Since, for some strange reason we are in "show and tell" mode relative to the concept of "Satan", here is something of what Adi Da has to say on the subject.
LOVE OF THE TWO-ARMED FORM (1985)
Part I: The Regenerative Principle
CHAPTER 2: The Taboo against the Superior Man
Dracula and Frankenstein: The Ancient Superior Man as Scapegoat for the Modern Inferior Man
Part III
<<<(3.1) The "Devil" is nothing more than the Divine Reality in its Function as the Destroyer and ultimate Destiny of the sacrifice of all beings and worlds. He is "Siva," the image of the Divine Person carrying a trident.3 The free religious or spiritually awakened individual is not only himself restored to God, but his higher understanding restores aspects of God or the Godhead to Itself. When "sin" is forgiven, or when self is purified of its separative motivations, what was previously the "Devil's work" (by virtue of egoic, fearful, and self-possessed fascination) becomes a matter of ordinary responsibility and sacrifice.
(3.2) In modern literature, one of the most potent Satanic images is that of Count Dracula, in the novel by Bram Stoker. But the pervasive evil of this character and his deeds is itself only an expression of an inverted sense of the sexual function in Man. And, curiously, the story itself represents a cultural memory of the whole taboo against the association between the sexes during the menstrual flow of the female.
(3.3) In earlier times and places, men generally avoided social and sexual contact with women during the days of the menses. However, those who were mature and representative of the higher human type were often initiated by the elders into methods for transforming various "negative" sexual indications into positive and regenerative means. Such methods are reflected in the descriptions of sexual communion in this book. Among such methods or approaches was one regarding contact with a woman during her monthly flow. The man who was truly prepared could embrace a woman during the time of menses and not only avoid enervating imbalance but actually benefit from the increased available force of the female (or the feminine, relatively passive, or "negative" and "left-sided"4 pole in the polarized play of sex).
(3.4) Male individuals trained in the greater arts and sacrificial responsibilities of sex knew not only how to compensate for and benefit by social and sexual relations during the menses of women and wife, but also how to use the force of the female in general, for regenerative purposes in the male body. And initiated females likewise knew how to use the force of the male for regenerative purposes in the female body. This yoga was common to certain classes in China, India, and elsewhere in more ancient times. In general, it was most often men who were trained in these methods, but there were frequent cases of women who were also trained in the positive regenerative sexual association with men. Whether ideal sex relations were considered to be polygamous or monogamous, the regenerative or Life-conservative practices related to sexuality were common throughout the ancient world.
(3.5) In modern times, the positive, regenerative, higher, and esoteric approach to sexual relations and the sexual mechanism has become obstructed by dualistic and childishly inverted views of human life. The war of "flesh" and "spirit" has brought the world of mankind close to oblivion, and the last quarter of the twentieth century is perhaps going to be the ultimate test of our capacity to liberate ourselves from this profound lie and disturbance. The self-divided man is one in whom the psycho-physiological mechanisms of the left and right sides of brain and body are opposed to one another rather than polarized toward one another. Such a one originates Gods and Devils, Worlds and Heavens and Hells from his own body-mind, and he lives his sexual character, male or female, as a principle of conflict with others and of independent satisfaction of self.
(3.6) Thus, Count Dracula, the "Devil," is the product of our antisexual, inverted, self-divided psychology. In him, the ancient superior man is made to wear the guise of Evil, and our conventional psyche rejects him and all that he represents to us, both consciously and unconsciously. But if we understand ourselves and cease to be self-divided, antisexual, alternately at war with the body and with "Heaven," then we may also see the superior and even Divine qualities of Man underneath the superimposed vulgarities of Dracula.
(3.7) Dracula-apart from the disgusting and negative disguise given him by the modern mind-is simply an ancient type of the superior man. He is a man who is free to embrace a woman during her time of menstrual imbalance, or greater force. He appears in the form of a bat-a blackened or evil inversion of a bird, a dove, the mind or "soul" of Man. He embraces his lover with passionate intent, as a life and death matter-and mysteriously, suddenly, like the Holy Spirit descending on the future mother of an Incarnation of Truth. But he is made to kill, rather than to give and to receive Life in the positive sense. He seeks the vulnerable place of life and blood, at the throat, in the manner of an animal. But, truly, this is only an inverted acknowledgment of the yogic passageway between the trunk and the brain, and the necessity for the sexual force and the higher blood chemistry to rise to the brain and to the entire body of the regenerated individual. The white canine teeth, the eye teeth of Dracula, penetrate the vulnerable throat of his lover, again in animal fashion, but symbolizing in an inverted way the act of sexual intercourse. The pervasive presence of blood, the association of penetration or sexual intercourse with blood, is a sign of the ancient yogic practice of coupling during the menses. Dracula's own bloody mouth, with white phallic teeth exposed, duplicates the image of the sexual scene, while also symbolizing his own harmonization of opposites within himself, thus giving him the power of regeneration or relative immortality. And Dracula is given life every time he enters into embrace-so that he even becomes perfectly regenerated, or immortal, as long as he continues his habit of sexual love. All the rest of the story is a pseudo-Christian accretion that mainly serves the whole notion of anti-sex and anti-Life.
(3.8) Modern man, in the conventional guise of "Everyman," fears the idea of taking responsibility for his own life, and the Process of Life itself, as it is altogether and everywhere displayed. Thus, another Gothic tale, by Mary Shelley, about the Frankenstein monster, manages to express the same psychology that inverts the ancient superior man into the "Monster," Dracula. Doctor Frankenstein, in the ancient manner, takes bold responsibility for life, and, by acquiring the lightning power, or Life-Force, of a storm, enlivens a corpse. But Doctor Frankenstein is made monstrous, along with his "Monster," by the inverted, antisexual and childish, subhuman mind of modern Man.
(3.9) Truly, we must awaken to the ancient responsibility for sex and all the ordinary powers of Life in our own bodies. We must do this fearlessly, and return to the culture of a superior humanity, organized via a moral and esoteric order of physical and superphysical sacrifices of the individual. We must again accept our responsibility for life and death, and fearlessly embrace the bodily process of our existence, so that we may live humanly, and so that we may Realize the true Destiny of Man, which only comes through literal sacrifice and Translation of the whole and entire and individual body-mind into the All-Pervading and Transcendental Divine Radiance wherein we all appear.
(3.10) In the Old Testament it is suggested that Man exercise dominion over beasts and growing things. This is an acknowledgment that Man, in the form of every human individual, is not only functionally or structurally more and greater than anything else in the natural or elemental world, but that his happiness and even his survival depend on his acceptance of responsibility for everything in himself that is common to the rest of the natural world.
(3.11) Thus, it is not merely that he is naturally superior to cattle, snakes, vegetables, and the elements, and, therefore, should force all such things into degraded submission to his own aggressive and stupid will to eat and use and do everything, and wait for understanding to come in the future, while the Cosmic Parent meanwhile keeps everything in order. Rather, the superiority of Man is in his responsibility to acknowledge that he is not merely a natural or vital creature, like the rest of the natural world. Man is structurally more and greater than the vital processes, and, therefore, he must understand, and accept responsibility for a right and Lawful relationship to what is merely vital, in himself as well as in the world.
(3.12) If the individual does not accept active responsibility for his vital-physical and emotional-sexual functions, then he is reduced to these. And if he is not responsible for these functions in his own case, he will inevitably deal irresponsibly and destructively with all vital creatures and the natural domain itself.
(3.13) Our science, technology, politics, and social experience bear this out. Mankind is, at this stage, generally still in the subhuman levels of adaptation, wherein responsibility for the vital functions and the vital domain is largely absent, because men and women have not sufficiently differentiated themselves from a sense of exclusive identity with the vital and elemental dimensions of themselves and the world. It is not that we must, as religious and spiritual cultists generally suggest, identify exclusively with what is not at all vital and elemental. Such would lead us into subjectivist illusions. However, we must realize that we are structurally more and greater than what is merely vital and elemental, even while we also realize that what is vital and elemental is a part of us, and the very part for which we must assume immediate and intelligent responsibility.
(3.14) In our subhuman and childish condition, more or less exclusively identified with vital and physical experience, we tend to fear and avoid responsibility for the lower aspects of experience and of the world itself. Hence, we "play" with everything, but we cannot fully control our effects. We slaughter, exploit, poison, and spoil. We achieve power over great natural forces in the environment, but we cannot be the loving master of sex, or population, or industrial wastes, or international politics. Therefore, we are a destructive influence in the natural world, where beasts and elements consistently demonstrate an instinctual economy and harmony that puts our human vulgarities to shame.
(3.15) The old orders of religion are the cults of this same childish irresponsibility. They support fear, dependence, and subhuman levels of adaptation and awareness. They do not do this altogether intentionally, but they do so effectively, by making consolation, mythical belief, child-parent imagery, and personal survival the core of the religious way, rather than self-sacrifice, radical spiritual intelligence, and higher adaptation.
(3.16) Thus, higher or superior Man is present in this world only in the case of the rare individual, rather than in the form of the human world as a whole. And such an uncommon individual is regarded suspiciously by all. The responsibilities and the Vision he presumes make him appear like a "mad scientist" or an "evil" man of mysterious powers, in league with the "Devil." All of this because the usual man refuses to be responsible for all that he must master if he is to be truly human and pass on to his Divine Destiny.
(3.17) Sexual taboos and the generalized sense that antisexual views and habits are humanly and even cosmically obligatory and correct are passed on from generation to generation by many means. The most influential means are those of the withholding of bodily and sexual communications. We only show and tell our children what we ourselves are not afraid to be and know. The rest is hidden behind the withholding of bodily and emotional intimacy as well as the absence of positive verbal communication about the whole affair of incarnate human experience, including sexuality.
(3.18) The entire social and cultural game of antisexual, "spirit against flesh" education is so monstrous, so opposed to incarnate happiness and human responsibility, as well as the ultimate transcendental sacrifice of the individual body-mind through moral and spiritual processes, that it must be considered the primary social and even philosophical issue of our time.
(3.19) We must all awaken from our loveless one-sidedness. The deluded religious and spiritual cultists are perpetually at war with the bodily life, choosing the brain-mind as if it were the Infinite. And the equally deluded anti-religionists, salt-of-the-earth political fanatics, and worldly humanistic social mechanics or scientific technocrats are perpetually at war with the higher, psychic, and spiritual dimensions of human experience.
(3.20) Children of parents of the "spirit" are deprived of the energy of their incarnation, fastened to inward nonsense and the vision of a self-divided mortality that has no pleasure except away from here. And children of parents of the "flesh" are deprived of the powers of higher adaptation, fastened to cycles of endless work and reproduction, and the vision of utopian solutions that only serve those who happen to be alive when the great Future State comes.
(3.21) We must awaken and adapt to the conditions of the whole and entire body-mind, and to the Way of truly human existence, which is made through personal, moral, and higher mental or spiritual sacrifice, or love. Then we will not only live in Truth, but we will withhold nothing from our children, who must always be permitted a complete bodily understanding that corresponds to their level of functional awareness, and who must be included in a culture of truly human adaptation, in which not exploitation but gradual responsibility is the key to human growth. >>>
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Notes
1. Count Dracula is the central figure in the nineteenth century novel Dracula by Bram Stoker. Possessed of supernatural powers, Dracula derived his strength from the blood of beautiful women, which he obtained by biting them on the neck. In the popular lore that has developed around him, Dracula is depicted as a powerful but hideous figure who often takes the shape of a bat, which, like Dracula himself, avoids the sunlight and is active only at night.
2. Doctor Frankenstein, from the nineteenth century novel by Mary Shelley, is an eccentric scientist who harnesses the electrical energy in Nature in order to bring to life a "monster" of a man whom he assembled from human cadavers. Like Dracula, Doctor Frankenstein and his monster are popular archetypes of fascinating but threatening heroes-the hidden and conventionally unacceptable self-images of Man.
3. In the Hindu Trinity, Siva is the Destroyer aspect of the One Divine Person. (Brahma is the Creator aspect and Vishnu, the Sustainer.) The trident is associated with Siva, as it is also with Satan. (There is also a higher or perfect interpretation of Siva, as the Radiant Existing One, the Absolute Divine, Who Includes and yet Transcends the Trinity of Divine Functions.)
4. The "left side" of the bodily being expresses and corresponds to the inward-turning, upward-moving, passive, receptive, emotional-psychic quality or force of bodily life. It is in opposition or play with the "right side," which expresses and corresponds to the verbally or analytically motivated outward-turning, downward-moving or life-oriented, active, penetrative, vital-physical, expansive quality or force.
The left side is controlled by the right hemisphere of the brain, the locus of the psychic, spatial, nonverbal, holistic-intuitive mental functions (whereas the left hemisphere, which controls the right side of the body, is the locus of the intellectual, linear, verbal, analytical-deductive mental functions)
Adi Da criticizes both the objectively oriented ways of Western religion, philosophy, and culture and the subjectively oriented ways of Eastern religion, philosophy, and culture as imbalanced expressions of the whole body of Man. |
