Back in May, erickh dropped the explainingevil.com website into a brief reply to a Skeptiko podcast thread on evil (episode #411). His post got a couple of likes, but was otherwise ignored.
Given the website's title and my interests, I was very intrigued, so I read through the whole site, which follows on in consecutive sections like a book - so from here on I'll refer to it as a book. After reading it, I found that I agree with erickh that it offers "A lot of insights about evil". At the same time, I am not 100% convinced about everything in it. In this post, I share what I hope is my adequate review of the book, and then a bit of reflective and critical thought about it. I hope to stimulate discussion about this topic, and to perhaps inspire others to investigate this book for themselves.
The book is authored by Kim Michaels, who has written several other books, none of which I've read. In this book, he describes a cosmology/theology which starts with the Creator alone. The Creator then wills to create, and, in fulfilling that will, creates a spherical boundary around Itself, withdraws into a point in the centre of that sphere, and creates within the spherical void a smaller sphere within which It creates structures, and into which it projects itself as individual self-aware beings. Those self-aware beings have free will, and use their creativity to further structure their sphere (with the equivalent of buildings, etc), and in the process raise its vibrations and their consciousnesses to a critical level, at which point the sphere "ascends" and becomes permanent, and they all also ascend and become "ascended masters".
The Creator then creates a second sphere, and the ascended masters do as It originally did, and project aspects of themselves into that sphere as individual self-aware beings with free will to again creatively structure it, and raise its vibrations and their consciousnesses, such that that sphere, too, ascends and they, too, become ascended masters. The only difference is that the initial vibrations of this second sphere are lower than those of the original sphere.
This goes fine for three spheres, but in the fourth sphere, whilst the majority of individuals (co-creators) within it choose to overcome selfishness and raise their vibrations to the ascension point, some of them were not willing to let go of their focus on self: they did not want to let go of the structures and selves they had created within the un-ascended sphere, which is necessary for ascension (albeit that upon giving this all up they transform into ascended masters). They were not at this point what we would see as evil though.
This possibility had been foreseen, and the ascended masters had allowed for it. To this end, they allowed the fourth sphere to ascend, and those beings who did not want to ascend "descended" into the fifth sphere as it was created. They are thus known as "fallen beings". This process repeated itself such that now in the seventh sphere, our sphere, there exist some beings who have "fallen" three times.
These beings have seen and been part of (sometimes even led) far more advanced civilisations than ours, and, having come from other spheres, they feel no kinship with humanity. They believe themselves to be the rightful rulers over us, and have no compunction against using what power and intelligence they have to achieve this. They and their machinations are the source of all of the war, inequality, violence, hatred, and discord on Earth. Humans, left to their own devices, would be living in peaceful coexistence with each other, with the planet and with its other life forms.
The problem for us is that in allowing our vibrations to sink too low, we unknowingly invited them to our planet. They were not meant to be here. They had been provided with other planets upon which to work through their path, and to realise that selfishness is unsustainable. The advantage to this is that we have the authority (but not the power) to rid our planet of them - and that the ascended masters have the power to remove them (but not the authority, since they respect our free will as co-creators in the sphere).
The book goes into some detail about how we can collectively and individually work with the ascended masters to remove the fallen beings from Earth, and in this respect refers to some off-site resources which I have not yet read. It also goes into considerable detail as to:
That said, I was less convinced by the book's cosmology and theology. As some of you know, I have long contended that the problem of evil (i.e., the apparent impossibility or simply difficulty of reconciling evil with a good God) is not resolvable through putative solutions based on the significance of free will (i.e., solutions along the lines of "God gave us free will, and free will includes the possibility of choosing evil, and God respects our free will enough not to interfere with our choices, even if they are evil") - yet the resolution to the problem of evil proposed by the author of this book is essentially based in the significance of free will.
The book also left some questions unanswered, the main one of which for me was:
What are your sources of all of this information - in particular that pertaining to Creation - and how do you know that it is reliable?
Others include: given that you write that "The fallen beings who have turned into demons have, for all practical purposes, lost this ability [enough self-awareness that they could potentially change their minds and return to a path of growth]", what, then, can/will be done with/for them?
Overall, I think that this book makes a good case that in order to solve our sociopolitical problems, we need a solid understanding of our metaphysical situation, and I recommend it.
Given the website's title and my interests, I was very intrigued, so I read through the whole site, which follows on in consecutive sections like a book - so from here on I'll refer to it as a book. After reading it, I found that I agree with erickh that it offers "A lot of insights about evil". At the same time, I am not 100% convinced about everything in it. In this post, I share what I hope is my adequate review of the book, and then a bit of reflective and critical thought about it. I hope to stimulate discussion about this topic, and to perhaps inspire others to investigate this book for themselves.
The book is authored by Kim Michaels, who has written several other books, none of which I've read. In this book, he describes a cosmology/theology which starts with the Creator alone. The Creator then wills to create, and, in fulfilling that will, creates a spherical boundary around Itself, withdraws into a point in the centre of that sphere, and creates within the spherical void a smaller sphere within which It creates structures, and into which it projects itself as individual self-aware beings. Those self-aware beings have free will, and use their creativity to further structure their sphere (with the equivalent of buildings, etc), and in the process raise its vibrations and their consciousnesses to a critical level, at which point the sphere "ascends" and becomes permanent, and they all also ascend and become "ascended masters".
The Creator then creates a second sphere, and the ascended masters do as It originally did, and project aspects of themselves into that sphere as individual self-aware beings with free will to again creatively structure it, and raise its vibrations and their consciousnesses, such that that sphere, too, ascends and they, too, become ascended masters. The only difference is that the initial vibrations of this second sphere are lower than those of the original sphere.
This goes fine for three spheres, but in the fourth sphere, whilst the majority of individuals (co-creators) within it choose to overcome selfishness and raise their vibrations to the ascension point, some of them were not willing to let go of their focus on self: they did not want to let go of the structures and selves they had created within the un-ascended sphere, which is necessary for ascension (albeit that upon giving this all up they transform into ascended masters). They were not at this point what we would see as evil though.
This possibility had been foreseen, and the ascended masters had allowed for it. To this end, they allowed the fourth sphere to ascend, and those beings who did not want to ascend "descended" into the fifth sphere as it was created. They are thus known as "fallen beings". This process repeated itself such that now in the seventh sphere, our sphere, there exist some beings who have "fallen" three times.
These beings have seen and been part of (sometimes even led) far more advanced civilisations than ours, and, having come from other spheres, they feel no kinship with humanity. They believe themselves to be the rightful rulers over us, and have no compunction against using what power and intelligence they have to achieve this. They and their machinations are the source of all of the war, inequality, violence, hatred, and discord on Earth. Humans, left to their own devices, would be living in peaceful coexistence with each other, with the planet and with its other life forms.
The problem for us is that in allowing our vibrations to sink too low, we unknowingly invited them to our planet. They were not meant to be here. They had been provided with other planets upon which to work through their path, and to realise that selfishness is unsustainable. The advantage to this is that we have the authority (but not the power) to rid our planet of them - and that the ascended masters have the power to remove them (but not the authority, since they respect our free will as co-creators in the sphere).
The book goes into some detail about how we can collectively and individually work with the ascended masters to remove the fallen beings from Earth, and in this respect refers to some off-site resources which I have not yet read. It also goes into considerable detail as to:
- The nature and categories of fallen beings and associated entities.
- Their needs. For example: at such low vibrations as they are, they are cut off from the energy supplied by the Creator, and need to steal energy from us, as we still have a connection to the Creator whose energy sustains us - but they can only feed on negative energy like fear, which is one of the reasons why they foment war, violence, hatred, and discord.
- How these beings manipulate us. For example: they set up dualities such as "capitalism versus communism", "Jews versus Arabs", "materialism versus religion", and encourage different humans to become utterly invested in one side or the other, such that the humans on one side see the other side as evil, and perceive the duality as an epic battle which must be won at all costs - hence the author's term, "the epic mindset".
- How these beings have manipulated us throughout history.
That said, I was less convinced by the book's cosmology and theology. As some of you know, I have long contended that the problem of evil (i.e., the apparent impossibility or simply difficulty of reconciling evil with a good God) is not resolvable through putative solutions based on the significance of free will (i.e., solutions along the lines of "God gave us free will, and free will includes the possibility of choosing evil, and God respects our free will enough not to interfere with our choices, even if they are evil") - yet the resolution to the problem of evil proposed by the author of this book is essentially based in the significance of free will.
The book also left some questions unanswered, the main one of which for me was:
What are your sources of all of this information - in particular that pertaining to Creation - and how do you know that it is reliable?
Others include: given that you write that "The fallen beings who have turned into demons have, for all practical purposes, lost this ability [enough self-awareness that they could potentially change their minds and return to a path of growth]", what, then, can/will be done with/for them?
Overall, I think that this book makes a good case that in order to solve our sociopolitical problems, we need a solid understanding of our metaphysical situation, and I recommend it.
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