To say there is no evil is unrealistic. We cannot escape evil by ignoring it. What is evil? Anything that obstructs God-realisation. God is aware of all our wrong thoughts and doings and the troubles we are in. If He doesn’t know that evil exists, He must be a very ignorant God! So, good and evil, the positive and the negative, both exist in this world. While trying to keep the consciousness positive, many people become unreasonably afraid of negative thoughts. It is useless to deny that negative thoughts exist, but neither should you fear them. Use your discrimination to analyse wrong thoughts; and then dump them
Once the poison of a negative thought takes hold in the ego, it is very hard to get rid of. A story is told of a man who was trying to drive an evil spirit out of a woman. He threw mustard seed at her, which was supposed to make the spirit depart. But the evil spirit just laughed: “I got into the mustard seed before you threw it, so it doesn’t work against me.” Similarly, when the poison of negative thoughts has thoroughly permeated your mind, the power of the mind doesn’t work anymore. The “evil spirit” of negative thoughts gets into the “mustard seed” of your mental force. Thus, if you have been sick for a month, you tend to think you are going to be sick always. How can that one month of illness outweigh the fact of the many years of good health you have enjoyed? Such reasoning is unfair to your mind.
Deep metaphysicians probe into the consciousness of the soul, and with its divine power drive out all traces of evil from their lives. This is the Yoga way of destroying all obstacles to the union of soul with God; it is not imaginary, but scientific. Yoga is the highest way to God. Through Yoga you leave behind all negative thoughts and realise the ultimate states of consciousness. Yoga is the path of the spiritual scientist. It is pure science throughout, a complete science. Yoga teaches you to look yourself honestly in the eye and find out what you are, and then, with all the strength of your soul, to destroy the evil in you. You cannot just deny evil away. No matter how much persistence it takes, the spiritual scientist is never discouraged. He knows there is no trouble formidable enough to overpower the strength the Lord has given him.
