{Spiritual Recognition of Evil}[5th December 1973]

[Redbook2:27][19731205:2339]{Spiritual Recognition of Evil}[5th December 1973]

Wednesday 19731205.2339

            Does this means to measure evil – or at least to value evil – mean that no action is intrinsically evil? Does a torturer practising his craft upon a creature which, unknown to him, is insensitive in this area of suffering, do no evil?*

            But here Spirit speaks to Spirit, and our own Spirit – if allowed – will recognise the hatred in the torturer as evil.  (Is this an elitist philosophy? – many, unrealising, do not recognise the Spirit).  What of the dispassionate torturer, the craftsman, who (again) does not know that his victim is insensitive to suffering?  Here the act is one we would instinctively call evil, but because there is no evil intent and no experience of evil by these rules there is no evil in the particular case – only in the generality(?) it represents.**  And perhaps this is as it should be:  that we should allow that some acts fall under the general evil while in themselves neutral.

*This does not follow from evil as a spiritual state rather than an action: rather the reverse, in fact <921010>.

**The answer to this is that if he is Human, he must know of the hurt he does; if not, he is not Human, in the circumstances <890928>.

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