THE NEGATIVES
CATEGORY 11, VOLUME 7 – PART II
March, 2026
The Preface to this Category reads as follows:
We see what appears to be evil rampant in the world, especially in this century, but it is not absolute evil. It is destined to disintegrate and vanish. How can you be so sure? Because if humans grow they come to the truth. If they do not then they lose their humanhood for a time. Their evil goes with them. Those who live in the truth live in ethereal light, beautiful peace, even if the shadows are there. They see on deeper levels where evil cannot penetrate and where the senses of unevolved people cannot extend. If you are not able to know the great truths for yourself then believe in them.
How are we to understand the nature of this “negativity,” and how has it become part of humanity’s world image and experience?
There is that in us which repeatedly works against our finer aspirations, which provides us with opposition. Upon this anvil our character is hammered out, shaped, and developed. [11:1.1]
The root of all the trouble is not our wickedness or animality or cunning greedy mind. It is our very I-ness, for all those other evils grow out of it. It is our own ego. Here is the extraordinary and baffling self-contradiction of the human situation. It is a person’s individual existence which brings them suffering and yet it is this very existence which they hold as dear as life to them! [11:2.22]
Humanity did not come into its present grievous situation by chance. The whole picture of thoughts and their consequences, passions and their evils, acts and their effects, must be seen under the light of immutable karmic law. [11:4.11]
What lies at the root of all these errors in conduct and defects in character? It is the failure to understand that he is more than his body. It is, in one word, materialism. [11:2.18]
PB speaks of the “baffling self-contradiction of the human situation.” Is it possible to experience the world without functioning as an individual “I”? If not, how are we to best function within the polarities of “good” and “evil” in our experience?
What are the blockages which prevent the soul’s light, grace, peace, love, and healing from reaching us? There are many different kinds, but they are resolvable into the following: first, all negative; second, all egoistic; and third, all aggressive. By “aggressive,” I mean that we are intruding our personality and imposing our ideas all the time. If we would stop this endless aggression and be inwardly still for a while, we would be able to hear and receive what the Soul has to say and to give us. [11:2.24]
Our only enemies are those inside ourselves. They are our weaknesses and vices, our lower passions and intellectual deformities. It is better to fight them than to fight other people. [11:2.12]
If a man could keep himself out of his thinking and feeling, he would more easily arrive at truth. If he could believe his personal views to be nothing, but truth everything, he would sooner receive its grace. [11:2.46]
In a world seething with negative thoughts, murky in several areas with suspicion and even hatred, inflamed with violent feelings, the person who knows the truth must hold all the more to inner and outer calm, to goodwill and faith in the Overself’s presence. [11:3.485]
Evil is strong in the world and sometimes people who aspire to the good become discouraged and depressed. It is at such moments that they need to recall whatever glimpses of the Real they have had and to remember that all things pass away, including the evil. [11:3.486]
It is because all humanity is approaching the threshold of a new era, a better era, that all the devils of the old era put forth their fiercest efforts, whilst there is yet a little time, to degrade human character, to drag it down into the hells of the worst forces and emotions–hate, envy, aggressiveness, and brutality. [11:4.2]
The rule of casting out all negative thoughts, and keeping them out, is an absolute one. There are no exceptions and no deviations. Such negatives as hate, irritability, and fault-finding make poisons in the body and neuroses in the mind. They irritate the nerves, disturb the proper movement of the blood, distort the internal secretions, and destructively affect the chemical composition of tissue cells. Nor is this the end. They provoke like emotions in other people with whom we are constantly thrown in contact. We then have to suffer the effects as if they were echoes of our own making. Thus the discords inside oneself throw up disturbances outside oneself. One’s anger provokes the other person’s anger, for instance. [11:5.64]
If catastrophe and obliteration threaten humanity and if the individual is hopeless when confronted by them, it is logical to conclude that although humanity might not be able to save itself, the individual can save themselves from these disasters if they believe that inner salvation is at least a possibility where outer salvation is not. Yes, you and I can save ourselves from within even when we cannot save ourselves from without. That at least is a better lot than the one of the person who can save themselves neither from within nor from without and put their faith in political action alone. For politics is merely a system of human bargaining actuated by self-seeking. It can invoke the aid of no higher power because it does not rise higher than this self-seeking interest itself. But the individual is free to lift themself above this sordid plane and therefore they are in a position to invite the attention and aid of higher powers. [11:3.502]
Compiled by Judy S.