Satan-The Collective Ego

The following is an excerpt of an article that I gleaned in my cyber travels:

I feel it undoes some old religious teachings and also addresses some the excesses of metaphysical and Eastern thought as well.

I offer this kind of material for perusal in the spirit of contemplation, not as absolutes that must be embraced.

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Quote:

The serpent is the symbol of the deepest knowledge within creaturehood; it also contains the impetus to rise above or beyond itself in certain respects. Eve, rather than Adam, for example, eats of the fruit first because it was the intuitive elements of the race, portrayed in the story as female, that would bring about this initiation; only afterward could the ego, symbolized by Adam, attain its new birth and its necessary alienation. The tree of knowledge, then, did indeed offer its fruits - "good and bad" - because this was the first time there were any kinds of choices available, and free will.

There were other tales, some that have not come down to you in which Adam and Eve were created together, and in a dream fell apart into the separate male and female. In your particular legend Adam appears first. The woman being created from his rib symbolized the necessary emergence, even from the new creature, of the intuitive forces that will always come forth - for without that development the race would not have attained self-consciousness.

Good and evil then simply represented the birth of choices, initially in terms of survival, where earlier instinct alone had provided all that was needed. In deeper terms, there is still another meaning that mirrors all of those apparent divisions that occur as All That Is seemingly separates portions of itself from itself, scattering its omnipotence into new patterns of being, that in your terms, remember their source and look back to it longingly, while still glorying in the unique individuality that is their own.

The story of the fall, the rebellious angels, and leader Satan who becomes the devil - all of this refers to the same phenomena on a different level. Satan represents - in terms of this story - the part of All That Is, or God, who stepped outside of Himself, so to speak, and became earthbound with His creatures, offering them the free will and choice that previously had not been available.

Many hold certain ideas about good and evil that are very hampering. These may be old beliefs in new clothing. You may think they are quite free, only to discover that you hold old ideas but have simply put new terms to them."

You may be quite able to see through the distortions of conventional Christianity. You may have changed your ideas to such an extent that you can see little similarity between your current ones and those of the past. Some of you may believe in the theories of Buddhism, for example, or of another Eastern philosophy.

The differences between any of those systems of thought and Christianity may be so apparent that the similarities escape you. You may follow one of the schools of Buddhism in which great stress is laid upon the denial of the body, discipline of the flesh, and the avoidance of desire. These elements are quite characteristic of Christianity also, of course, but they may appear more palatable, exotic, or reasonable coming from a source foreign to your childhood education. So you may leap from one to the other, shouting emancipation and feeling yourself quite free of old limiting ideas.

Philosophies that teach denial of the flesh must ultimately end up preaching a denial of the self and building a contempt for it, because even though the soul is crouched in muscle and bone it is meant to experience that reality, not to refute it.

All such dogmas use artificial guilt, and natural guilt is distorted to serve those ends. In whatever terms, the devotee is told that there is something wrong with earthly experience. You are, therefore, considered evil as a self in flesh by virtue of your very existence.

This alone will cause adverse experience, making you reject the very basis of your own framework of experience. You will consider the body as a thing, a fine vehicle but not in itself the natural living expression of your being in material form. Many such Eastern schools also stress - as do numerous spiritualistic schools - the importance of the "unconscious levels of the self", and teach you to mistrust the conscious mind.

The concept of nirvana and the idea of heaven are two versions of the same picture, the former being one in which individuality is lost in the bliss of undifferentiated consciousness and the latter one in which still-conscious individuals perform mindless adoration. Neither theory contains an understanding of the functions of the conscious mind, or the evolution of consciousness - or for that matter, certain aspects of greater physics. No energy is ever lost. The expanding universe theory applies to the mind as well as to the universe.

However, these philosophies can lead you to a deep mistrust of both your body and your mind. You are told that the spirit is perfect, and so you can try to live up to a standard of perfection quite impossible to achieve. The failure adds to the sense of guilt.

You attempt then to further banish the characteristic enjoyment of your own creaturehood, denying the lusty spirituality of your flesh and the strong present corporeal leanings of your soul. You will try to rid yourself of very natural emotions, and so be cheated of their great spiritual and physical motion. On the other hand, some leaders may give little consideration to such issues, but still be deeply convinced of the misery of the human condition, focusing upon all the "darker" elements, seeing the world's destruction ever closer to hand without really examining the beliefs that arouse such constant feelings.

They may find it easy to cluck their tongues at obvious fanatics who cry out for God's vengeance, and speak about the world's end in brimstone and ashes. They may be as equally convinced, however, of man's basic unworthiness, and so of course of their own. In daily life such people will concentrate upon negative events, store them up, and unfortunately cause personal experience that will seem to quite reinforce the basic ideas.

The you that you consider yourself is never annihilated. Your consciousness is not snuffed out, nor is it swallowed, blissfully unaware of itself, in some nirvana. You are as much a part of nirvana now as you will ever be.

In Buddhism, nirvana - a state of heavenly perfection- is achieved by the extinction of individual life and the soul's absorption into the supreme spirit.

There is nothing more deadly than nirvana. At least your Christian concepts give you some twilight hopes of a stifling and boring paradise, where your individuality can at least express itself, and nirvana extends no such comfort. Instead it offers you the annihilation of your personality in a bliss that destroys the integrity of you being an expression of Source. Run from such bliss!"