Light From Eternal Lamps–Essays On Practical Spiritual Life–by Swami Nirmalananda Giri
Satan and Satanism
One of the most interesting and sharp altercations between Jesus and His opponents is recorded in the eighth chapter of Saint John. Without hesitation Jesus opens with a full volley:
“I speak that which I have seen with my Father: and ye do that which ye have seen with your father. They answered and said unto him, Abraham is our father. Jesus saith unto them, If ye were Abraham’s children, ye would do the works of Abraham. But now ye seek to kill me, a man that hath told you the truth, which I have heard of God: this did not Abraham. Ye do the deeds of your father. Then said they to him, We be not born of fornication; we have one Father, even God. Jesus said unto them, If God were your Father, ye would love me: for I proceeded forth and came from God; neither came I of myself, but he sent me. Why do ye not understand my speech? even because ye cannot hear my word. Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it. And because I tell you the truth, ye believe me not. Which of you convinceth me of sin? And if I say the truth, why do ye not believe me? He that is of God heareth God’s words: ye therefore hear them not, because ye are not of God.”
However popular the cant about how there is no such thing as black or white, but everything is really somewhere in between, it is evident that in the eyes of Jesus–eyes considerably more illumined than ours or those who propound the “grayness” theory–a human being can only be two things: of God or of the Devil.
But what is “the Devil”?
All spiritual revelations state the same thing. Though they may use different terminologies, they are agreed on the fact that there are two great streams or currents of force within the universe, and all the individual consciousness are moving within one or the other.
Lest the attitude of Jesus seem too simplistic, let us look at it from the viewpoint of streams of water. If there are three boats out on the river–one boat in the very midst, one boat halfway between that and the shore, and another boat only a few yards from the river bank, they are all three in the river and moving with its currents. Even if a fourth boat was gliding along right at the shore, even bumping into the bank, it would still be in the river. And conversely, a boat just one foot away from the river on a bank would be just as much out of the current as a boat several miles away on the dry land. And we would not consider ourselves simplistic or unsophisticated for saying so, either.
In the divine sight of Jesus, all those He encountered were either in the current that draws the souls toward God or in the current that carries them away from God. Undoubtedly there are degrees of involvement with those currents and degrees of distances the individual has been carried along by them. But nobody is moving in both streams at once–though we can be influenced or pulled by both currents simultaneously. And there is always the possibility of switching currents.
That force which carries us away from God is actually composed of three basic entities: Satan, the Devil and Lucifer.
Satanas is a Hebrew word meaning “the opposer.” It has no connotation of some great evil being that has existed coeternally with God and is forever trying to damn souls while God tries to save them.
We can better understand the nature of Satan if we go back to the very beginning of things. In eternity, before all this drama of creation, we were all in the bosom of God. In order for us to transcend our finite scope of consciousness and expand our capacity for experience so we might be able to participate in His infinity, God projected the entire range of relative existence–the “many mansions” Jesus spoke about. Then we voluntarily went forth from the Bosom of the Father to begin our journey to infinity.
Two things were needed for this venture: (1) the capacity to enter into states of being that were not really ours, and (2) a current of life force into which we could enter in order to be impelled outward and downward into relativity–and which would keep us “out and down” as long as we needed to maintain our separate status.
The first requirement was fulfilled by our taking on the mind and ego-sense. The second was provided by God Himself. As already stated, their are two great streams within relativity, one of which draw souls out from the Bosom of God and one which draws them back into the Bosom of God. These two streams are referred to in the teachings of Jesus as the Right and Left Hands of God. With one hand He pushes us away and with the other He pulls us back.
Both the ego-mind and the outgoing force are divine in nature, being manifestations of the great Power known as the Holy Spirit. But they have been wrested from their original purpose, distorted and turned against God and us by Lucifer, thus “creating” the Devil from the ego-mind and Satan from the outgoing force. (It would actually be more accurate to say that part of the ego-mind and part of the outgoing force have been diverted into the Devil and Satan.)
In order for us to evolve there must be a force that keeps us stabilized within relativity. We need the mind, as well, to experience our evolution within relativity. They are the gift of God–as long as they further our growth and return to Divinity. The moment they are corrupted and used to halt and avoid evolution they become destructive. They become Satan and the Devil. “Devil” is the English translation of the Greek word diabolon which means “that which separates” or “that which divides.”
Even the downward-drawing force has as its purpose our ultimate union with God, and the same is true of the mind. In their healthy status they join, not divide. We should also understand that both Satan and the Devil are temporary conditions of what is basically–and ultimately–good. In erroneous philosophies it is declared that we must destroy or get rid of these entities, but in esoteric Christian philosophy they are seen as needing to be redeemed, that is, restored to their original purpose and function. Then, it is true, we will transcend and go beyond them, for they will no longer be needed.
To deal correctly with anything we must have a right grasp of its nature. In dealing with the force Satanas we must keep in mind that it is God’s own power, and approach it accordingly. The same is true of the mind.
But who turns these tools for divinization into Satan and the Devil? We do. But under the influence and with the “help” of another: Lucifer. The subject of Lucifer and his place in creation is considered in our publication Robe of Light, but we should give some exposition here, as well.
Creation comes forth in a series of emanations. And these emanations are presided over and controlled by a hierarchy of greatly evolved intelligences. Their further evolution is being accomplished by their involvement in their respective worlds.
The realm of creation from the archangelic plane downward was manifested under the direction of seven great beings known as Archons. Though evolved to such a high degree that they participate in the creative powers of God, they are still capable of falling into delusion–however unlikely that may be. Because of some unresolved flaw, one of the Archons rebelled against the Plan and attempted to incite his fellow Archons as well as the archangels and angels under their direction to join him in wresting the creation from the ultimate guidance of God and to secede from the rest of creation that they might themselves become the only gods of the lesser worlds. Perhaps the utter folly of the idea was what blinded Him to its hopelessness. Not only he, but many angels and archangels attempted the impossible–separation from God. As a result they “fell from heaven”–that is, they lost the true vision of their essential unity with God and sank into the delusion of separation. Externally they were expelled from the higher worlds and confined to the material plane and the lower astral worlds. Because of their nature it is possible for them to enter the regions of higher evolution, but they find such intrusions distasteful and even painful.
Not acknowledging the error of their attempt, they began setting about to accomplish their goals which were: (1) to repolarize the material creation and turn it in direct opposition to the evolutionary process and (2) to subvert the evolving intelligences so they would also turn against the prospect of reascent to the Divine and remain forever in the domain of Lucifer and his cohorts. All this was effected through great subtlety–mostly on the subliminal level in relation to the intelligences being influenced. And the process continues today with seemingly increasing success–which is a subject all of its own.
If we read the account of the seduction of Eve in Genesis we will see the basic modus operandi of the Luciferic forces, the result of which is to make us over into the image of Lucifer rather than the image of God. What is the “image” of Lucifer? We are given a glimpse in the fourteenth chapter of Isaiah:
“How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! how art thou cut down to the ground, which did weaken the nations! For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north: I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the most High.”
These verses show us that Lucifer rebelled against the idea of taking aeons of evolution before reaching the Divine Height. Looking upward, he saw that between him and the Throne of God were vast worlds of higher evolution that required countless ages to traverse. He was also rebellious against having to communicate with the Highest through the intermediate hierarchy rather than directly, since it implied his dependence upon others and a lack on his part of the capacity for higher modes of communication. He especially rebelled against the fact that he was supposed to wait upon the Divine will rather than propelling himself upward by his own efforts and will. And lastly, he wished to be God. He rebelled against the Plan and the truth of things upon which that Plan was based.
In the brief quotation from Lucifer given above, “I” appears five times, revealing that his little, temporary archangelic “I” had completely obliterated his greater “I” which was god with God. If he had kept sight of his true self, he could not have fallen into such a delusion. But, identifying wholly with the “unself,” the false ego, he wished to exalt it and set it upon the Throne rather than his real self. Saint Paul wrote: “Not I, but Christ.” Lucifer’s proposition was just the opposite: “No longer Christ, but I.” Since our true “I” is Christ, Lucifer–and those being shaped into his image–are seeking annihilation, though calling it life.
Discomfiting as it may be, we had better pause to gauge how much and in what ways we are already molded into the Luciferic image. For without an accurate diagnosis there can be no effective cure.
We are small universes, reflections of the greater cosmos, with many layers to our being. Within us, as within the outer creation, there develops a twisted will of ignorance and delusion, of false identity with those states of unbeing that are not really us. If unchecked or not counterbalanced, after some time that ignorance within us develops into actual evil–just as food which can nourish the body, if allowed to spoil, will become poison and kill the body instead. It is this corrupted will within us that is the evil we need to beware of. This is the inner Satan. That Satanas becomes further corrupted into Diabolon–it becomes a principle of the lie of separation and independence from God, a lie which we not only tell to ourselves but we try to tell to God, saying (by deed if not by actual word) to God: “Leave me alone. I don’t want to go back to You. I belong in this world. I should be here. I have my interests, my life, my body, and my identity–that is enough for me. Now, don’t You go bothering me, sending people to teach me righteousness, people who will try to wake me up and make me remember who I really am so I will come home. This world and this body are the only home I want. I am asleep and dreaming, and I like it. And, by the way, as far as I am concerned, this dream is reality, and I am the only real thing there is. You don’t exist. And if You do, You are only my imagination, an anthropomorphic conception made in my image. I am too wise to believe in You anymore.”
This is the voice of the Devil which is inside us. Indeed, there is a universal, external negative force that sometimes cooperates with our inner negativity in dragging us further (and wilfully) into the darkness, but we must realize that for all practical purposes Satan, the evil one, the liar, the killer, resides in us, enthroned in our own will. It is our false self, the true anti-Christ.
It is not in the outside world that the Devil needs to be exorcised, but within our own distorted consciousness. The Devil is our own selfishness, egotism, greed, and hatefulness. It is our own determined self-delusion. To exorcise that is a lot more traumatic than the versions Hollywood puts on film.
Since this Satan/Devil becomes the ruling principle of our present and future lives, it becomes our “father”–that is, the producer of our life in this and in subsequent bodies. It becomes our real “progenitor,” producing further embodiments in which we increasingly pursue our blind egoic ways. God only becomes our father when our inner spiritual consciousness awakens and we remember that God is our Father and that this body and this life is intended for the search for God. When we consciously take up the path of evolution, then God is truly our Father. Until then our “father in heaven” in the exalted place of rulership which controls our life, is not God but Satan. And our following of that “father” in our daily mode of life is the real Satanism.
Even though God is the origin of all beings, the people of the world have become divided into two spheres according to who is their “father”–God, their Divine Self, or Satan, their false ego. A little observation reveals that there are two kinds of people: those who are bound in the world and who are binding themselves closer to it, and those who are freeing themselves by spiritual growth. It is very much like a school. Some people apply themselves, learn, pass the examinations, graduate, and leave the school. But there are also those who go to school to play and waste their time away, never passing the tests and legitimately graduating. They refuse to learn, to grow.
So it is in the school of life. There are people who are fiddling their lives away. They are “living” in the sense that they are experiencing the activities of the senses–indeed they are obsessed with them. But they are not evolving back to the Source. They are in truth fools, and dead fools, at that.
“All the world is a stage,” but instead of remembering that we are only playing different roles from life to life, none of which are really “us,” we have forgotten our true identities and begun to identify with the superficiality of our roles and our costumes.
This madness of forgetting who we really are and thinking that we are the role we are playing is the result of having the Devil for our father. And this, as pointed out before, is the real Satanism, for Satanism is the perpetuation of ignorance–specifically, ignorance of our true self. It is the perpetuating of continual birth and death in this world, rather than growing beyond the world for even higher evolution. It is the refusal to take the path back to God.
Every act which which binds us closer to ignorance and egoity is satanic worship, far worse than anything done by those poor exhibitionistic crazies who announce openly to the world that they are satanists. It is far worse, because it is self-destruction.
There is such a thing as satanic religion, but it is not the cavortings of the openly avowed satanists. Rather, it is any religion which denies that we have come from the Father and absolutely will go back to the Father after having become the sons of God–perfect images of the Father. Any theology that denies this truth is Satanism of the most virulent sort.
We are spirits temporarily embodied for the purpose of the transcendence of the embodied state through evolution and gnosis. A religion which teaches us that the goal of human life is to live in the human body forever is absolutely satanic. Such a religion pulls people back into continual rebirth since “according to your faith be unto you.” The bondage of rebirth is perpetuated by the mythology that one day there will be a blast on a big trumpet and we will all pop up like toast out of our graves to be forever confined in this body. And that horrible confinement to the state of limited humanity is set forth as the reward of righteousness, when it is in reality the kingdom of the devil. The belief that we must have a physical body to be “alive” draws us inexorably back into physical embodiment and its attendant delusions and limitations.
A more sophisticated Satanism admits that you must transcend the material body, but teaches that your highest destiny is to fly away after death to some happy place and live there forever and ever–always separated from God. This is the voice of Diabolos, the Separator, who would condition our minds to desire and even pray for such a “heavenly” condition of separation from God. This, too, is satanic religion.
The churches which dispense these false philosophies have corrupted and blinded more innocent souls than any of these psychotic “satanic” groups will ever do. Pitiful, burnt-out Aleister Crowley never, never could begin to produce the effect of evil in the world that Billy Graham has accomplished.
This is a matter of great severity and great subtlety, therefore Saint Paul warns us: “Examine yourselves, whether ye be in the faith,” since it is possible to have all the externals of seeming “godliness” but in the secret of our hearts be worshippers of the inner Satan, albeit ignorantly. Saint Gregory of Nyssa in his exposition of the Lord’s Prayer states that it is possible for us to stand in church, saying: “Our Father which art in heaven,” and be actually calling upon Satan and not God. The determining factor is the state of our consciousness. As the Apostles said to Simon Magus: “Thou art in the gall of bitterness, and in the bond of iniquity.” The “gall of bitterness” is ignorance and “the bond of iniquity” is mistaken identity with the false ego, the not-self.
One more example of Satanic religion. One of the most blatant satanic acts in the name of Christ is perpetuated every year on Ash Wednesday in some of the Western churches. The people come forward, and the priest or minister smears ashes on their foreheads, saying: “Remember, O man, that you are but dust, and to dust you shall return.” Now, nothing is more satanic than that! “Remember, O man, that you are but dust.” Such blasphemy is the voice of the Accuser, not of Christ. What could be a more vicious accusation than to say to a son of God, whose irrevocable nature is immortal spirit: “You are dust and your destiny is to be dust.” This evil catechism is the opposite of what we must all remember. What kind of a life will a person live who believes that satanic accusation? On top of it all, if a person declares that he truly does believe that accusation and believes that he is only a bundle of material forces that will be dissolved back to their original constituents at the time of death he will be soundly condemned and damned by those very ash-smearers as an atheist, a materialist, and anti-Christian! It is absurd isn’t it? What you think you are, you will manifest–no more, no less.
So you see, this supposed worship of Satan that tabloids and television love to depict is more mental illness than anything else. But the real satanism is seeking to maintain our distance from God. And unfortunately most of us have fallen into it. So now it is time to come to our senses like the Prodigal Son, remember from whence we came, and, like him, to arise and go back to our Father.
The ancient Egyptians employed a perfect imaging of our true nature in the symbol of the winged sphere. Ellipses occur in material existence, but never spheres. Therefore a sphere symbolizes that which is ever beyond materiality in its true nature–the pure spirit that is our essential being. The sphere is a transcendent being. But there are two wings attached to it, which symbolize our experiencing of and functioning within duality. But it is using its two wings to fly back to the source. The winged sphere is also a miniature sun, flying back to join itself to the great Luminary of all life of which it is a perfect image.
Real worship of God, the opposite of Satanism, then, is that disposition of the inmost heart that manifests in the aspiration expressed in the ancient Sanskrit prayer-affirmation:
Lead me from the unreal to the Real,
Lead me from from darkness to the Light,
Lead me from death to Immortality.
1) John 8:38-47
[Go back]
2) See Robe of Light for more on this. [Go back]
3) Isaiah 14:12-14 [Go back]
4) Galatians 2:20 [Go back]
5) Matthew 9:29 [Go back]
6) II Corinthians 13:5 [Go back]
7) Acts 8:23 [Go back]
8) Luke 15:18 [Go back]
