The Condensed Book
The condensed book: about 20,379 words, roughly 73 pages; with the appendices, about 30,970 words, roughly 111 pages. At 280 words a page, updated whenever the site is regenerated.
For so long as the root of wickedness is hidden, it is strong. But when it is recognized, it is dissolved. When it is revealed, it perishes. … It is powerful because we have not recognized it. —The Gospel of Philip
This work is my attempt to convey an insight about the nature of good and evil that arose from my practice (as well as plant medicines) many years ago. It is not one that I can claim to be fully living myself.
What I saw was how I, specifically, was contributing to the horrors of the world—even while being flawlessly confident that I was one of the “good guys,” valiantly fighting evil. Because I was convinced of that. At the same time, I saw how an aspect of my mind had always known exactly how I was lying to myself. It was always there, just patiently waiting to be remembered. And I saw that remembering it was the only way I’d ever be of real help to anyone caught in the same thing.
The rest of this book is me checking what I saw, in the one place I can: my own case. Where something is only what I see, I say so.
The main engine of this book is one familiar thing: moral contempt, the way we treat our enemies as though they were inherently defective. Traced carefully, it turns out to be a uniquely insidious expression of evil: how the darkness spreads between us while masquerading as righteousness.
I know evil is a heavy word, and I mean it: not as a value judgment or an attack, but as a description, and the book earns it. And it isn’t an abstract idea; my hope is to help you notice whether you’ve been acting on a knowledge of it all along.
The book is meant to be read from a settled seat; Chapter 1 especially, since it asks before it tells. If it provokes the recognition, the rest is detail.
This work is far from finished. Part of my hope for this version is to find people with deeper insight and better communication skills than mine, who wish to collaborate. If that’s you, let me know.
A warning. Parts of this are hard to read, because they ask you to look at things in yourself that nobody enjoys looking at. Go slowly, and stop when you need to. Nothing here is a verdict on you.
May all beings be free of suffering and its causes.