The Role of Satan [a.k.a. 'Apara-Prakriti'] in God's Creation - Part 6

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The Role of Satan [a.k.a. 'Apara-Prakriti'] in God's Creation - Part 6

 

(p.140) Even though God has created the universe out of delusion [maya], He

Himself is not deluded by it. He knows 'maya' as naught but a modification of

His one Consciousness. The colossal dramas of creation and dissolution of

planets and galaxies; the birth, growth, and decline of empires and

civilizations; the countless miniature plays of individual lives with their

subplots of health and sickness, riches and poverty, life and death--all are

happening in God as the One Dreamer-Creator, a chimerical perception of change

within the Eternally Changeless. One part of the Infinite Being ever remains

transcendent, beyond vibratory dualities: There He is the inactive Absolute -

Spirit. When Spirit vibrates Its consciousness with thoughts of diversity, It

becomes immanent as the omnipresent Creator in the finite vibratory realm of

infinity: There God is active as the creative Vibratory Holy Ghost with its

immanent Christ Consciousness.

 

(p.140) Within the creative Holy Ghost Intelligence are all the governing laws

and principles that manifest, sustain, and dissolve every part and particle of

the Lord's universe. The Holy Ghost inherited from Spirit the independence to

create and govern within the mandated vast scope of the manifesting powers

endowed to it.

 

(p.141) This Creative Power, which gives birth and nurture to creation, is

referred to in Hindu scripture as Maha-Prakriti, Great Nature, the potentials of

all becomings. When this power goes forth from Ishvara (God the Father of

Creation) as Intelligent Creative Cosmic Vibration, it takes on a dual nature.

As Para-Prakriti (Pure Nature) it creates and expresses all good and beauty in

harmony with the God-tuned immanent 'Kutastha Chaitanya' (Christ Consciousness).

Its divine nature is magnificently expressed in the causal and astral heavenly

realms. But as the Vibratory Power descends into material manifestation, it

becomes conjointly a deviant Apara-Prakriti (Impure Nature), creating through

the circumscriptive laws of gross matter and the uttermost density of delusion.

 

The origin of Satan,

the creative power that

rebelled against God

 

These two aspects of Prakriti [Para- and Apara-Prakriti] correspond to the

Christian designations of Holy Ghost and Satan. The Holy Ghost in tune with

Christ Consciousness creates goodness and beauty and draws all manifestation

toward a symbiotic harmony and an ultimate oneness with God. Satan (from the

Hebrew, literally " the adversary " ) pulls outward from God into entanglement with

the delusive world of matter, employing the mayic cosmic delusion to diffuse,

confuse, blind, and bind.

 

Thus Satan is defined as an archangel that fell from heaven, a force fallen from

the grace of attunement with the Holy Creative Vibration of God. Jesus said: " I

beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven " (Luke 10:18). The divine Cosmic

Vibration with its creative light became a divided force (Para- and

Apara-Prakriti). The satanic or 'apara' aspect asserts its independence and

turns from God and the heavenly realms to ply its wiles in the grossest regions

of duality, contrast, inversion, oppositional states, and mortality. Because it

enshrouds matter and engages man in the most deceptive confusion of mayic

delusion, Jesus referred to this satanic force as a devil, a murderer, and a

liar. " The devil...was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the

truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of

his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it " (John 8:44).

 

Satan originated as the natural consequence of God's desireless desire to divide

His Sea of Oneness into waves of finite creation--a power of independent will

that would wield the laws of material creation to manifest and sustain its

existence. (p.142) The plan of Spirit was that this conscious Cosmic Delusive

Force should be endowed with independence in order to use 'maya' and 'avidya' to

create God-reflecting finite objects out of Holy Ghost cosmic vibratory energy,

in harmonious attunement with the divine Christ Intelligence present therein.

 

Perfect gems in mines, perfect flowers, perfect animals, and human

soul-luminaries residing on perfect planets were thus created, brought forth as

material manifestations from the heavenly astral and causal realms. That is why

in the Christian Bible we find the ideal Adam and Eve communing with God, so

naturally and simply in the abundant Garden of Eden. After a harmonious

existence--a perfect expression of form, health habits, and modes of existence

on the stage of time, without suffering, disease, cruel accidents, or painful

premature death--all created forms were to return to God. Just as rainbows come

and go, or as motion-picture forms can be created for entertainment and

electrically switched on or off at will, so all created things were to exist as

pleasant, mutually entertaining pictures on the screen of space and time, and

were to resolve into their pure essence in God at the end of their cycle, after

the drama of that period was perfectly played.

 

Thus originally all Cosmic Energy, being vibrated by the Holy Ghost and Christ

Intelligence, was flowing Godward, creating perfect images from astral light

turned inward to reveal God. The conscious Cosmic Delusive Force, with its

independent power from God, saw that if the cosmic-energy manifestations of the

Holy Ghost Vibration were to dissolve back into Spirit according to the divine

plan, then its own separate existence would also cease. Without the Holy

Vibration there would be neither a reason for, nor sustenance of, the Cosmic

Delusive Force. This thought frightened Satan; the sole purpose of his being -

to keep these forms in manifestation - was threatened. So for his own purpose of

self-perpetuation he rebelled against God, as an obstreperous general sometimes

turns against his king, and started to misuse his cosmic powers. He manipulated

the laws and principles of creation under his command to establish patterns of

imperfection that would preclude [i.e., prevent] their automatic resolution back

into Spirit. Satan became as lightning falling from heaven because he turned the

light of cosmic energy away from its focus on God and concentrated it on gross

matter. The heaven-revealing astral light became the bedimmed physical

luminaries of sun, fire, electricity, which show only material substances.

 

(p.143) Scriptural literature of many persuasions employs a pragmatic imagery of

personifying the qualities, acts, and motivations of the Deity and Its

hierarchical derivations, inasmuch as the minds of ordinary persons, comfortably

closed in a cause-effect view of phenomena, do not easily accommodate divine

abstracts unless they too are metaphorically cloaked in familiar guise. God must

have a cause to create - His desireless desire - and there must be a rationale

for the existence and behavior of a fallen archangel who became a devil,

deceiving man and opposing God in ways innumerable - Satan's desire to

perpetuate his own existence.

 

Therefore, it can be said that except in the absolute sense that everything is

made of the one Cosmic Consciousness of God, there is no evil in the All-Perfect

God. Evil resides in the Adversarial Force that maintains its realm of influence

by the gross obscuration of the true God-nature of all created beings.

Philosophic sophistry could convincingly make the case that since the duty of

Satan as an archangel was to sustain the existence of manifested forms, he fell

from heaven just trying to do his job!

 

The Second Coming of Christ (The Resurrection of the Christ Within

You) Volume 1, Discourse 7, pg. 140-143

Paramahansa Yogananda

Printed in the United States of America 1434-J881

ISBN-13:978-0-87612-557-1

ISBN-10:0-87612-557-7