Whether it’s fake news, alternative facts, mainstream media propaganda or our government’s lies, it is getting increasingly harder in this Orwellian world of ours to discern truth from lies. In words that are even more true today than ever before, Jung writes, “the lie reaches proportions never known before in the history of the world.”[i] Lying has gone pandemic in our world. From the spiritual point of view, lies are a murder at the level of soul. According to Buddhism, lying in one form or another—be they big or small, lies of commission or omission, to oneself or others—is the root of all evil. As the Buddhist Maharatnakuta Sutra says, “A liar lies to himself as well as to the gods. Lying is the origin of all evils.” One of the most important requirements for confronting the forces of evil is for us to stop lying to ourselves, which is the very act that helps us to cultivate the ability to discern between truth and deception.

Our culture doesn’t supply the adequate vocabulary necessary to describe, express and thereby expose evil. Evil itself has dumbed us down, as we no longer seem able to talk intelligently about the subject. Evil’s inability to be languaged is one of the things that allows it to get away with the murder that it does. Speaking of evil, Denis de Rougemont, author of The Devil’s Share writes, “It is emptying all words of their meaning, turning them inside out and reading them backwards, according to the custom of the black mass. It is inverting and ruining from within the very criteria of truth.”[ii] The sacred mass is about communion with the divine; de Rougemont points out that, as if in a black mass, the darker forces co-opt words, the medium of communication, to have the opposite of their desired effect – to cut us off from our communion with the divine, as well as separate and divide us from each other. The relationship between lying and evil is symbolically expressed by the figure of the devil, who Christ called “a liar and the father of lies.” (John 8:44)

One way we are all geniuses is our incredible ability to deceive ourselves. When someone lies and falls into the perverse situation of believing their own lies (a form of hysteria called pseudologia phantastica), they can develop a type of charisma such that their lies, through psychic contagion, become very convincing to others. Jung writes, “Nothing has such a convincing effect as a lie one invents and believes oneself, or an evil deed or intention whose righteousness one regards as self-evident.”[iii] Lying to oneself, and then absolutely convincing oneself that one is not doing so, is an extreme form of self-deception that is to be unconsciously hiding from oneself. To quote the former dissident Vaclav Havel who eventually became the first President of the Czech Republic, “Lying can never save us from another lie.” In other words, once we step on the path of lying, lies feed on and off of themselves, weaving a never-ending web of deceit in which we become caught.

Once we become sufficiently committed to—and possessed by—this process of hiding from ourselves, as if in the throes of an addiction, we then become compulsively driven to sustain the lie that we are perpetrating on ourselves by whatever means necessary, lest we snap out of our self-generated cycle of self-deception and have to confront the lie that we have been living. Once our self-deception becomes air-tight, however, it continually doubles-down on itself without end so as to avoid both the light and the dark. We then become an alien to our true selves.

Believing our own lies is a classic version of doublethink: in trying to reduce our own cognitive dissonance, we successfully deceive ourselves, pull the wool over our own eyes (and then forgetting that we have done so), trick ourselves out of our (right) mind, literally brainwashing and hypnotizing ourselves in the process. The result is a split—and toxic—mind that has “danger” written all over it. The consciousness of the person so afflicted, as philosopher Herbert Marcuse put it, has become inured to its own falsity.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky, in the classic The Brothers Karamazov, writes, “Above all, don’t lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to such a pass that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love.” When we lie to ourselves, we lose the ability to discern truth from falsehood, both within ourselves and out in the world. This ultimately leads to a lack of self-esteem and even self-loathing, which results in losing our ability to truly love – the greatest tragedy of all.

“Evil,” to quote philosopher Nikolai Berdyaev, is “always a product of consciousness severed from the primary sources of being.” The root of this pathology is an unwillingness to face our own darkness. Paradoxically, not dealing with our own darkness blocks our light as well. As this perverse process takes up residence within a person’s psyche, it become their “second nature.” The fundamental source of being has roots in the radiance of the divine as well as the darkness of the unconscious. Splitting-off from our own darkness (which is an act of violence against ourselves) is an internal act inspired by the very darkness that we are trying to avoid, leaving us dissociated from the creative wellsprings of our unconscious.

Interestingly, Jung simply referred to “shadow projection” (a psychological process in which we project out our own darkness onto others in an ultimately futile act of attempting to rid ourselves of our own shadow) as “the lie.” Instead of freeing ourselves from our darkness, shadow projection is itself none other than a disguised and unmediated form of the very darkness it is projecting outside of itself. In always blaming others, Jung writes that whoever projects out their own darkness, “would not even think of shouldering the responsibility or taking the blame for anything … [they are] in a perpetual state of defense against real and supposed accusations. In reality the chief accuser is not outside, but the judge who dwells in our own hearts.”[iv] Overly identified with the light part of themselves (at the expense of their darkness), they are then fated to unconsciously act out their own unrecognized darkness in the world, continually having to defend their own one-sided, inflated and fabricated self-image from the informing influence of reality.

A great danger is when the pathological liar has a bully pulpit, is in a position of power and is taken seriously by the wider public. Jung comments, “The man who promises everything is sure to fulfill nothing, and everyone who promises too much is in danger of using evil means in order to carry out his promises, and is already on the road to perdition.”[v] Like Faust, the liar is—either knowingly or unknowingly—bound to make a pact with the devil and slip off the straight path, taking those who are enabling them, as well as anyone under their sphere of influence, into the abyss with them.

To quote noted clairvoyant Rudolf Steiner, “this effect of ‘untruth as truth’ contains an enormous force of evil. And this force of evil is made full use of in various ways and by different interests.”[vi] The force of evil that is intrinsic to the lie is exploited by people and organizations who have anything but our best interest at heart. The result of the systemic institutionalization of lies and untruths is a disabling of our discernment and a deadening of awareness, which greatly serves the forces of darkness.

Unlike truth, however, lies can be molded to resonate with people’s unmet psychological needs and their desire to believe the world is a certain way. It is an unconscious human tendency to believe comfortable lies rather than to confront uncomfortable truths. When we’ve been hoodwinked long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the fact that we’ve been bamboozled—it can be too painful and traumatizing to realize that we have been fooled—which is to say that we then no longer prioritize finding out the truth.

Words have immense creative power and are imbued with real magic – they literally cast spells (this is indicated by the very way words are made – they are “spelled”). When the power of the word (“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” – John 1:1), which is the power of the logos itself, is severed from its connection with the divine, the shadow side of the word comes to the fore, as the word itself can become an infernal slogan of propaganda—a logo—that is capable of any and every kind of deception. Instead of accomplishing its original intent—to render intelligible order out of chaos so as to unite humanity—the word in the wrong hands and minds can disrupt society, polarize people and pit them against each other, creating endless destruction.

The collapse of the distinction between truth and fiction (and the confusion that this engenders) opens the door for fascist, totalitarian forces—both out in the world and within our own minds—to control and manipulate us. As political theorist Hannah Arendt warned long ago, the big lie—the most notorious characteristic of totalitarianism—takes hold when the line between fact and fiction becomes overridden as a matter of normalized routine. This is why totalitarian regimes poison the channels of public information, for they depend on keeping knowledge and free public discourse silenced and repressed to maintain their false and illicit power. “In fact,” as Russian émigrée and New Yorker writer Masha Gessen has put it, “the purpose of totalitarian propaganda is to take away your ability to perceive reality.” Our ability to perceive reality and thereby discern truth from lies is the precondition for us to find and connect with our intrinsic creative power and sanity. The real war that the forces of darkness are waging is a war on our consciousness.

In his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, novelist and philosopher Alexandr Solzhenitsyn said, “let us not forget that violence does not and cannot exist by itself. It is invariably intertwined with the lie. They are linked in the most intimate, most organic and profound fashion. Violence cannot conceal itself behind anything except lies, and lies have nothing to maintain them save violence. Anyone who has once proclaimed violence as his method must inexorably choose the lie as his principle… Violence [does not] always and necessarily lunge straight for your throat; more often than not it demands of its subjects only that they pledge allegiance to lies, that they participate in falsehood.” Lying is a form of violence in that it subtly coerces and interferes with people’s decision-making process—and hence, their free will—causing them to make choices that they would not have made if they had more truthful information. Lying and violence feed off of and into each other – they are two sides of the same (counterfeit) coin. For a lie to gain currency all that is needed is for enough people who see through the lie to lack the moral courage to call it out; silence in the presence of a lie is to be in collusion with evil.

If we turn a blind-eye towards the lying that has become normalized all around us (to use one example, in excusing our governments lies, we tell ourselves – “all governments lie”), in our looking away we have become unwittingly complicit in the evil of the lie. Solzhenitsyn continues, “The simple act of an ordinary brave man is not to participate in lies, not to support false actions! … it is within the power of writers and artists to do much more: to defeat the lie! For in the struggle with lies art has always triumphed and shall always triumph! Visibly, irrefutably for all! Lies can prevail against much in this world, but never against art…. One word of truth shall outweigh the whole world.”[vii]

In his masterpiece The Gulag Archipelago, Solzhenitsyn writes, “One man who stopped lying could bring down a tyranny.” A totalitarian state depends upon people being cowed into lying to themselves, which invariably results in its subjects being inauthentic, out of integrity with their very souls. This self-betrayal, which disconnects us from our true power, is to be abetting (and be in bed with) evil. What Solzhenitsyn is pointing at is that the antidote to the tyranny of evil (both out in the world and within our own minds) begins at an individual level. Any one of us having the courage to unsubscribe from the self-deception that is demanded of us in order to participate in a world trending towards totalitarianism could be the very spark of consciousness that sets aflame the greater body politic of humanity to do the same. One person refusing, in Solzhenitsyn’s words to “pledge allegiance to lies” could be—at the very least potentially, if not in reality—to quote Jung, “the makeweight that tips the scales,”[viii] that catalyzes others to do the same.

The greatest lie that we have taken on is that we are powerless to deal with the overwhelming darkness that is going on in our world – nothing could be further from the truth. The way to connect with the immense power that we all unknowingly carry is to be found within the individual—and shared—human heart. Solzhenitsyn famously writes, “The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either — but right through every human heart — and through all human hearts.”

The way to make sure that we are not “crossing the line” (to the evil side of our being) is to practice what in Buddhism is called “right speech,” which is one of the essential parts of the Noble Eightfold Path (the path to spiritual liberation). This brings to mind Gandhi’s idea of satyagraha—truth force—the power that is born out of truth.

The spiritual power inherent in not lying to ourselves and speaking truthfully is why Don Miguel Ruiz, author of the classic book The Four Agreements, felt that the first of the agreements—“Be Impeccable with your Word”—was the most important one. Ceasing to lie to ourselves, and to then become impeccable with our word (to speak with “truth force”), takes away the toehold within us where the darker force of lying can gain traction over our own minds, thereby inoculating us from the lie that is being cast all around us.

Solzhenitsyn himself had every reason in the world to play the role of a victim and blame others, but instead, he summoned the incredible courage to look within his own heart and find the darker, unconscious places where he was lying to himself, and hence, complicit in the world’s evil. He then found the inner strength to stop lying once and for all and become a truth-teller. In doing so, like a real-life mythical hero, he was literally modeling and showing us the way to freedom. Let us have the courage to follow his lead, affirming our humanity—and the humanity of others—in the process.

Footnotes

[i] Jung, Civilization in Transition, CW 10, para. 554.

[ii] De Rougemont, The Devil’s Share, 72.

[iii] Jung, Civilization in Transition, CW 10, para. 419.

[iv] Ibid., 415-416.

[v] Ibid., 413.

[vi] Rudolf Steiner, The Karma of Untruthfulness, vol. 1 (London: Rudolf Steiner Press, 1988).

[vii] From the speech delivered by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn to the Swedish Academy on the occasion of his acceptance of the Nobel Prize for Literature.

[viii] Jung, Civilization in Transition, CW 10, para. 586.

About the Author

A pioneer in the field of spiritual emergence, Paul Levy is a wounded healer in private practice, assisting others who are also awakening to the dreamlike nature of reality. Among his books are The Quantum Revelation: A Radical Synthesis of Science and Spirituality (SelectBooks, May 2018) and Dispelling Wetiko: Breaking the Curse of Evil (North Atlantic Books, 2013). He is the founder of the “Awakening in the Dream Community” in Portland, Oregon. An artist, he is deeply steeped in the work of C. G. Jung, and has been a Tibetan Buddhist practitioner for over 35 years. He was the coordinator for the Portland PadmaSambhava Buddhist Center for over twenty years. His email is paul@awakeninthedream.com; he looks forward to your reflections.