We are put upon this track by the statement in 2 Corinthians 1:20 that in Christ, all the promises of God are Yea and Amen — that is, essentially Affirmative; in other words, that all our growth towards Perfected Humanity must be by recognition of the Positive and not by recognition of the Negative. The prime fact of Negation is its Nothingness; but owing to the impossibility of ever divesting our Thought of its Creative Power, our conception of the Negative as something having a substantive existence of its own becomes a very real power indeed, and it is this power that the Bible calls "the Devil and Satan", the same old Serpent which we find beguiling Eve in the Book of Genesis. It is equally a mistake to say that there is an Evil Power or that there is not. Let us examine this paradox.
Whatever tends to expand and improve life is the Good, and therefore it is a primary intuition from which we cannot get away that the Infinite, Originating, and Maintaining Power can only be Good. But to find this absolute and unchangeable "Good", we require to get to the very bedrock of Being, to that as yet undifferentiated Life-in-itself inherent in, and forming one with, Universal Primordial Substance, of which I have spoken in a former chapter [see The Creative Power of Thought — Ed]. This All-underlying Life is forever expressing itself through Form; but the Form is not the Life, and it is from not seeing this that so much confusion arises.
The Universal Life-Principle, simply as such, finds expression as much in one form as another, and is just as active in the scattered particles which once made a human body as it was in those particles when they cohered together in the living man; this is merely the well-recognised scientific truth of the Conservation of Energy.
Now evolution is a continuous process of building up, and what makes the world of today a different world from that of the ichthyosaurus and the pterodactyl is the successive building up of more and more complex organisms, culminating at last in the production of Man as an organism both physically and mentally capable of expressing the Life of the Supreme Intelligence by means of the Individual Consciousness. Why, then, should not the Power, which is able to carry on the race as a perpetually improving expression of itself, do the same thing in the individual? That is the question with which we have to deal; in other words, why need the individual die? Why should he not go on in a perpetual expansion?
We have seen that whatever God is, the Devil must be the opposite, and therefore if God is the Power that builds up, the Integrating power, the Devil must be the power that pulls down, or the disintegrating power. Now what is disintegration? It is the breaking up of what was previously an "integer" or perfect Whole, the separation of its component parts. But what is it that causes the separation? It is still the Building-up Power, only the Law of Affinity by which it works is now acting from other centres, so as to build up other organisms.
Granted that this individualisation of motive could take place, there appears no reason why it should not continue to work on indefinitely. A tree is an organised centre of life, but without the intelligence which would enable it to individualise the motive of the Universal Life-Principle. It individualises a certain measure of the Universal Vital Energy, but it does not individualise the Universal Intelligence, and therefore when the measure of energy which it has individualised is exhausted, it dies; and the same thing happens with animals and men.
But as the particular intelligence advances in the recognition of itself as the individualisation of the Universal Intelligence, it becomes more and more capable of seizing upon the initial motive of the Universal Mind and giving it permanence. And supposing this recognition to be complete, the logical result would be never-ceasing and perpetually expanding individual life, thus bringing us back to those promises which I have quoted in the opening pages of this book, and reminding us of the Master's statement to the woman of Samaria that "the Father" is always "seeking" those who will worship Him in spirit and in truth; that is, those who can enter into the spirit of what "the Father" is aiming at.
But what happens in the absence of a perfect recognition of the Universal Motive is that sooner or later the machinery runs down, and the "motive" is transferred to other centres where the same process is repeated, and so Life and Death alternate with each other in a ceaseless round. The disintegrating process is the Universal Builder taking the materials for fresh constructions from a tenement without a tenant; that is, from an organism which has not reached the measure of intelligence necessary to perpetuate the Universal Motive in itself or, as the Master put it in the parable of the ten virgins, such as have not a supply of oil to keep their lamps burning [Matt. 25 — Ed].
This Negative disintegrating force is the Integrating Power working, so to say, at a lower level relatively to that at which it had been working in the organism that is being dissolved. It is not another power. Both the Bible and common sense tell us that ultimately there can be only ONE power in the Universe which must, therefore, be the Building-power, so that there can be no such thing as a power which is negative in itself; but it shows itself negatively in relation to the particular individual, if through want of recognition he fails to provide the requisite conditions for it to work positively.
Work it always will, for its very being is ceaseless activity; but whether it will act positively or negatively towards any particular individual depends entirely on whether he provides positive or negative conditions for its manifestation, just as we may produce a positive or negative current according to the electrical conditions which we supply.
We see, then, that what gives the Positive Power a negative action is the failure to intelligently recognise our own individualisation of it. In the lower forms of life this failure is inevitable, because they are not provided with an organism capable of such a recognition. In Man, the suitable organism is present, but he seeks knowledge only from past experiences which have necessarily been of the negative order, and does not, by the combined action of reason and faith, look into the Infinite for the unfoldment of limitless possibilities; and so he employs his intelligence to deny that which, if he affirmed it, would be in him the spring of perpetual renovation.
The word "Devil" means "false accuser" or "false affirmer", and this name is therefore in itself sufficient to show us that what is meant is the creative principle of Affirmation used in the wrong direction, a truth which has been handed down to us from old times in the saying "Diabolus est Deus inversus" [The Devil is God inverted — Ed.]. This is how it is that "the Devil" can be a vast impersonal power while at the same time having no existence, and so the paradox with which we started is solved. And now it becomes clear why we are told that "the Devil" has the power of death. It is not held by a personal individual, but results quite naturally from that ignorant and inverted Thought which is "the Spirit that denies".
This is the exact opposite to "the Son of God", in whom all things are only "Yea and Amen". That is the Spirit of the Affirmative and, therefore, the Spirit of Life; and so it is that the Son of God was manifested that "he might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the Devil, and deliver them who, through fear of death, were all in their lifetime subject to bondage" (Hebrews 2:14-15).
Now, taken in due order, Matter or Concrete Form is as necessary as Spirit itself, for without it there could be no manifestation of Spirit; in other words, there could be no existence at all. Seen from this point of view, there is nothing evil in it, but on the contrary, it may be compared to the lamp which concentrates the light and gives it a particular direction, and in this respects Matter is called "Lucifer" or the Light-bearer. This is Matter taking its proper place in the order of the Kingdom of Heaven. But if "Lucifer" falls from Heaven, becomes rebellious, and endeavours to usurp the place of "Sol", then it is the fallen Archangel and becomes "Satan", or that outermost planet which moves in an orbit whose remoteness from the warmth and light of the Sun renders all human life and joy impossible, a symbolism which we retain in our common speech when we say that a man has a saturnine aspect.
Thus "Satan" is the same old Serpent that deceived Eve; it is the wrong belief that sets merely secondary causes, which are only conditions, in the place of First Cause or that originating power of Thought which makes enlightened Man the image of his Maker and the Son of God. [For the all-important distinction between Causes and Conditions, see Chapter 9 of my Edinburgh Lectures on Mental Science.]
The words used for the Devil are, in the Greek, "Diabolos", and in the Hebrew, "Satan", both having the same general meaning of the Principle of Negation; but individual devils are called in the Hebrew, "sair", a hairy one, and in the Greek, "daimon", a spirit or shade, and these terms indicate evil spirits having personal identity.
Now without stopping to discuss the question whether there are orders of spiritual individuals which have never been human, let us confine our attention to the immense multitudes of disembodied human spirits which, under any hypothesis, must crowd the realms of the unseen. Can we suppose them all to be good? Certainly not, for we have no reason to suppose that mere severance from its physical instrument either changes the moral quality or expands the intelligence of the mind, and therefore if there is such a thing as survival after death at all, we cannot conceive of the other world otherwise than as containing millions upon millions of spirits in various stages of ignorance and ill-will, and consequently ready to make the most unscrupulous use of their powers where opportunity offers.
The time is fast passing away when it will be possible to regard such a conception as fantastic, and taking our stand simply upon the well-ascertained ground of thought-transference and telepathy, we may well ask, if such powers as these can be exercised by the spiritual entity while still clothed in flesh, why should they not be equally, or even more powerfully, employed by spirits out of the flesh?
This opens an immense field of inquiry which we cannot stop to investigate; but setting aside all other classes of evidence on this subject, the experimentally ascertained facts of telepathy bring to light possibilities which would explain all that the Bible says regarding the malefic influence of evil spirits. But the inference to be drawn from this is not that we should go in continual terror of obsession or other injury, but that we should realise that our position as "sons and daughters of the Almighty" places us beyond the reach of such malignant entities.
Our familiar principle, the Law of Attraction, is at work here also. Like attracts like; and if we would keep these undesirable entities at a distance, we can do so most effectually by centering our thoughts on those things which we know from their nature cannot invite evil influences. Let us follow the apostolic advice, and "whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue and if there be any praise, think on these things" (Philippians 4:8). Then, however far the Law of Attraction may extend from us into the other world, we may rest assured that it will only act to bring us in touch with that innumerable company of angels and spirits of just men made perfect, of whom we are told in the twelfth chapter of Hebrews, and who, because they are joined in the same worship of the ONE Divine Spirit as ourselves, can only act in accordance with the principles of harmony and love.
The Bible is by no means silent on this subject, but I may sum up its teaching in a few lines. It assumes, throughout, the possibility of intercourse [i.e. exchange of thoughts or feelings — Ed.] between men and spirits but, with the exception of the Master's temptation, where I understand a symbolic representation of the general principle of evil — the Power of the Negative which we have already considered — it should be remarked that all its record is of appearances of good angels as ministering spirits to heirs of salvation.
Nor were these visitants sought after by those who received them; their appearance was always spontaneous; and the solitary instance which the Bible records of a spirit appearing whom it was sought to raise by incantation is of the appearance of Samuel to Saul, announcing that his rebellion had culminated in this act of witchcraft, and this was followed by the suicide of Saul on the next day [1 Sam. 28 — Ed.].
If, then, our study of the Bible has led us to the conclusion that it is the statement of the Law of the inevitable sequences of cause and effect, this uniform direction of its teachings must indicate the presence of certain sequences in this connection also, although we may not yet understand them. This knowledge will come to us by degrees with the natural expansion of our powers, and when it arrives in its proper order, we shall be qualified to use it; and if we realise that there is a Universal Mind capable of guiding us at all, we may trust it not to keep back from us anything that it is necessary we should know at each stage of our onward journey. Do we want knowledge? The Master has promised that the Spirit of Truth shall guide us into all truth. "Should not a people seek unto their God instead of unto them that have familiar spirits?" (Isaiah 8:19). There is a reason at the back of all these things.
Then in both cases, the suggestion having been accepted, our own creative power of Thought does the rest and so prepares the way for receiving still further suggestions of the same sort. Now the antidote to all this is a right conception of God or the Universal Spirit of Life as the ONE and only originating Power. If we realise that relatively to us this Power manifests itself through the medium of our own Thought, and that in so doing it in no way changes its inherent quality of Life-givingness, this recognition must constitute such a supremely powerful and all-embracing Suggestion as must necessarily eradicate all suggestions of a contrary description; and so our Thought, being based on this Supreme Suggestion of Good, is certain to have a correspondingly life-giving character.
To recognise the essential One-ness of this Power is to recognise it as God, and to recognise its essential Life-givingness is to recognise it as Love, and so we shall realise in ourselves the truth that "God is Love". Then "if God be for us, who can be against us?" (Romans 8:31) and so we realise the further truth that "perfect love casteth out fear" (1 John 4:18), with the result that in our own world there can be no devil.