A story recently posted here describes an encounter between two travellers, one of whom, notwithstanding his good appearance, is revealed to be Satan.  The story has raised some questions, and it deserves closer examination.

Certain religious streams, seeking to teach their congregations good behaviour, have spoken of a dark power trying to lead humanity astray.  Their descriptions have often been very vivd and even terrifying, but as the story tries to show us, if the ‘dark’ path were so unappealing, we would have no difficulty staying on the path of Light.  Careful readers of this blog might have noticed a connection between this story and the hadith quoted in the introduction to the poem of Ibn al-Farid : “The Garden is enclosed by hateful things, while enclosing hell are things of lust.” A simple interpretation is that paradise is reached by passing through difficulties, whereas surrender to the intoxicating fires of the senses results in suffering.

Hazrat Inayat Khan did not speak often about the idea of Satan, pointing more often toward the One, the perfection of love, harmony and beauty, but he did give some guidance on the theme. In one Gatheka, he speaks of the impulse of agitation, which is, as he says, the whole mechanism of the world’s creation.  It is this agitation which gives all motion, all activity, but it is also the source of all conflict; it is what causes even the simple birds and animals to fight, and it is seen much more clearly in humanity.  When we embark on the spiritual path, the spirit of agitation travels with us, usually unnoticed, but it cannot go to the final destination.  Hazrat Inayat says : The shrine of God is called ‘Dar-as-Salam’. … And what does it mean? It means the door to peace. Agitation, therefore, is not allowed to enter the door of peace, it must stay outside. Therefore, as, in the ancient times, they used to say, ‘You cannot follow two masters, God and Satan.’ What is it? The Satan is the spirit of agitation which is to be found within ourselves, God is the spirit of peace in whom is our happiness; and we cannot follow two masters.

The problem for the spiritual traveller is that we are accustomed to agitation, and we find pleasure (but not happiness) in it. We identify with it.   In this, we are like children: every parent has seen that sometimes a child may be so tired that it becomes fretful and begins to cry, but still will do everything to avoid going to sleep. In the same way, our ‘agitations’ are appealing to us, even though they make us unhappy.  That is why, to the traveller’s great surprise, his pleasant companion turned out to be none other than Satan.

Therefore we need to be wary of our ‘companions,’ for they may not be what they seem.  But we should also think about how we regard difficulties; according to the hadith, above, they enclose the Garden of heaven – but simply throwing more and more difficulties on our path will not necessarily open the Door of Peace.  To arrive where we wish to go, the difficulties have to seen with the proper attitude, for it is our attitude that converts the painful into something useful.  The Sufi poets speak of the bowl of poison offered by the hand of the Beloved, and in the Vadan, it says:
I have loved in life and I have been loved.
I have drunk the bowl of poison
from the hands of love as nectar,
and have been raised above
life’s joy and sorrow.