"They force us to play their game in order to survive."
I'm sitting here with the vision of a pyramid in my mind again. At the top is the entity who the Creator has put in charge of our schooling. Called Satan by Western religions, it has many names in many lands, but it is the one we see as the Evil One. Beneath this entity is a hierarchy of power that creates the classrooms for souls to recieve their schooling. There is a classroom for everything. From poverty, disease and starvation to wealth, power and excess. It is the Evil Ones duty to hold souls captive as long as possible inside this hierarchy, by any means possible. Since the Evil One, like the Creator, has no physical body to work through, it must use its influence through the minds of the beings under its control. It will inspire the development of civilizations, which appear to the unaware soul as manifestations of progress, but which are, in reality, a crystalization and hardening of free spirit into confining mental structures. Soul, believing it is participating in a beneficial growth process, accepts the dictates of this civilization as proof of its inherent superiority over the natural creation. As time progresses, the Evil One inspires the leaders of these civilizations to establish more and more control over their citizens. This is directly in line with its mandate to keep souls in captivity as long as possible. Fear, violence and bloodshed are often used, but subtle manipulation of the mind is just as common, for it is harder for a soul to discern that it is trapped if its environment is less obviously painful. If a soul is comfortable and believes it is free, it will stay in it's cage far longer then if it is overtly threatened. Hence the populations tend towards the security that their leaders promise them, only to learn, sooner or later, that there is no security in this world for more than a short period of time. As the serpent biting its own tail, the Evil One will use aspects of its own creation to destroy that creation in order to prolong the stay of souls in the lower worlds. Thus great countries and civilizations are built up only to to destroy themselves from within until they fall prey to the hungry dogs at their feet. Above the dualistic lower worlds, there is no good or evil, only light, but down here, the Joker laughs, for this is his kingdom and he will force us to play his game in order to survive.