The Role of Satan [a.k.a. 'Apara-Prakriti'] in God's Creation-Part 8

May 11, 2009

Delusion of body-identification

produces the false idea of death

(p.146) When Eden, the state of divine consciousness, was lost to the original

Adam and Eve, they became intensely identified with the gross physical form and

its limitations. They lost their primal innocence, in which they could see

themselves as souls encased in a wondrous triune body of consciousness, life

force, and atomic radiation. God intended man to behold the human body and mind

as delusive thought-forms that provide the soul with a means to experience the

Lord's cosmic drama. Ever since the Fall, man has indulged in the ephemeral

attractions of bodily pleasures, thereby subjecting himself to countless

miseries inherent in body consciousness. Under the influence of Satan

[Apara-Prakriti], man concentrates on the outward appearances and vicissitudes

of life rather than on the underlying immutability. He is thus stricken with the

false idea of death as annihilation.

The cosmic motion picture of a man's life seen on earth--his birth, experiences,

and death--produces the exhilarating consciousness associated with his birth and

the sad concept of his ending in death. Satanic ignorance hides from view man's

life as he joyously began the descent from God, and his exultant return to God

as he hies back to Him. Satan, by enslaving man's attention to the physical body

and senses, makes him forget prenatal and after-death experiences in the

superphysical astral realm; and by showing for a time this drama of life and

then lowering the curtain of obscurity, it has produced a fallacious conception

of death.

The change called death is only an outward link in the chain of immortality, the

continuity of which is surreptitiously hidden from man's view. It is

unmetaphysical and erroneous to say that death does not exist, but it is equally

untrue to give to it the reality and finality suggested by delusion. To dismiss

the dismal view of the 'danse macabre', man should learn to behold all

permutations as mere wavelets of change appearing and disappearing on the

changeless ocean of Infinity.

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

You) Volume 1, Discourse 7, pg. 146

Paramahansa Yogananda

Printed in the United States of America 1434-J881

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

ISBN-10:0-87612-557-7

Recommended Posts