In holotropic states, we can directly experience not only the unified creative principle, as I described earlier, but also separately either its benevolent or its malevolent form as two discrete entities. When we encounter the benevolent form of God, we selectively tune into the positive aspects of creation. At this point, we are not aware of the shadow side of existence and we see the cosmic play in its entirety as being essentially radiant and ecstatic. Evil appears to be ephemeral or entirely absent from the universal scheme of things.
The best approximation to the understanding of the nature of this experience is to describe it in terms of the ancient Indian concept of Sacchidananda. This composite Sanskrit word consists of three separate roots: sat meaning existence or being; chit, which translates as awareness; and ananda, which signifies bliss. All we can say about this experience is that we are identified with a radiant, boundless, and dimensionless principle, or state of being, that seems to be endowed with infinite existence, has infinite awareness or wisdom, and experiences infinite bliss. It also possesses an infinite capacity to create forms and experiential worlds out of itself.
This experience of Sacchidananda, or Existence-Awareness-Bliss, has its counterpart—a cosmic principle that epitomizes all the negative potential of the Divine. It represents a negative mirror image or an exact polar opposite of the basic attributes of Sacchidananda.
We can think here of the introductory scene from Goethe’s Faust, in which Mephistopheles introduces himself to Faust: “I am the spirit that negates” (“Ich bin der Geist der stets verneint”). When we look at the phenomena that we consider bad or evil, we will see that they fall into three distinct categories, each of which represents the negation of one of the basic characteristics or attributes of Sacchidananda.
The first of the three basic qualities of the positive Divine is sat, or infinite existence. The
corresponding category of evil is related to the concepts and experiences related to limited existence, termination of existence, and nonexistence. Here belongs the impermanence that rules the phenomenal world and the inevitable prospect of final annihilation of everything.
This includes our own demise, the death of all living organisms, and the ultimate destruction of the earth, the solar system, and the universe. We can think here of the dismay of Gautama Buddha, when during his rides outside of his father’s palace he discovered the facts of disease, old age, and death. In our own tradition, medieval Christian clergy coined many laconic phrases reminding the population of this aspect of existence:
“Dust to dust, and to dust thou will return,” “Remember death,” “This is how passeth the glory of the world,” or “Death is certain, its hour uncertain.”
The second important aspect of Sacchidananda is chit, or infinite awareness, wisdom, and intelligence. The corresponding category of evil is related to various forms and levels of limited awareness and ignorance. It covers a wide range of phenomena from harmful consequences of lack of knowledge, inadequate information, and misunderstanding in matters of everyday life to self-deception and basic ignorance about the nature of existence on a high metaphysical level (avidya). This type of ignorance was described by the Buddha and some other spiritual teachers as one of the important roots of suffering. The form of knowledge that can penetrate the veil of this ignorance and lead to liberation from suffering is called in the East prajñaparamita, or transcendental wisdom.
The third category of phenomena experienced as bad or evil includes elements that represent negation of another major characteristic of Sacchidananda, the element of unlimited bliss, or ananda. The experiences belonging here and their causes reflect the dark side in the most direct, obvious, and explicit way, because they interfere with an ecstatic experience of existence. They involve an entire range of difficult emotions and unpleasant physical sensations that are direct opposites of divine pleasure, such as physical pain, anxiety, shame, sense of inadequacy, depression, and guilt.
The evil demiurgic principle, the negative mirror image of Sacchidananda mentioned earlier, can be experienced in a purely abstract form or as a more or less concrete manifestation. Some people describe it as Cosmic Shadow, an immense field of ominous energy, endowed with consciousness, intelligence, destructive potential, and monstrous determination to cause chaos, suffering, and disaster. Others experience it as an anthropomorphic figure of immense proportions representing the all-pervading universal evil, or the Dark God. The encounter with the shadow side of existence can also take a more culture-bound form of specific deities, as exemplified by Satan, Lucifer, Ahriman, Hades, Lilith, Moloch, Kali, or Coatlicue.
I will use here as an illustration an excerpt from the report of Jane, a thirty-five-year-old psychologist, who experienced in her training session a shattering confrontation with the dark side of existence that culminated in an encounter with a horrifying personification of universal evil.
It seemed to me that I had lived my life up to this point with rosy glasses on my eyes that prevented me from seeing the monstrosity of existence. I saw countless images of
various forms of life in nature being attacked and devoured by others. The entire chain of life, from the lowest organisms to the most highly developed ones, suddenly appeared as a brutal drama in which the small and weak get eaten by the large and strong. This dimension of nature was so striking and overbearing that I could hardly see any other aspects, such as the beauty of animals or ingenuity and creative intelligence of the life force. It was a shattering illustration of the fact that the very basis of life is violence; life cannot survive without feeding on itself. A herbivore is just a more hidden and mitigated example of predatory existence in this biological holocaust. The sentence “nature is criminal” that the Marquis de Sade used to justify his own behavior suddenly made new sense.
Other images took me on a tour of human history and provided clear evidence that it has been dominated by violence and greed. I saw the vicious combats of the cavemen using primitive clubs, as well as the mass slaughter caused by increasingly sophisticated weapons. Visions of the Mongolian hordes of Genghis Khan, sweeping through Asia senselessly killing and burning villages, were followed by the horrors of Nazi Germany, Stalin’s Russia, and the African Apartheid. And yet other images portrayed the insatiable acquisitiveness and insanity of our technological society that threatens to destroy all life on this planet!
The ultimate irony and cruel joke in this dismal portrait of humanity appeared to be the role of the world’s great religions. It was clear that these institutions promising to mediate contact with the divine have often actually been a channel for evil. From the history of Islam spread by sword and spear through the Christian crusades and atrocities of the Inquisition to more recent religiously motivated cruelties, religion has been part of the problem rather than its solution.
Up to this point in the session, Jane had to witness a selective display of the shadow aspects of life, both in nature and in human society, without getting any insights concerning the causes of greed and violence. In a later phase, the experience took her directly to what seemed to be the metaphysical source of all evil in the world.
Suddenly the experience changed and I came face to face with the entity responsible for all I had seen. It was the image embodying the quintessence of timeless Evil, an incredibly ominous towering figure, radiating unimaginable power. Although I had no concrete measure, it seemed immense, possibly the size of entire galaxies. Although it was generally anthropomorphic and I could roughly recognize specific part of its body, it had no concrete form.
It was composed of rapidly changing dynamic images that flowed in holographic interpenetration. They portrayed various forms of evil and appeared in appropriate parts of the anatomy of this God of Evil. Thus the belly contained hundreds of images of greed, gluttony, and disgust, the genital area scenes of erotic perversion, rape, and sexual murder, the arms and hands violence committed by swords, daggers, and firearms. I felt awe and indescribable terror. The names Satan, Lucifer, and Ahriman emerged in my mind. But these were ridiculously meek labels for what I was
experiencing.