(18) The knowledge by which, man clings to one thing (body or image) as if it were the whole, without reason and foundation in Truth, and which is trivial, that is declared to be Tamasic (Jnana).

(14) And know further that tamas is born of ignorance and that it deludes all embodied creatures. It binds fast, Ο Bhārata, by inadvertence, indolence, and sleep.

Ignorance is the mother of [all evil]. Ignorance leads to [death, because] those who come from [ignorance] neither were nor [are] nor will be. [But those in the truth] will be perfect when all truth is revealed. For truth is like ignorance. While hidden, truth rests in itself, but when revealed and recognized, truth is praised in that it is stronger than ignorance and error. It gives freedom. The word says, “If you know the truth, the truth will make you free.” Ignorance is a slave, knowledge is freedom. If we know the truth, we shall find the fruit of truth within us. If we join with it, it will bring us fulfillment.

(4) you knowledge, you depart in ignorance of God, this ignorance also is an essential attribute, and will abide as darkness of soul and the seed of misery. Therefore the Koran says, "He who is blind in this life will be blind in the next life, and astray from the path."

(4) The bodily Kind, in that it partakes of Matter is an evil thing. What form is in bodies is an untrue-form: they are without life: by their own natural disorderly movement they make away with each other; they are hindrances to the soul in its proper Act; in their ceaseless flux they are always slipping away from Being.

Soul, on the contrary, since not every Soul is evil, is not an evil Kind.

What, then, is the evil Soul?

It is, we read, the Soul that has entered into the service of that in which soul-evil is implanted by nature, in whose service the unreasoning phase of the Soul accepts evil- unmeasure, excess and shortcoming, which bring forth licentiousness, cowardice and all other flaws of the Soul, all the states, foreign to the true nature, which set up false judgements, so that the Soul comes to name things good or evil not by their true value but by the mere test of like and dislike.

But what is the root of this evil state? how can it be brought under the causing principle indicated?

Firstly, such a Soul is not apart from Matter, is not purely itself. That is to say, it is touched with Unmeasure, it is shut out from the Forming-Idea that orders and brings to measure, and this because it is merged into a body made of Matter.

Then if the Reasoning-Faculty too has taken hurt, the Soul's seeing is baulked by the passions and by the darkening that Matter brings to it, by its decline into Matter, by its very attention no longer to Essence but to Process- whose principle or source is, again, Matter, the Kind so evil as to saturate with its own pravity even that which is not in it but merely looks towards it.

For, wholly without part in Good, the negation of Good, unmingled Lack, this Matter-Kind makes over to its own likeness whatsoever comes in touch with it.

The Soul wrought to perfection, addressed towards the Intellectual-Principle, is steadfastly pure: it has turned away from Matter; all that is undetermined, that is outside of measure, that is evil, it neither sees nor draws near; it endures in its purity, only, and wholly, determined by the Intellectual-Principle.

The Soul that breaks away from this source of its reality to the non-perfect and non-primal is, as it were, a secondary, an image, to the loyal Soul. By its falling-away- and to the extent of the fall- it is stripped of Determination, becomes wholly indeterminate, sees darkness. Looking to what repels vision, as we look when we are said to see darkness, it has taken Matter into itself.

(8) But if a soul on entering the body of a man persisteth in its vice, it neither tasteth deathlessness nor shareth in the Good; but speeding back again it turns into the path that leads to creeping things. This is the sentence of the vicious soul. And the soul's vice is ignorance. For that the soul who hath no knowledge of the things that are, or knowledge of their nature, or of Good, is blinded by the body's passions and tossed about. This wretched soul, not knowing what she is, becomes the slave of bodies of strange form in sorry plight, bearing the body as a load; not as the ruler, but the ruled. This [ignorance] is the soul's vice.

(14) Darkness, indolence, inadvertence, delusion— all these arise, Ο descendant of Kuru, when tamas prevails.

(18) O Arjuna! that intellect, enveloped in darkness, which thinks Adharma as Dharma, and all things perverted is Tamasic.

(11) And now it may very exactly be understood by the Essences and Property of the Soul, that in this House of Flesh (where it is as it were generated) it is not at Home; and its horrible Fall may be also understood [thereby.] For it has no Light in itself of its own, it must borrow its Light from the Sun; which indeed springs up along with it in its Birth, but that is corruptible, and the Worm of the Soul is not so; and it is seen that when a Man dies it goes out. And if then the divine Light be not again generated in the Center, then the Soul remains in the eternal Darkness, in the eternal anguishing [Source or] Quality of the Birth, where nothing is to be found in the kindled Captive. Fire, but a horrible Flash of Fire, in which [Source, Property, or] Quality, also the Devils dwell; for it is the first Principle.

(23) Two fundamental forms of ignorance were recognized by the Platonists: simple ignorance and complex ignorance. Simple ignorance is merely lack of knowledge and is common to all creatures existing posterior to the First Cause, which alone has perfection of knowledge. Simple ignorance is an ever-active agent, urging the soul onward to the acquisition of knowledge. From this virginal state of unawareness grows the desire to become aware with its resultant improvement in the mental condition. The human intellect is ever surrounded by forms of existence beyond the estimation of its partly developed faculties. In this realm of objects not understood is a never-failing source of mental stimuli. Thus wisdom eventually results from the effort to cope rationally with the problem of the unknown.

(12) For he who has not formed the wish to extirpate the passion of the soul, kills himself. But, as seems, ignorance is the starvation of the soul, and knowledge its sustenance.

(323) The fear of death grieves man because of the ignorance of the soul.

(33) 'I, by not having understood these [things] in that way hitherto, have held the non-existent to be the existent, the unreal to be the real, the illusory to be the actual, and have wandered in the Sangsara so long. And even now if I do not recognize them to be illusions, then, wandering in the Sangsara for long ages, [I shall be] certain to fall into the morass of various miseries.

(4) Joyless are those worlds called/ Covered with blind darkness. To them after death go those People that have not knowledge, that are not awakened:

(74) If it stretches to God, then the Devil holds it on one Side with one Band, and the World with another Band; and they set upon it; the Devil handles it in Fierceness, [Sternness, Frowardness, or Wrath, which is a Source [or Quality] and Sin, which cannot attain to the Kingdom of God; and the World leads it into Pride, Covetousness, and fleshly Lust, so that the Essences of the Soul grow full [or impregnated] with the fleshly Will; for the Will of the Mind draws these Things into the Soul, and so the Soul (from that which is attracted) becomes wholly unclean, a swelled and dark, and cannot attain the Light of God; its Essences, that should give up themselves to God, cannot: For they are too rough, and cannot get into the Light, that kindles not itself in its Essences. The Gates of the Deep must be broken open first, and then the Essences [of the Soul may] press into the Liberty, without the Darkness; but if the Mind be filled, then it cannot [come into the Liberty,] and then begins Horror, Fear, Distress, and Despair of the Kingdom of God, and this makes mere Torment, [Woe, Pain, and Smart,] in the Soul.

(15) As is mentioned before, the eternal Mind stands thus lin the Darkness, and vexes itself, and longs after the Light, to generate that; and the Anguish is the Source, and the Source has in it many Forms, till it reaches the Fire in its Substance, viz. [it has] Bitter, Sour, Hard, Cold, Strong, Darting forth, or Flashing; in the Root of itself sticks the Joy and Pain alike; viz. when it comes to the Root of the Fire, and can reach the Light, then out of the Wrath [or Sternness] comes the great Joy. For the Light puts the stern Form into great Meekness; on the contrary, that Form which comes only to the Root of the Fire, that continues in the Wrath.

(5) But, it will be objected, if this seeing and frequenting of the darkness is due to the lack of good, the Soul's evil has its source in that very lack; the darkness will be merely a secondary cause- and at once the Principle of Evil is removed from Matter, is made anterior to Matter.

No: Evil is not in any and every lack; it is in absolute lack. What falls in some degree short of the Good is not Evil; considered in its own kind it might even be perfect, but where there is utter dearth, there we have Essential Evil, void of all share in Good; this is the case with Matter.

Matter has not even existence whereby to have some part in Good: Being is attributed to it by an accident of words: the truth would be that it has Non-Being.

Mere lack brings merely Not-Goodness: Evil demands the absolute lack- though, of course, any very considerable shortcoming makes the ultimate fall possible and is already, in itself, an evil.

In fine we are not to think of Evil as some particular bad thing- injustice, for example, or any other ugly trait- but as a principle distinct from any of the particular forms in which, by the addition of certain elements, it becomes manifest. Thus there may be wickedness in the Soul; the forms this general wickedness is to take will be determined by the environing Matter, by the faculties of the Soul that operate and by the nature of their operation, whether seeing, acting, or merely admitting impression.

But supposing things external to the Soul are to be counted Evil- sickness, poverty and so forth- how can they be referred to the principle we have described?

Well, sickness is excess or defect in the body, which as a material organism rebels against order and measure; ugliness is but matter not mastered by Ideal-Form; poverty consists in our need and lack of goods made necessary to us by our association with Matter whose very nature is to be one long want.

If all this be true, we cannot be, ourselves, the source of Evil, we are not evil in ourselves; Evil was before we came to be; the Evil which holds men down binds them against their will; and for those that have the strength- not found in all men, it is true- there is a deliverance from the evils that have found lodgement in the soul.

In a word since Matter belongs only to the sensible world, vice in men is not the Absolute Evil; not all men are vicious; some overcome vice, some, the better sort, are never attacked by it; and those who master it win by means of that in them which is not material.

(5) The Lord does not receive either the evil or good of anyone. Knowledge is enveloped by ignorance, and by it, beings are deluded.

(9) If thou art frightened by the pure radiances of Wisdom and attracted by the impure lights of the Six Lokas, then thou wilt assume a body in any of the Six Lokas and suffer sangsaric miseries; and thou wilt never be emancipated from the Ocean of Sangsdra , wherein thou wilt be whirled round and round and made to taste of the sufferings thereof.

(39) Now behold, dear Soul, that is the Deity, and that comprehends in it the second or the middlemost Principle. Therefore God is only good, the Love, the Light, the Virtue [or Power.] Now consider, if the Mind did not stand in the Darkness, there would no such eternal Wisdom and Skill be; for the Anguish in the Will to generate, standeth therein; and the Anguish is the Quality, and the Quality is the Multiplicity [or Variety.] and makes the Mind, and the Mind again makes the Multiplicity [or Plurality.]