A Phenomenology: Being Beyond Good and Evil and Living within The

Realm of Good And Evil

By: Rudolph Bauer, Ph.D. Diplomate in Clinical Psychology, A.B.P.P.

This paper is an ethical discussion about how action emerges from and out
of timeless awareness through us into time. Our understanding reflects and
is based upon what has been described as the two ways of knowing. The
most primordial way of knowing is knowing non- dualistically through
awareness or what some call gnosis and others call jnana and still others
direct perception. And the more common and ordinary way of knowing is
knowing through our mind and the instruments of our mind such as feeling,
thinking, sensation, memory and imagination. This knowing is the mode of
knowing difference, singularity and dualistically. This is the mode of
knowing me and you, us and them and this and that. This knowing of
duality is the mode of knowing within appearance, knowing what is
appearing both within and without, knowing both internally and externally.
Now because of our wonderful capacity for the skillful simultaneous union
of these two modes of knowing we can know duality from within non-duality
and within duality we can know non-duality. This sublime mode of knowing
reflects the simultaneous union of the two modes of knowing. This sublime
mode of knowing reflects the very nature of creation which is oneness and
difference. Through the simultaneous integration of the two modes of
knowing we can experience both oneness and difference through our
experience of appearance. Furthermore this sublime knowing is an action
and so in respect to this knowing the Hindu Shavite masters would declare
knowledge is action. This sublime form of knowingness manifests the
action within duality while arising and emerging from within the dimension
of non-duality. The action emerges out of non- duality into the dualistic
experience and appearance.
This simultaneous knowingness is the power of compassion. Compassion
self-arises from within non-duality of gnosis or jnana and manifest within
dualistic appearance and the experience of self and otherness. This is the
power of non-dual timeless awareness entering into the drama of duality
within time.
Time is the unfolding of appearance, time is the unfolding of the pairs of
opposites. The power of compassion is the power both of self-liberation
and protectiveness. This power of compassion liberates us from evil within
us and the evil within circumstances. As the great Christian prayer the Our
Father invokes: Deliver us from evil, now and at the hour of our death.
Compassion also gives the power of protection and protectiveness towards
those vulnerable to evil and suffering. Compassion protects innocence.
The closer and the more our mind is integrated within this awareness field,
this field of knowingness, the more our mind is infused by the sense, the
implicit felt sense of non- duality, the inner heart essence. This integration
of our mind within our awareness field overcomes and heals the primary
developmental dissociation between our mind and our innate awareness.
The more our dualistic mind is dissociated, separated from the innate
relatedness of primordial non-dual awareness, the more our mind is felt to
be a thing among things. And so our thoughts become things, our feelings
become things, sensation is thing like, our drives are thing like, sexuality is
a thing, and the world itself becomes a thing.
As we become thing like, our very humanness does not unfold into being.
We do not become what we are. We do not become shepherds of being
as Heidegger called us. The anima mundi disappears. The world as soul,
the world as psyche disappears and only things remain. Happily, whenever
there is the manifestation of love there is the self-arising of non-duality
within duality. Wherever there is love there is the self-arising of
compassionate protection. Ubi charitas et amour deus ibi est. This means
wherever there is charity and love there is God. And so the Christian
medievalist would say God is Love and the ancient Greeks would say
Love is a God.
Belief in the deities or belief in the archetypal dimension of human
experience is not the same power as the experiential power of invocation.
The power of invocation is the power to invoke or bring forth the archetypal
realm and is the power of bringing forth the power of the archetypal into
situations and within our embodiment and within our own circumstances.
This is the power of magical realism. Through the power of invocation, the
power of the archetypal dimension can manifest around you and through
you. Our very oneness with the archetypal dimension can bring forth
goodness around us and through us and to us. Just as the power of evil
can come forth through us and around us and within us. The archetypal
context and archetypal source when benevolent can protect us from
suffering and infuse us with the light of awareness. We live in trans-lucidity.
Some think and restrict the archetypal realm to the interior world of the
human psyche. They think within the Cartesian, Kantian philosophical
framework of the basic division between subjectivity and objective world.
Rather the archetypal dimension of human experience are fields of energy,
light and information that inform both psyche and matter. The archetypal is
continuity between inner and outer experience. The archetypal dimension
is manifesting both the experience within psyche and the phenomena of
circumstance. The archetypal dimension is both non-dualistic and dualistic.
The archetypal is both cosmological and personal.
Evil is not simply psychological but is cosmologically rooted and is
constantly and unceasingly becomes psychological. Evil is suffering and
evil is the infliction of suffering. The love of the infliction of suffering is
evilness that is both personalized and archetypally manifested. Evilness is
the love humans have for inflicting suffering in order to protect themselves
from suffering. There is a pleasure humans have in inflicting suffering on
others. This pleasure is evilness.
Self-liberation is not earned but naturally given to everyone. This natural
given-ness is hidden by political, cultural, religious, personal and archetypal
obscurations. The darkness of ma rigpa (not knowing) is archetypal,
cultural and personal. Collectively the unconsciousness is the obscuration
of natural awareness which is the great compassion.
The ethos of compassion is the power to perceive through the union of
mind and awareness simultaneously the immediacy of lived context and the
lived immediacy of the self- manifestation of non-duality within duality. Non
duality infusing duality and duality infusing our experience of non-duality,
this is the true hermeneutic circle of self-liberation.
Self-liberation happens through the simultaneous experience of the
presence of goodness and the presence of evilness and the intertwining of
both. This intertwining is the alchemical mixture of both psyche and
circumstance. The fire of self-liberation is the fire of the elements
combining within appearance and experience. This is self-liberation within
the momentum.
 As Lama Tharchin Rinpoche so often said, how we relate to appearance
directly influences self-realization and self-liberation. Through our
experience of goodness and evilness, and our experience of intertwining of
both goodness and evilness there is ongoing intensification of liberating
self-experience. The multidimensionality of this experience of intrinsic
relatedness of goodness and evilness and the experience of luminous
awareness dissolves duality. Luminous Purity is the fire of awareness. The
luminous fire of awareness frees us from the confinement of
circumstances. The space of trans-lucidity allows us to live within the world
engaged without being enslaved by its vicissitude, without being captured
and possessed by the contained solipsistic mind and containing
circumstances.
Within Dharmakaya, the infinity of pure potential space, there is only purity.
There is only open unbound uncontained knowingness as no thingness
manifesting as everything and anything. In the experience of the
dimensions of appearance of duality of Rupa form, there is the pairs of
opposites. Without awareness, these extremes of the opposites cannot be
held and without the base of the space of awareness self- liberation
congeals. The radiance of appearance cannot be held. Primordial
awareness both manifest everything and anything and self- liberates us
within everything and anything.
Living and being in open spaciousness of luminous awareness frees us to
be beyond good and evil. Being luminous in the trans-lucidty of awareness
field is self-liberation within this realm of goodness and evilness, within
intertwining of happiness and suffering. We experience directly the infinity
in particularity, and the infinity in singularity and the infinity in
momentariness.
The power of compassion is the power of the mastery of self-liberation and
self-agency through action. The power of extension of the light of
awareness cuts through phenomena and opens all phenomena so that we
experience the trans-lucidity of phenomena, the lucidity of appearance.
The power of the innate awareness as light can free our person from
configurations of our mind and configurations of compelling actions and
situations. The light permeates everything absolutely everything is light.
The power of extension of the luminous awareness can free others from
compulsive mind and driven actions. It frees us from the demonic!
Cutting through liberates phenomena, and seeing through liberates the light
of phenomena to become visible and manifest. Simultaneously seeing and
experiencing the purity of all beings as Being itself and simultaneously
experiencing the evilness and goodness intertwined within all beings of
form. Evilness and goodness is not simply a function of rational
responsibility as our perverted superego conjectures. Awareness
metabolizes everything and anything. Dissolves everything into the light
and is able to manifest experience through the light.
A great master of Dzogchen Yang Thang Rinpoche describes absolute
compassion as the capacity of a person who is in timeless awareness in
time, to extend the light of this awareness into a persons presence into the
present, into the persons past, and into the persons future. There are four
times. The time of present moment, the time of the past and the time of the
future, the fourth time is the time of timeless awareness. As a person
becomes aware of their own awareness, this timeless dimension opens
and becomes the experiential base of their existence. From within timeless
awareness the power of extension can bring forth the light and the action of
the light into time. Such a person is simultaneously in timeless awareness
and in time and brings forth compassionate action from the place of
timeless awareness into time. The power of timeless awareness is the
power of self- liberation.
Good and evil is not simply a function of freedom of choice. The very
cosmology of a person brings within itself goodness and evilness, love and
hate, driven-ness, openness, happiness and suffering. The love of
goodness and benevolence is given just as is the compelling-ness of the
pleasure of evil and the pleasure of the destruction of the human psyche.
There is the love of the infliction of pain on self and otherness. The love of
Thanatos and love of Eros is the existential condition of humanness. The
intertwining of Eros and Thanatos is the alchemical fire that liberates us or
can destroy us. This understanding was Freuds final understanding about
human consciousness.
As Nagarjuna, 2nd century AD the most important Buddhist philosopher
warns us over and over to be careful if you think you know what causality
is. He said it is impossible to explain the relationship between cause and
effect and also how cause and effect is related to human beings. He would
say any view of causation leads to certain contradictions or absurdities.
Nagarjuna argues that causal production is really impossible to think and
apprehend. The understanding and belief that an effect is real inherent in a
cause and then is produced by the cause is viewed from his school of
Madhyamika as an absurd understanding. He would say you think you
know about causality but you do not really know with your concrete
operational mind. You should be careful if you think you know what karma
is and how it unfolds.
Even Nagarjuna, in his brilliance, was incomplete in his understanding
about emptiness. He understood emptiness without radiance, emptiness
without luminosity. He understood awareness as emptiness without
radiance. Nonetheless, his great philosophical step was to bring forth the
cosmological dimension of emptiness as source.
The focus on mind as the knowingness of singularity and difference, and
awareness as the knowingness of being opens for us ethos. True ethos is
the simultaneous knowing through mind, and through awareness, the
unfolding situation, unfolding of circumstances. The two modes of knowing
are necessary for the ethos of compassionate action. It is true that gnosis
as non-duality is beyond good and evil and the mind knowing difference is
within the realm of good and evil. Of course self- liberation is
simultaneously being in non-duality within duality and being in duality within
non duality. Being beyond good and evil within the realm of great
happiness and great suffering and in the realm of great happiness and
great suffering while being beyond good and beyond evil. This is the
experience of self-liberation which is actually the full realization of human
being-ness.
The paradoxical process of self-liberation takes place within the one
knower whose drama of self-liberation involves two profound modes of
knowing. There is knowing which the unfolding process of compassion
which is gnosis direct awareness in every situation. This non-dual knowing
the experience the pervasive trans-lucidity of luminous being pervading the
different dimensions of existence. The dimension of the flesh
(Nirmanakaya) is the dimension of ordinary life. The dimension of
apparitions, (Sambogakaya) is the archetypal dimension of existence. The
pervasive dimension of (Dharmakaya) is the dimension of radiant
potentiality.
Paradoxically and simultaneously within this one knower is the mode of
knowing through mind, knowing the difference and singularity of
phenomena. This mind knowing experiences about phenomena and about
action.
The process is innately paradoxical. Being in the realm of direct
knowingness a person experiences the purity of all phenomena. The purity
of being manifesting itself as infinite beings. The being-ness of all beings is
purity, the purity of being itself. At the same time within this one knower,
there is the knowingness of difference and singularity. And within this realm
of the same existence all phenomena contains the paradox of goodness
and evilness. This mode of knowing experiences the manifestation of great
goodness and great evilness within this Nirmanakaya realm, the realm of
infinite actions of both goodness and evil cruelty.
By being in non-duality a person is better able to experience with clarity the
character of goodness and character of evilness in dualistic experience.
Non-dual awareness infuses the mind. Through this union of mind and
awareness there arises a gnosis of mind just as there is gnosis of
awareness. Through the directness of non-dual awareness the phenomena
of goodness and evilness is unveiled and clearly perceived by the union of
both mind and awareness.
The archetypal dimension is also perceived more directly and clearly
including the very drama of manifestation. The luminous energetic
elemental archetypal realm (Sambogakaya) is experienced with its
compelling-ness of goodness and compelling-ness of evilness beyond what
our minds can apprehend or comprehend as mind alone. The archetypal
dimension is an intermediate area of manifestation between Dharmakaya
and Nirmanakaya..This realm is unconscious for many people if not most,
In the unfolding of self-liberation the person experiences the luminosity and
trans-lucidity of all phenomena including the archetypal energies becoming
form and action. The demonic arises simultaneously as the beatific arises
into formulation and forms of being .The depth of manifestation is often
obscured and unseen as this invisible dimension becomes visible as a felt
sense. Goodness is a felt sense and evilness is a felt sense.
If one is in mind alone then the full power of goodness and the full power
evilness will not be experienced consciously but only as a resultant state.
This means a person will only experience the result of goodness or the
result of evilness but not the unfolding process of self-manifestation.
Goodness can compel us into beneficent states. Evilness can compel us
into demonic states. Demonic states are pain states and beneficent states
are bliss states. There is a contagion that is beyond the reflective mind.
Goodness is a sphere of energy and evilness is a sphere of energy and
both archetypal goodness and archetypal evil manifest corresponding
experience and behaviors of goodness and evilness. This drama is not only
individually, but familial, cultural and epochal.
This manifestation manifest not only as the individual but manifest in time
and places. Good times and evil times and good places and evil places are
manifested. The great compassion arising from within timeless awareness
manifesting in time and spaces. Timeless awareness manifesting actions
that liberate goodness from the domination and possession of evilness.
The great compassion liberates beings from suffering imposed by evilness.
Compassion liberates beings from the passion of evilness.
Many spiritual traditions including eastern traditions by pass and foreclose
duality. They foreclose the actuality of duality, the actuality of difference,
and the actuality of ordinary reality. Ordinary reality is considered by many
to be a delusion or illusion. This unhappy by passing of duality and
foreclosure of duality, forecloses the power of the action of the great
compassion to protect human beings within the world of difference. The
great compassion is wisdom gnosis in action arising out of the non-duality
of timeless awareness into time and place and cuts through evil, liberating
us from evil. The denial of duality, is the denial of humanness and
individuality. The denial of non-duality is the denial of divinity as oneness.
The denial of duality is a source of suffering just as the denial of non-duality
is a source of suffering.

The Washington Center for Consciousness Studies and the Washington

Center for Phenomenological and Existential Psychotherapy Studies