The Cosmic Drama
Part Four (of Five) - In Walks the Devil!
This is part one of a series of articles. It has its origins in a prior blog article entitled, "Who is Jesus Christ?" You may wish to read that first, though not absolutely necessary. This series attempts to describe the Trinity, or, how God can be omniscient, omnipresent, infinite, and immanent in creation at the same time. And, what significance this has for the reality we face as individuals. As the prior article on Jesus Christ noted, "Who Jesus is says a great deal about who we are." So, too, who God is addresses who we are.
When God “sent out” His power through vibration (“Aum”) and seeded it with His reflected Intelligence, the creation (especially the powers and intelligences behind matter) are endowed with procreative power, desire, intelligence, and individuality. Just as the son, who may resemble his father in many ways, is given free will to make his own choices in life, so too, the creation and the souls in creation have been given, and have, made choices. As vibration acquires form, individuality and intelligence it acquires a relative degree of independence. Not absolute, but relative. This power, force and intelligence assumes unto itself a self-perpetuating momentum, not unlike the famous computer HAL in the movie: 2001: A Space Odyssey. The outflowing power of God becomes, by degrees, not only independent but, as it begins to assert its self-identity, either rebelliously or ignorantly, it become satanic. The term “satanic” implies a conscious intention to remain apart and independent. It implies a purposeful rebellion against harmony and attunement with the Creator. It is not sharp line in the sand, but a gradual continuum from divine attunement to forgetfulness to restlessness to ignorance to harm and to conscious evil.
Endowed with intelligence and empowered to go out and
multiply and then acquiring the form and feeling of separateness (from God),
this outgoing power takes onto itself the responsibility and desire to create,
multiply, dominant and remain its own “god.” (Think of the myth of Lucifer or
Adam and Eve wanting to eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good
and evil.) Thus does the outflowing force begin gradually to make its own way.
The further from God its consciousness inclines, the more the good intention
becomes gradually an evil one, usurping God’s power and worshipping itself as
godlike. (Thus was Jesus tempted by Satan to have dominion over all the earth
if he would but worship Satan as the creation itself.) Thus humans set up false
gods, worshipping money, the pleasures of the senses, power over others,
addictive substances, and so on. Satan, in the form of the creation, invites us
to worship him as the summum bonum of existence. In the end he takes our souls,
metaphorically speaking (only), in the sense that we lose (temporarily) our
soul joy and innocence in God’s bliss. Death, old-age, disease, disappointment—at
last, he reneges on his promise leaving us with neither God’s peace nor our
moth-eaten treasures on earth.
There is another aspect to this loss of innocence. As Spirit
is cloaked in form, individuality, and separateness, it finds itself competing
for survival in a world of the senses. Forced to feed, clothe and shelter
itself, it finds that the compelling necessities of its outer form cause it to
look outward through the senses. The outer world gradually becomes its reality
and lost is the divine memory of its own omniscience and immortality. It will
take untold incarnations for this lost soul to (ascend first to the human
level, and then untold more incarnations to) rebel against the “anguishing
monotony” of continued rounds of rebirth, struggle, pleasure, pain, illness and
death after having exhausted every avenue of sensory and ego-affirming, but
ultimately disappointing, fulfillment.
Thus, the macro-characters in the cosmic drama are God (as the Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost) and the satanic force which opposes harmony with and union with God. Paramhansa Yogananda put it this way: the satanic force has sowed the creation with patterns of imperfection (pain, disease, & physical death) so that our memory of divine perfection will impel beings to want to return to the creation to make it perfect. But alas, the cosmic drama requires the villain that we might love the hero. The villain must be punished and the hero is applauded. As we act more like the hero we come closer to God. In this way, even the satanic force of maya (delusion and ignorance) act to sow the seeds of our longing for perfection. This perfection, this bliss, this union is found only within our souls—in God alone. We have an eternity of free choices to discover and seek this re-union, just as the prodigal son in Jesus’ story, hungry and famished, decides to begin the journey home to his Father. There he is welcomed and embraced (not punished).
Whether we view the betrayal of God’s divine purpose as the
result of the “first man and woman” (Adam and Eve) or as a choice we all make,
especially beginning with puberty, is perhaps a matter of taste. The reality is
that, from the human point of view, evil exists, ignorance exists, wrong
choices and bad things happen and we need to make things better. Blaming God
has its place, but only to a point. Doing so doesn’t change the bad things. We
have to take action and we have to take at least some responsibility for
ourselves and our neighbor. Without this, life would be not worth living.
Besides, in truth and at the present moment, most people wouldn’t have it any
other way and are not the slightest bit interested in knowing, loving, serving
and uniting in love with God.
The "devil made me do it",
Nayaswami Hriman
