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Preface
5 Planes of Existence
Introduction
Five Planes of Manifestation
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AHRIMAN, OR AHARMAN
A symbol of the lower principle, the opposite of
the Higher. The relative or illusive self during manifestation which
implies duality.
"The destruction which Ahriman produced in the world was terrible.
Nevertheless the more evil he tried to do, the more he ignorantly
fulfilled the counsels of the Infinite, and hastened the development
of good." - Zoroastrian System.
Upon the planes of form and illusion the havoc produced among the
lower qualities was terrific, and the transformations which occurred
were innumerable and various. Nevertheless, the lower principle
unwittingly acting for good, although from low aims and unworthy
ideals, the counsels of the Most High are established and fulfilled;
and so all is done in the interests of the great Law of the
development of the soul. The duality of good and evil is a primal,
necessary means for the soul's experience, exercise and growth.
"God is not neutral between goodness and badness, nor is His nature
compounded of the two. For since evil is inwardly self-discordant
and self-destructive, and rebellious against the law of the whole,
its inclusion in the will of God means its complete transmutation
and suppression in its character as evil. It is plain that morality
is entirely occupied in striving to abolish the condition and object
of its own existence. For unless evil had at least a relative
existence as evil, there could be no morality. Evil is thus in a
sense cause, as being a necessary antecedent condition, of good, and
if so, it cannot be radically bad. Things solely evil,' says St.
Augustine, 'could never exist, for even those natures which are
vitiated by an evil will, so far as they are vitiated, are evil, but
so far as they are natures they are good,' or, as Plotinus says, '
vice is always human, being mixed with something contrary to
itself.' We believe that all that is good is preserved in the
eternal world, but not the evils which called it forth. For that
which is not only manifold but discordant cannot exist, as such, in
the life of God.' - W. R. INGE, Paddock Lectures, p. 132.
"If the Zoroastrians' good principle, called God by us, is taken as
a being; and their bad principle as only a condition privative; one
as a positive and real cause, the other as a bad possibility that
environs God from eternity, waiting to become a fact, and certain to
become a fact, whenever the opportunity is given,-it is even so. And
then it follows that, the moment God creates a realm of powers, the
bad possibility as certainly becomes a bad actuality, a Satan or
devil in esse; not a bad omnipresence over against God, and His
equal,—that is a monstrous and horrible conception,—but an
outbreaking evil, or empire of evil in created spirits, according to
their order. For Satan or the devil, taken in the singular, is not
the name of any particular person, neither is it a personation of
temptation or impersonal evil, as many insist; for there is really
no such thing as impersonal evil in the sense of moral evil; but the
name is a name that generalises bad persons or spirits, with their
bad thoughts and characters, many in one." - H. BUSHNELL, Nature and
the Supernatural, p. 88.
"Sin arises from our bondage,-from the dualism in our nature,-from
the opposition between the lower and the higher in our desires.
There are tendencies in our nature pulling one way while the moral
sense is pointing another. We have to fight for our promised land.
It is the only conceivable means whereby nobleness as distinct from
innocence could become part of our conscious experience." - R. J.
CAMPBELL, Serm., The Meaning of Retribution.
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