Dear Rafi,

I was not aware of the new book that Scott Peck has written.

I just looking it up at Amazon, and found it interesting, but it is not a book that I have an interest in reading.

Perhaps this is part of my current psycho-spiritual profile, but I tend to think of good and evil as acts – rather than personifications of people. Over time, of course, the actions shape the personality. I understand that Mother Theresa once said that she could have ended up being a Hitler.

I believe that how environment affects humans is not adequately understood. I discussed that in another paper presented at a seminar of “Our Family” (of the Heart). A link to that is given below.

http://www.drsohail.com/FOTH/November28/Masud_Sheikh.htm

I am inclined to say that Scotty’s (I have never met him, but have read most of his books, so feel like calling him by the name used by his friends) decision to “become a Christian” has also affected the way he looks at things, and the words he chooses. In one of his books, he says that his choice to embrace Christianity made him a little sad as well, since it meant that he no longer could be so many other things (e.g. a Buddhist, or Sufi etc.) as well.

Dr. Sohail (or another psychologist/psychiatrist in our Family) may also wish to comment. To Dr. Sohail and others: The book “Glimpses of the Devil” has the following self-explanatory sub-title “A Psychiatrist's Personal Accounts of Possession, Exorcism, and Redemption”. Instead of taking about “exorcism” in the context of the “Devil”, I expect there could be explanations where “exorcism” is from “personality characteristics” that have become part of the human. Hitler could perhaps have been, with a great degree of pain, been exorcised of the “Devil” that possessed him.     

Thank you for your comments – let us hope that the conversation now opens up

Masud