(© RKP, 1963)Philosophers, theologians, moralists, sociologists - anyone who spends time considering the troubles of mankind, their wrongs, griefs, miseries, conflicts, ambitions, personal and general - have analysed these things and attributed them to almost everything from Satan to Heredity. Literature is largely composed of the problems arising from this search for the cause of what is called 'Evil'.
But you have only to sit back and think for a few moments in order to perceive that what is called 'Evil' has only one cause, a most obvious one, that is neither Satan nor Heredity nor anything in between. It is the I-concept, the notion of an individuality, of a separate self.
Take that away, and nothing deriving from it can remain - for all derive from pride, greed, envy, desire, ambition, etc., all of which are manifestations of egoism or what is commonly called self-ishness.
Were every human being suddenly to lose that notion - which we know to be unfounded and quite unreal - all these evils, indeed all 'evil', would automatically cease to exist.
That is theoretical: we know of no means of bringing that about, and it would be the famous millennium. Only an infinitesimal minority of 'individuals' have succeeded in realising that they are not such. But is there any reason why the upbringing and normal education of every child should not be directed, indeed consecrated to that end?
Such a process would not produce a millenium created by self-less men and women? No, it would not, but in whatever degree it succeeded in weakening the notion of 'self', the preoccupation with 'self', to just that degree would life on Earth come to resemble the kingdom of Heaven.
