“I even find it hard to explain it to you,” said the Devil, “your ideas are so confused. I must begin a long way back. In that old book of yours is written the story of Adam and Eve. Well now, that story is not correct, and this fallacious theory concerning the origin of man confuses all your subsequent ideas about him. As for the new theory of the origin of man from protoplasm, it is very witty. I admit that. But it is even further from the truth. I will now attempt to tell you what really happened.
“Adam and Eve are the names of those descended from the Great One. So they say; I do not know how true it is, but then I do not know that we can be sure of anything, probably not. But they do say that there was a Great One called the Bearer of Light, who fought and quarrelled, not with heaven but with the earth, with matter, or with falsehood, and conquered it. It was not until much later, we said, that he quarrelled with heaven. He rose very high, but they say that in the end he doubted the truth and for a moment he believed in that very falsehood he had been fighting against. This caused him to fall and be smashed into a thousand pieces. And it is from his descendants that Adam and Eve came. With the best will in the world I cannot tell the story any better than that: you see, it borders on matters I don’t understand. And what I don’t understand does not exist. It is most unpleasant to speak about what is found on the edge of some emptiness beyond which nothing exists. We are afraid of this void. And there you have it: I have told you our biggest secret. It is on account of this fear, this terror, that we attach ourselves to you: you help us to ignore the dreadful nothingness and forget about it.
“But I will return to what I was talking about earlier. Adam and Eve, according to your old book, lived in paradise. This is the first error: they lived on earth. But, how can I put it? They only played at living on the earth — like children! And with nine-tenths of their being they lived in that emptiness we so detest and which is hostile to life. They called this void the world of the miraculous. To my way of thinking they were not normal and they certainly suffered hallucinations of sight and hearing. Take the fact that they were reported to have seen God and spoken with Him. I don’t know what that means, but it is undoubtedly something terrible.”
I saw the Devil begin to tremble and huddle himself into his mantle.
“Of course, I do not believe in God. That would be ridiculous,” he said. “But I pass on to you the legend as it stands. It is said that we rebelled against God: that is quite absurd. We never rebelled against God because we did not believe, do not believe and we can never believe in Him. The part of the legend dealing with our rebellion against God we invented ourselves. Later on I will tell you the reason. What is said about Adam and Eve further on in your book is again incorrect: it is written that they wanted to be like gods, and wanted to know what is good and what is evil. That is wrong, because they were like gods, and knew what is good and what is evil. To us this was most unpleasant and frightening.”
The Devil became silent as if he found it difficult to speak.
“They were as if stronger than we,” he continued. “Of course, all this was fantasy. But we were for them on the level of animals. They could see us only as animals. And they gave us also names, corresponding to our qualities.”
The Devil pronounced the last words very unwillingly.
“I must also tell you,” he continued, “that they were not alone on earth. The earth was inhabited by another race of people, the descendants of animals. But nothing is said in your book about this other race. They were completely in our power and could never get away from us. But we wanted, above all, to subordinate Adam and Eve. Their presence embarrassed us. We could not be sure of anything with them there. You see, they gave the impression that at any moment they could make the whole world disappear. They said that nothing existed and everything was merely a dream, and that it was possible to wake up and find everything gone.”
The Devil lost his usual casual tone and seemed afraid to speak. Looking at him at that moment, I realized that the basis of his nature was fear.
“There are words that are hard to utter,” he said, looking at me like a beaten dog. “Still, now I have started, I had better continue. Thus the struggle started. The problem was to rid these two of their fantasies, to convince them that the world does exist; that life is not a game but a very serious, even difficult and troublesome thing and that notions of good and evil are ultimately only relative and impermanent. To convince them would mean to banish them from paradise. This paradise really disgusted us. Perpetual talks about God, eternal love and kisses. We could not take it at all!”
“Why did it irritate you so?”
“Of course, you wouldn’t understand. They said that love was their main strength and a powerful magic; that through love they would resurrect the Great One and thus restore the lost world. I don’t understand it at all. But just think of it, how could we tolerate such a perverted philosophy? It was quite enough for us to accept the fact that they could vanish before our very eyes. You see, often a rose coloured cloud would come down and they vanished. We were powerless to prevent it, even though it disturbed us greatly. Besides, we found their costume positively dreadful — you know, the one Adam and Eve had before the Fall. We considered it highly improper. Matter demands a certain propriety. These two denied matter, and yet admired beauty.”
The Devil drawled the word contemptuously.
“We tried to convince them the body is essentially very ugly and indecent and much better covered up whenever possible. But they were not prepared to listen. It reached the point where their example began to have a bad effect on the other race, the descendants of the animals. There remained only one way to get the better of Adam and Eve: to introduce suffering into their life, and force them to believe in the reality of matter. But how? We thought for a long time. Finally, one of us turned our attention to the descendants of animals. The whole of their lives consisted of harbouring grudges and endeavouring to get out of difficulties by burdening others with them. They had no doubts about the reality of this world, nor of material things. On the contrary, they
were quite ready to smash each other’s heads in for the tiniest thing — a pretty stone, for example. Their ideas of good and evil changed so quickly that even we could not keep up with them. In the morning the sun is good; at mid-day, evil; by evening, good again. In the evening, the wife is good: in the morning, evil; in the evening good again, and so on. And we started wondering why everything went so well with them; perhaps it was something to do with their habits. It occurred to us that if only we could get Adam and Eve to take up one of these little ways we might very well manage to convince them of the reality of things, and of the relativity of good and evil. Amongst the customs of the animal descendants was one which particularly entertained us — of all their ways this appeared to us to be the most idiotic. This was their habit of eating daily, and in great quantities, the fruit from a certain tree… “
(from P. D. Ouspensky, Talks with a Devil, 1916)
