2009-12-19 08:11:00
Audience: "Isn't it like survival of the fittest? Since the dark brothers are going towards destruction and progress lasts, isn't it the survival of the fittest and the dark brothers are not really surviving?"
JJ: The answer to that is yes and no. Yes in the fact that it's a principle that as we progress along we pick that which is good to hold on to, just like nature picks that which is fittest to keep and lets that which is not fit go. It's kind of a cruel way of looking at it. But because we apply intelligence, we not only want ourselves to be fit, but we want everybody to eventually achieve where we are. This is the meaning of the name of Jesus Christ.
The name itself means to take a brother by the hand and pull him up to where you are. That's the true meaning of the name. And when you do this, then somebody else higher than you will come along and take you by the hand and pull you up to where he is. That's the law of the universe; that's the way it works. You cannot move ahead until you first pull somebody else up. When you pull somebody else up, then some life in the universe will take note of you and pull you up, because he needs somebody to pull him up, too. It's an eternal chain that operates, and this is part of the reason that the good dominates.
But unlike where nature lets the species go and they may disappear forever, when somebody chooses a negative side and becomes destructive, it will only last for a while and then he's going to bounce back and he's going to find out what works. Eventually he will find the dominating good and follow it.
Audience: "If it's true that good dominates over evil in the long run, why does the dark side seem to have such apparent power in the short term?"
JJ: Well that's why people pick the dark side to begin with, is because it has power in the short term. You have to step back. It's like with Edison. He was working on the light bulb, he performed 10,000 experiments and it cost him a tremendous amount of money and time and sweat and tears to go through those 10,000 failures. The short term success would have been "Well, I'll just stop this and take all this money I'm putting into the light bulb and I'll put it into whale oil or something that is going to make me a good return on my investment." And 999 people out of a thousand or more would have done that. But we had one guy that didn't do that, and one guy that didn't do that produced something that created a lot of good for mankind.
So evil is powerful in the short term. But eventually a person rises in intelligence to see the long term, and the person has to see the long term to be an agent for the dominating good. But when he's an agent for good he then produces that long-term effect. Since Edison produced the light bulb, have we ever just eliminated it? Have we ever decided, "Well, we don't want the light bulb any more. We've had it for 50 or 100 years, so we've had it long enough so we're just going to throw it back"? No, because it dominates -- that good dominates. We're not going back to whale oil to live on, to light our lamps with, are we? (chuckles) There aren't enough whales anymore, anyway.
So once that good demonstrates itself, we don't go back. We keep it. We're keeping the light bulb, we're keeping the radio, we're keeping computers. We keep all these dominating good things. We're not throwing them back. They can be destroyed through our negligence, but we're not letting them go willingly.
Audience: "I think that some of the apparent dominance of evil over good is really that even in our own personal lives, not just in our country and in the world, but even in our own personal lives selfish people are very assertive and take other people's energy. And it's also so easy to destroy something versus to create something. I mean, every time we get a new technology, somebody figures out how to make a bomb with it. You know, 9-11 was carried off with a couple of box cutters and a flying gas tank. Oooo, such a mastermind plan. Any of us in this room could have thought of that plan. It's very easy to destroy stuff. And we all know all these pushy people and bosses that we -- people just, like, they just dominate and they're just all over you, they're just aggressive, they just take what they want. And all of us nice people, you know, we suffer for it. So I think it's pretty apparent why it appears to dominate."
Audience: "There is a scripture that says children of the dark are more wise in a generation than children of light. A scripture in the New Testament."
JJ: Yeah. But it doesn't say "dark." It says the children of the wicked one are more wise in a generation than the children of the kingdom, or something to that effect.
Audience: (Inaudible.)
JJ: Well, you look at a lot of these arguments they have on TV -- I mean, they're arguing everywhere on TV on politics, and I always pick the one I think is the most logical. And often I think towards him, "Why don't you make this argument that is obvious in my mind?" There are so many good arguments this guy could make, and he's just letting the other guy steamroll right over the top of him. And I think, "This guy who's on the wrong side is a lot smarter than the guy who's on my side, who I think is the dominating good, myself." But this often happens, that those who are on the right side will often let themselves be steamrolled over.
Audience: "I think that good and evil is also within us, because there might be a tendency, when we look at good and evil, that when we are fighting for evil, it might be like outside of us, but actually it's also inside of us. The other thing is, and I'm trying to remember this, but..."
Audience: "Can I say something? Since the survival of the fittest was mentioned, it also reminds me that it is an objective fact that this survival-of-the-fittest mode is always there. And it seems that we transcend if people understand and have unconditional love. It seems that, for me, if we get this higher intelligence incorporated into ourselves and manifest it, then everything seems to go into balance. But it takes willpower to put that intelligence into action."
Audience: "What I was about to say is that you emphasize intelligence, and I think it's true, but I think it has to be balanced by love. Because even the dark side can use intelligence towards-- like, Atlantis, actually. The scientists used intelligence, but it led to destruction. So I think there has to be a balance of love, which is more of unity. And intelligence is very discriminative, but it's going to creation."
JJ: Yeah. Well, okay. So we'll wrap this up by making this statement here: There is good and evil as much as there can be anything that's real. Some philosophies question that nothing is really real, we all just need to go back to what some call the eternal void where there is a state of nothingness and live there for eternity in a state of some type of a bliss. But that's a reason God created everything to begin with -- to get away from the nothingness, to put a little bit of excitement in his life. And remember what I said yesterday? We are reflections of God, we are in the image of God, and by examining ourselves we can understand the mind of God.
We crave experience. That's why we all came to Sun Valley -- we want to have a new experience here. We don't want to gather to the same place every year. We go to different places because we like to have a new experience, a new location, and experience new things. And even when we sleep, we manufacture dreams so that we can continue to experience. We crave experience so badly that we can't even get away from it in our sleep. We still dream of those monsters chasing us, and then there's who Dan dreams of being a rock-and-roll star.
Audience: Laughter.
JJ: And Artie dreams that I make the bed every morning when I get up instead of her. (chuckles) But we all have our dreams. Psychologists say that we dream to compensate for unfulfilled experience in life. So, if Dan isn't the rock star in this life, he can at least dream about it and have the experience there. If Mike over here doesn't have a lot of beautiful women fawning over him, he can dream about being on a desert island surrounded by 100 of them (laughs).
So we all crave experience and we've decided we're going to get experience one way or another -- either in wakefulness or sleep. But forget about whether or not the illusion is real. We are here, and the experience is real. No matter where you go from this point, you were here in your experience, even if your body is created of nothingness, as some philosophies teach. No matter what creation is, you are here experiencing. You will take your experiences with you always and will always go to new experiences.
Audience: "Aren't there beings who have decided not to come here -- like angels or something -- and they've decided not to have this experience and they just kind of...?"
JJ: Yeah. What they're doing is they're just delaying the experience. And oftentimes people are afraid of experience. There are people who are afraid to leave their homes because they have fears about everything that's going to happen out there -- all kinds of fears. They have a fear of crossing the street for fear they'll get run over, a fear of getting struck by lightening, or whatever. People fear new experiences. They think, "Well, I haven't experienced it yet. Am I going to really enjoy it?" People fear getting married. "I don't know. Would I enjoy getting married? Could I handle getting married?" Well, whether you can handle it or not, being married myself, it's something from which you're going to grow a lot. (chuckles) It's going to give you an in-depth experience.
Audience: "It's going to give you a real opportunity to find out about yourself."
JJ: (Laughs) Which brings me to one of my favorite quotes: "A bad decision is better than no decision." A bad experience is better than no experience. Because with a bad experience, you know what to avoid so next time you can have the good experience.
Copyright © 2009 by J.J. Dewey, All Rights Reserved