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.” 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. 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. One way we are all geniuses is our incredible ability to deceive ourselves. 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) It is inverting and ruining from within the very criteria of truth.” 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. 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. Evil itself has dumbed us down, as we no longer seem able to talk intelligently about the subject. Our culture doesn’t supply the adequate vocabulary necessary to describe, express and thereby expose evil. 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.
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. From the spiritual point of view, lies are a murder at the level of soul.
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.” Lying has gone pandemic in our world. 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.
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