Ignorance as the Root of Evil

This is a quotation from Pamela Kribbe’s book The Jeshua Channelings, which is very important to me. Below, I explain why.

“In order to bring about change, to create the possibility for movement and expansion, God had to introduce into His creation an Element that differed from the all-pervading Good. This was very difficult for Him, for how can you create something that is not of you? How can Good create Evil? This is impossible. Therefore, God had to resort to, so to speak, a trick.

This trick is called ignorance. Ignorance is the element opposite to ‘the Good’.

It creates the illusion of existence outside the Good, the illusion of separateness from God. In your Universe, the impulse for change, growth, and expansion comes from not knowing who you are.

Ignorance gives rise to fear, fear gives rise to the need for control, control gives rise to the struggle for power. All the conditions for the flourishing of ‘evil’ are present.

In this way, the stage was set for the battle between Good and Evil…”

— Pamela Kribbe, The Jeshua Channelings

Every sentence above is filled with meaning, because it shows how the different parts are connected within the Whole that humanity has called God. The most central idea is that the opposite of good is not evil, but ignorance. The same is claimed by Plato, who says that ignorance is the root and foundation of all evil.

Such formulations of pairs of opposites—where the other side of a duality turns out to be different from what we expect—are deeply creative. They give rise to real solutions, because the solution is inevitably a new way of uniting opposites. Jung formulates something similar about love: the opposite of love, he says, is not hate, but unconscious eros, which manifests as the will to power.

It follows that the opposite of both good and love is ignorance—because love and good are one and the same. The same applies to the identity between evil, fear, and the will to power: “ignorance gives rise to fear, fear to the need for control, control to the struggle for power—the conditions for the flourishing of evil.”

The practical implications of this perspective are crucial, because they direct our efforts in the right place: toward the fear that arises from ignorance. This means that we should not try to eradicate the evil we discover within ourselves, but to understand where it comes from. When we see its roots, it dissolves.

Osho often speaks about this process using the metaphor of bringing a candle into a dark room. Light does not fight darkness. It simply is—and by its very presence, darkness disperses. Consciousness is light that dispels the darkness of ignorance.

Here comes another important clarification—about the specific role of ignorance in the divine plan:

“In order to ‘set His creation in motion’, God needed the dynamics of opposites. This may be very difficult for you to accept, when you are aware of all the suffering caused by ignorance and fear, but God attached great importance to these energies, because they gave Him the opportunity to rise above Himself.

And then God asked you, who belong to His most creative, advanced, and courageous part, to put on the veil of ignorance. In order to experience the dynamics of opposites as fully as possible, you temporarily immersed yourselves in forgetfulness of your true nature. You yourselves agreed to immerse in ignorance, but this fact, too, was covered by the veil of forgetting. That is why you so often curse God for finding yourselves in this situation of a difficult life in ignorance—and we understand you.

But in essence, you are God, and God is in you.”

— Pamela Kribbe

It seems that good and evil are a pair of opposites with a very special role in divine creation: they are the condition through which God can rise above Himself. But what does it mean for God to rise above Himself?

One possible answer comes from alchemy, which is why I see Pamela Kribbe’s book as a contemporary alchemical text. According to the alchemists, the human being is an instrument through which God comes to know Himself—and their work is to assist in perfecting creation.

Thus, evil is a specific form of ignorance. It concerns the “material” of which the human being is made: immortal Spirit that permeates everything and everyone—God. This ignorance has a divine meaning: by working with the tension between opposites within us, we come to know ourselves and find the Third that unites them in a new way. This is profoundly creative. And it helps us—God—to rise above ourselves.