The Gospel According to Acharya S
The Devil is Divine
To state the thing in brief, priests and politicians "colleagued together," and invented the Devil and his domicile as
scare-crows to frighten the ignorant superstitious masses into quiet, submissive allegiance to the ecclesiastical tribunals, namely, "the
powers that be."
Kersey Graves
Do you know where the word "devil" comes from? Do you know how the Devil was created? Yes, created, because that is precisely
what has happened. As opposed to something real and set in stone that mankind has merely perceived, the Devil is a creation of man's mind. Take,
for example, the current impression of a man with horns and a pitchfork. This image is a compilation of characters from other mythologies,
incorporating elements of the Greek god of nature Pan, for instance. What these statements mean is that the Devil is a not a real person of
demonic nature running around the universe terrorizing people with "his" godlike but evil powers. Although there is evil in the cosmos--even
Absolute Evil--the current construct that humans perceive as the Evil One is an anthropomorphic version based in mythology. True evil is not
personal, not a single being. It is merely a quality that can be possessed by anyone.
The Origin of Evil
If you ask a believer the question, "If God is so good, why is there so much evil in the world?", he or she will invariably
answer, "Because of the Devil." If you ask that believer, "Who created the Devil?", he may then say that the Devil has always existed, not really
wanting to ascribe such a malevolent creation to the all-good God. Of course, that eternal existence puts the Devil on par
with God, who was the original being from which all creation comes. Well then, the faithful may say, the Devil was one of God's creatures that
"got away from him" or rebelled--the evil angel, as it were. But that nonetheless makes the Devil one of God's creations, hardly a handiwork to
be proud of. It also implies that God is not very powerful, in that "he" can lose control of "his" creatures so easily.
How Religions Are Made
In reality, the formed beings currently portrayed as both God and the Devil are creations of the human being, not vice versa.
That this assertion is true can be shown quite simply by using as illustration the evolution of religion. So-called religion, as it turns out to those who have eyes to see and ears to hear, is not a divine revelation from any god person who
created everything and knows all. In actuality, "religion" is a construct that takes centuries and millennia to complete, beginning with various
perceptions of the natural and "supernatural" worlds around us.
The first perception we have of the "supernatural hand of God" is elemental: the wind, the heat, the cold, the light, the
dark, the rain, etc. Because the elements seem to have a mind of their own, human beings love to anthropomorphize them and give them human
qualities. Thus, purely atmospheric phenomena come to be viewed as expressions of a humanlike entity with a mind of its own. We ascribe
personality characteristics to the various entities we build up around the elements. For example, Zeus, the Greek sky-god father-figure, takes on
a thunder-and-lighting personality.
This business is how "religion" evolves. Although "religious" fanatics may violently oppose
this notion, all religion is basically mythology built upon limited human perceptions of what is in the universe, and not upon concrete and
absolute truths. Absolute truth has no form; hence, whenever "God" is portrayed as having form, whether human or animal, male or female, black,
white or polka-dotted, it is not the Truth.
In looking at religion, what we find around the globe is a core mythos based on atmospheric elements and planetary bodies or
other natural forces with a variety of forms they take on. In places where the skin of the inhabitants is red, the god may have red skin, and
where the skin is white, the god may have white skin, and so on. It is completely arbitrary and not based on actual fact.
What happens is that different groups of people--and there have been very many cultures and groups on this planet--bring their
distinct interpretations of deity to each other, whether through friendly merger or violent conquest, the latter of which seems to be the norm.
During this merger process, the predominant people will force their particular, ethnocentric, egocentric and gender-centric interpretation of
deity upon the conquered peoples. At the same time, they will also either make the conquered deities into lesser gods, godmen, heroes or
patriarchs in their own pantheon, or they will turn the conquered deity or deities into demons and devils.
The Origin of the Words "Demon" and "Devil"
In fact, the very words "demon" and "devil" have been vilified in just such a way. Before cultural judgment turned these words
into something wholly other than their original meaning, both words represented entities that were considered sacred and holy. The word "devil"
comes from the Sanskrit/Hindi word "deva," which refers to the good angels of the Hindu pantheon. The root of both "devil" and "deva" means
"divine." It was only after Zoroaster and the Persians conquered Hindu territory that they felt compelled to make the Hindu gods into devils!
Thus, the Hindu devas became the Persians devils. As Rev. George Cox says, in Mythology of the Aryan Nations (Longmans, 1870, pp. 355,
363):
"The Devas of the [Hindu] Veda are the bright gods who fight on the side of Indra; in the [Zoroastrian] Avesta the word
has come to mean an evil spirit, and the Zoroastrian was bound to declare that he ceased to be a worshipper of the daevas...
"...the word devil passed into an immense number of forms, the Gothic tieval, diuval, diufal, the Icelandic djofull,
Swedish djevful, all of them, together with the Italian, French, and Spanish forms carrying back the word diaboloV
[diabolos] to the same root which furnished the Latin Divus, Djovis, and the Sanskrit deva."
Likewise, the word "demon" comes from the Greek word "daimon" or "daemon," which originally referred to beings of divine,
godly nature--gods, not evil spirits. "Daemon" was also corrupted and changed into having a evil connotation through the same religion-making
process. It had nothing to do with an accurate discernment of any genuine evil spirit. It was simply Christian
propaganda used to brainwash the followers of the Greek and Roman religions into rejecting their old gods in favor of the newly created
Christian character. As has been shown, this priestcraft is a very old trick. It was done rather well this time, with the subsequent burning of
millions of books that would have revealed the ruse.
In God's Name--Not the Devil's
In light of the fact that so-called holy scriptures record one barbarous, murderous act after another attributed to "God," it
is not surprising that the "Devil" was once considered divine! Perhaps the Devil brings peace, and not a sword, to humanity. Considering how many
people have been killed in the name of God and not the Devil, maybe the world is worshipping the wrong entity. Perhaps the Indians and the Greeks
were right in the first place. Think about it: No army has ever marched off to war in the name of the Devil.
The Gospel According to Acharya S
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