The Role of Satan [a.k.a. 'Apara-Prakriti'] in God's Creation-Part 10

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The Role of Satan [a.k.a. 'Apara-Prakriti'] in God's Creation-Part 10

 

Satan's strategies of

pain and sorrow, and

how man may defeat them

 

(p.148) Satan has a subtle strategy for propagating desires: the introduction of

the idea of pain, which is purely a mental phenomenon. The original humans had

great self-control and a mind that was impersonally nonattached to the body, and

so did not feel pain when the body was injured. Originally, pain as a part of

creation was simply a heightened sense of awareness to protect the fragile

physical and mental instrumentalities from injurious clashes with the objects

and laws of gross matter. But by increasing man's attachment to the body and

ego, and thereby his mental sensitiveness to their complaints, Satan made pain

excruciating. Every impingement of discomfort, physical or emotional, great or

small, creates a desire for appeasement.

 

(p.149) Similarly with the affliction of sorrow imposed by Satan on the

phenomenon of death: Death was to have been a conscious, happy transition from

the changeful body to Changeless Spirit. That was God's idea of death. Satan

['Para-Prakriti'] so influenced man's consciousness to desire lasting happiness

in the physical body that death became a dreaded, painful parting from the

mortal form, causing unconsciousness at the time of transition. Because of

Satan's delusion, man fails to see the godly event that death was meant to be -

a promotion, a liberation from toilsome, imperfect earth-life to perfect,

everlasting freedom in God. Rather, the grief at being forced to depart the

material playground engenders a Satan-devised desire to come back.

 

Ultimately, however, Satan defeats his own purpose; for physical pain and sorrow

are also prods that at last cause matter-weary souls to seek their preordained

freedom in God.

 

Emancipation is hastened by playing the living drama of a perfect life of

health, abundance, and wisdom with a detached mental aboveness. Satan-engendered

dualities of pain and sorrow are greatly lessened by a strong mind that does not

exacerbate suffering by fear or nervous imagination. That is, if one can remove

the consciousness of sickness and not fear illness if it does not come; and not

crave health while suffering from ill health, this helps one to remember one's

own soul, the transcendent Self that has never undergone the fluctuations of

either sickness or health, but has always been perfect. [1] If one can feel and

know that he is a child of God, and as such possesses everything, even as his

Father God does - whether he be poor or rich - he can be free. If one can

believe in his soul-omniscience, even while endeavoring to add to his little

store of knowledge, he can transcend the ignorance of delusion.

 

All dualities belong to the domain of ignorance: fear of sickness and a desire

for mortal health, fear of poverty and a desire for opulence, a feeling of

inferiority from a lack of knowledge as well as a desire for a great intellect.

Of course, if one is stricken with ill health, failure, or ignorance, this

doesn't mean he should supinely continue in that state. He should rouse the

perfection within him to express outwardly as health, prosperity, and wisdom,

but without acknowledging the pain of lack or the fear of failure. Man should

know that his struggle for completeness is born of delusion; for he already has

all he needs within his inner powerful Self. (p.150) It is only because he

mistakenly imagines, while identifying himself with spiritually ignorant mortal

company, that he is lacking in these divine endowments. He needs only to realize

the everlasting fullness of his soul treasure-house.

 

The ignorant man stubbornly dreams about lack and failure, when he might instead

claim his birthright of joy, health, and plenty as a son of the Ruler of the

Universe. He is even now, in his transcendent Self, living in his perfect

kingdom, yet in his mortal consciousness persistently dreaming of Satan's evils.

[2]

 

God's awakening touch in meditation is the way to be free from pernicious

delusions. Divine contact with the Perfect Fulfillment destroys utterly all

seeds of earthly longings and attachments. The soul instantly recalls its

inheritance of Eternal Bliss, which makes a mockery of all desires for exiguous

[scanty] earthly ways.

 

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

You) Volume 1, Discourse 7, pg. 148-150

Paramahansa Yogananda

Printed in the United States of America 1434-J881

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

ISBN-10:0-87612-557-7

 

Notes:

 

[1] " The Supreme Spirit, transcendent and existing in the body, is the detached

Beholder, the Consenter, the Sustainer, the Experiencer, the Great Lord, and

also the Highest Self " ('God Talks With Arjuna: The Bhagavad Gita' XIII:22).

 

[2] " The influence of the force of 'avidya' [the individuality of the ego] is

such that no matter how irksome the illusion, deluded man is loath to part with

it....The confirmed materialist, captive in his own realm of 'reality', is

ignorant of his deluded state and therefore has no wish nor will to exchange it

for the sole Reality, Spirit. He perceives the temporal world as reality,

eternal substance--insofar as he is able to grasp the concept of eternity. He

imagines the grossness of sensory experience to be the pure essence of feeling

and perception. He fabricates his own standards of morality and behavior and

calls them good, irrespective of their inharmony with eternal Divine law. And he

thinks that his ego, his mortal sense of being--with its inflated

self-importance as the almighty doer--is the image of his soul as created by

God....

 

" Ordinary man is dumbfounded by the enticing propositions of illusory sense

experiences, and clings to delusive material forms as though they were the

reality and the cause and security of his existence. The yogi, on the other

hand, is ever conscious inwardly of the sole Reality, Spirit, and sees 'maya'

and 'avidya'--universal and individual delusion--as merely a tenuous web holding

together the atomic, magnetic, and spiritual forces that give him a body and

mind with which to play a part in the cosmic drama of the Lord's creation " ('God

Talks With Arjuna: The Bhagavad Gita', commentary on 1:8).