The devil entered the Garden of Eden in the form of a serpent, and planted slanderous lies in the mind of Eve; and through her foul whispering, Adam’s mind changed; and therefore, he ate the forbidden fruit. God drove them from the heavenly garden. Thus, Lucifer lost paradise and Adam lost Eden.
With this fall of Adam and Eve, mankind was separated from God as it was the sin of heritage. Therefore, Jesus came to earth as Saviour so that the human race may repent and regain through Him all that was lost.
Temptations come to us because we belong to the human group. The devil tempted Jesus in the wilderness as He came in this world as a human being. His victory over temptations inspires us how we should check the flow of thought in our mind and reject the enticement of the prince of darkness.
The mind is a fertile soil to sow ‘good seeds’ of thoughts and also for the ‘evil weeds’ to grow. The fallen angel knows that human mind is never satisfied, so, the devil, plants the evil seeds of greed, power and pleasures of the flesh. Many people give in to the inviting tricks of Satan.
Good seeds help us to rise above petty irritations and make us do noblest deeds and the evil ones pull us down to commit heinous crime. Therefore, we have to cultivate good seeds and neglect the weeds or evil thoughts placed in our mind by the devil. Otherwise, our spirit will follow the dictates of the mind.
If we are not cautious enough, there will be inner struggle between good and evil making our life hell on earth. It will be a dual personality as seen in Robert Louis Stevenson’s Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde where Dr Jekyll is only a mask of sanity and the inside evil Hyde is really he, leading an immoral and corrupt life. The harvest of the mind depends on good seeds or weeds which make our life a heaven or hell on earth; as seen in the parable of the prodigal son, in the Bible, who went to a distant land and squandered his wealth and when he was starving, came home with thoughts in the mind saying: “Treat me as one of your hired servant.” (Lk 15:19).
In another example, Satan entered into Judas. (Lk 22:3); and Judas with mistaken reasoning hanged himself (Mt 27:5). The mind can be one’s worst enemy also one’s best friend according to one’s thought.
We think that the body by itself remains fit if given proper nourishment. But the mind is most powerful. Men of medicine tell us that most diseases are psychosomatic, involving both body and mind. There is a mental side to every physical illness. And physical diseases are made worse by mental factors such as stress and anxiety. The mind can also triumph over the body. It did in the lives of Helen Keller struck blind and deaf, excelled as a speaker and writer and Stephen Hawking, though wheelchair-bound, is one of the world’s leading scientists.
The poet John Milton summed it up: ‘The mind is its own place, and in itself, can make a heaven of hell, and a hell of heaven’.
