Let us ask ourselves:
How is inner evolution reached?
All inner development is possible only through inner temptation.
Three temptations of Christ by the devil are mentioned in detail in the early parts of the Gospels of
Matthew and
Luke, and referred to very briefly in
Mark, in terms of
"wild beasts". Nothing is said of this in
John but
the Miracle of Water into Wine is made as the starting−point of the teaching and miracles of Jesus. Let us study for the present the version of the three early temptations as given in Luke, in order to realize that Jesus had to advance by undergoing development by the method of temptation and so pass through stages of inner growth, by means of inner self−conquest.
But let us first remember that the conception of
Mankind in its unawakened state as given in the Gospels is that it is
in the power of evil and this is represented by the idea that Man is infested by evil spirits. That is, Man is under the power of evil moods and impulses and thoughts, which are personified as evil spirits, whose object is the destruction of a man and of the human race.
The conception of the Gospels is that Man is continually being dragged down by evil forces, which are in him, not outside him, and to which he consents. By Man's consent to these forces in himself, progress in human life is prevented. The evil powers are in Man, in his own nature, in the very nature of his
self−love, his
egotism, his
ignorance, his
stupidity, his
malice, his
vanity, and also his
thinking only from the senses and taking the seen world, the outer appearances of life, as the only reality.
These defects are collectively called the devil, which is the name for the terrible power of misunderstanding everything that undeveloped Man possesses, the power of wrongly connecting everything.
The devil is the aggregate of all these deficiencies, all these powers of misunderstanding in Man, and all their transmitted results. So the devil is called the
slanderer or
scandal−maker, from one point of view, and the
accuser from another point of view. But we shall see a little more clearly what is meant by the devil when we begin to understand what temptation really means.
In the account of the tempting of Christ by the devil given in Luke, it is said that Jesus was in the wilderness for forty days,
"being tempted of the devil". This number forty appears in
the account of the Flood, where the rain lasted for forty days and nights, in the
allegorical account of the Children of Israel wandering forty years in the wilderness, and it is said also of
Moses that he fasted forty days and nights before he received
the Commandments written on tablets of stone. Here, in Luke, the forty days in the wilderness are directly connected with the idea of temptation:
"Jesus was led by the Spirit in the wilderness during forty days, being tempted by the devil. And he did eat nothing in those days and when they were completed he hungered. " (Luke iv, 1−2).
Then comes a description of the first resulting temptation of this period of temptation, which is represented in the following way:
"And the devil said unto him, If thou art the Son of God command this stone that it becomes a loaf of bread. " (Luke iv, 3. )
Let us take
the superficial literal or first level of meaning. Christ hungered and the devil suggests that he should transform a stone into bread.
"And Jesus answered and said unto him, It is written, man shall not live by bread alone". (Luke iv, 4. )
On the literal level this is just as it appears—a physical temptation. Notice, however, that it is said above that Jesus was in the wilderness forty days
"being tempted of the devil". If we suppose the wilderness to be a literal physical wilderness, how is it that nothing is said about how he was being tempted all this time? One might merely say that he was starving. But in connection with inner development we must understand by the term
wilderness a state of mind, a general inner state, comparable with a literal wilderness—that is, a state where there is nothing to guide a man, where he is no longer among familiar things and so is in a wilderness, a state of
distress and
bewilderment and
perplexity, where he is left entirely to himself, as a test, and does not know in which direction to go and must not go in his own direction.
This itself is temptation, for all the time he is being starved of
meaning. Why should a man leave the familiar and go into a wilderness? He hungers for bread—
not literal bread but that bread that we ask for in the Lord's Prayer, so wrongly translated as "daily" bread—namely, guidance,
trans−sub−stantial bread, and, literally, bread for the
to−morrow, in fact, meaning, for
the development of our lives, not for our lives as they are to−day, now, but as they can become, the bread necessary for our support in growing, the bread for successive and necessary stages of understanding. (For the Lord's Prayer is a prayer about inner evolution and the bread asked for is the bread of understanding necessary for it.)
In such a state the temptation is to make bread for oneself— that is, to follow one's own ideas, one's own will—exactly as the builders of the "
Tower of Babel" used bricks and slime of their own making, in place of stone and mortar.
They thought they could make a new world from their own ideas. Why should one not fall back on oneself and so on life once more instead of waiting for something that seems doubtful? In Matthew the answer of Christ to this temptation is:
"Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God. " (Matthew iv, 4. )
See clearly that
the devil has asked Christ to make bread by himself to ease his state—that is, not to await
the Word of God. The devil says:
“If thou art the Son of God, command that these stones become bread." That is,
nourish yourself by your own powers and ideas. But the mission of Christ, which began immediately after the temptations in the wilderness, was not to manufacture truth and meaning by himself, but
to understand and teach the Truth and meaning of the Word of God—that is, of a higher level of influences. The test was as to his own self−will and the will of a higher level. He had to do the will of "God"— not his own will.
He had to bring the lower human level in himself under subjection to the will of the higher or divine level.
It is the human level here that is under temptation for Jesus was born of a human mother.
To mistake the lower for the higher is the annihilation of a man, for then he will ascribe to himself what does not belong to him. A man will then be tempted to say:
"I am God", and not
"God is I". If he says:
"I am God", he identifies himself with God
from a lower level. This annihilates him. If he says:
"God is I", he surrenders his self−will and makes the will of God "I" in him and so is under, and must obey, God— that is, a higher level. Notice that the devil is made to address Jesus in the words:
"If thou art the Son of God... " and so suggests that Jesus can do as he likes, as if he were at the level of God. All this was in Jesus. It took place in him. And although this temptation can be taken quite simply as one relative to
overcoming the appetites, in this case,
hunger, it is clear that other and far deeper meanings lie behind the literal meaning and that they are concerned with those problems of self−love and power—and violence—in which human nature is rooted.
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