The Role of Satan [a.k.a. 'Apara-Prakriti'] in God's Creation-Part 9

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The Role of Satan [a.k.a. 'Apara-Prakriti'] in God's Creation-Part 9

 

How Satan [Apara-Prakriti]

entraps souls in the mortal

labyrinth of earthly

reincarnations

 

(p.147) As it is possible to watch the slow process of a flower budding,

blossoming, and disappearing on a movie screen, so man should behold his life

pictured on the screen of his consciousness through the stages from childhood to

a full-grown individual; and then his disappearance into God of his own accord.

 

Satan [the Apara-Prakriti] saw that it would all be very simple if the immortal

children of God, after beholding a perfect earthly existence with a changeless

attitude, would go back again to immortality. So Satan tampered with the showing

of this perfect picture of life before it had a chance to be completed in God.

Satan's delusive machinations introduced mental and bodily pain and sorrow.

These devil-born patterns of evil have disturbed the intended desireless,

perfect existence of human beings. Dissatisfaction arising from an imperfect,

prematurely destroyed picture of life created in man a sense of unfulfillment

and the desire to see perfect pictures played out and completed to his

satisfaction.

 

Thus, the immortal soul-images of God forgot their already perfect immortality.

They began to exercise their free will in pursuit of a desire for temporal

fulfillment. But desire begets a brood of desires, enticing immortals into a

mortal labyrinth of cause and effect comings and goings, earthly binds and

deaths. The law of compensation, that for every action there is a binding

reaction, serves as Satan's most effective means of keeping otherwise free souls

earthbound. This law of action, karma, which imprisons souls in Satan's kingdom

of finitude, makes necessary the constantly revolving wheel of reincarnation.

The rebellious Cosmic Delusive Force, through the karmic consequences of man's

wrong actions and his mundane desires arising from the dissatisfactions of

imperfect living, slaps back into finite existence again and again those beings

who earn only a brief respite between incarnations in the astral realm of life

after death.

 

Reincarnation evolved from Satan's [Apara-Prakriti's] attempt to immortalize

changeable flesh in order to keep creatures under his subjugation. Flesh, being

subject to change, was not perdurable [everlasting] but fated to succumb to the

ultimate change of the state called death. Immortal souls in bondage to the

karmic law of recurrence could not go back to God with their Satan-engendered

imperfect desires, so they had to return repeatedly to earth, through rebirth in

new fleshly forms.

 

(p.148) Satan, like a fisherman, has cast a net of delusion around all mankind

and is continually trying to drag man toward the slavery of delusion, death, and

finitude. Satan tempts humanity by his baits of greed, and promises of pleasure,

and leads people to destruction and continuous painful reincarnations. He keeps

souls, like fish, in the pond of finitude and spawns in them the consciousness

of mortal limitations and desires in order to make them reincarnate on

earth--again and again. As one desire is fulfilled, Satan insinuates into the

consciousness new desires by ingenious temptations lest the soul escape his

devilish earthly nets.

 

In a way, Satan provided a means, witlessly acting as the tool of God, to

ultimately free souls from their mortal attachments. Reincarnation assures

freedom, for it gives immortal souls ample time and opportunities to divest

themselves of all false notions of earthly fulfillment, and to realize through

wisdom their already perfect divine natures. With the expiration of desires and

karmic consequences from wrong determinations, they will be liberated.

 

It has to be conceded that Satan [Apara-Prakriti] is exceedingly clever to be

able to captivate immortals with material tawdry, after successfully mesmerizing

them with forgetfulness of their endowment of divine treasure. Satan uses this

forgetfulness to hold all created beings in their finite state, identified with

the physical body and consequent slavery to material attachment, instinct, and

conscious and unconscious desires for finite experiences. Until man regains his

lost Eden on earth, he remains an exile, constrained by the law of reincarnation

to strive ceaselessly for the outworking of his human longings.

 

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

You) Volume 1, Discourse 7, pg. 147-148

Paramahansa Yogananda

Printed in the United States of America 1434-J881

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

ISBN-10:0-87612-557-7