All this time our culture tends to blame an entity called the "devil" for our misfortunes or simply when everything doesn't go our way. That devil has different names in different cultures: Mara for Buddhism; Iblīs for Islam; Kali Yuga for Hinduism; and of course Satan for Christianity. Is there really such an entity? Perhaps yes, because different cultures from different parts of the world came up with this idea. But where is the devil?
In my childhood days I always wondered if this evil entity really exists. I remember my high school teacher's answer to this. He said that man is naturally good, so, why would a man commit such cruel acts? There is only one reason: There is Satan, the devil that tempts us to do evil. Then I asked myself: Why don't I sense this Satan? Then as I think of this question, as if knowing what I was thinking, my teacher said: Satan is invisible to us because he is like God or more like the angels. He is formerly the right hand of God; but in the thirst for power he betrayed God. Now he is trying to tempt people to join him in his struggle against God. Be careful he is always watching you to seize an opportunity to make you do evil things!
Back then I didn't know why, but I felt a strong sense of uneasiness. It feels like something is missing in this story. Despite that my life went on believing in what my teacher said. In the long years of blaming the devil for my urges to do bad things, suddenly one incident happened. One of my supposedly calm teachers went berserk in our class. Perhaps he got angry because our class scanned the test paper results way before he permitted us to do so. While he was shouting at us so intensely it felt strange because we never experienced this kind of outburst coming from him. We believe that he was supposed to be this patient and humorous teacher. However during that moment we see a different side to him. To me it feels like it is not a different side to him but it was a totally different person. Surprisingly, I was not overwhelmed by the anger of this teacher. Then I had this rhetorical question: Was he possessed by the devil? Maybe we did not see it coming but perhaps we too were possessed by the devil to generate an opportunity for the devil to come in to our teacher and create this "sinful" situation. It was a striking speculation for me at that time, because I knew how this so called devil worked. But after a few moments our teacher walk out the third party observation was blown away by a realization of what our current situation is. I suddenly feared what may happen next, so I totally forgot what I was thinking earlier.
My picture of the true nature of the devil is comes into form starting from there. That time I had a notion: the devil is not tempting us from the outside but it comes into us or possesses us to do what they called "sinful" deeds. But again it took me a few more years before I realize the true nature of the devil.
After I got into college I became this person who hates the world for it's corruption and violence. I realized how absurd the history of mankind is. Scan your history books and see how an ideology of a person killed more than 100 million people. We can see that when a person is given absolute power he becomes absolutely corrupt and violent.
Back then I viewed the world then as a web of wrong doings. The capitalist creating products that harms our health for the sake of profit. Presidents who put themselves into position just to gain more money and more influence, ignoring their real role of service for the country. The world bank who seems to be helping poor countries by lending money but ended up making them "poorer" by plunging them into debt and forever chaining them to the world bank. Wars that are supposedly a last resort to stop violence is frequently used for various political and religious reasons. All of this things done by those with power causes economic downfalls. This economic downfall plunges humans into poverty. This poverty causes families to crumble. In third world countries parents are force to go abroad just to support their family; other parents goes to work for so long that they can no longer take care of their children. Perhaps, the worst case is for people to do crimes in order to feed their family. All this pain and suffering in the world is caused by the way those in people organize the political and economic balance of the world. I don't how the system really works but so far it only brought about more poverty and did not lessen the wars. This only means that this so called action to balance the political and economic side of the world is a means of expansion of influence and income for those in power.
At the moment I saw all this I had a conclusion: There is no entity outside us called the devil, humans themselves are the one causing this madness. Humans themselves are the devils. This web of suffering and violence is caused nothing more by the innate behavior of humans: greed. At that time I began to hate the human race including myself for being such greedy creatures. I thought to myself perhaps humans will destroy themselves in a nuclear war if this greed cannot be stopped.
For me at that time life is like a nightmare because I believed that it is built in human nature to be the devil themselves. Fortunately, it only took me a while to wake up from this nightmare. As my life goes on I began to notice again the act of little compassion people are giving off to others. I did not notice all this when I was in my nightmare. Perhaps my pessimistic view of life blinded me from this. But as time goes by that rigid pessimism is little be little weakening. And the main wake up is an incident with my family. My family got in the quarrel about the issue of money which is very grave for us. At that moment I experienced a similar feeling with my teacher in high school. The third person perspective gave me this chance to see what is really happening. The issue here is all about the lack of money. Blaming and demands against each other sprout out of desperation to solve the situation.
The situation is really kind of strange and absurd because I know what they are all really feeling and thinking and yet none of their words sink in with that. It appears to me that they are not themselves. They are not able to know what they really feel and they just follow this instinctive impulse to defend the position they are in. It is quite strange but in that position dwells a false sense of self. And that artificial self, for some reason that does not want to lose. It craves for more arguing and fighting; more pain and suffering. This artificial self prolongs the fight or make it even worst to generate more separation and evoke more pain and suffering. Now I see it. That is why this argument is lasting so long because this artificial self needs arguments. I don't know where this came from but it seems like an entity inside them that goes into active mode whenever there is an opportunity to generate pain and suffering. And now it goes active and everyone is possessed by this. The need to be right, the need to hurt each other, the need to infect others with negativity, all of this is not in their nature. It is really strange because I have this knowing that artificial self is not really them. Deep inside me there is this knowing that my parents and siblings are not this kind of people. I have felt it. For the longest time that I was with my family I felt each of their genuine self. Then I realize there is a simple solution to this problem; make them realize what they truly feel. I had this intuition that if I just bring about a little light so that they can really see what each of them is feeling, their genuine self will emerge. Then this fight constructed by their artificial self will be dissolved and rendered meaningless by their genuine self.
Then out of the moment I shouted some words that shows directly how each person feels. Then suddenly a brief moment of silence comes. The feeling of heaviness goes away and it seems that they recognize the artificial self inside them. It's kind of funny. They make this face that seems to tell me: "What the heck was I doing?". Then suddenly after realizing what the real situation is, they began crying as if releasing all the tension brought about by the artificial self. Then I said to myself: "This is it. At last they are back to their genuine self." Then I began crying myself because of the relief I felt.
In that experience I had a realization. All human interactions are corrupted by this artificial sense of self. All arguments and misunderstandings comes from not recognizing this. Temptations and urges to do "bad" things comes from this artificial self. Whenever we get in a state of negativity we lose ourselves and that is the time we do this "bad" things. What happens when you lose yourself? Someone else takes over you that is not really you. Perhaps that is why when people do something bad, after that event they tell other that they were not themselves or the devil tempted them. Maybe there is a knowing deep inside them that the self that they are during the bad act was not really them, but some alien entity that took possession of them.
This realization made my doubts vanished. Everything made sense. The devil is not an invisible entity outside us. It is something built in the human psyche. Perhaps this psyche of humans live long before the concept of an evil entity was invented. It may be a long history on how this psyche was generated. But now that we have psychology we can clearly recognize that. Perhaps it is another personality that we created to cope with pain and suffering. Unfortunately this personality took over us and became a part of our sense of self. This artificial sense of self has grown to be a monster; for humans were not able to recognize for the longest time. Unknowingly, we activate this artificial self whenever we feel a sense of lack because we believe that it is the only way to cope with the pain and suffering that the sense of lack brought about. Since this artificial self's only role is to cope with suffering it generates more suffering in order to fulfill it's role more effectively. That is why something in humans looks for pain and suffering, its because of this artificial self, that lives only for that purpose. This self has grown so much in us that we believe that this is part of us; not knowing that this is like a split personality.
This artificial self is not us, it is a dysfunction in us. A dysfunction that became a part of the collective human psyche and now everyone considers it as normal. But how can this be normal? Craving for pain and suffering is that really normal for humans? No, pain and suffering is a part of life; however, it is not innate for humans to crave for it. It is not in our nature to crave suffering we created that self of ours that wants it. This craving is artificial, generated by the monster we created. This is the so called devil. Ancient people already knows this. That is why there are a lot of teachings that points to the concept of avoiding or destroying this devil; for there is already a knowing back then that this devil is not natural. But now we can discover that this devil is within us.
“The heart of man is the place the devil dwells in; I feel sometimes a hell within myself”
-Thomas Browne, Sr.
The devil is in the human psyche. We can recognize and dissolve it by recognizing that we are not that devil but the one who is aware of that. With this we can stop creating suffering for ourselves. Let's stop creating hell here on earth and perhaps if we do that we can create heaven here on earth.
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