Does Hindu Godhead have a dark side?

It looks to me like you're applying a common day way of thinking about how humans act toward animals to Satan. Often, I hear people say things like, "humans feel they can torture or mistreat animals because they think they're better than them." This is exactly what you are trying to say about Satan. Yet, anyone who would make such a claim would also say that those humans are unenlightened, mislead, stupid, or just plain ignorant. Yet, you on the other hand are saying that Satan is an immensely superior and for more perfect entity. Then why would he stoop to such lows?

Yes, it is said in Christian cosmology that Satan was once Lucifer, the Bearer of Light, highest of all the angels in heaven. It was pride, belief that he was so great, so superior, that brought him to challenge God. He believed that he could like God Himself. I'm not sure where you get this "react like a spoiled child deprived of his father's attention" from. Unless you've heard some traditions that say that the Angel's one and only test was to be shown that Jesus (or Mary according to some) would be greater in heaven than they, and that this was unacceptible to Lucifer. However, that is not an official Christian stance. That is simply a tradition that is accepted by a minority. There simply is no accounting for the test that the Angels endured. The official stance is simply as I have described, that pride was Lucifer's downfall, that it was pride that motivated his actions.

Concerning Satan as being the one to torture bad souls, this is also a misconception. According to Christian cosmology, this is the role that Satan has taken up: Satan is the tempter, he tempts humans by mode of offering a lesser good in replacement of a greater good to our own detriment. At the end of time, Satan, and all the demonic hosts, and all the damned souls, will be trapped in hell forever. You must realize that the greatest pain of Hell is disconnection with God. Utter loneliness consumes the damned. It is not the picture that Hollywood has painted with the red demon laughing as he whips you into servility. There is no joy, there is no community, no connection in Hell. Satan does not torture you. You are the bringer of your own sorrow and pain. Not some outside entity. You and you alone.

 

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just like your god of the bible then, so whats the problem.

 

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I guess what I'm trying to say is that the mythology of Satan seems self-contradictory. I find it very hard to believe that Satan is the victim of excessive pride, which is a human trait. More likely is that he started his own heaven, where souls may go if they so chose. Rather than a place of misery, it's a place of indulgence and pleasure, and hell of mythology is just a smear campaign by Christians.

 

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You are right, pride is a human trait, but it is a trait borne of the spirit, not of the body. Angels are also capable of pride. Furthermore, you are confusing what heaven and hell are. They are not places. Spirits are unextended, they do not occupy space. So, it would be quite impossible for Satan to "start" his own heaven for souls to "go." Heaven and Hell are states of being. Heaven is a state of perfection and perfect happiness, whereas hell is a state of lacking. Not perfect lacking mind you, but perpetual and ever-growing loss. Unless you wish to say that all purely spiritual entities are perfect in every action that they perform, then you cannot say that the mythology of Satan is self-contradictory. Mistake is not simply a human trait.

 

If hell is a place where all your works aren't torn apart and you aren't in eternal physical torment, it is starting to sound pretty good. Somewhere to work on your own projects, whatever they may be. Where you start from the ground up knowing that whatever you make is yours and yours alone.

If that is the way things are, it really does look like the devil cooked up his own heaven. Certainly sounds better than sitting at god's feet as a zombie and doing nothing but say his praise for all eternity. I don't care how blissful it is, too much of that and you wouldn't be yourself for long. Bliss can break you just as surely as agony.

And disconnection to god? Thats how most of us feel most of the time.

 

Don't misunderstand me, Clockwood, Hell is certainly eternal physical torment. Physical torment, however, isn't the worst kind. Furthermore, you wouldn't have any projects to work on, nor would you desire to. One in hell hates everything, including himself. You would not have patience, nor would you have the will to work on anything, and your malcontent would only ever-increase.

 

I think it's more credible to think that God and the angels are exactly the same kind of being, differing only in degree, perhaps of age or accomplishment. Perhaps they all started out as mortal beings. It is unreasonable to think that God is the only one of the species. So, perhaps Satan is a devine being that happens to have approached God in greatness, so God was forced to share the spotlight. I don't think such beings would be capable of making mistakes. Perhaps souls enter another realm where they may increase in greatness until they reach devine levels, and can hang out with whichever other beings they wish.

Besides, isn't this all old testament mythology? I don't think Jesus talked about it this way.

 

But, we are only getting a biased account of the story, maybe it's not like that at all.

 

So in otherwords, I would not be myself. It would be someone else being punished. You can't change someone's nature so much witout changing them.

 

Spidergoat, imagine that you do something that you believe is wrong, say you steal something from a store. You feel shame and guilt for it. But, as things go, once you do something the first time, it's easier to do it a second time. So, sometime down the road you do it again, and once again you feel guilty for it. Pretty soon you're stealing quite often. You still believe it's wrong, but it's become kind of a habit for you, and as things go, habits are hard to break. Not after very much of this you begin to loathe who you've become. This isn't very uncommon, since when one feels shame, beating himself up over it is very normal. The problem with self-loathing is that you begin to lose the ability to socialize properly. You don't want people to find out, or you don't trust people, or you even come down hard on other people for doing things you think are wrong, when really you're actually still beating yourself up about it. So, as things go, people start to look at you differently, people get hurt. You sort of become ostracized, or at the very least that's how you feel about it. This is the beginning of a trend of anger for others. You get angry easily, and you begin to loathe the people around you. You can see that your life is a mess, you're still stealing, some people have found out about it, but not very many, and the ones who have haven't said anything. You're always anxious or frustrated. Often you try to cover it up, try to be nice, but that doesn't last long, you're real feelings show through. You want to change, but you're either too proud, or too afraid to ask for help, and every time you try to change you just don't have enough fortitude. You go for a few days, a week sometimes, but after that you fall back into your rut.

This is a kind of hell. Often, it gets to the point when you simply don't try anymore. You come to an impasse, and you think "this is who I am now, there isn't anything I can do about it, I'll just wallow in my misery." So, when people try to help you, you say "screw you." Why? Because now leaving where you're at represents difficulty and insecurity. You've become comfortable with your unhappiness. This is what hell is like. It's a state of being. The only one who condemns you to hell is yourself. The very first moral lesson that is taught in Catholocism is this: always follow your conscience, even if what you are doing is wrong. Why? Because guilt is the result of our conscience telling us to do one thing, and we do another. And when we feel guilty, that is the first step toward Hell. Heck, call it whatever you want. You don't have to call it Hell. But the is the Christian designation for that state of being. And the reason that Hell is an eternal state has to do with death, the meaning of eternity, and the resurrection of the body.

 

First of all, there are those who do something wrong but don't feel it was so. I always heard stories of how my great grandfather would walk off with everything that wasn't nailed town. He figured that if it was covered with dust, the owner either didn't care about it or didn't need it and so it was up for grabs. He knew that it was technically a sin but he also believed that there were exceptions to be made for every rule. No guilt.

Then there are people who do something and know it is wrong but do it because the other guy deserved it. Someone who gets revenge on someone for a past offense may feel this way. A cerial killer may kill women for some delusion that all women are whores or are evil or something or other. Oftentimes no guilt there.

Thn there are the really evil people. They know they are causing suffering and are delighted by the thought. If you ask 'What about the pain?', they may answer 'Delicious isn't it?'. There is zero guilt here.

 

Indeed, Clockwood. This is why the second moral teaching in Catholocism is that you are responsible for properly forming your conscience.

 

Heaven must be an extremely empty place then...

 

Again, I think that you misunderstand me, or perhaps I'm simply less clear than I aught to be. Guilt is the first step in the path to hell. Lack of caring is also anothing step. However, the first step is only just that. It doesn't mean that whoever feels guilty ever, or if anyone hasn't properly formed his/her conscience ever, that hell is where they're destined. Not at all. While it may perhaps be true that hell has seized a great too many tormented souls, many more, I think, have achieved heaven. That is a thing to hope for.

 

Well, concience is an artifact of culture, it is taught. I used to steal stuff all the time, and I didn't feel guilty about it when I only stole from impersonal entities, like a store, or cleared out a cigarette vending machine (I'm still proud of that one- no tools needed!-screw the tobacco industry). Several times, I did steal from people, strangers, and I did feel guilty about that. But, the slippery slope you describe is just a fiction. I started to hang out with people that did the same things, it increased my socialization, my popularity, my status, perhaps that was my motivation more than having the things I took. Christianity standardizes the policeman inside you, guilt for a particular action isn't universal. In fact, it might be the creation of guilt that makes the Hell, not the action. The past was the past, you can recreate yourself at any moment. I stopped doing these things when I realized it was just a yearning for self-destruction.

I do connect with your description of heaven and hell as self-created, I think this is what Jesus meant all along, but really, this interpretation has become rather unorthodox. I think we are punished BY our sins, not FOR them, and some things Christianity defines as sin is not. I am in heaven now, I couldn't be more ethical about what I do, and I am prosperous and happy. We need to make mistakes our own in order to learn from them. Perhaps we mean the same thing, and just describe it in different ways.

 

Perhaps.

Yes, conscience is a product of environment, but it can also be changed, and formed, both by the environment one is in, and by will (ie... continuously telling oneself that something is good... or bad). Yes, one can change himself at any time. Yes, not all people see the same things as wrong.

What I posed, described, was a scenario that does occur. It is a scenario that is not altogether uncommon. I did not mean to imply that it was a scenario that you'd get caught in. It is simply a single scenario of many. There are many ways both toward heaven and toward hell. To each his own. I simply wanted to give you an understanding of hell as a reality (as I understand it), as compared to these imaginary concepts of a place deep underground that is entirely afire, and teeming with red demons with horns and tails that whip you along in servility, as you carry rocks around for what seems like absolutely no reason. It's a vivid description, and perhaps the torment pictured is aptly spoken, however, it is false to consider that image as the reality of hell. I simply wanted to convey that.

 

Yes, it's more of a metaphor. "the kingdom of heaven is within"...

 

The way I understand it, Kali is just a dark aspect of one of the goddesses of Hindu religion. She is not a devil, but she is worshipped more by the demoniac peoples and the demons themselves.

However, Shiva is said to lead a horde of demons, but he is a great friend of Lord Vishnu, the highest Hindu god. So you can't really view Kali in an entirely negative light. She wears a necklace of skulls, but she is not evil. She is another, darker form of the Goddess Durga, who is the wife of Shiva and is said to ride on a great tiger. Durga holds many weapons with which she destroys evil beings as a service to Lord Shiva and Lord Vishnu.

 

Kali is the cut-off and demonized--by the patriarchy--aspect of the Great Goddess. Her Crone or Dark Aspect/ Death aspect.

Whereas the patriarchal gods are 'all-good' and from there comes the 'problem of evil'--which NOTE their DIVISIVE thinking has creATED, with the Great Goddess it was known that she is 'womb/tomb'. Meaning that you are bordn from her and die into here. and she is the source of life and death,
so what patriarchal thought did--in its fearful reaction to Nature and deeath is split up the Goddess, only keeping her subservient aspects--ie., as for example 'Eve' and the 'Virgin Mary'--and the East will have its own role models, and demonized her death aspect. in the West this is 'Lilith', and the Northern Goddess, 'Hel' which is where the Christians got their name 'Hell' from.

 

Duendy, I get the feeling that you think the "female" side of divinity is somehow better than the "male" side. It's not. Without men, there is no life and without women, there is no life. They're perfectly equal, and when both of these complementary sides are in balance, they form divinity, that which is both male and female - neither male or female. The supreme "being" is not a separated, onesided entity, fallen from oneness, who needs completion, but it is the oneness itself. The male and female are only visible because the divinity has been separated, since without separation, the world wouldn't be possible. Where the male and female sides form a oneness, there is no physical existence.