Is Every Man Capable of ‘Sinful Behavior” Under Certain Circumstances?

Cultured and educated people often believe that they could not stoop to certain actions or be guilty of certain motives in their actions, or simply react to circumstances in a way other than that of their predominant mental view of themselves. They may look down on those who appear to them to be weak, sinful or who give in to impulses that are hateful, greedy, lustful or otherwise exhibit one of the ‘sins’ that humanity generally recognises as unacceptable behavior. Yet there are times, and circumstances, when any individual becomes capaable of doing things that they would consider, at other times, to be ‘out of character’.
There is the famous story of the educated man who happened to attend a fascist rally in 1930’s Europe. He was not a believer in the ideology, nor a supporter of the cult of personality that had arisen at that time and in that place. He went as an ‘observer’. When the crowd was whipped up and in a fever pitch of hatred, anger and directed rage, he suddenly was screaming with the rest of them! Afterwards he reflected on how he could have given in to that impulse!
There was a famous experiment in sociology where college students were split up into two groups, ‘jailer’ and ‘prisoner’. These educated, and idealistic, young people were soon, however, caught up in the abuse and humiliation of their prisoners by virtue of the role they took on and the expectations that came with that role, and the exercise of their delegated power to control others. Afterwards, they were both amazed and mystified at the transformation that they had undergone by taking on those roles.
People of a peaceful and understanding nature have been known to suddenly react with extreme violence and anger under various pressures. There are cases of monks or sadhus who undertook years of secluded meditation and intense efforts to bring their vital natures under control, who, believing themselves to be ‘above’ such things go out into the world and find that the forces they thought had been quelled actually rose up with more force and moved them to actions they would have never thought possible for them, including acts of rape, child sexual abuse and using their position of influence or power to gain control or obtain ‘favors’ from others who depended and relied on them.
In his book, The Steppenwolf, Hermann Hesse explores the potential for quiet and thoughtful, and introspective individuals, to release forces that show the potential and power of the lower vital nature. It is an exploration of the depths which few individuals ever undertake in a deliberate and serious manner.
For the spiritual seeker, such things are actually quite easily understood. When the seeker recognises the oneness of all existence, and the movement of universal forces that enter into one and overpower the basic physical, vital and mental nature, he can understand that no individual can withstand such forces if he once opens himself to them. The power of universal forces is like trying to withstand a tsunami wave when it hits the shore. There are actually experiences of conscoiusness where the seeker can enter into a status where he can see the forces at work, their power and influence, and see how they move individuals to actions. This can be a basis for empathy for those who are caught up in the clutches of those forces. It can also be a way for the seeker to gain new powers and insights and forms of protection to mitiigate or prevent those forces from gaining control over his being and his actions.
Pride or vanity about one’s cultured attainments, one’s virtue, one’s purity are misplaced if one has not had to face down temptation, withstand forces that drive the vital nature, or distort the mental view. What happens to any human individual could, under the right circumstances, happen to any other individual. No one is exempt from the pressures, and no one is, by himself, in his individual ego-personality, powerful enough to withstand those pressures. It is therefore a cause for compassion and sympathy, not pride or vanity.
In his Thoughts and Aphorisms, Sri Aurobindo states: “To hate the sinner is the worst sin, for it is hating God; yet he who commits it glories in his superior virtue.”
A disciple asks: “When we enter into a certain state of consciousness, we see clearly that we are capable of anything and that in fact there is not a single ‘sin’ that is not ptoentially our sin. Is this impression correct? And yet we revolt against and feel an aversion for certain things: there is always something somewhere which we cannot accept. Why? What is the true attitude, the effective attitude in face of evil?”
The Mother writes: “There is not a single sin that is not our sin…. You have this experience when for some reason or other — depending on the case — you come into contact with the universal state of conscoiusness — not in its limitless essence, but on any level of Matter. There is an atomic consciousness; there is a purely material consciousness; and there is, even more, a general psychological consciousness. When by going within, by a kind of withdrawal from the ego, you come into contact with this zone of consciousness, let us say, a terrestrial or collective human psychological zone — there is a difference, ‘collective human’ is restrictive, whereas ‘terrestrial’ includes many animal movements, even plant movements; but as in the persent case the moral notion of guilt, sin, evil belongs exclusively to the human consciousness, we will say simply the collective human psychological consciousness — when you come into contact with that through this identification, naturally you feel or see or know that you are capable of any human movement anywhere. It is to some extent a truth-consciousness — this egoistic sense of what belongs and does not belong to you, of what you can do and cannot do, disappears at that time; you become aware that the fundamental structure of the human consciousness is such that any human abeing is capable of doing anything at all. And since you are in a truth-consciousness, at the same time you have the feeling that judgments or aversions, or rejection, are absurd. Everything is potentially there. And if certain currents of force — which you usually cannot trace; you see them come and go, but as a rule their origin and direction are unknown — if any one of these currents enters into you, it can make you do anything.”
Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, Looking from Within, Chapter 2, Looking at Oneself and Others, pp. 49-50