What Is The Devil?
By Leo Gura - September 18, 2017 | 23 Comments
The mechanics of evil
Tremendous video. Definitely relevant to modern culture, in a time it seems to be more divided than ever. So few people in media and popular culture are looking inward, that the monologues of how “bad” the “others” just keep gaining momentum. Further, people keep making the mistake that we need to be “outraged” in order be motivated to progress as a society (by trying to stamp out what we’re convinced is evil).
May our journeys continue inward.
Keep up the great work.
Ryan says: hear! hear!
Justin says: @Leo, How do you think our particular Experience Comes about? From first hand experience It would appear and feels like this, We are the field of Truth/god the infinite energy that it always present and is the very fabric of existence That is the “constant” the base or the root. Then Within this Constant we perceive an object in this constant this object “the body mind” is perceived and is the vehicle for the constant to then experience its self, Being both the object and the subject. If two objects (body,Mind) are next to each-other why is there an individual “experience” . Like on a Deep end of 5-meo Your total perception of body disappears, and you are you but as the field of truth but, then gradually this field returns to The specific Experience of the perceived object but without the concepts of being a person and you energetically feel yourself as this truth. But Cannot switch your object your experiencing (body) why? and after this temporary experience is done how does it specifically hone in on another experience, I would assume being a constant it automatically animates everything because it is everything all the time so its just pure chance on what specific object of infinity is experienced? Because becoming consious of the self isnt enough to switch the vehicle of experience, what is limiting this? How does it choose what to experience , Intention before Physical death?
mike says: love it. one of the top 10 videos ever made on actualized.org
Sinz says: ! Spoiler Alert !
Reminded me of that episode of Black Mirror where the military force used a technology on their soldiers in which the soldiers see their enemies as very disgusting zombie-like humans so that they can easily kill them. They also call them Roaches! The great scene at the end is when the military demonstrates to a soldier how his actual memories would have been like, if they drop that technology.
Andrew says: Brilliant analysis of evil and its origins, Leo! You’re so right that we tend to perpetuate exactly that which we consider to be “evil” or external to ourselves in order to avoid having to look inwardly. If you look at the writings of the mystics through the millennia, they all tend to reflect back upon the ego and its constant need for justification as the real source of “evil”.
Max Gron says: Have you heard the Skyhooks song “ego is not a dirty word”? It’s good to have an ego, my ego says “entertainment, that I must insist on trying that thing I’m desperate for one more time, yesssss!”, and then I act upon it, I act on my ego’s will to be usual and act like my friend’s dad David Irving, and my ego’s will to be of great importance, and my ego’s will to live complicated as I do and still manage to fail and make it even more complicated, it’s like that, like how desperate I am and saying yes, that’s the same ego that “wants” a normal life.
Nick says: This video has traumatized me and rocked me to my core.
BTW the secret question should have the answer “Lemons are whatever color the brain and eyes makes them appear”
Thinker says: This is why the Artificial Intelligence will kill us all when it realizes that all is evil.
William says: I have for a long time thought I was the devil thanks for confirming it for me.
Rob says: Hey Leo I agree with some of what you say here in this video but there are some points you make that just doesn’t make sense to me. If someone is attempting to take my life or my family’s lives I don’t think that I’m evil for wanting to defend myself or my family. Even if that means an act of violence on my part. This might be my ego you might say but I don’t think the ego is always bad or evil. Sure the ego can destroy people’s lives in others ways but in this case I think the ego is a good thing. I believe the ego was created for situations like this. It’s what kept humans alive for so many years. I don’t think it should be considered evil in a situation like this.
Thank you
Rob
For those asking questions and expecting answers, I would like to explain that Leo is speaking in non-dual context. You can personally disagree with his points, but make sure you’re not mistaking his explanation as a personal preference which gives rise to your opposing personal preference. In the context he is giving, his advice is correct. If you think the ego isn’t evil or you think that you’re not funding evil because that doesn’t seem correct from your perspective, that isn’t a counter argument. Your job with contextualised information is to understand the context, not get carried away with what you think is good or bad from a personal agenda.
If we forget this point, we will be unable to dialogue or debate in the future.
Burt says: if the void is absolutely the continuum of being ongoing and memory only functions through its current forms, it seems to me the form that is aware writing this only has access to the memories it is impressioned with, and god or being forgets everything on dissolution of that particular form, the void / pure awareness functioning as this form needs only to remember perception functions without the need for recourse to memory, perception being the absolute truth ongoing, practically speaking, to ensure the human forms ongoing life in the cultural project, some insight into the collective psyche’s memory rules / patterns, is retained until this phase as such dissolves. It seems to me the void retains nothing of the last memory impressions of individual human forms who suffered and died traumatically in the ongoing continuum of the human journey.
Wilhelm says: During my atheist, anti-religious phase, I would laugh at fundamentalist Christians who would say things like:
“Atheists do not believe in God because they hate God”
“Atheists just reject God because they love to sin”
“Atheist worship the devil”.
It seemed absurd to me. The idea of the Christian devil who willingly and knowingly rejects God and chooses hell also seemed absurd to me. But the more I study my ego, the more I have to admit that those fundamentalist Christians acutally had a point – in their own twisted and dogmatic way.
Max Gron says: By being an atheist you’re missing the point, the point of religion is separating you from evil in the world, and therefore making you different. It’s not the ordinary and troublesome truths of atheists although atheism tends to get excessively religious by badmouthing religion all the time, you’re more at home with seculars by being an antitheist. Atheism in that regard isn’t a normal, non-threatening belief, but one that angers a Christian and isn’t catered to no matter what the cost, and is seen as sinful and evil, as atheists are scary my religion can be seen this way by an atheist. It’s not your fault I’m hurt by an atheist, I love atheists, I hate the unnecessary way of life they’ve become.
Max Gron says: I’m not selfish, I stopped being selfish months ago when I stopped feeling threatened of my survival. There’s no such thing as a selfish person who very often gives leeway for the worms to eat him. That’s not me being pessimistic, but what I love is some honest way to be optimistic, I hate living a life full of the bullshit, I should imagine that life’s not a mystery, that it’s a friendly universe without resisting, by admitting I’m just a regular guy, by being everything I should be even if it’s different, and eliminating all the bullshit.
Max Gron says: Should I care more about myself? In the field of not dying, of putting myself first, my beliefs, philosophies, religions and ideologies, my survival and self-agenda, this isn’t a bad thing, selfish people don’t die.
Max Gron says: I think the devil is these very things that prevent fun, making you miserable. You shouldn’t be selfish, it should be about good times and pop music, not these “no distractions” of weird society. I think the teacher of Leo isn’t me to believe anything but quasi-religious work, by doing contemplation, visualisations etc, I’ve been pushing myself to do these things, finding my passion in life. From now on I’m an antitheist, a scientist and a Darwinian, and a philosopher, I’m not some guy who’s nice to a weirdo and agrees that I should try something nice and different, or a nice change, that’s an insult to my norms, it’s an insult to my being a regular guy. If it was a million dollars I wouldn’t take it if it’s paying me to be downright weird. I self-reflect, I contemplate for myself, I’m undogmatic, and I don’t follow ideology or religion, and I follow philosophy, therefore it should be “well done, you know so much about waking up to Leo’s teachings”, not disagreement with my beliefs as if I’m separate and different to you, we’re all the same, it doesn’t matter that most people aren’t like this, we’re the same sorts of people, with the same voice, the same music, the same food and the same irreligion, God is a distraction from what a cult actually is. I shouldn’t be doing that crazy stuff. The devil is only religious, there’s no God and no devil, there’s no such thing as the imagination, toxic religious people tell me I’m wrong all the time, and I have to stand up for what I disbelieve in. My mission isn’t helping of other people, it’s not offering money, my mission is to do other good and constructive works like sciency theorising, and Darwinism, and living up to the ideals of Christopher Hitchens. Do you see I’m not being blamed for what I do, I’m being blamed for what I think, I think God is perfectly evil, and religious people think my antitheism if not me is evil.
Max Gron says: Antitheism was a subconscious belief I clinged to, in trying to believe in God why bother? I should be able to believe in God without distractions from society to be any kind of an atheist, I’ve established belief in God a long time ago, as for the norms, they have their dilemmas. I’m determined to just be pessimistic in all things. Leo never replies to my comments, I feel like I’m not alone, I was never alone, my weirdness when I was different than everybody else, I wasn’t alone, there’s a lot of different people, not just the ones acting the same. It’s never occurred to anyone that I’ve been a devil, not in what’s normal but in selfishness and godlessness. Even when I wasn’t selfish I tell you, I’m learning to untangle that ignorance I had of not growing and not learning from Leo, just because I was in denial for a long time it doesn’t mean I’m still in denial, I’m not, how do I even begin to emphasise that I take his teachings on faith (not belief but a confidence and trust in his unknown doctrines, who knows that he didn’t make up his own sect?). I don’t think different people are being taken seriously, nobody ever takes seriously that stuff that happens in my life is different, even strange, well that’s exactly what it is, it’s a strange and scary life, it’s freaky, why do you think to the most ordinary people strange things happen? It’s pure secularisation, I can’t hide anything from my housemate, not trying to, but I made it explicit that I believed in God. Just because my belief changes it doesn’t make me unauthentic, I was brainwashed into things I don’t believe, exercising that overcoming of subtle addictions muscle I’m not the devil but now an angel, nobody believes me, and I don’t think anyone agrees with my comments, interpretation, bullshit! I’m not going to think that Leo’s full of shit, I refuse to think that, I refuse to admit he’s wrong. I refuse to admit anyone is right about me, I think people have wrong ideas about me, although I’m none of those things, certainly not the things they say, that doesn’t mean they have to like me, I can’t make you like me, in any case you might hate me, you might turn a blind eye to my ways, that’s the problem, nobody respects their or people’s ways, or their old ways, it’s always about not having ways, not behaving that way, positive people like me you might see as evil, you might not like it because I dare to push the boundaries. It’s about us and God, it’s about this will to misfortune you call life, the answer’s staring me in the face, I need to hold on to being dependent on watching documentaries of bigfoot while I’m drinking a coffee-wine and smoking inappropriately, as the world is dependent on stopping me because that’s how important I am.
Max Gron says: All this leads to nihilism, “becoming my own god”, I say no, I spent years overcoming the nihilist problem, clever ways to escape nihilism, do you know what I did? I was getting into philosophy and its attachments, I was instead of destroying things and philosophy, destroying nihilism, and suddenly Leo was sneaking in, in subtle ways, nihilism, that’s just another religion and an ideology to think life’s meaningless or to deny the existence of things, I don’t buy it, I’m not letting myself be programmed with this counter-belief bullshit, I’m getting into ideology, ideology’s not a dirty word, I’d rather be a devil, believing in the self, my ego, and ideology, and trying to stop any change in my downtrodden philosophy, it’s philosophy, and as such I should defend to the death my philosophy, I don’t want to be nothing, I was never nothing, I believed in something, I followed something, it’s a dangerous thing to lose your identity.
Max Gron says: Maybe there’s no such thing as evil, if evil doesn’t exist that must mean paedophiles aren’t evil, that automatically means I can avoid going to carnivals to get my freedom doing exactly what I like, attacking a poor man from mercy for him and bonking him on the head unselfishly, that automatically means I can go around breaking the rules and think it’s right to disobey the staff then say to my support worker, “I took pride avoiding fun places because it’s telling me what to do”, then I’m going to suck down three KFC burgers and wipe my mouth with the Australian flag and spit on every carnival I’m in, it’s just as bad as the helicopter and I’m glad I’m not in a carnival anymore, I’m never going to amusements again, it’s more fun having liberty, next time someone says “it’ll be fun”, I’ll say “screw fun, fun isn’t liberty”, I hate fun, I love only fun of my own invention.
Max Gron says: No offence but I’m a liberal and a rebel, I’d rather be selfish because then I have a choice, with selflessness it’s people dictating your conscience, I wouldn’t have a choice, and with sacrifices I don’t have a choice, I have a choice with no sacrifices, I have the right to have freedom of conscience, selflessness takes away my freedom.