Are evil people born without souls? Â One of our long-time Seminarians, a smart fella, played Anne Frank’s father in a dramatic production recently. Â He wrote me today with a theory that maybe Hitler was born without a soul.
Rev. Randy wrote:
As to the Holocaust, I truly believe there are those out there who are born without a soul. Â My Priest always said “even Hitler could be forgiven since all our tickets were already punched,” (spoken like a true Episcopalian). Â But I don’t buy it, I think the SOB was born without a soul. Â It’s the only explanation how anyone could be that unfeeling. Â Of course there are those who would say I could say the same things of slave owners, but to me it’s still different. Charles Manson falls in that category also. How’s that for Esoterica LOL. Â Yeah, I know your Right Reverendness is cringing.
I wrote back:
Oh, not cringing at all!  I spend a lot of time pondering what as you know, philosophy and theology dub, “The Problem of Evil”. See earlier blog posts like this one for such ponderings and gripings. Well.  The theory that some are born without souls does speak to the Problem of Evil.  Hmmmm. Will have to ponder that… I already chew on the way people get souls in the first place. Are they reincarnated? Or are they newly stirred clumps of drops of soul-stuff — like everytime you pour a glass of water you get drops that may not have yet been together in the same place before.  So much water has been thru the atoms-created-in-stars, evaporation/rain back down system. Maybe souls are made of soul-stuff and we are a hodgepodge of a bunch of other people, I sometimes wonder, not the same exact soul passed down. Maybe reincarnation doesn’t happen, but we have ancestral memories in our DNA and therefore we have all kinds of “flashes” of DNA memory of people in “past lives”. Okay, so if a person is born without a soul…. how does that happen, how does he live, etc.  Wow. Food for thought.
Eckhart Tolle, whose work we are now requiring for our most advanced Seminarians (those in the Holy Orders program) says evil people are buried in layers and layers of dark unconscious ego. Their false mind-made self (the ego) is running their body and resorts to violence and perversion to keep its control. When such a one gets in power like Saddam Hussein, Pol Pot, Hitler, Stalin, heads roll. Unconsciousness, complete lack of awareness, complete lack of sensing the Presence, causes this crap. I am currently designing a study course of his book, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose.  This book is chock full of our type of alternative, esoteric “Zen” Christianity. Love it, love it.
Tolle’s earlier book is The Power of Now, but I recommend reading A New Earth first and then The Power of Now. The goal of a Seminary student is to become a spiritual teacher, A New Earth is truly a manual for spiritual teachers.
Katia
Hi Katia,
I think I’m with Eckhart Tolle on this one. I think that people who generate ‘evil’ have souls, but psychologicly they are really, really sick, deluded, psychotic, etc. I have a family history regarding Herr Hitler, some of my extended family were taken prisoner and who knows what happened to them (my great grandmother and an uncle). Anyway, the weird thing is that if my father hadn’t escaped Austria to get away from Mr. Totally Insane, then he wouldn’t have met my mother in Los Angeles, and my fingers wouldn’t be typing this reply to your weblog right now, because I wouldn’t have been born. That certainly twists the brain into a bit of a pretzel!
Love, Jennifer
Hi Sophie,
I totally agree with you, thank you for your post. Your words “However I lean towards Christ’s words “Forgive them for they know not what they do.†And Mary Magdalene, when she said that what we perceive as ’sin’, is in truth ‘ignorance’, people missing ‘the mark’. ”
Wonderfully put!
Love, Jennifer
Interesting concept, people with no souls, like zombies………..hum
I’m with you Katia on Tolle’s ‘New Earth’ and all the new ways of viewing consciousness, this is growth and awareness manifesting. Isn’t that part of the awakening process?
However I lean towards Christ’s words “Forgive them for they know not what they do.” And Mary Magdalene, when she said that what we perceive as ‘sin’, is in truth ‘ignorance’, people missing ‘the mark’. In mankind’s desperation to define God/dess, All That Is, man literally has put limitations and labels on that power~((Godhead/All That Is)), IMPOSSIBLE!! To do this places limitations where there can be none. As soon as you do that, you’ve created an idol or image to be bowed down to and worshipped (mentally or physically). An image of the invisible? Possibly it comes from our own individual interpretation of things, which is gauged by our own standards, beliefs systems and spiritial maturity. Remember when I brought up Lilth? Does not everyone and everything have both sides to our physical nature? Yin/Yang, Light/Dark, positive/negative, etc? Zadok reminded me to be true to myself and remember who I Am. We are all supposed to do that. Through being true to our hearts and knowing ourselves, we determine who we ARE in every moment of everyday, we are always choosing what we are (free-will). If we choose one way and the outcome is not what we expected or intended, we choose again. How then can we choose to be “good” or “evil” if we h ave no idea or concept of the other? The Divine Godhead/All That Is makes no mistakes, only we do.
Love,
Sophie
I think people are born with a soul. I think that we change because of the things we go through in life which defines who we become and what we do while we are here. According to the bible in Genesis we were born of Adam and Eve. Sin separate us from God. It is hard to explain why anyone would do the things that Hitler did and that there would be people who would follow him. I can only say to that there is Good and Evil in the world and we decide.
The concept of some people we meet being born without a soul is not new at all. Some of the most ancient myths in the Judo_Christian culture as well as other culthers support this concept.
In one case a being created by the Goddess on her own without the help of the Creator Father went bad and creates beings who never have a soul. Although they look and act, in some ways, like humans with souls they don’t have one.
Even some modern highly scientific para-pschologists have brought forth similiar theories, that some people we meet really don’t have souls and never did. I try to relate to this concept by thinking of these people like extras in a play or movie. They have to be there to make the scene work but we never know who they are.
When we think of evil people we must remember that according to the Bible God says he creates good and evil. So for him I don’t think evil has the same meaning as it does for us. He uses events we call evil to help bring learning and joy to us. How would we know the power of his love for us if we were never in a situation that allows it to shine through the apparent evil around us.
Wish I had the absolute answer but I am not sure that having a soul or not is directly related to what people like Hitler have done. Had Germany won the war, we may have been having this discussion about Rosevelt instead!
Would be interested in hearing more on the subject though.
Hitler was born with a soul. The highest self or Atman is completely beyond corruption. Between the Atman and the physical body, however, are etheric and astral bodies, and these do reflect and determine or capacity for love in incarnation. The accumulation of acts of evil can allow the entry of higher-order evil powers into our astral and etheric bodies and in some individuals, this leads to the actual loss of the conscience. In cliniical terms, this is the state of psychopathy. There is an important psychological study of the relationship between psychopathy and political evil.
It is documented that Hitler suffered from terrible waking nightmares of a demonic presence closing in on him, so at some level his soul was aware of its peril.
This concept has been explained by some esoteric christians and others; exists and actually have a name: organic portals. Nobody is born or is equal anb some lack soul…
The problem is not “soul” or “no soul,” but rather our willingness to participate in the reality game at all, which is ultimately and reducibly only a dream reality to start with. As cruel and uncaring as it might sound — but I’m gonna say and sound it out anyway, because everyone reading this needs to remember it, again, since evidently we all forget it when we become mesmerized back into believing reality is what it presents itself to be, which it is not: THERE ARE NO VICTIMS,…only intense dreamers, some of which experience nightmares, some of which do not, and then there are those lucky few who awaken to both deceptions, presented as reality, whether a night dream or day time dream.
Wow, I thought I had just come up with this concept. comforting to know there are others with the same thought. I wish my memory (or search skills) were better, but I do recall one verse in the Bible that says: Very rough paraphrase “some are put on this earth only to ‘hinder’ (but be some other purpose) the rest of us” I know it sounds odd, and I admits it’s a paraphrase, but it always stuck with me because it was so unusual. Perhaps those are the people with out souls. Similar to what a previous commenter said about movie “extras”. Not zombies, but character with roles to play, but ultimately no eternal consequence.
Bob