakers even prior to Moses. For example, a collection of laws known as the code of Hammurabi!⁹ was found on a stela on the site of ancient Susa in 1901 AD which dated back more than 3,700 years.  

No doubt codes of conduct were formulated by other groups even earlier, but it is clear that the idea of man's being evil or sinful did not occur until the tribe, clan or society to which he belonged had established the norms of social behavior and the penalties for violating them. As Spinoza reminds us: Apart from society "there is nothing which by universal consent is good or evil, since everyone in a natural state consults only his own profit." ... Only when men live together in a civil society under law can it be "decided by universal ¹⁰ consent what is good and what is evil." It also seems clear that the need for such codes and standards of behavior grew out of the instinctual drives for group survival and perpetuation. Similarly, the idea of evil itself, or more likely a personified Evil, undoubtedly arose from events external to the clan which threatened its survival.

Anthropogenesis 

The origins of man from the viewpoint of science began not in a mythical Garden of Eden but rather from the very first stirrings of life in the primeval oceans around 3.5 billion years ago. Step by step - from the formation of amino acids into proteins, from the formation of protoplasm and nucleic acids into cells, from the differentiation of cells into plant and animal by the inclusion of an atom of chlorine in protoplant cells and an atom of iron in protoanimal cells, to the formation through endless eons of development of life in the ocean and then on land - the inexorable march of evolution led to the multifarious flora and fauna we find on the earth today culminating in the appearance 500,000 or so years ago of the species known as homo sapiens, thinking man. 

Recent technology permits scientists to determine the genetic structure of all living things (even from samples taken from remains of creatures who died long ago). By comparing the DNA sequence of any life form scientists can learn how closely related various species of plant and animal life are. By these techniques they put the final nail in the coffin of "Creationism" when they discovered there is better than a 99 per cent match between human DNA and that of the higher primates such as chimpanzees, orangutans, and gorillas. While these results do not support the commonly held belief that the theory of evolution holds that man evolved from monkeys, they do strongly support the hypothesis that we evolved from a common ancester, confirming what Charles Darwin called man's "pedigree of prodigious length". Two thousand years before Darwin it was observed by Aristotle that "nature proceeds little by little from things lifeless to animal life" and that "throughout the entire animal scale there is a graduated differentiation in amount of vitality and in capacity for motion." ¹¹ Discoveries by paleontologists and anthropologists in the last 130 years or so have merely documented and confirmed these earlier observations by Aristotle and Darwin. 

The classification of the millionfold plant and animal species which inhabit the earth today is necessarily somewhat tentative as new discoveries are unearthed which permit ever more complete and refined groupings. The process also remains dynamic by the appearance from time to time of new varieties of species which in time due to natural selection become species in their own right while other varieties of the species become extinct. Nevertheless, through the principles set forth by men like Carolus Linneaus (1707-1778) and Georges Cuvier (1769-1832) the science of taxonomy has permitted the hierarchical classification of the bewildering variety of life we find in every nook and cranny on earth today - from the ocean depths to the tops of mountains, from the steamy equatorial regions to the polar ice caps. From this elaborate taxonomic system we learn that man belongs to the kingdom of animalia, the phylum of chordata, the subphylum of vertebrata, the class of mammalia, the order of primates, the family of hominidae, the genus of homo, and the species of sapiens. 

Early mammals, similar to the diminutive shrew, were contemporaries of the dinosaurs during the Triassic period some 200 million years ago and survived their extinction at the end of the Mesozoic era around 65 million years ago. Although there are more than one million species of the kingdom of animalia still extant, it has been estimated that more than one billion species of all types have become extinct over the long course of evolution - an extinction rate of 99.9 percent. Also it is believed that the current species extinction rate may be as high as 0.5 percent per year. Sic transit gloria mundi. (Thus passes the glory of the world). 

Linnaeus gave the highest order of mammalia the name of primates, which included the apes, monkeys, lemurs and man. (Originally, but no longer, the order of primates even included the bats.) The family in which taxonomists place man is named hominidae, but many modern zoologists, refusing to accord a group that include the apes such a distinction, prefer the family name simiidae. Others prefer using the name anthropomorpha for a sub order of primates which excludes the apes while others prefer the super family classification hominoidea (man-like) to designate a classification which includes both modern man and the higher primates. In any event the only extant species of the family of hominidae is man which would seem to make such distinctions moot. An early genus of hominidae, or hominoidae if you prefer, dating back 1.75 million years was discovered by Louis S. B. Leakey in Tanzania in 1959. He named it Zinjanthropus, but later it and similar specimens were called by the genus name australopithecus (southern ape) and by the species name robustus. Then in 1974 a nearly complete skeleton of a similar creature was unearthed near Hadar in Ethiopia by Dr. Donald Johanson which dated back about 3.7 million years. He nicknamed her Lucy after the Beatles' song, Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds. After finding a number of bones and teeth of others in the area they were also given the genus name Austalopithecus but a species name of africanus. Both species coexisted over one million years until about 500,000 years ago. It was thought originally that the australopithecines were forebears of Homo, true man. "A discovery in Kenya in 1972 by Richard Leakey and coworkers, however, cast doubt on the believed sequence of human ascent. They found the remains of a very humanlike skull some 2.5 million years old. This suggested that a form of Homo might have coexisted with the australopithecines, instead of stemming from them." ¹² At any rate specimens classified as belonging to the genus Homo date back around two million years. The earliest evidence of Homo sapiens (wise man) was discovered in Hungary in 1965 with chopping tools and evidence of man-made fire nearby. It was found in a deposit dating back 400-500 thousand years. Other remains found in England, Germany, and France date back 250 thousand years or so ago. ¹³ Thus, the accumulated evidence confirms Darwin's conclusion that man has a "pedigree of prodigious length".

Cosmogenesis 

As noted earlier, the scientific evidence of man's evolution from earlier and more primitive forms clashes with those who cling to a literal interpretation of the story told in the book of Genesis. Not only do Creationists believe in a separate creation of man on the sixth day by God in a literal Garden of Eden, but in fact it was only a little more than a century ago, as H.G. Wells reminds us, that "the whole Christianized world felt bound to believe, and did believe, that the universe had been specially created in the course of six days by the word of God a few thousand years before ---according to Bishop Ussher, 4,004 B.C. (The Universal History, in forty-two volumes, published in 1779 by a group of London booksellers, discusses whether the precise date of the first day of Creation was March 21st or September 21st, 4,004 B.C., and inclines to the view that the latter was the more probable season.)"¹⁴ 

Science, in contrast to the authority of the bible and religious leaders, based their hypotheses and theories about the nature of the world and the universe on actual observations. If later data contradicted these original observations, then new hypotheses were suggested which included both the original and the newly observed data. Thus scientific theories never claim to be absolute since new observations may require revisions to those previously formulated. Ever since Galileo's observations of the heavens through his telescope in 1610, which confirmed Copernicus' revolutionary theory that the sun and not the earth was the center around which the planets revolved, scientists have been revising and extending earlier speculations about the universe. Although Heraclitus in the 4th century BC guessed correctly that the apparent motion of the moon, sun and stars around the earth was caused by the rotation of the earth, the geocentric model of the universe envisioned by Aristotle and other Greeks became the generally accepted view until the time of Copernicus and Galileo, nearly 2,000 years later. For teaching this revolutionary idea, which dethroned not only the earth but also man from the center of the universe, the Vatican placed Galileo under house arrest, forbade him from writing or teaching such heresies and ordered him to recite the seven penitential psalms once a week for three years. In fact it wasn't until the middle of the nineteenth century, two hundred years after the death of Galileo that the church formally accepted the heliocentric view of the universe and not until 1992, or 350 years after his death, that Pope John Paul II pardoned Galileo for the part he played in overturning the geocentric paradigm. 

It wasn't until larger and more refined telescopes and instruments like the spectroscope were developed that calculations could be made about the size and age of the visible universe. Not only have scientists discovered that the sun and not the earth is the center of our planetary system, but also that our sun is only one of 100 billion or more stars in our Milky Way galaxy, which in turn is only one of perhaps billions upon billions of galaxies each of which contains billions upon billions of individual stars. Thus, the sun, earth and the other planets orbiting our sun shrink in size to mere grains of sand on the shore of a great ocean when compared with an incredibly vast and barely imaginable cosmos, which itself is expanding at a prodigious rate. 

In the year 1913 an astronomer named Vesto Slipher "discovered that about a dozen galaxies in our vicinity were moving away from the earth at very high speeds, ranging up to two million miles per hour. Slipher's discovery was the first hint that the Universe was expanding." ¹⁵ Shortly after "Einstein published his equations of general relativity in 1917 Willem de Sitter, a Dutch astronomer, found a solution to them almost immediately that predicted an exploding Universe, in which the galaxies of the heavens moved rapidly away from one another. This was just what Slipher had observed. However, because of the interruption of communications by the war, de Sitter probably did not know about Slipher's observations at that time." ¹⁶ Although the slides presented by Slipher in 1914 clearly revealed the red shift in the color of light from these distant galaxies which indicated they were rapidly receding from the earth, he did not realize that he had stumbled on the first evidence of an expanding universe. One of those in the audience at his presentation, however, realized their significance. His name was Edwin Hubble. 

In the following years Hubble along with his coworker, Milton Humason, working with the 100-inch telesope at the Mount Wilson Observatory were able to determine not only that the universe was expanding but that the farther away a galaxy was from the earth the faster it moved. It appeared therefore that at a point in time the universe had come into being with a mighty explosion, a theory of cosmogenesis now known as the "Big Bang". The idea that the universe came into existence at a zero point in space and time would require a mass of infinite density - obviously an absurdity. It therefore would be, as Stephen Hawking calls it, a "point of discontinuity". However, it left many scientists uncomfortable because it raised an unanswerable question of what existed prior to the "Big Bang". It also opened the door for other explanations for the creation of the universe: Religions of many stripes would now be able to reaffirm their belief that God created nature ex nihilo (from nothing).  

"The second law of thermodynamics, applied to the Cosmos, indicates the Universe is running down like a clock. If it is running down, there must have been a time when it was fully wound up. Arthur Eddington, the most distinguished British astronomer of his day, wrote 'If our views are right somewhere between the beginning of time and the present day we must place the winding up of the universe.'"¹⁷ Eventually, therefore, the universe would completely unwind with a uniform temperature only slightly above absolute zero - minus 460 degrees on the Fahrenheit scale. Other evidence that the universe would come to a dismal end someday arose from the fact that stars have finite lives. When its nuclear fuel is exhausted, a star collapses as a result of the gravitational pull of its own mass, which either results in a small super dense white dwarf about the size of our earth or else it disintegrates in a giant explosion known as a supernova. To rejuvenate itself the universe needs a continuous supply of fresh hydrogen in order to keep the process of star creation going. To get around this rather embarrassing situation a theory was devised which avoided the necessity for a beginning. It was called the "Steady State" theory which hypothesized that hydrogen is being continually created throughout the universe out of nothing. This became the widely accepted view of astronomers and astrophysicists until a discovery made in the 1960's resurrected the Big Bang as the theory best able to explain the observable data. 

"In 1965 Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson of the Bell Laboratories discovered that the earth is bathed in a faint glow of radiation coming from every direction in the heavens. ... The entire Universe seemed to be the source. ... No explanation other than the Big Bang has been found for the fireball radiation. The clincher, which has convinced almost the last doubting Thomas, is that the radiation discovered by Penzias and Wilson had exactly the pattern of wavelengths expected for the light and heat produced in a great explosion."¹⁸ A more recent confirmation was made in 1992 as a result of data collected by NASA's Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) satellite. Scientists were awe struck with the discovery that as early as 300,000 years after the Big Bang of creation (estimated to be 15 billion years ago) "extremely thin clouds or ripples that represent the earliest stages of matter started clumping together in the new born universe. ... Astrophysicist, George Smoot declared: 'If you're religious, it's like looking at God.' Michael Turner, a University of Chicago physicist, stated: 'This is unbelievably important. ... The significance of this cannot be overstated. They have found the Holy Grail of cosmology.'"¹⁹

Go(o)d and (D)evil 

The reader, having persisted this far, must wonder of what relevance the last two sections on anthropogenesis and cosmogenesis are to the problem of evil. Let us, therefore, now attempt to show their relevance. It was posited at the beginning of this essay that good and evil are opposites, which nevertheless can never be completely separated since any definition of what a thing is requires differentiating it from what it is not. The symbol of the Tao was suggested as one which best represents this symbiotic relationship with its primal pair of opposites, yin and yang, in perpetual and dynamic embrace. The origin of evil was then discussed from two points of view: religion vs. science or, more generally, God vs. Nature. Then, in an apparent digression, evidence was presented of the evolution of homo sapiens (modern man) from basic chemical elements in the primeval oceans 3.5 billion or so years ago; and, going back in time even further, evidence was presented of the evolution of the cosmos itself from a primal explosion of incredible energy some 15 billion years ago. 

The purpose of this was to give the reader a sense of how far man has indeed fallen since the beginning of the scientific revolution sparked by Copernicus in the sixteenth century - from being the center of the universe to being a mere speck in the cosmos who has existed but one small tick on the giant cosmic clock - from a being created in the image of God, who originally dwelt with Him in Paradise, to a being whose ancestors crawled onto the dry land from their aboriginal home in the ocean. Man thus seems to be suspended between two opposite poles: between God and Nature, on the one hand, and between the worlds of Spirit and Matter, on the other. Alexander Pope in his Essay on Man captures the dilemma in which man finds himself: 

Placed on this isthmus of a middle state,
A being darkly wise, and rudely great;
With too much knowledge for the skeptic side,
With too much weakness for the stoic's pride,
He hangs between; in doubt to act, or rest;
In doubt to deem himself a god, or beast;
In doubt his mind or body to prefer;
Born but to die, and reasoning but to err;
Alike in ignorance, his reason such,
Whether he thinks too little or too much;
Chaos of thought and passion, all confused;
Still by himself abused or disabused;
Created half to rise and half to fall;
Great lord of all things, yet a prey to all;
Sole judge of truth, in endless error hurled;
The glory, jest and riddle of the world!"²⁰

So man, no less than God Himself, is a riddle, a mystery, a complexio oppositorum (a complexion of opposites). Various mythological creatures, half-man and half-beast, symbolize this composite nature of man. For example, the Assyrian man-bull with wings attached to its body is a reminder that the nature of man is composed of an animal body but also the wings of a god. Similarly, the Egyptian Sphinx with the body of a lion, the face of a man and a headdress worn by the Pharoahs to signify their god-like nature symbolizes this same composite animal-spiritual nature of man. 

All truths, even scientific ones, are likewise paradoxical. For example, for many years physicists debated the question of whether the nature of light is wave-like or composed of particles. In 1678 Christian Huygens, the Dutch philosopher, was the first to suggest that light was a wave phenomenon that was propagated by a medium which permeated all space, which he called the "luminiferous ether". Early experiments seemed to support his theory. However, Sir Isaac Newton, who published his treatise on optics in 1704 concluded that the sensation of light on the retina was produced by minute corpuscles emitted from luminous bodies. Because of his greater reputation in the field of physics this theory prevailed until 1826 when Augustin Fresnel published his work on optics. His ingenious experiments proved that Huygens wave theory was far superior to that of the corpuscular theory of Newton. There were still some phenomena, however, which could not be explained by the wave theory alone. It was not until early in the 20th century with the development of quantum theory and wave mechanics that all observations could be explained by combining both of the earlier theories. Not only the phenomenon of light but the entire electromagnetic spectrum from long radio waves to the ultra short X-rays and gamma-rays can only be explained by combining both theories. 

What is true in the realm of physics is also true in the realm of metaphysics. An ancient maxim states: "As above, so below." This can be illustrated by an analogy with Einstein's famous equation that postulated the equivalence of matter and energy: 

E = MC² where E = Energy, M = Mass, and C = the speed of Light 

By solving this equation for the universal constant C we obtain:

C = Square Root of E/M where C = Light, E = Spirit, and M = Matter 

Light (C), therefore, metaphysically is a compound of spirit and matter, with Spirit (E) being above Matter (M) just as we conceive heaven being above earth. We can further say that "In the beginning God created the heavens (E) and the earth (M) . . . and God said 'Let there be light' and there was light."!"²¹ 

Note that just as the first words that God speaks in the creation story in Genesis are: "Let there be light.", so in the New Testament St. John begins his gospel with: 

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God; all things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it."²²  

He refers, of course, to the indwelling of the Spirit of God in the man, Jesus, the light of the world, who elsewhere in the New Testament is called the Son of God. The Nicene Creed recited by many Christians likewise affirms: 

"I believe . . . in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God; Begotten of his Father before all worlds, God of God, Light of Light, Very God of very God; Begotten, not made; Being of one substance with the Father; By whom all things were made." 

Jesus does not deny the appellation, the Son of God. However, when he asks the Pharisees from whom their long awaited Messiah (or Christ) is supposed to descend, they reply that he is to descend from the line of David. Jesus then confounds the Pharisees with another question:  

"How say the scribes that Christ is the son of David? David himself said by the Holy Ghost [in Psalm 110], 'The LORD said to my Lord, Sit thou on my right hand, till I make thine enemies thy footstool.' David, therefore, himself calleth him Lord; and whence is he then his son? And the common people heard him gladly."²³  

In other words, the Holy Spirit was in the heart of David as well as in Jesus and potentially in every man. Therefore, man is indeed created in the image of God - spirit, mind and body. This Holy Spirit is dormant, buried in darkness until it is brought to life. Jesus declares: "I am the light of the world; he who follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life."²⁴ However, other traditions also equate the first born of the Godhead with light. For example, in the Jewish Kabbala, AIN SOPH, the "Most Ancient of all the Ancients", gives birth to AIN SOPH AUR, the Limitless Light. In the Hindu tradition the unknown and unknowable, Parabrahman, gives birth to Isvara, the God with attributes, who forms a shining center or dot, a center of conscious energy, from whom all future generation emanates. To the Buddhists he is Avalokiteshwara; to the Pythagoreans the first born is called the Monad, the center of centers; to Taoists the unknowable, no name Tao gives birth to the One, etc. etc. 

After the appearance of the blinding point of light created by the Word of God the next phase in the process of creation is the separation of light from darkness, of Spirit from Matter, of Energy from Mass, and of Father from Mother. In the language of the Pythagoreans, the Monad becomes the Duad, or as Lao Tsu, the founder of Taoism puts it: "The Tao begot One. One begot Two..."²⁵ Just as the astrophysicists referenced above were ecstatic when they discovered wispy protomatter forming soon after the Big Bang, so does the Genesis story affirm: 

"...and God saw the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night."²⁶ 

Thus, the universal Monad, the Heavenly Man, the first Adam, the only begotten Son of the Father, in turn begats a Duad (light and darkness, spirit and matter, male and female), and the creative tension produced by these polar opposites sets the stage for all further creation. So there you have it! "God saw the light was good." (Nota bene!!) This means, therefore, that light's polar opposite, darkness, must be evil. To those who may be uncomfortable with the idea that God is not only the creator of light and darkness but also the creator of both good and evil, let me remind you of a passage from the prophet, Isaiah, which confirms this conclusion: 

"I am the Lord, and there is no other.
I form light and create darkness,
I make weal and create woe,
I am the Lord, who do all these things."²⁷  

Recall also the definitions of evil from page 1: Evil is "that which causes or constitutes misfortune, suffering, difficulty or the like; woe. Likewise, evil is "that which is destructive, corruptive or fallible whether from natural circumstances or by human ignorance, error or design." Thus, the Creator has woven evil into "this sorry scheme of things entire"²⁸ from the very beginning. To reinforce this rather discomfiting thought consider that for humanity the first duad was created when God took a rib from the original Adam and fashioned the woman, Eve. It was then Eve who picked the apple from the tree of Good and Evil and persuaded Adam to eat the forbidden fruit. Note too the similarity of the name, Eve, to the word evil and its derivation from the Middle English word, evel. That which obscures light and forms darkness is matter. Do you suppose it is an accident that the Latin word for matter is materia and for mother is mater? In fact all Indo-European derived nouns are divided into either masculine, feminine or neuter gender - mater being the feminine gender and materia the neuter gender of the same word. Of course this is not meant to suggest that women are inherently evil and men are inherently good. Rather it was the very act of separation of the sexes from the original hermaphroditic Adam, who was created in the image of God, that set the stage for all subsequent procreation; and it was the devolution of spirit into the world of matter (i.e. Mother Nature) that set the stage for the conflict between good and evil. 

One can also make the case that just as physicists have discovered that every subatomic particle of matter has its opposite particle of anti-matter, so too does the spiritual realm contain its corresponding opposites - a heaven requires a hell, a Christ requires an Anti-Christ, and a good God requires an evil Satan. ("As above, so below.") However, do you not find it strange that the Snake, the Old Dragon, Beelzebub, or Satan is also called Lucifer, whose name means "Bearer of Light"? Ancient astronomers gave the name Lucifer to Venus, the Morning Star, the most beautiful star in the heavens. This identification of Satan with the morning star is confirmed by Isaiah when he says: "How you are fallen from heaven, O Day Star, son of Dawn!"²⁹ Even stranger still is when the risen Christ (through John on Patmos) says: "I am the root and the offspring of David, the bright morning star."³⁰ Les extremes se touchent indeed! Of course, the planet Venus is not only the bright morning star; half of the time it is also the evening star. In either case, however, it is never far removed from the location of the sun in the heavens since its orbit is closer to that celestial orb than is that of planet earth. In an analogous manner the creation of the primal Duad, protospirit-protomatter, is not far removed in time from the appearance of the Monad, that incomparably brilliant point of light, the "Big Bang".

War in Heaven 

In the beginning there were evidently a number of morning stars. For instance, in the Book of Job, God asks Job: "Where were you . . . . when the morning stars sang together and the sons of God shouted for joy?"³¹ Their harmony did not last long, however: 

"Now war arose in heaven, Michael and the dragon and his angels fought, but they were defeated and there was no longer any place for them in heaven. And the great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent, who is called the Devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world - he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him."³² 

Many other traditions tell of a time when the gods (or the sons of gods) were at war with one another. In Hindu mythology, for example, Indra, the king of the gods in the Hindu pantheon, has an arch-enemy, Vritra, a great serpent who lies coiled about the world mountain at the navel of the earth. His defeat of Vritra unleashes the creative power in the universe. Indra also slays Vishvarupa, Vritra's older brother. Interestingly, Vishvarupa, Vritra and Indra are all said to be sons of Tvashtar, whom Indra also kills because he had hid from him the elixir of immortality. In fact, all the Hindu gods and demons have the same father but different mothers. "The battle between gods and demons begins immediately after they are created."³³ 

In the Egyptian cosmogony Osiris and Seth were both sons of Geb (the earth-god) and Nut (the sky-goddess). Osiris, although a god, "was a human King, who was a good and wise ruler. . . . . Seth, however, became jealous of the popularity of Osiris and plotted his death."³⁴ Seth succeeded in killing Osiris and later dismembered his body and scattered the pieces around Egypt. However, Isis, the sister and wife of Osiris, was able to recover the various pieces and restore Osiris to life but not as a ruler on earth. He became king and judge of the dead in the underworld. Before this was accomplished she gave birth to his son, Horus, who when he was grown, vowed to revenge his father's death. After a bloody struggle he succeeded in castrating Seth and ostracizing him for eternity. "With the gods' endorsement Horus succeeded his father on the throne [of Egypt] as a living king."³⁵ Thereafter, "each king upon death became an Osiris, while his successor ascended to the throne as Horus - the living king, the son and heir of Osiris in the myth."³⁶ 

Similarly, in Greek mythology "Sky (Ouranos) begot out of Earth (Ge) the older generation of the gods, named Titans, but he would not withdraw himself from Earth to allow her to give birth. The primeval separation of Sky [Heaven] and Earth was achieved by the Titan, Kronos [the Roman god, Saturn], with his mother's aid when he castrated Ouranos [Uranus] with a great sickle. So began the strife and successions of the gods."³⁷

Kronos was deposed in turn by his son, Zeus [the Roman god, Jupiter]. Kronos-Saturn was banished to the earth where he reputedly founded Latium, the Kingdom of the Latins, and ruled in a Golden Age when freedom and equality prevailed. The Romans later instituted an annual festival of Saturnalia to commemorate this enlightened reign. 

Thus, in many of these myths of creation the fall of a god (and/or of angels) from heaven is not to hell but to the earth. The opposite of spirit is matter and the process of involution (or devolution) requires putting on successive layers of ever denser, more restrictive forms. At first a spirit being is aware of his true nature, but as the "coats of skin" - similar to those God gave to Adam and Eve after they had eaten the forbidden apple - become heavier and denser, even beings created as gods or angels gradually forget their true nature and origin. As the risen Christ reminds the angel of the church in Ephesus: "Remember then from what you have fallen, repent and do the works you did at first [i.e. in the creation]."³⁸ Similarly, God speaking to Job out of the whirlwind asks him to remember his origin: 

"Where is the way to the dwelling of light, and where is the place of
darkness, that you may take it to its territory and that you may
discern the paths to its home? You know, for you were born then,
and the number of your days is great!"³⁹  

Myths, and even some biblical stories like those about Adam and Eve and Job, are not meant to be taken literally but rather to convey in symbolic language the origins of the basic truths and assumptions of a particular culture in terms of its own history and experience. Nevertheless, as the mythologist, Joseph Campbell, reminds us: "The fundamental themes of mythological thought have remained constant and universal, not only throughout history, but also over the whole extent of mankind's occupation of the earth."⁴⁰ The universal theme that we have been addressing in this essay is the dualistic, yet complementary, nature of good and evil. Although it appears to be an essay based on a fundamental dualism both in nature and in man, in fact it is based on a fundamental unity of good and evil, spirit and matter, god and nature. In the words of Alexander Pope: "All are parts of one stupendous whole, whose body Nature is and God the Soul." (We will address the resolution of duality later in this essay.) 

However, it does not attempt to trivialize or minimize the reality of evil in the world. Those who have lived through World War II with it holocausts and mass destructions can attest to its reality and the culpability of leaders of nations who to this day instill hatred and mistrust among nations. We only note in passing that one of our own presidents, Ronald Reagan, who in many ways was an exemplary leader, once referred to the former Soviet Union as an "evil empire". Similarly, the Ayatollah Kohmeni in Iran often referred to the United States as "the Great Satan". As long as nations, particularly powerful ones, speak in such a way about each other, there can be no lasting peace in the world. We therefore can theorize about such an era, but unless there is a world hegemony to enforce it or a raising of man's collective consciousness there does not appear to be a resolution to the problem of evil in the world. Even if there were a world power to enforce such a peace we are mindful of Lord Acton's admonition that:

"Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely". 

For the moment let us accept the fact that there is a fundamental duality not only about our own natures but one built into the cosmos from the very beginning. As Gerald Messadie states it in a recent book: 

"Duality is a symbolic opposition of being and nonbeing, of creation and chaos. It is the interpretation of a world based on necessary antagonisms. The cosmos is essentially benevolent toward humanity. This does not imply that evil does not exist, merely that it is normal, a function of the cosmic chaos, since there is never peace among heaven's opposing powers. If evil affects humanity, it does so because the human microcosm is part of the macrocosm."⁴¹

The human microcosm is not only a part of the macrocosm but a central tenant of many teachings and beliefs, both ancient and modern, holds that every man is created not only in the image of God but in the image of the cosmos itself - in short, a belief that the entire universe dwells within each of us. Thomas Mann expressed it this way: 

"The world hath many centers, one for each created being, and about each one it lieth in its own circle. Thou standest but half an ell from me, yet about thee lieth a universe whose center I am not but thou art."⁴² 

Similarly, the nature of man as the microcosm of the macrocosm was expressed by the third century Christian writer and teacher, Origen, as follows: 

"Understand that thou art a second world in miniature, and that the sun and the moon are within thee, and also the stars."⁴³  

Since an understanding of this concept is central to the thesis of this essay, it will be well to elaborate on it at this point. In reality it is more than a concept since it forms the nucleus of a weltanschauung (worldview) which Leibnitz (1646-1716) called the philosophia perennis (the perennial philosophy). It was defined by Aldous Huxley in his book of the same name as: 

"the metaphysic that recognizes a divine Reality substantial to the world of things and lives and minds; the psychology that finds in the soul something similar to, or even identical with, divine Reality; the ethic that places man's final end in the knowledge of the immanent and transcendent Ground of all being."⁴⁴

In fact Leibnitz's concept of a philosophia perennis goes further than Huxley's definition by positing that a spiritual center lies in the heart of every atom, every molecule, every cell, every organism, every star, and every galaxy as well as within the soul of every man - in short, within the heart of all existences in the cosmos. He calls these ubiquitous metaphysical or spiritual centers, "monads". His most famous theory is called the doctrine of the "Pre-established Harmony" between all substances. "All matter is . . . composite, and thus even the smallest particle is a fully organized world; every part of the 'divine machine' of Nature is, in its turn, a further machine. . . . [Thus] the so called material world must be regarded as an aggregate of immaterial units [which possess perception and volition]. Hence the philosophical interpretation of the universe has inevitably to be given in terms of final causality, i.e., of the purposive activity of the ultimate simple elements [i.e. the monads]"⁴⁵  

Similar ideas can be found in the writings of contemporaries of Leibnitz - namely, the younger Flemish chemist, van Helmont and the older Dutch philosopher, Spinoza (1632-1677), with whom he had repeated philosophical discussions. Even earlier in 1584 it was the the Italian philosopher, Giordano Bruno who wrote that "Deus est monadum monas" (God is the Monad of monads.) For these and other heretical ideas he was imprisoned by the Venetian inquisition and six years later in 1600 was burned at the stake. But the earliest philosopher known to teach the idea of an infinitude of monads emanating from an original, all powerful Monad was Pythagoras in the sixth century BC. He reputedly was initiated in the Egyptian, Babylonian and Chaldean mysteries, was also instructed in the secret traditions of Moses by Jewish Rabbins and spent several years studying with the learned Brahmins in Hindustan. Some even believed that he may have been a disciple of Zoroaster, himself. (However, since Zoroaster's birth may have been as early as 1,000-1,500 BC, it is more likely that he would have come into contact with his successors.) Thus, it is nigh impossible to determine from which tradition these ideas first originated. 

"Pythagoras taught that both man and the universe were made in the image of God; that both being made in the same image, the understanding of one predicates the knowledge of the other. He further taught that there was a constant interplay between the Grand Man (the universe) and man (the little universe)."⁴⁶  

This characterization of the universe as a "Grand Man" was implied earlier when the Monad was linked with the appearance of the point of light at the origin of the universe, which scientists refer to as the "Big Bang"⁴⁷. All mass, energy and creative potentials for the subsequent development of the universe were contained in that one incredible point of space-time. The Monad was also referred to earlier as the Heavenly Man, the first Adam, and the only Begotten Son of the Father⁴⁸. Another appellation given to the Monad is the Divine Logos or Word of God. ("In the beginning was the Word"⁴⁹) His image in the form of a gigantic or "Grand Man" has been reported by many seers, prophets and philosophers. In the Judeo-Christian bible we have already noted the prophet Isaiah's lament: "Woe is me . . . for my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts." More graphic is the prophet Ezeckiel's vision of the four tetramorphs - living creatures with the form of men but each of which had four faces and four wings: 

"In the midst of the living creatures there was something that looked like burning coals of fire, like torches moving to and fro among the living creatures; and the fire was bright, and out of the fire went forth lightning . . . Over the heads of the living creatures there was the likeness of a firmament, shining like awesome crystal, spread out above their heads . . . and above the firmament over their heads there was the likeness of a throne, in appearance like sapphire; and seated above the likeness of a throne was the likeness as it were of a human form . . . and when I saw it I fell upon my face .."⁵⁰  

Likewise, John in Patmos in his revelatory vision beheld the risen Christ: 

"like a son of man, clothed with a long robe and with a golden girdle round his breast; his head and his hair were white as white wool, white as snow; his eyes were like a flame of fire, his feet like burnished bronze refined as in a furnace, and his voice was like the sound of many waters; in his right hand he held seven stars, from his mouth issued a sharp two-edged sword, and his face was like the sun shining in full strength. [and] When I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead."⁵¹  

Similarly, in king Nebuchadnezzar's dream which the prophet Daniel described: 

You saw, O king, and beheld a great image. This image, mighty and of exceeding brightness stood before you and its appearance was frightening."⁵²  

Perhaps the most vivid description of the Grand Man, howver, is found in that section of the Hindu epic poem, the Mahabharata, known as the Bhagavad-Gita (The Song of God). The warrior hero, Arjuna, asks his charioteer, Krishna, (an incarnation of Vishnu, the second person of the Hindu Trinity) to reveal to him His divine form. An extract of that powerful description follows: 

Sanjaya, the narrator: "Suppose a thousand suns should rise together into the sky, such is the glory of the Shape of Infinite God. Then the son of Pandu [Arjuna] beheld the entire universe in all its multitudinous diversity, lodged as one being within the body of the God of gods." 

Arjuna speaks: Ah, my God, I see all gods within your body;
Each in his degree, the multitude of creatures;
See Lord Brahman throned upon the lotus;
See all the sages, and the holy serpents. 

Tell me who you are, and were from the beginning,
You of aspect grim, O God of gods, be gracious.
Take my homage, Lord. From me your ways are hidden.⁵³  

Other examples of a Grand Man of the universe are found in the Jewish Cabbalah's image of the Macroprosophus, the Grand Etre of the philosopher, Auguste Conte, and in the writings of the Swedish seer, Emmanuel Swedenborg. Lest the reader conclude that these visions of the universe as a Grand Man are nothing but an anthropomorphic projection from the subconscious mind or a regression to a primitive pantheism, consider instead that just as man animates a body composed of a hierarchy of lesser entities ( e.g. organs, cells, organic and inorganic matter) so too does the Ruler of the universe animate a body composed of a host of lesser entities. This view does indeed conceive God as active and involved in every part of his creation - a theistic rather than a deistic conception. It goes beyond theism, however, in positing a God that is immanent within His creation as well as transcendent. It is a God "in whom we live and move and have our being."⁵⁴ Whether a self-conscious being who evolved on a different planet under different chemical and environmental conditions would experience a similar or different image of the Grand Man, I will leave to the reader's own imagination. 

However, one must not lose sight of the fact that the Godhead, the God above all gods, the Tao, Brahman, etc. has no form and no attributes. It thus cannot be said to be in one form or in another - a form of any kind being a limitation on a being who by definition has no limits except those which are self-imposed. God, therefore, is indeed Spirit who "blows where he wills."⁵⁵ But because the monads (which are at the center of every atom) are themselves a universe in miniature, they are capable of evolving into ever higher and more complex expressions of Being just as the universe at large is evolving. As John the Baptist told the Pharisees and the Sadducees: "God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham."⁵⁶ It is because of this immanence of Spirit within the heart of all creation that Leibnitz postulated his doctrine of the "pre-established harmony" between all substances. This led him to deduce further, like Plotinus before him, that this world is therefore "the best of all possible worlds." It does not take a rapier wit like Voltaire with his Candide and comic philosopher, Pangloss ( a parody of Leibnitz), to convince us that in many ways we are not living in the best of all possible worlds. Indeed one might more readily speculate, as did Aldous Huxley, that "perhaps our world is some other planet's Hell." We are thus brought back to our central question: How does an all powerful God, who is immanent in every atom in the universe, permit such things as plague, pestilence, famine, AIDS, holocausts, genocide, war, lust, greed, injustice and cruelty? Perhaps we can find an answer in "The Great Chain of Being", which was established as part of the original creative process.

Arthur Lovejoy, a twentieth century American philosopher, in his book, The Great Chain of Being, tells us that the phrase taken as his title "was long one of the most famous in the vocabulary of Occidental philosophy, science, and reflective poetry."⁵⁷ It is a "conception of the plan and structure of the world which, through the Middle Ages and down to the late eighteenth century, many philosophers, most men of science, and indeed, most educated men, were to accept without question."⁵⁸ Although he concludes that this philosophy articulated by Plato and Aristotle, among many others, may have run its course in the twentieth century with its scientific orientation, it is a vital concept in understanding the philosophia perennis and thus is far from being discarded either by current or by future generations. 

In brief, it is the conception of the universe as composed of an immense "number of links ranging in hierachical order from the meagerest kind of existents, which barely escape nonexistence, through every possible grade up to the ens perfectissimum [the most perfect being, i.e. God]."⁵⁹ This would include everything known to science to exist from subatomic particles to atoms, molecules, all the rest of the mineral kingdom, the viruses, bacteria, plankton, algae, all the vegetable kingdom, the amoebae, zoophytes, jelly fish, mollusks, fish, frogs, amphibia of all types, insects, birds, mammals and the whole of the animal kingdom culminating in that "paragon of animals", homo sapiens. It would not stop there, however. It would also include all those classes of invisible entities known to primitive peoples, mythology and religions of many stripes. Thus, it includes elemental spirits, the spirits of the earth, water, air and fire (e.g., gnomes, undines, sylphs and salamanders), the spirits of animals, the spirits of ancestors, demons, angels and gods. Just as the physical world has its hierarchy of existences (the mineral, vegetable, animal and human) so too does the invisible world have its corresponding hierarchy of what Aristotle called "the powers of the soul".⁶⁰  

This power of soul can also be expressed in terms of the degrees of freedom which a level of being has to respond to changes in its environment. For example, the mineral kingdom has almost no degrees of freedom since all of its responses to the environment are governed by the "laws" of nature expressed so impressively by the sciences of physics and chemistry. Yet even in the world of subatomic particles, which have the lowest degree of freedom, matter disintegrates into waves of probability and is subject to Heisenberg's principle of uncertainty. 

Increasing degrees of freedom are encountered as the chain of being ascends from mineral to the vegetable kingdom and from vegetable to the animal kingdom. The common distinction made between mineral and higher kingdoms is that the higher ones possess the function of living things while "dead" matter is inert and is only responsive to external forces. Thus, living things exhibit self-movement, irritability, the ability to take in and assimilate nutrients, growth, reproduction and excretion of waste materials. However, ordinary molecules of matter are able to form crystals and grow in size while more complex molecules, such as the amino acids, are able to combine into an extraordinary number of even more complex protein molecules, which are the building blocks of all living things. A virus, for example, although incapable of reproducing on its own (and hence technically not alive) can invade an animal, plant or bacteria cell, take over its reproductive mechanism, multiply itself and cause diseases, even death, to its host organism. Polio, measles, chicken pox, mumps, AIDS and the common cold are all familiar examples of diseases caused by these minute structures composed of particles of nucleic acid and proteins. 

Examples abound of the lifelike characteristics of supposedly dead matter, but few would consider the possibility of matter possessing a soul and a spirit (i.e. the monad).We live in an age when the prevailing philosophy (the scientific worldview) discounts the reality of anything that cannot be seen, touched, measured or deduced by use of instruments which extend the range of our five senses. Existentialism, which is an outgrowth of this way of looking at the nature of reality, turns its back on the need for belief in God or any other invisible entities by postulating that "existence precedes essence." As Jean-Paul Sartre explains this concept: 

"It means that, first of all, man exists, turns up, appears on the scene, and, only afterwards, defines himself. If man, as the existentialist conceives him, is indefinable, it is because at first he is nothing. Only afterward will he be something, and he himself will have made what he will be. Thus, there is no human nature, since there is no God to conceive it. Not only is man what he conceives himself to be, but he is also only what he wills himself to be after this thrust toward existence."⁶¹  

It follows from this premise that there is no such thing as a universal or absolute moral law, whether handed down by Moses or God, that man is responsible only to himself to determine what is right and what is wrong, what is good and what is evil. If, on the other hand, there are not only "natural laws" found by science which produce predictable and inevitable results in the observable world and universe, is it not possible (nay, probable) that man, a creature that evolved from the natural world, is also subject to a set of moral laws which are just as predictable and inevitable as those subject to observation and verification in the physical world?  

This does not preclude man from exercising his precious gift of freewill, but if universal laws extend into the moral realm as well as in the physical realm, there are inevitable consequences of man making choices also. In fact, the more knowledge he possesses the larger the scope of choices available to him and the greater the consequences of those choices. A few widely separated clans or tribes competing only with other animals and subject to the vagaries of natural forces is a far cry from a species that dominates the earth and makes plans to colonize or establish bases on other planets. As one created in the image of God, man inherits not only his animal body from the natural world. He also inherits a measure of the Creator's mind, intelligence and ability to create whatever his mind can imagine or conceive. As the poet expresses it: 

"Mind is the master power that molds and makes;
And man is mind, and evermore he takes
The tools of thought and thinking what he wills
Brings forth a thousand joys, a thousand ills.
He thinks in secret and it comes to pass.
Environment is his looking glass."  

The evils that we observe all around us, therefore, are nothing more than an out picturing of ideas and desires, fears and hatreds of the collective consciousness of mankind, past as well as present. "For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and wickedness of men who by their wickedness suppress the truth.⁶² .... And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a base mind and to improper conduct. They were filled with all manner of wickedness, evil, covetousness, malice. Full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malignity, they are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, ruthless."⁶³ .... "We know the judgment of God falls upon those who do such things."⁶⁴ Not only do the sins of the present generation result in this out-picturing of evil. For even though the Lord is longsuffering and slow to wrath he visits the "iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation."⁶⁵ 

Those who do not believe in the reality of a personal God, and therefore in His judgment and wrath, may prefer to consider the consequences of thinking and doing evil as a law of action, which the Hindus call "karma". Sir Isaac Newton in his Principia discovered in the natural world a law of motion which can be stated as: "For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction." For example when a gun is fired, the force that propels the bullet forward also kicks back on the holder of the gun. Anyone who has fired a 45 caliber pistol or a shotgun can attest to the reality of that equal and opposite force.  

One of the principles underlying the Great Chain of Being Lovejoy calls "plenitude". As he states it: "If any eternal essences have temporal counterparts, the presumption [by Plato] was that all do so, that it is of the nature of an Idea to manifest itself in concrete existences."⁶⁶ He then goes on to explain the necessary complementarity between light and shadow in Plato's well known simile in which the sensible world is likened to shadows being thrown on the wall of a cave by an exterior source of light (i.e., the sun). "The shadows were as needful to the Sun of the intellectual heavens as the Sun to the shadows; and though opposite to it in kind and separate from it in being, their existence was the very consummation of its [the Sun's] perfection."⁶⁷ Another way of stating the principle of plenitude is that all things that can be conceived in the realm of universal ideas will find their equivalent expression in the sensible world - the ugly as well as the beautiful and the evil as well as the good. If follows that no manifestation in the natural world is possible unless it exists first in the archetypal or universal realm. ("As above, so below.") As the poet, Goethe, expressed it: 

Plant a thought and reap a deed;
Plant a deed and reap a habit;
Plant a habit and reap a character;
Plant a character and reap a destiny. 

Or more succinctly: "Whatever a man sows, that he will also reap."⁶⁸ and
As a man "thinketh in his heart, so is he"⁶⁹  

Today we could express Plato's simile in terms of a movie projector behind us flashing pictures on a screen so rapidly that they appear to be real instead of mere two dimensional representations (flickering shadows) of our three dimensional world. Is it not conceivable, therefore, that our three dimensional reality is in turn only a reflection of a higher dimensional reality which in its turn is a reflection of a still higher level of reality and so on until at last we reach the ens perfectissimum? The number of levels, dimensions or planes of reality above our three dimensional one is naturally subject to a wide range of speculation. One approach would be to use an analogy with what we know about the physical universe. The center around which our planet and its eight sister planets revolve and on which all life depends for its existence is our star, the sun. Yet it is known that our star, which is only one of some 100-150 billion other stars in our Milky Way galaxy, is also revolving around the galactic center. Our galaxy in turn, for all we know, may be revolving around a super-galactic center, etc. Some philosophies call the spiritual being at the center of our solar system the solar logos. If we accept the premise of the Great Chain of Being, there well may be a galactic logos, a super-galactic logos and so on until we reach the ens perfectissimum at the center of the universe (the etymology of which, interestingly, means "one turn"). 

The time required to make one revolution around a center depends on an entity's location in the chain. For example, an electron circles its atomic nucleus about 1 million, million (i.e. a trillion) times each second while a mountain on the surface of the earth revolves around its center once in twenty-four hours. The earth itself takes 365 1/4 days to make its annual trip around the sun while the sun, which is about 1 million times the volume of the earth, takes an estimated 224 million years to make one revolution around the Milky Way galaxy. No one knows how long it takes the universe to make its one cycle, but if we accept the Hindu notion of the periodic appearance and disappearance of the universe, a "mahamanvantara" lasts about 35 billion of our years. Thus, if the Big Bang occurred some 15 billion years ago, the universe should go on for another 20 billion years or so before it returns to a quiescent state known as the night of Brahman. 

The above analogy to the Great Chain of Being assumes that all invisible entities have a material counterpart. However, most religious traditions, and those seers who have explored dimensions above the physical level, attest to the reality of spiritual beings with an outer form appropriate to the level they occupy but who do not customarily inhabit a physical body. Though as Professor Bloom admonishes us in a recent book: "Angels are anything but ephemeral images."⁷⁰ In fact, we learn from the eighteenth century seer, Emanuel Swedenborg, who spent the last twenty-two years of his life in the exploration and study of the spiritual worlds of heaven, purgatory and hell that: 

"There are with every man [and woman] at least two evil spirits and two angels. Through the evil spirits the man has communication with hell; and through the angels, with heaven. Without communication with both no man can live a moment."⁷¹  

Man, therefore, indeed finds himself "placed on this isthmus of a middle state" between the antipodes of heaven and hell and the between the multi-dimensional worlds of spirit and matter. That which separates him from the rest of the animal kingdom is his intellect and his awareness of himself as a creature with the power of choice. The very word intelligence is derived from two Latin words, inter and legere, meaning "to choose between". This self-consciousness and his power of choice does indeed set him apart from the rest of the visible creation with an admonition from his Creator: 

I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing;
Therefore, choose life that both thou and thy seed may live."⁷² 

Thus, this gift of intelligence and the consequent increased freedom to make choices is not an unmixed blessing. It gives man more power, but it also gives him responsibility for his own fate. The fall from the childlike state of paradise begins not only when Adam and Eve (i.e. mankind) eat of the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil but also when they thereby acquire the power to choose between them. For a clue as to when this occurred we turn back again to mythology.

Prometheus Bound 

Every schoolboy knows (or should know) the story of Prometheus as told by Aeschylus in his play, Prometheus Bound. In brief: 

"Prometheus was one of the Titans [a giant], the old powers, which ruled the world before the coming of Zeus [the Roman, Jupiter]. After Zeus had conquered the Titans [with the help of Prometheus] Prometheus made human beings out of clay and life [psyche] was breathed into them by Athena. Zeus had no love for the race of men. [He planned to destroy them because they lacked nous, the living fire or spirit of eternal life. In defiance of Zeus' wishes] Prometheus stole fire [i.e. nous] from heaven, carried it down to earth in the hollow stalk of a fennel plant and gave it to men. He also taught mankind the arts and sciences, but Zeus took his revenge. He had Prometheus fettered to a mountain peak. Everyday an eagle (or a vulture) came to peck and tear at the chained Titan's liver, and every night the liver grew again, so that there was no end to the torture. Prometheus remained fettered there for thousands of years until at last, in the usual story, he was released by Hercules [the Greek, Heracles]."⁷³ 

In this story of Prometheus we come, at long last, to the possibility of a synthesis between the various myths concerning the creation of man and the scientific theory of his evolution from more primitive life forms. Although Creationists would have us believe that the world and all its varied flora and fauna sprang into being almost immediately after God said, "Let there be light" (which led to the widely held belief that the world was created in 4,004 BC⁷⁴), we now know that it has taken many billions of years from that spectacular event known as the "Big Bang" to bring about the current status of our world and all the life forms within it.  

Darwin hypothesized that varieties of a species which were best adapted to their environment were responsible for the gradual evolution of the species. Natura non facit saltum (Nature makes no leaps) was the cornerstone of his theory as well as that of geology and other sciences of his day. Modern evolutionists, however, in the light of the more than 130 years of observation since Darwin published his The Origin of Species conclude that "all of Darwin's premises are defective; there is no unlimited population growth in natural population growths, no competition between individuals, and no new species producible by selecting for varietal differences. And if Darwin's premises are faulty, then his conclusion does not follow. It simply means that we cannot use Darwin's argument, brilliant though it was, to establish natural selection as a means of explaining the origin of species."⁷⁵) Furthermore, and crucially for our exposition here, "Darwin maintained that evolution was driven exclusively by external causes . . . . [It now appears that] the whole cause of evolution is within the organism."⁷⁶  

Just how fundamental changes arise within the DNA of an individual who is the bellwether of evolutionary change is at present unknown. Although mutations are known to occur when germ cells are exposed to high levels of radioactivity, there well may be other mechanisms which will produce such changes. As previously mentioned, there is better than a 99 per cent match between the DNA in man and that of the other higher primates (e.g. chimpanzees, orangutans and gorillas)⁷⁷. Therefore, a small change in even one gene could perhaps produce a large change in one or more of the offspring of those in which such changes in the DNA structure had occurred.  

Although the fossil record generally supports the hypothesis that early hominids had a smaller brain and were smaller in stature than contemporary homo sapiens, there are notable exceptions. For example, fossils of now extinct homo erectus,whose earliest types date back 700,000 years ago, had a cranial capacity as high as 1,280 cc. This compares with a brain size of living adult men as small as 900 cc with mean sizes ( depending on racial and geographic characteristics) ranging from about 1,200 cc to 1,550 cc.⁷⁸ Similarly, Neanderthals, whose remains date back about 200,000 years, were "fully sapiens in brain size. Contrary to a once popular belief, the Neanderthals stood and walked fully erect."⁷⁹ Finally, from the upper Paleolithic Age dating from around 37,000 years ago to the end of the last Ice Age (circa 10,000 BC) we find remains of a magnificent race of homo sapiens - Cro-Magnon man.

The name comes from the area in southern France where his fossil remains were first discovered in 1868. The name means "literally big-large or great-big, in the old local dialect"⁸⁰ of the region. Not only were they skilled hunters, who used the atlatl, or spear thrower, and possibly the bow and arrow but they were also artists and artisans. Their "tools and weapons are things of beauty, finely dressed blades and points. A wide variety of other forms served special purposes, such as engraving bones and ivory for ornamentation or drilling eyes into bone needles or carving bone fishhooks."⁸¹ In the caves at Lascaux, Cougnac, Altamira etal he left pictures of hundreds of deer, bison, horse and mammoth, which even by today's standards are marvels of artistic style and ability. His appearance was also very contemporary. "A high forehead, a chin, and greatly reduced brow ridges gave the look of totally modern man. He would have passed unnoticed on American city streets"⁸² except for one thing - he was 6 to 6 1/2 feet in height. The name, Cro-Magnon (meaning big-large or great-big), thus applied to the men found there as well as to the name of the area where his fossil remains were first found. 

Although there are many current examples of adult men who are just as tall as Cro-Magnon man and even taller (e.g. American pro basketball players and Watusi tribesmen of Rwanda and Burundi), on average modern men are under six feet in height. However, Cro-Magnons were not just a local tribe; they were a race, who at one point numbered an estimated 3,000,000 - a significant percentage of the species homo sapiens extant at that time. It is believed they originally immigrated from the Middle East (the cradle of civilization). Although their greatest concentration was in southern France and the bordering regions of Spain, their remains have been found ranging from the upper Danube in the East to Belgium and Britain in the North and West.⁸³ Even in historical times there is evidence of men who were much taller than average - so much taller, in fact, that they were called giants. 

In the Old Testament after Moses led the children of Israel out of Egypt into the wilderness of the Sinai (circa 1290 bc) God warned him: "Do not harass Moab or contest with them in battle. . . . The Emim formerly lived there, a people great and many and tall as the Anakim; like the Anakim they are also known as Rephaim, but the Moabites call them Emim . . . [and] the Ammonites call them Zamzummim."⁸⁴ That their descendents were still in the land of the Moabites is attested to by a group sent out by Moses to spy out the land of Canaan. "The land through which we have gone [Moab], to spy it out, is a land that devours its inhabitants; and all the people that we saw in it are men of great stature. And there we saw the Nephilim (the sons of Anak, who came from the Nephilim), and we seemed to ourselves like grasshoppers, and so we seemed to them."^{85 86}  

The Nephilim, from whom these "men of great stature" arose, were in turn descended from the sons of God. For in the first book of Moses in the days before a worldwide flood destroyed all mankind except for Noah and his immediate family we read:  

"The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God [Elohim] came in to the daughters of men and they bore children to them. These were the mighty men that were of old, the men of renown."⁸⁷  

Recall that these same "sons of God" were also co-creators with God in bringing the universe into being.⁸⁸ Even the Hebrew word, Elohim, which here, and usually in the Bible, is translated by the word "God", is the plural of Eloha, which is the Hebrew generic word for a god with a small g. Hence, it would also be correct to translate Elohim as "gods" or "angels" rather than as "God".⁸⁹ Recall also the passage in Genesis where man was created: "Then God [Elohim] said, 'Let us make man in our image, after our likeness ..."⁹⁰ Note that when "God" speaks "He" uses the plural form of the personal pronoun three times in the same sentence. It does no injustice to the grammatical construction then if we use the plural form of the Hebrew noun to agree with the plural pronouns. The passage would then read: "Then the gods said, 'Let us make man in our image, after our likeness .'" Does this do violence to our cherished belief in one supreme God of the universe? - Certainly not! Recall also the earlier discussion of the concept of plenitude wherein the Great Chain of Being includes invisible as well as visible entities arranged in hierarchical order according to the relative powers of soul.⁹¹  

Do Christians not speak of and believe themselves to be members of the body of Christ, who in turn is One with the Father? Did not Jesus, himself, pray: "that they may all be one; even as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee that they also may be in us?⁹² Also in the Book of Psalms we read: "God has taken his place in the divine counsel; in the midst of the gods [Elohim] he holds judgment."⁹³ It therefore should be no heresy to acknowledge the Supreme Being (the ens perfectissimum) as the One "in whom we [and all creation, visible and invisible] live, move and have our being."⁹⁴  

That a number of gods or angels are involved in the process of creation is explicit in Zoroastrian cosmology from which many of the stories in the Old Testament appear to have been derived. To these ancient Persians they were Amesha Spentas (Immortal Holy Ones). Likewise, in Hinduism they were Prajapatis (Lords of Creation) and in Egypt , Mystery Gods. Even in the Old Testament we find two orders of spiritual beings: (1) the seraphim described by Isaiah as surrounding God's throne while endlessly chanting "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of His glory."⁹⁵ ; and (2) the cherubim whom God placed at the gate east of Eden together with a flaming sword which turned every way to prevent Adam and Eve from returning to eat of the tree of life (i.e. immortality).⁹⁶ They are also placed symbolically by Moses on each side of the Ark of the Covenant guarding the Holy of Holies.⁹⁷ In the New Testament St. Paul also identifies a hierarchical order of invisible beings when he speaks of "principalities and powers in the heavenly places"⁹⁸; and elsewhere he distinguishes between these powers and angels.⁹⁹ Also in the New Testament St. Peter makes distinctions between angels, authorities and powers, all of whom are subject to the sovereignty of the Almighty.¹⁰⁰  

Although the God above all gods is the causeless cause of all subsequent creation, it is the lower echelons of spiritual beings who are responsible for the involution of spirit into matter and form and for implanting the heavenly nous in the Adam with a flesh body. In the intertestamental Book of Enoch we find an expansion of the story found in Genesis 6:1-4 which tells us that "some two hundred lustful angels come down upon the summit of Mount Hermon in pursuit of the beautiful daughters of men . . . [and] after mating with earthly women, the fallen angels raise up giant sons"¹⁰¹ who the Genesis story calls the Nephalim. However, this union of the sons of God with the daughters of men produces more than just descendants who were giants. The story in Genesis continues: "The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually."¹⁰² Again the intertestamental Book of Enoch expands the Genesis narrative: 

"And there arose much godlessness, and they committed fornication, and they were led astray, and became corrupt in all their ways. . . . And as they perished, their cry went up to heaven . . . 'Thou seest what Azazel [one of the fallen angels] hath done, who hath taught all unrighteousness on earth and revealed the eternal secrets which were preserved in heaven, which men were striving to learn . . . And they have gone to the daughters of men upon the earth, and have slept with the women, and have defiled themselves, and revealed to them all kinds of sins. And the women have borne giants, and the whole earth has thereby been filled with blood and unrighteousness. And now, behold, the souls of those who have died are crying and making their suit to the gates of heaven, and their lamentations have ascended; and cannot cease because of the lawless deeds which are wrought in the earth.'"¹⁰³ The story of Noah and the worldwide flood follows in both Genesis and Enoch. 

We may impute a similar rendering of the Greek myth of Prometheus since he was one of the Titans (i.e. giants). Although there is no actual mating with earthly women in the Greek legend, he and the other Titans were descendants of Ouranos (Heaven) and Ge (Earth). Thus, they had a heavenly father and an earthly mother. Recall also from our earlier discussion of the Greek creation myth that it was Kronos, a first generation Titan, who by castrating his father, Ouranos, and taking over his exalted position, enabled the process of creation to proceed.¹⁰⁴ It was then one of his own sons, Zeus, a second generation Titan, who in turn deposed Kronos and imprisoned him and his brother Titans in Tartarus (a deep pit below the surface of the earth). Zeus, along with other Titans, had numerous liaisons not only with other female gods but also with human women.  

The early generations of men evidently were not pleasing to Zeus since he oppressed them and deprived them of fire (i.e., nous or immortality). It was then Prometheus who stole fire from heaven and gave it to men. The conventional interpretation of "fire" in the Promethean myth is the acquisition by early man of the making, control and use of fire, which he had undoubtedly witnessed as coming from the heavenly spheres in the form of lightning. By that interpretation the gift of fire to men from the gods would have been given at least 400-500,000 years ago, since anthropologists have discovered hominid remains dating back that far with evidence of man-made fire nearby.¹⁰⁵ Although these remains were classified as being that of early homo sapiens (wise man), it is doubtful that they possessed the mental faculties to warrant the species designation sapiens. Another interpretation of the Promethean myth is that the gift of fire represented intelligence, since the name Prometheus in Greek means "forethought" - i.e., the ability to think ahead and plan for future contingencies. This interpretation is also supported by Prometheus teaching mankind the arts and sciences.¹⁰⁶ Early man unquestionably possessed intelligence but then so does much of the rest of the animal kingdom. However, that which distinguishes man from his animal cousins, and even from the higher primates is not primarily a higher degree of intelligence measured on a continuum from lowest to highest but rather a discrete faculty which belongs to man alone - viz., the faculty of self-consciousness.  

The rise of this faculty in man would appear to be of relatively recent origin since even today primitive people retain in large measure their participation mystic, as Levy-Bruhl calls it, with nature. As Carl Jung defines this primordial condition: "It connotes a peculiar kind of psychological connection with the object, wherein the subject is unable to differentiate himself clearly from the object..."¹⁰⁷ In other words there is an unconscious identity of subject and object which manifests itself in the belief that all nature is alive, even inanimate objects. Similarly, a young child, before his self-consciousness is well developed, talks to his doll or his dog as if it understood what he is saying. Since "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny", the child reflects the evolution of his species in his own development. Even earlier (around age two) a child calls himself by his given name and only later refers to himself as "I". This transition, Dr. Richard Bucke tells us, is one from simple consciousness to self-consciousness, from receptual to conceptual intelligence.¹⁰⁸ Concomitant with the appearance of self-consciousness is the rise of abstract thinking, the use of symbols to express ideas and the development of a written language. "It is generally believed that writing was introduced to the western nations by the Phoenicians, and it is commonly believed that the Phoenician system was based on the Egyptian... The Egyptians [in turn] attributed their writing to Thoth, and the first characters are said to have consisted of portraits of the gods."¹⁰⁹ Similarly, the ancient Sanskrit language is said by the Hindus to have been derived from the gods and they "call one form of it devanagari (divine city)."¹¹⁰ 

Although the biblical account of this infusion of godly attributes into mankind is followed immediately by the story of Noah and a worldwide flood as a result of man's misuse of these new powers, myths from other cultures tell a different story. We have recounted earlier that in Egyptian mythology Osiris and Horus were not only gods but became kings on earth. Their human successors were thereafter also called Horus. Similarly, in Roman mythology after Saturn had been deposed as head of the gods by his son Jupiter he was banished to earth where he founded the kingdom of the Latins and ushered in an era of enlightenment known as the Golden Age.¹¹¹ From these and similar stories of reign by men descended from the gods came the belief in the divine right of kings, which has persisted even into the twentieth century. For example, it is said the Kaiser Wilhelm, who ruled Germany during World War I, still believed in this doctrine. In Japan the state religion of Shinto still teaches that their "emperor is the descendent in unbroken succession of the Sun Goddess, and is, therefore, himself divine, drawing his authority from divine ancestors."¹¹² While this is now largely symbolic, during World War II Emperor Hirohito was revered as a god by many Japanese, and their flag continues today to be the rising sun.  

Unlike the current worldview many mythologies teach that mankind has not progressed since the gods walked amongst us. Rather, as the Greek poet, Hesiod, recounts in his Works and Days: the Golden race was followed by four others, wherein he presents mankind in continuous decline. The current race is the Iron race in which man is "never resting from labor, born to trouble, sorrow and death, but with some good mingled with its evils."¹¹³ Similarly, in Hindu mythology "The first age was the Golden Age, when virtue prevailed and man lived on the fruits of the garden of earth. After a steady decrease in both virtue and lifespan during the second and third ages, we find ourselves in the present era [the Kali Age, the last and worst of the four ages of the world, which is filled with] sin, disease and heresy."¹¹⁴ According to Hindu beliefs this fourth and final age will be succeeded by a return to the first age (called the satya yuga or krita yuga - an age of purity) but not before a cataclysmic end to the present one. 

Thus, despite, or perhaps because of, this infusion of knowledge from the gods, man comes to believe that not only is he created in the image of God, but that with the development of his ego (i.e., self-consciousness) he is himself a god who no longer needs to be subordinate to his creator(s). The biblical story of his fall from Eden after eating the forbidden fruit of the knowledge of good and evil follows forthwith. In like manner Lucifer, the bright morning star, falls from heaven; Icarus, trying to fly too close to the sun, causes his waxen wings to melt and plunges into the sea; and Prometheus, for his sin in bringing the fire of knowledge and immortality down from heaven to man on earth, is fettered on top of a mountain in the Caucasus where he is made to suffer daily for thousands of years.¹¹⁵ The Greeks called this "pride which goeth before a fall" hubris. Today we call it secular humanism. 

This motif of being cast down from the heavens (or paradise) to become imprisoned on earth (or Hades) is a universal theme in myths and folklore the world over. Zeus, upon seizing the heavenly throne from his father Kronus, threw not only him down to earth but all of the other Titans down to Tartarus (Hades) as well. In Babylonian and Assyrian mythology the Mother-Goddess, Ishtar, descends downward through the seven heavenly spheres to find the elixir of immortality to restore her dead son, Tammuz, to life. However, when she arrives at the lowest level the guardian of Hades "inflicts upon her all manner of disease and imprisons her in the underworld."¹¹⁶ As Joseph Campbell reminds us: ""The mythology of the seven spheres and of the soul's journey from its heavenly home downward to its life on earth and, when that life was done, then upward again through all seven, is as old in this world as our civilization itself."¹¹⁷  

So what are the conclusions which can be drawn from these stories of Prometheus Bound, the fall of Adam and Eve, Ishtar etal? Again, Joseph Campbell sums it up for us: "To enjoy the world requires something more than mere good health and good spirits; for this world, as we all now surely know, is horrendous. 'All life', said the Buddha, 'is sorrowful'; and so, indeed, it is. Life consuming life: that is the essence of its being, which is forever a becoming. 'The world', said the Buddha, 'is an ever burning fire.' And so it is. And that is what one has to affirm, with a yea!"¹¹⁸ In the Christian scriptures St. Paul reminds us: "We know that the whole creation has been groaning in travail together until now."¹¹⁹ Or as the philosopher, Pascal, phrases it: "Our nature consists in motion; complete rest is death."¹²⁰ Yet this surcease from labors by death is what Hamlet in his famous soliloquy ponders: 

To be or not to be that is the question.
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of trouble,
And by opposing, end them. To die; to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end the
Heartaches, and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to. 'Tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep . . . 

As a modern bumper sticker puts it: "Life's a bitch and then you die." Is that the end of the story? Fortunately, for Prometheus and for the rest of us, it is not.  

Prometheus Unbound 

True to the meaning of his name (i.e. foresight) Prometheus foresaw the sequence of events which would lead to his eventual release many thousands of years later. He tells the goddess, Io, the mistress of Zeus, the dangers she must face and journeys she must make in order for Zeus to restore her to her original form. (She had been turned into a cow to deceive his jealous wife, Hera.) He told her she then "will bear a son, swarthy Touchborn, who is to rule over all the land watered by the Nile. In the fifth generation fifty maidens, fleeing the proffered marriage of their cousins, shall return to her home in Argos and shall in the watches of the night put their lords to death. But one of the maidens will spare her mate. From this pair will spring a royal race, one of whose descendants is destined to deliver Prometheus."¹²¹ His name would be Hercules (or in Greek, Heracles). 

Hercules was the most celebrated of the heroes of Greek mythology. His strength and feats of valor were the subject of many legends recounted by Homer, Hesiod and others. He showed his prowess even as an infant when he strangled two serpents sent by the goddess Hera to destroy him in his cradle. The mother of Hercules (Alcmene) was a mortal but his father was the mighty god, Zeus, who ruled the other gods atop Mount Olympus. His wife Hera, as we saw earlier in her pursuit of Io, was extremely jealous of his liaisons with other women. She thus hated any offspring from them. Since she knew that a child born on a certain day would become ruler of the descendants of Perseus, she contrived to prolong the birth of Hercules and hasten that of his cousin Eurystheus so that he would become ruler instead of Hercules. 

As a young man Hercules killed a huge lion which had preyed on the flocks of his stepfather Amphitryon and on those of the king of Thespis. He next freed his native city of Thebes from having to pay an annual tribute of a hundred oxen to a neighboring king. For this deed he was rewarded by the king of Thebes with marriage to his daughter Megara and the government of his kingdom. However, his cousin Eurystheus, aware of his successes and increasing influence, ordered him to come to Mycenae in order to impose upon him a series of difficult labors. Even though Hercules was subject to Eurystheus as a result of his earlier birth, he refused his command; whereupon Hera "inflicted him with melancholic madness during which he killed his own children by Megara, supposing them to be the offspring of Eurystheus. When he recovered he was so horrified by the misfortunes which had proceeded from his disobedience and insanity that he consulted the oracle at Delphi. He was told that he must be subservient to the will of Eurystheus and perform ten labors imposed by the king, after which he would attain immortality."¹²²  

Eurystheus not only envied Hercules but feared him. By imposing ten impossibly difficult and dangerous tasks on him he hoped to eliminate a potent rival. The first task he gave Hercules was to destroy the Nemean lion which was terrorizing the region and which was invulnerable to arrows and spears. Hercules subdued him "by knocking him unconscious with his club and then throttling it. He skinned it and afterwards always wore the skin round his shoulders. Eurystheus was so frightened when he saw him that he hid himself in a large pot from then on whenever Hercules appeared."¹²³ His second labor was to hill the Hydra, a nine-headed serpent whose heads regenerated when they were severed. Hercules again used his club to crush each head and had his friend Iolaus burn the root of each head with a hot iron while he crushed the next one. His "third labor was to catch the hind of Diana, famous for its swiftness, golden horns and brazen feet. The fourth labor was to bring alive to Eurystheus a wild boar which ravaged the neighborhood of Erymanthus. . . . In his fifth labor Hercules was commanded to clean the stables of Augeus where 3,000 oxen had been kept for many years; this he accomplished in one day by turning the rivers Alpheus and Peneus through the stables . . . The sixth labor was to destroy the carnivorous birds with brazen wings, beaks and claws, which ravaged the country near Lake Stymphalis in Arcadia.. In his seventh labor he brought alive into Peloponnesus the wild bull, a gift of Poseidon to Minos, king of Crete, which had laid waste to the island. In his eighth labor he was commissioned to capture the mares of Diomedes, which fed upon human flesh. He killed Diomedes, and gave him to be eaten by his mares, which he brought to Eurystheus. For his ninth labor he was commanded to obtain the girdle of the queen of the Amazons. In his tenth labor he killed the monster Geryon, king of Gades, and brought to Argos his numerous flocks, which fed upon human flesh. Adjudging the second and fifth labors as unlawfully performed, Eurystheus imposed two others. These were: the eleventh, to obtain the golden apples from the garden of the Hesperides; and the twelfth, to bring from hell the three-headed dog Cerberus. .. This ended what are generally known as the Twelve Labors of Hercules, and relieved the hero from bondage."¹²⁴ However, he continued to perform deeds of valor. Thus, he participated in the pillage of Troy, fought with Zeus in his battle with the giants and accompanied Jason and the other Argonauts in their quest for the golden fleece. He also liberated the heroes Prometheus and Theseus. At the end of his mortal life he ascended to Mount Olympus where, as foretold by the prophesy at Delphi, he took his place among the other immortal gods.  

The twelve labors of Hercules are sometimes compared with the twelve signs of the zodiac and the experiences required in each by the soul before it can complete its sojourns in a body of flesh. Thus, just as Prometheus represents the original divine man, the first Adam, who first creates the human form and then becomes imprisoned in a body of flesh on earth, so Hercules represents the redeemer, the second Adam, who, after completing his mighty twelve labors, frees not only Prometheus but potentially all men and returns them to their original status as immortal beings. For as Joseph Campbell tells us: Heroes are "the world's symbolic carriers of the destiny of Everyman."¹²⁵  

This notion that each of us is destined to undergo the trials and tribulations of the hero appears to imply a doctrine of salvation by works in contradiction to St. Paul's admonition that it is by God's grace that we "have been saved through faith . . . [and] not because of works lest any man should boast."¹²⁶ However, it is not sufficient for salvation to be mere believers in God. For in the New Testament we are also told to "be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves."¹²⁷ And that "faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead."¹²⁸ Even Jesus, who Christians believe to be the incarnate Word of God, says that: "Not every one who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but [only] he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven."¹²⁹ He further admonishes us to: "Enter by the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard, that leads to life, and those who find it are few."¹³⁰ And again he says: "Many are called but few are chosen."¹³¹ The path of the hero is indeed a hard way and relatively few in a given generation succeed in going through that narrow gate. 

The reader, having absorbed or refreshed his or her memory of the myths of Prometheus and Hercules, must be wondering what these Greek stories, myths or legends have to do with the problem of evil. Therefore, a recapitulation at this point will hopefully allow us to return to the central theme of the essay: 

The universe comes into being as a result of the Monad (the first manifestation of that unimaginable, indefinable and unknowable being variously called Brahman, the Tao, the Godhead, the God above all gods, etc.) separating itself into two opposite yet complementary poles, a matrix from which all subsequent creation springs. We call this original pair of opposites by various names: protospirit-protomatter, light-darkness, God-Devil, good-evil, Father-Mother, Adam-Eve, yin-yang, Sun-Moon, etal. However, the designation of the Duad as protospirit-protomatter is somewhat misleading in that there is at this stage nothing which even vaguely resembles matter. In Hindu terminology Mulaprakriti merely throws an invisible, tenuous veil over Parabrahman. Earlier it was emphasized that the Great Chain of Being involved a number of levels or dimensions in the invisible as well as in the visible realms. The widely held theological belief in creation ex nihilo (from nothing) simply means that the creative process begins long before any physical manifestation occurs. Reference was also made previously of the universal motif in mythology of the descent of the soul from its heavenly home downward through seven spheres (levels or dimensions) before reaching its life on earth.¹³² This downward arc of spirit into matter, of Lucifer's descent from Heaven to Hell, of Adam and Eve's expulsion from the heavenly Garden of Eden to a life of toil and tribulation on earth all symbolize this process of involution of spirit into successively more restrictive degrees of freedom, the putting on of ever-heavier "coats of skin". Thus, the concept of an ens perfectissimum (a perfect being) implies as its polar opposite an imperfect being. A Being with complete freedom of action implies an opposite one of limited freedom of action. A place where omnipotence and an infinity of possibilities reigns implies a place of finite and limited power and possibilities. A center at which there is no movement implies a periphery in constant motion. Immortality implies the existence of mortality; etc., etc. 

That involution from spirit into matter precedes the evolution or ascent of matter into spirit is confirmed by innumerable stories of the elder gods being overthrown and supplanted by younger ones. Thus, Ouranos (Uranus), the ruler of heaven, is supplanted by his son, Cronus (Saturn), who in turn is overthrown and sent down to earth by his son, Zeus (Jupiter). This theme of the younger supplanting the older is also found in the Old Testament beginning with God's rejection of the sacrificial offering of Cain, Adam and Eve's oldest son, and his acceptance of the offering made by the younger son, Abel. In anger Cain then kills Abel and as a result is branded with the mark of Cain on his forehead and sent away from his family to dwell in the land East of Eden. Similarly, the Jewish patriarch, Abraham, has his first son, Ishmael, by his wife's bondwoman, Hagar. When his younger son, Isaac, was born thirteen years later to his wife, Sarah, she tells him to "cast out this slave woman with her son; for the son of this slave woman shall not be heir with my son Isaac."¹³³ The Lord concurs with Sarah and tells Abraham: "Through Isaac shall your descendants be named."¹³⁴ In the case of the twin sons, Jacob and Esau, born to Isaac and Rebecca, it was Esau, who by coming out of the womb first, was entitled to inherit everything after his father's death . Nevertheless, Jacob persuaded him when they were grown men to sell him his birthright in exchange for a bowl of pottage and by deceit was given his father's deathbed blessing. When Esau complains about the deception, Isaac explains to him: "Behold, I have made him [Jacob] your lord and all his brothers I have given to him for servants, and with grain and wine I have sustained him."¹³⁵ Isaac then tells Esau: "Behold, away from the fatness of the earth shall your dwelling be, and away from the dew of heaven on high. By your sword you shall live and you will serve your brother."¹³⁶  

Even without the theological postulate of original sin the fact that man is enmeshed in a body of gross flesh is prima facie evidence that he is a being far removed from the ens perfectissimum. Although by the evolution of his mind and self-consciousness he is superior in many ways to all other life forms on earth, he, like Prometheus, longs to break the chains that confine him to the earth and yearns to return to a realm where bodily death does not mean the end of his existence. St. Paul speaks for all men when he laments: "Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?¹³⁷ "For I know that nothing good dwells within me, that is, in my flesh. I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. For I do not the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I that do it, but sin which dwells within me."¹³⁸  

Thus, St. Paul identifies his body as the source of his sin and his knowledge of the law given to Moses by God for his awareness of the difference between good and evil. As noted earlier, he confirms that "if it had not been for the law, I should not have known sin ...[and] Apart from the law sin lies dead."¹³⁹ Although Abraham was told by God that he was to be the father of many nations with his descendants as numerous as the stars,¹⁴⁰ he was also told that "Through Isaac [and not Ishmael] shall your descendants be named.¹⁴¹ St. Paul explains that "This means that it is not the children of the flesh who are the children of God, but the children of the promise [who] are reckoned as descendants."¹⁴² However, even the twin sons of Isaac are similarly divided when God tells his wife, Rebecca, that "the elder [Esau] will serve the younger [Jacob]."¹⁴³ Not only is Jacob, later renamed Israel, to rule over Esau, but as God in later years speaks through the prophet, Malacai: "I have loved you, but you say 'How hast thou loved us? Is not Esau Jacob's brother?' Yet I have loved Jacob but I have hated Esau; I have laid waste his hill country and left his heritage to jackals of the desert."¹⁴⁴ So if even the children of the promise are not immune from the wrath and judgment of God, who then "will deliver [us] from this body of death?" Enter the hero, the redeemer, the Son of God, the second Adam, the way-shower who by his death and resurrection makes atonement (i.e. at-one-ment) for the sins of all mankind by resolving the problem of duality.

The Reconciliation of Opposites 

The epistle of St. Paul to the Romans, quoted in the preceding section, served as the foundation for a new covenant which transcended the old one given by God to the children of the promise - the nation and people of Israel. This epistle became the basis not only for converting both Jews and Gentiles in Rome to Christianity but also served as a theological foundation for its subsequent spread throughout the world. What began as a small movement nearly 2,000 years ago centered around the life, crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth has today grown to the point where one-third of the world's population calls itself Christian. Yet many of these are Christians in name only. Even among devout followers there are deep divisions and disagreements over matters of doctrine, belief and practice. Nor is Christianity unique in this respect. In Islam the Shiites and the Sunnites not only differ in terms of how the successors of Mohammed are determined but actually war against each other (e.g., Iraq and Iran) over their differences. Hinduism is notorious for its wide-ranging and divergent beliefs. One of its offshoots is Buddhism which today itself has a number of branches (e.g., Hinayana, Mahayana and Zen). Even modern Judaism, whose central and unifying belief is "The Lord our God is one Lord"¹⁴⁵, has three major divisions: the Orthodox, Reform and Conservative. Yet these divisions differ "as much and more from the others than Catholics, Protestants, and the Eastern Churches differ from one another."¹⁴⁶  

It is perhaps inevitable that the original precepts of a God-man such as Jesus, a bodhisattva like the Buddha or an avatar (an incarnation of God) like Krishna in time become elaborated, expanded and codified into rituals, doctrines and practices which are widely divergent from their original form and content. For example, the laws of Moses had become so elaborated and extended in the centuries after the original ten commandments were given by God to Moses on Mount Sinai that only the very devout even outwardly were able to obey them all. It was these groups, therefore, that Jesus attacked in his short ministry for their attention to the letter of the law and their neglect of the beliefs at its core. 

"Woe to you Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint and dill and cummin and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith. These you ought to have done without neglecting the others. You blind guides, straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel."¹⁴⁷  

Were Jesus to reappear today he no doubt would likewise find some Christian groups to upbraid for their "holier than thou" attitudes and practices. As Professor Marcus Borg points out in a recent book: "In parts of the [modern Christian] church there are groups that emphasize holiness and purity as the Christian way of life, and they draw their own sharp social boundaries between the righteous and sinners. It is a sad irony that these groups, many of which are seeking very earnestly to be faithful to Scripture, end up emphasizing those parts of Scripture that Jesus himself challenged and opposed."¹⁴⁸ When outward compliance is emphasized to the detriment of inner directed motivation, the individual often internalizes that society's laws, rules and regulations . One's sense of right and wrong, good and evil, reward and punishment becomes equated with the prevailing ethos of one's particular cultural milieu. It not infrequently occurs, therefore, that the voice of conscience becomes identified with an image of God who is both the author and enforcer of what Professor Borg refers to as the "conventional wisdom" of the group with which one identifies. "When this happens in the Christian tradition, it leads to an image of the Christian life as a life of requirements. Indeed, this happens so frequently that it is the most common form of Christianity."¹⁴⁹  

Not only do we often internalize the moral requirements of the group of which we are a part and assimilate its ethos as our own, but we are also influenced, unconsciously perhaps, by the prevailing worldview of our culture. In our twentieth century Western civilization this weltanshauung has been characterized by Alexander Solzhenitsyn as "rationalistic humanism or humanistic autonomy: the proclaimed and practiced autonomy of man from any higher force above him."¹⁵⁰ This view goes hand in hand with the precepts of modern science, which proscribe attributing any phenomena to supernatural causes, and with the philosophy of atheistic existentialism cited earlier.¹⁵¹ The dilemma for many people today then is having to choose between complying with a rigid set of "do's" and "don'ts" set forth by various religious orthodoxies or in attempting to find one's own way without the benefit of any higher moral authority. So devastating has this nihilistic philosophy been on the human spirit that Martin Heidegger, one of the protagonists of existentialism, is reported to have said toward the close of his life: "Only a god can save us now."¹⁵² Similarly, Professor Corliss Lamont, one of the leading exponents of the philosophy of humanism, says: "Even I, disbeliever that I am, would frankly be more than glad to awake someday to a worthwhile eternal life."¹⁵³ Why wait Professor Lamont? As St. Paul proclaims it:  

"Behold now is the acceptable time; behold, now is the day of salvation!"¹⁵⁴  

The heart and soul of Christianity, as taught by Jesus and his early disciples, was neither simply to conform to the ethos imposed by a religious hierarchy nor to attempt to find one's own way unaided by external authority. Rather, its message was to be born again with a spiritual identity that transcends time and physical reality. Just as the world and its multifarious life forms come into being by the process of the One becoming many, so the process of reintegration from the many back into the One requires raising the individual consciousness from identification with gross matter to identification with its spiritual origin - its Alpha as well as its Omega. As Meister Eckhart, a German theologian, expressed it in the thirteenth century:  

"Three things prevent a man from knowing God. The first is time, the second is corporeality, the third is multiplicity. That God may come in, these things must go out - except thou have them in a higher, better way: multitude summed up to one in thee."¹⁵⁵  

This begins to sound a lot like the perennial philosophy that was introduced earlier in this essay. The essence of this philosophy, as you may recall, is the belief "that finds in the soul something similar to, or even identical with, divine Reality; [an] ethic that places man's final end in the knowledge of the immanent and transcendent Ground of all being."¹⁵⁶ By contrast, as we have seen, the prevailing consciousness of people today is rooted in the conventional wisdom of the milieu in which they find themselves. This was no less true 2,000 years ago when Jesus walked the earth in Palestine. As Professor Borg concurs, "living in accord with conventional wisdom not only was the dominant consciousness of the first-century Jewish social world, but also is the dominant consciousness in our time and culture."¹⁵⁷ To introduce the radical idea of the immanence of God and his kingdom, therefore, Jesus talked to the people in parables and only explained the inner teaching to his intimate disciples. 

"Then the disciples came and said to him, 'Why do you speak to them [the people] in parables?' And he answered them, 'To you it has been given to know the secrets of the Kingdom of heaven. . . . This is why I speak to them in parables, because seeing they do not see, and hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand. . . . . But blessed are your eyes, for they see, and your ears, for they hear."¹⁵⁸  

Jesus thus taught that a new consciousness, a new way of experiencing reality, was necessary in order to enter into heaven and eternal life. 

"Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the Kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh i