Evil Relative, Not Absolute

Now the deception into which Eve falls is mathematically represented by saying that God = Zero, and thus attributing to Evil the same self-existence as to Good. There is no such thing as Absolute Evil; and what we recognise as Evil is the ONE Good Power working as Disintegrating Force, because we have not yet learnt to direct it is such a way that it shall perform the functions of transition to higher degrees of Life without any disintegration of our individuality either in person or circumstances. It is this disintegrating action that makes the ONE Power appear evil relatively to ourselves; and, so long as we conceive ourselves thus related to it, it does look as though it were Zero balancing in itself the two opposite forces of Life and Death, Good and Evil, and it is in this sense that "God" is said to know both.

But this is a conception very different from that of the All-productive ONE and arises, not from the true nature of Being, but from our own confused Thought. But because the action of our Thought is always creative, the mere fact of our regarding Evil as an affirmative force in itself makes it so relatively to ourselves; and therefore no sooner do we fear evil than we begin to create the evil that we fear. To extinguish evil, we must learn not to fear it, and that means to cease recognising it as having any power of its own; and so our salvation comes from realising that in truth there is nothing but the good.

Mortality

But this knowledge can only be attained through long experience, which will at last bring Man to the place where he is able to deduce Truth from a priori