the way i see it is that the devil is a generic term , a face or personality that man needs to acribe certain qualities to
it is a face to an intangible quantityquaility
it may be temptation, it may be evil(also very vague and needing further breakdown), sometimes the aspect of trickery, of illusions, delusions, of corruption, of defilement, of decay, of pain, of punishment, or destruction, anarchy,disobedience,chaos,fear many many things, the darker aspects of being, and human psyche
it is a means to understand an aspect of human nature by externalising it, much like most poetry, metaphors and dream language uses
it may mean different things to different people, when opposed to a god figure it is about dichotomy, and the struggle between two opposing forces, a struggle that is eventually about balance
as duality implies polarities, to posit the quantity good, or light, there must be a bad/evil, dark to polarise it, else the duality breaks down, essentially this duality is about all that is me and all that is not, it is the way one seperates ones self from the environment, it pervades in all spheres of life from , my name, my age, my family, my counrty, my race, my religion, my object, my land, all of which imply a you or they, that this my is the polar of ,that this my is seperate from
dichotomies pervade all of human life and activities, it is the origin of all boundaries, lines of seperation and borders
it is the very basis of western thought that cuts, seperates and analyses, that seeks to cut things into smaller and smaller peices, to classify and put into compartments
it is a system that seeks to understand the universe through exclusion rather than inclusion, juxtaposition and incorporation
it is based eventually on the judeo-christian concept of time being linear, that there is a beginning and and an end, which necissitates good and evil, as forces that are the basis of life
the concept of a devil as opposed to a god , a dualistic understanding of the universe being thus seperated is less common in eastern understandings of the universe, owing primarily to the cyclical understanding of time, so one doesnt need good and evil, as moral quantities
it does away completely with the idea of morality and in some cases god and self even
yes there are demons and such beings known to exist even in eastern systems, yet they are not seen so much as a seperated division from angels or devas and such but as being part of the same field of being, of existence, that they too are players, and puppets in a larger game, that they are aspects of existence that are coexistent and inseperable from all
also there is another way to look at this matter, if one posits god as being the reason for reasons, the first without begining or end, the cause of all causes itself having no cause, then all must exist and be in the field of god, there cannot be duality
for faith to be a valid quantity there cannot be two
there can only be one, and all must necessarily be from that one,
seperateness and dichotomies, duality then being the basis of all illusion
also it is about figures and grounds, all dualities,
black figure against white ground, is interchangable with white figure on black ground, implying thsat it is a matter of perspective and relative spacetimecausation coordinates, that determines all value in duality
when cotton is rare it becomes dear and when it is plenty its price reduces, these matters are spacetimecausation bound, and within the playfield
good and evil are also like that , as sometimes good appears to be evil and evil appears to be good, it is from point of view being within the field of play
not being able to see the forests for the trees so to speak
