“Men seek salvation from an evil that they deem a living monster of the nether world; and they have gods that are but demons in disguise; all powerful, yet full of jealousy and hate and lust; whose favors must be bought with costly sacrifice of fruits, and of the lives of birds, and animals, and human kind. And yet these gods possess no ears to hear, no eyes to see, no heart to sympathize, no power to save. This evil is myth; these gods are made of air, clothed with shadows of a thought.
“The only devil from which men must be redeemed is self, the lower self. If man would find his devil he must look within; his name is self. If man would find his savior he must look within; and when the demon self has been dethroned the savior, Love, will be exalted to the throne of power. The David of the light is Purity, who slays the strong Goliath of the dark, and seats the savior, Love, upon the throne” (Aquarian Gospel 8:17-23).
Being in the grip of duality, it is only natural that those who follow the various religions of the world project that duality into their spiritual views and practices. Some see a great Duality in the form of God and The Devil; others, because of the fragmented state of their minds, project many forms of gods and demons and set about pleasing the gods to get what they want and protecting themselves from the misfortunes brought about by the demons. Rare are those that (really) see the One True beneath the illusions of the two and the many.
We will save the first clause of this to examine in the second half of our study, dealing with demons.
Demon gods
“Men…have gods that are but demons in disguise; all powerful, yet full of jealousy and hate and lust.” This to be expected, since the subconscious from which these projections emerge is indeed “all powerful, yet full of jealousy and hate and lust.” Egocentric human beings do not want to be like God, they want God to be like them. So they create “holy scriptures” in which God hates and harms and becomes angry at whatever He dislikes and is pleased and favorable to whatever He likes. In these scripture God threatens His potential displeasers and promises reward to potential pleasers. His entire state of mind and actions are determined by the character of His creations. He seems to have no mind or personality of His own; rather He is a bundle of instinctual reactions, a cosmic tyrant with the outlook of an overpowerful child Who, because of His eternity, simply does not have to care about either the character or the consequences of His actions. His creations, however, had better care of they know what is good for them.
Polytheists complicate matters, for their many gods not only act the same way in regard to humans, they also envy, hate, lust, and war among themselves, creating even more chaos in creation, often eclipsing humanity entirely and even destroying worlds. Their gods do to human beings things that in human society would result in jailing or worse. Both “God” and “gods” engage in thoughts, words, and deeds that their inspired scriptures declare reprehensible in their devotees. For example, in the ancient world rapists were executed while the gods raped women and sired demigods all over the place. The gods of the ancients seemed incapable of speaking a simple truth. But they ruled because they had the power. And the religions were mirrored in the unjust and chaotic societies in which those religions flourished.
Such gods (and “God”) were demons, dwelling in the nether world as much as the “devils” that populated the cosmologies of such devotees. For although said to dwell in the lower regions of the cosmos, they really dwelt in the subconscious of their worshippers. They were only projected symbols of the negative instincts with which the unconscious ever teems.
That they were demons was proven by their being self-centered entities “whose favors must be bought with costly sacrifice of fruits, and of the lives of birds, and animals, and human kind.” Both the negative drives of the subconscious and the gods that were their outward projections demand sacrifice and rob mankind of its rightful life. The true God is just the opposite, for He gives all things to us; His life continually flows in and around us. Through creation He has made Himself–as the Son of God, the Christ–the Cosmic Sacrifice for the benefit of man. And His messengers have likewise sacrificed themselves totally for the uplift of humanity. The Devil, on the other hand, exists only to take, since the only way to maintain his shadow existence is to live off of real life. So when he parades as God he demands obedience and sacrifice–and so do his servants, the real enemies of humanity. The Devil and his “angels” mock and deride the self-sacrificing mercy and love of God and his saints as folly and weakness. Strength and domination is their desire. When they die, they become discarnate fiends, real demons, until they are born again as human beings; and even then they often carry over their demonic ways. Consider the Nazis.
The vampire is a powerful symbol of the inner Satan and his devils. The antithesis of the vampire is Christ–especially Jesus the Christ. The vampire kills human beings by taking their blood so he can live. Jesus died for humanity and gives them His Blood so they might live. This is why the crucifix is agonizing to the vampire; its very sight negates the evil impulse that keeps him “alive.” Both the inner and the outer demons that men call gods are “soul eaters.”
Deaf, blind, heartless, and powerless
“And yet these gods possess no ears to hear, no eyes to see, no heart to sympathize, no power to save. This evil is myth; these gods are made of air, clothed with shadows of a thought.” We must ever keep this in mind lest the gods/demons and their votaries gull us into accepting their reality and engaging in battle with them, and by our doing so give them the power to keep existing and even overcome us. Ignoring them is the only realistic response. Darkness has no being at all; we do not fight the dark, we just bring in the light. This truth is the thing the god-demons hate the most. That is why evil “Christianity” teaches people that they are evil and sinners by nature; that they cannot help doing wrong, that all they need to is “believe in Jesus.” This is foul blasphemy of God and of His image and likeness, humanity.
When we have faith in evil we have disbelief in good. Belief in “the Devil” destroys faith in God. By “belief” I mean belief in his power and ultimate reality. The Devil and demons do exist, but only as modes of behavior and polarity–they really have no self-existence. A good laugh is the best exorcism.
The supreme Satan is our own ego; it, too, has “no ears to hear, no eyes to see, no heart to sympathize, no power to save” or destroy. But as the final clause informs us, they are thought; and thought-power is great. Since, though, the thought is ours, we need only turn it around from darkness to the light and poof! there goes the Devil and his angels. I do not say it is easy, but it is simple.
The real demon…
“Men seek salvation from an evil that they deem a living monster of the nether world,” but that in actuality is only the petty foolishness of their own mind magnified into gigantic proportions by the false lens of the ego. “If man would find his devil he must look within; his name is self. If man would find his savior he must look within; and when the demon self has been dethroned the savior, Love, will be exalted to the throne of power.” What has been presented here is just incredible. Both the ego and the spirit are within; so those who turn their awareness within will no doubt first meet the ego instead of the spirit. They will encounter the Devil instead of God. For this reason many people quit meditation and denounce it as evil, since they met their inner demon instead of divinity.
It is hard to accept that we are both our own devil and our own savior, Christ. We like to hear that we are Christ, but we do not much like hearing that we are Satan. But why worry? The devil part is an illusion–only the Christ is real. Yet we must banish that illusion to reveal the Christ. We must dethrone ego, the Antichrist, and enthrone the spirit, the Christ in us the hope of glory (Colossians 1:27). When we clear out every mote of darkness, every speck of duality and ignorance and ego, then the Light of Christ, the love of God made manifest, will sit upon the throne. “And I heard a loud voice saying in heaven, Now is come salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of his Christ: for the accuser of our brethren is cast down, which accused them before our God day and night” (Revelation 12:10). “And he that sat upon the throne said, Behold, I make all things new” (Revelation 21:5).
Read the next section in the Aquarian Gospel for Yogis: About God the Tao