Monthly Archives: August 2001

William Chittick: Let me say something about your basic underlying insight in these discussions of good and evil. Something that Shaikh Kabir referred to a few days ago, and that is: evil is essentially nonexistence. There's none good but God. There's your principle. Being is good. Non-existence, the lack of being, is evil. Now, we run into problems with Mevlana, of course, since he's talking about the workshop of nonexistence, you say, well, does that mean that that nonexistence is evil? No, of course not. Because it has been pointed out that, when he's talking about nonexistence, he's talking from our point of view. But it's simply because we see things backwards. We think God is in nonexistence up there, and we're existent. No, we're non-existent. Remember that passage from Shams. Where he says, "You say God is dhat (essence). So what? What's it to you? He is eternal being. He is. You are not."