Sunday Service Reading #33

From Rays of the One Light
Does Satan Exist?
(to long readings) (link to longest reading)

The Bible tells us in Chapter 4 of the Gospel of St. Matthew:

Then [after baptism] was Jesus led up of the spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil.

To most modern minds, this passage seems quaintly obsolete. Psychologists would say—have said, in fact—that the temptation of Jesus, if it occurred at all, was purely psychological. They call it a projection of desires lurking in his own subconscious mind.

The subconscious plays a strong part, certainly, even if not a unique one, in any testing the spiritual seeker must undergo.

The Bhagavad Gita, in dealing with this undeniable reality, quotes Arjuna in the third Chapter, and then Sri Krishna's reply:

“Yet tell me, Teacher! [said Arjuna] by what force doth man
Go to his ill, unwilling; as if one
Pushed him in that path?”
[Krishna replied:]
“Desire it is!
Passion it is! born of the Darknesses,
Which pusheth him. Mighty of appetite,
Sinful, and strong is this!—man's enemy!”

Yet even Krishna describes passion as “born of the Darknesses.”The fact is, as Paramhansa Yogananda wrote in Autobiography of a Yogi, “All thoughts vibrate eternally in the cosmos. . . . Thoughts are universally and not individually rooted; a truth cannot be created, but only perceived.” Psychology, yes, but psychology attuned to currents of consciousness that pervade the entire universe, attracted by each of us according to our own personal inclinations.

Yogananda, quoted in The Path, said, “I used to think Satan was only a human invention, but now I know, and add my testimony to that of others who lived before me, that Satan is a reality. He is a universal, conscious force whose sole aim is to keep all beings bound to the wheel of delusion.”

We should take pains, then, to attract uplifting currents of universal consciousness, and to avoid attracting the negative, which—disease that it is!—can infect our thoughts even while it leads us to believe that our thoughts are purely our own.

Thus, through holy Scripture, God has spoken to mankind.

VIDEO of Swami's Service on this Subject from 8-16-09
MP3 for Download (or online listening) of Swami's Service on this Subject from 8-16-09

VIDEO of Asha's Service on this Subject from 8-23-09 (asha did this subject a week later than scheduled)
Sunday Service on 8/23/2009 from Ananda Palo Alto on Vimeo.

MP3 for Download (or online listening) of Asha's Service on this Subject from 8-23-09

VIDEO of Jyotish and Devi's Service on this Subject from 8-17-08

MP3 for Download (or online listening) of Devi's Service on this Subject from 8-17-08

MP3 for Download (or online listening) of Asha's Service on this Subject from 8-17-08

MP3 for Download (or online listening) of Devi's Service on this Subject from 8-19-07

Long Readings from the 3 Volume Set:
Rays of the Same Light

#33 Does Satan Exist?

This reading is from the Gospel of St. Matthew, Chapter 4, Verse 1:

"Then [after his baptism] was Jesus led up of the spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil."

Commentary

One of the profoundest of life's mysteries is how evil can exist in a universe created and sustained by a good God. For this seeming inconsistency many people reject religion altogether. If they stop short of becoming outright atheists, they may decide that if God exists, He can only be a sort of abstract force, supremely indifferent to all human joys and sorrows.

People who believe in such a force insist, quite naturally, that this force is incapable of recognizing goodness. Good and evil, then, to their way of thinking, have no reality outside the narrow confines of man's convenience, and are the concern of sentimentalists, not of realists. A number of these "deep thinkers," having thus cavalierly dispensed with God as a good God, carry their philosophical meandering further still: They postulate an abstract force that is actually negative, or evil, in its effect on the longing of mankind for happiness.

How eternally true it is that, wherever people look, they behold only reflections of themselves! Dark minds behold only darkness everywhere. Evil minds behold only evil. Hardened hearts can imagine no kinder sentiment than a certain mild indifference to the sufferings of others. People in whom goodness has atrophied cannot perceive good qualities in anyone, nor anywhere. And those whose pride is immoderate, and the divine consciousness dead, are always the first to proclaim — as though the universe were awaiting with bated breath their final judgment — "God is dead!"

Good and evil are issues far too vast, certainly, to be understood in terms purely of human ethics. For example, while it is wrong for man to kill, this proscription does not apply to tigers, which must live by killing.

How, in cosmic terms, may we understand the eternal duality of good and evil? For over a century, Nietzschean-type thinkers have shouted down the existence of a good God. Their opinions, however, are no more authoritative than the medieval belief that the world is flat. Who can presume to speak meaningfully about things so far above human thought? Anything unenlightened people say will be nothing but a projection of their own biases.

Let us look, then, for our answers not to the mere opinions of man, but to the realized wisdom of great masters. They, out of all humanity, have transcended human ideation, and perceived reality in its ultimate essence.

Those few in every religion who have actually experienced God describe Him as the Supreme Good. All things else, they aver, manifest goodness only to the extent that they succeed in expressing something of the Supreme Good. As Jesus said, "Why callest thou me good? There is none good but one, that is, God." (Matthew 19:17)

Evil, then, so the masters explain, is that which opposes Good in its harmonious operation. Evil is a part of relativity; it is not an absolute reality. Good and evil, viewed in relative opposition to each other, must be understood finally in their relation to the Absolute Good.

To understand this concept, imagine the sunlight shining on a fog. To people at the outskirts of the fog, the sunlight seems only slightly obscured. In the opposite direction from the sun, however, they see the light growing dimmer as it enters the fog.

Deeper within the fog, one may still be able, by comparing gray light with even grayer shadows, to tell from which direction the sun is shining. In the heart of the fog, however, the sun may not seem to be shining at all.

Evil is a thick fog of ignorance. It obscures perception, and obstructs people's efforts to emerge out of spiritual darkness into the light of wisdom. God, then, is the divine light beyond every relativity of shadow and light.

Light is more than a poetic metaphor: It is a literal manifestation of God. As we read in the Book of Genesis, "And God said, Let there be light: and there was light." (Genesis 1:3) Metaphorically, however, light is often used to represent spiritual qualities generally.

The thicker the mists of ignorance, the dimmer the "light" of selfless, divine love. In darkest ignorance, the ego loses sight of the very concept of the selfless love which is native to the soul. For the person who is steeped in delusion, his soul's capacity for love may find itself reduced to such a confusion of raw feeling that he may even imagine that the solution to suffering is not love at all, but hatred, malevolence, and strife.

The Ultimate Good is that which gives us what all of us, as God's children, long for in our souls: perfect love, perfect joy, perfect wisdom, perfect light. Evil, by contrast, is that which confuses us in our quest for perfection. It opposes man's spiritual efforts, and actively leads him away from his own eternal good.

Inevitably — given the choices we face endlessly in life — we err again and again before we finally discover the way out of ignorance. What heightens for us the drama of choosing is the fact that, when we break the law, we suffer. The law of our own being warns us, through mental or spiritual pain, whenever we offend against it, even as it warns us with physical pain when we approach too close to a fire. Suffering itself is meant only for our guidance and protection. It is not meant to hurt us, but to save us from greater danger.

The temptation of evil is born of mental habits and of ignorance, which cause us to imagine our highest good to lie elsewhere than in God alone. Thus, both good and evil are rooted in human nature, in the struggle for supremacy between the soul and the ego.

There is a cosmic struggle involved here also, however, as all the Scriptures attest. Paramhansa Yogananda stated, "I used to think that evil was only a mental condition. Now that I have realized God, however, I add my testimony to that of all those who have gone before me: Satan exists. He does battle constantly for the possession of men's souls."

What, then, is Satan?

When the Holy Spirit brought forth cosmic creation, it projected a great force out of Itself. This force was necessary not only so as to create a reality separate in appearance from Itself, but also to maintain that apparent separateness through endless eons of time.

Were it not for this force, the entire universe would at once be drawn back into God. Creation would simply cease to exist.

People often ask, "Why did God create the universe?" There is little practical use in this question. We are not on God's level of consciousness, so cannot presume to ask why He does anything at all. The basic problem for each of us is, quite simply, "What can I do about it, now that I've been created?"

Satan, though a divine creation, is the villain of the piece. He represents the outward-moving impulse, necessary as a means of keeping creation in a state of equilibrium. Satan may be compared to the villain of a play, whose function is to lend drama and interest to the story. Satan's divine purpose, where man is concerned, is to prod people to learn discrimination, and to develop love for saintly qualities.

Satan exists not only in the human heart. He existed also from the beginning, in vast streams of consciousness that flow throughout the universe. Human beings may, if they so choose, drink from these streams. They may even dive into them, submerging their spiritual lives altogether. Cosmic rivers of consciousness offer the waters of evil as a temptation to human egotism. They strengthen that measure of evil which deluded mortals have acquired already, by offering evil suggestions to their receptive minds.

God, at the same time, sends radiant streams of inspiration throughout the universe. These mighty rivers of consciousness attract and inspire us, whenever our thoughts turn to God's light for sustenance.

Initially, the choice is ours. Neither God nor Satan will influence us, except by our prior invitation, and by our subsequent cooperation. This is why it is important for us to keep our thoughts ever uplifted, our hearts free of malice and self-seeking. For these cosmic forces, both angelic and demonic, work consciously, whether for our salvation or for our destruction. They seek entry into human hearts to the extent that we invite them, according to the quality of our own thoughts and feelings.

As Jesus said elsewhere, "Whosoever hath, to him shall be given, and he shall have more abundance: but whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken away even that which he hath." (Matthew 13:12)

Next week we shall consider how Satan's influence may be resisted. Meanwhile, let us remember that human awareness is only a tiny part of that infinite Ocean of Consciousness on which all the waves of creation ride. Man's duty is to expand his awareness to infinity. Satan's constant effort is to keep him locked within stone walls of limitation, chained to the rock of selfishness and pride.

The choice, ultimately, is ours alone.

Thus, through the Holy Bible, God has spoken to mankind.

This passage is from the Bhagavad Gita, the 3rd Chapter, the 36th and 37th Stanzas, in the poetic translation of Sir Edwin Arnold:

 "(Arjuna said:)

'Yet tell me, Teacher! by what force doth man

Go to his ill, unwilling; as if one

Pushed him that evil path?'

"(Krishna replied:)

'Desire it is!

Passion it is! born of the Darknesses,

Which pusheth him. Mighty of appetite,

Sinful, and strong is this! — man's enemy!'"

Commentary

The Bhagavad Gita speaks here of the qualities of human nature not only as particular to individuals, but also as universal to mankind. These qualities are not limited to mankind; they have existed from the beginning of creation.

Elsewhere in the Gita we read that the universe is formed of a mixture of three basic qualities — gunas, as they are called in Sanskrit: the clear, and clarifying, called sattwa guna; the active, and activating, or, raja guna; and the dark, and darkening, or, tama guna.

Every human characteristic expresses one or more of these qualities. They pervade every aspect of Nature. Matter too expresses them, for creation is but a manifestation of consciousness — a dream in the mind of the Cosmic Dreamer. Locked in the heart of all things, as their most closely held secret, lies the germ of consciousness.

Whenever we express kindness to others, we attune ourselves to the universal quality of kindness, and are sustained and reinforced by it in return. Again, if we express cruelty, we attune ourselves to the universal quality of cruelty; that conscious aspect of Nature strengthens our own cruelty in return, and makes it the more difficult for us to escape evil's clutches, should we desire at last to reform.

These universal, conscious qualities in Nature also express themselves through the power of habit. Every action, if repeated often enough, becomes a habit. The more conscious the repetition, the more quickly the habit is formed.

Habit stands in relation to the universal gunas somewhat in the way a piece of blue-colored glass stands in relation to the color blue. The glass is reinforced in its blueness when placed against a blue background. Like enhances like.

Like, as is also well known, attracts like. Habits attract to themselves those gunas, or qualities, with which they are in sympathy. In turn, they become strengthened by them.

These facts shed light on a fundamental spiritual principle: namely, that good habits can be generated not only by personal effort, but also by prayer and inner communion, which unite us to the greater power of God.

O children of Infinity! Doubt not the Divine Goodness, for God's power is yours, if you would but draw on it. Man is saved from delusion, not by self-effort alone, but even more so by divine grace.

By right effort, we open the door to the inflow of grace. Right effort means to focus our minds in deep concentration on God, to offer Him our unconditional devotion, to have complete faith in His unconditional love for us. It means to open ourselves to Him on every level of our being.

Right effort, in other words, must not be confused with the ego-conditioned thought, "The more I do, the more I'll accomplish." Rather, it might be summarized as relinquishing the thought of self as the creator, and developing the awareness that the Doer is God. The Lord's power alone can liberate us from human limitations. He alone can expand our infinitesimal consciousness into vast reaches of infinite bliss.

Beginners on the spiritual path should strictly avoid any thought and action which might obstruct the development of good habits. Wholesome habits are the first, and forever necessary, step to ultimate freedom in infinity.

Like attracts like. If we express evil, we cannot but take on the qualities of evil. But if we express goodness, we take on the nature of the Ultimate Good.

Thus, through the Bhagavad Gita, God has spoken to mankind. Back to Top of Page

Back to Top of Page