Volume 8, Issue 1, page 3

THE P

NEGITIYE THINKING

Satan's Cognition. and Help, s Creator from a Dull Eternity

By
MURIEL

GRIEBE, D.A.

(Dayd's Advocate)

T IS APPALLING to see that absolutely no creative work is being
done on the
Power of Negative Thinking. On the contrary, it seems thatthe
only thing they
can write about is Positive Thinking. The entire situation smacks
of a very
deep bias.

The positive power of negative thinking is of course epitomized
in the
courageous exploits of that greatest of all geniuses (in his
field) known by
several pseudonyms, but most familiar as the Devil, or Satan. It
was only
thru his great self-confidence and temerity that the world
wassaved from an
abysmally dull and ignorant form of existence.

Now, please don't misunderstand. I am not attempting to criticize
Anyone Else for this
state of affairs. It is simply that without Satan we would have
been oblivious to so many
varied and delightful experiences-- and sensations. Even more
important, our self-awareness
as distinct and superior beings would have been decidedly limited.

Without the benevolent intervention of Satan in the Garden of
Eden. man would have been
little more than a sublime animal with hardly a brain to speak of
-- let alone an original
thought procesal

With the use of just a little soul-searching, you will come to
realize that the foregoing
is not "just words". Let's get down to some really serious
thinking on the subject, (and tD
the Devil wi th The ABEPJM Is " pol icy ") .

First of all. man was, created --not to be good or noble. not to
be an unthinking
Pollyanna, not to be a grinning lump of amorphous jelly.
According to undisputed authentic
revelation. man was created to be a Companion to The Creator.
Now. what kind of companion
would he be if he could only simper. twiddle. and express all the
attributes of a yes-man?

An ultra-intelligent Entity likeThe Creator would certainly be
horrified to find that He
was stuck with a yes-man or company-man for

APRIL, 1961 T h e A B

the rest of eternity. No. matter how you look at it. whether
rationally or emotionally, it is
quite obvious that the first attribute He would want in a
companion is intelligence. Anything
less would be an infernal insult to the Being Who was able to
conceive and produce in
concrete form this entire. incomprehensible universe. This takes
real wisdom. To, put it
bluntly; Man, He's really got it made.

A Being able to do such a colossal job as this would require an
intelligent companion
worthy of His.attention. Some of you may remark that Satan
himself was obviously worthy of
such notice. This is true to a certain extent. However, Satan's
intelligence and tal

ents, altho of extremely high calibre, wer; just a bit too
one-sided for friendly repartee .
While Satan undeniably has his points. they were obviously too
sharp in quality.

The Creator needed someone who had been thru the mill, so to
speak --someone who'd had
wide experience and knowledge in a variety of situations and
who'd been. shall we say,
mellowed by an intimate association with all sorts of
equivocalities and ambiguities. In
other words. someone with an open mind, unbiased in his thinking.
For this kind of a job,
Satan was obviously unqualified; his viewpoint was hopelessly
biased.

You can readily see that The Creator faced a rather sticky
problem. However, being
omniscient and omnipotent, He.managed to resolve it with an
ingenious little strategy. Now. a
word about this strategy: It seems that from the beginning right
up to the present day. men
have secretly believed that it smacked of an element of trickery
which was rather beneath His
dignity, if not downright out of character. They failed to
realize. however, that in order
for The Creator to accomplish the magnificent job of over-all
creation, He'd obviously have
to have had a real solid acquaintance with all aspects of
everything. Without this wellrounded
knowledge, how could He possibly have created Satan ? Don I t try
to delude yourself . The
Creator was no namby-pamby. He was really on the ball.

To get back to the dissertation: in order to effect His purpose,
The Creator arranged a
little tableau in the Garden of Eden so that man could become
acquainted with the singulax
attributes which at that time belonged to Satar, alone. The
upshot of it was that man gained
an open mind; he could see both sides of an issue. He became
aunre.

But a worthy companion to The Creator would have to have more
than just intelligence and
mental awareness. After all, how good is a mind that knows
nothing of discrimination and
judgment? These are attributes that require an awareness of
relative worth. And how is this
acquired? Of course--thru exposure to all kinds of inequalities
and conflicts.

Again. enter Satan with his valuable help.

By this timeThe Creator's companion is beginning to shape up
nicely. There is. however, one element still missing. A
good companion mbst have not only sense and judgment--he must
also have feeling. Without feeling. he would

E R R E E 3

J