Why is history such a record of wars, oppressions, exploitations, invasions, and persecutions? Why have all the saviours, avatars, prophets, and saints succeeded only with individual men here and there, not with the mass of mankind? Is the religious dream of universal goodness nothing more than a dream? It is not a help but a self-deception to ignore the double polarity of existence, the yin-and-yang in the universe, the shadow-self in man. Only outside of religion, in the philosophic realm of ultimate being, the Unique, the Real, where the entire world itself is cast out, can we talk of friction-free consciousness, and only in the deepest meditation can we share it. Although the experience is a temporary one, the peace in it so passes the understanding that "the kingdom of heaven" is its fit name. Here indeed is the Good raised to its highest degree. Here is a demonstration that human evil is but privation of good.
-- Notebooks Category 11: The Negatives > Chapter 1 : Their Nature > # 9
