What is the meaning of Jesus casting out devils? - Part 4

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What is the meaning of Jesus casting out devils? - Part 4

 

And there was a man in the synagogue possessed by the spirit of an unclean

demon, and he cried out with a loud voice, " Ha! What do we have to do with you,

Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are--the Holy One

of God! " And Jesus rebuked him, saying, " Be quiet and come out of him! " And when

the demon had thrown him down in their midst, he came out of him without doing

him any harm. And amazement came upon them all, and they began discussing with

one another saying, " What is this message? For with authority and power he

commands the unclean spirits, and they come out. " (Luke 4:33-36)

 

(p.403) Why be concerned about the harassment of ghostly tramp-souls? Such

threat is negligible. Normal, healthy minded persons are impervious to their

mischief. A far greater danger to one's well-being exists right within and

around every human being. Good and evil are fighting for supremacy--the one

force is trying to save us, and the other to harm us. We are caught in the

middle of this cosmic war between God and His " fallen archangel " Satan. One

cannot dismiss this problematic conflict by rationalizing that Satan is a mere

delusion. Jesus himself acknowledged the actuality of the adversary when he

said: " Get thee behind me, Satan " and " Deliver us from evil. " It would hardly be

necessary to pray to God at all if there were no devil and works of the devil

from which man requires divine intervention to be delivered.

 

Satan, with his power of 'maya', exists in order to provide the dichotomy of

Spirit necessary to bring into manifestation and perpetuate the universal cosmic

drama. But though God allows the shadows of troubles to play amidst His light,

He also tries to help us out of delusion's turmoils. God and His angels and

countless good spirits, spiritual forces, are trying to establish divine harmony

in man and his cosmic environment. Every beneficial quality is created by a

divine agent of God. These personified spiritual forces are constantly

implanting noble thoughts in man's mind. At the same time, Satan, with his evil

spirits, is fomenting chaos in the world and restive temptations to distress

man's consciousness.

 

(p.404) As all good is organized by God and His angels, and as He sends His

spiritually advanced children on earth from time to time to eradicate evil,

similarly, the mighty evil force, Satan, with a vast horde of evil spirits,

personified evil forces, is carrying on a campaign of organized wickedness

throughout the universe.

 

Millions of harmful bacteria and a melange of evil diseases, evil thoughts, evil

passions, are all potentially implanted by the evil force into the mind and body

of man. Though man is essentially made in the image of God, when his mortal

vulnerability succumbs to obsession by the latent satanic forces in him of

greed, selfishness, anger, or any of the evil tendencies, these overcloud the

purity of the human soul.

 

God's light is present in every being as the soul with its godly reflections of

divine forces and qualities; Satan is also present in every being as ignorance

with distinct reflections of himself as evil forces or spirits. Thus, each

individual is influenced both by the soul and its good qualities and by Satan

and his evil qualities.

 

So the truth is that the direct creator of evil--as concerns the relative

existence and experience of man--is this Satanic Force, the archangel that

turned away from God and misused his God-given power in order to create evil as

a counterpart of all the good that God has created. Thus we find in each man

opposite qualities--good created by God, evil created by Satan; love created by

God, hate created by Satan; kindness created by God, selfishness created by

Satan; intoxication of divine ecstasy created by God, and intoxication of evil

gratifications created by Satan.[1]

 

(p.405) When a person is beset with an evil obsession, physically, mentally, or

spiritually--such as chronic disease; insidious emotions, habits, or desires;

spiritual ignorance--it is the manifestation of a spirit reflection of Satan, a

devil, that needs to be cast out as decidedly as the exorcism of a tramp soul,

or unclean devil, in a case of spirit possession. Such, indeed, were among the

many healings effected by Jesus.

 

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

You) Volume 1, Discourse 24, pg. 403-405

Paramahansa Yogananda

Printed in the United States of America 1434-J881

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

ISBN-10:0-87612-557-7

 

[1] In yogic terms, the Bhagavad Gita explains the good and evil forces in man

as a war between two contending armies, one led by the powers of the divine

discrimination of the soul and the other by the materialistic mind and its baser

instincts of the delusion-influenced senses. These contending powers in man are

energized either by the spiritualized Godward forces in the astral centers of

life and consciousness in the spine, brain, and spiritual eye; or contrarily in

matterward energies drawn toward expression in the debased inclinations of the

senses and their allied cohorts of evil behavior in egotism, fear, desires,

anger, greed, attachment, pride, habits, temptations.