You can have equipment, you can have skill, but in order for it all to come together, you sometimes need a dumbass bird to knock itself out cold at your glass door, and then pose for you half conscious. đ
Also, sometimes having your subject shit itself in front of the camera actually makes things better:
You just can’t make this up. đ
Iâve been thinking about something recently, how âbetterâ isnât really a simple metric; as mathematicians would say, it isnât a scalar, where 5 is bigger than 2. For instance, I have a 50mm f/1.8 lens that I like a lot because itâs small and light and itâs something I can take for a walk when I have no expectations to get usable pictures, but it still has good minimum focusing distance, excellent sharpness and so on. It has issues â focusing motor is loud and slow, and it has lots of chromatic aberrations wide open on contrasty areas. Also, it doesnât have a MF/AF switch to turn AF off quickly when it starts struggling. So, I thought about upgrading it, getting a better 50mm lens.
Thatâs where we encounter a problem, you see, because optically speaking nothing is that much better. If a lens is ergonomically better, itâs also bigger and heavier, not to say much more expensive, and that removes most of the reasons why I like a 50mm. So, I could get a 50mm lens thatâs slightly faster, has better focusing and more mechanical switches and controls on the lens itself, but is half a kilo heavier and costs a really significant chunk of money, and letâs say I bought it. Would I carry that to a walk when I want to carry the lightest possible camera? No, of course; Iâd still take the 50mm f/1.8, because itâs light and small, itâs sharp enough, versatile enough, and looks unassuming. I can get a 50mm f/2.5 G, or a similar thing from Sigma, which has better controls and itâs still small and light, but Iâm actually losing aperture and therefore photographic versatility. So, basically, something thatâs technically not the best lens is actually exceedingly hard to upgrade, because gains and losses donât come in simple packages; essentially, âbetterâ is not a simple scalar.
This creates a silly situation where my cheapest lens is apparently here to stay because it almost perfectly fits the role I have for it. It needs to be cheap, light, small and good. Itâs not something I use for stuff where I need absolute image quality; I just need it to be very good, and still small enough that I still decide to take it when I go out and there doesnât seem to be much to take pictures of. It also needs to be versatile because I have no plan and no idea what Iâll see, if anything. I want something thatâs better than the iPhone, and not much more hassle to carry around. I could get some small compact camera, which is another thing to charge batteries for and with different menus I have to learn, or I could just take my old Sony, which is as small and light as a micro four thirds camera, and put the light 50mm lens on it. The image quality of that setup is honestly stellar. Versatility, with its close focusing distance and aperture, is also pretty amazing. Itâs just that it focuses like shit and has no AF/MF switch on the lens, and has strong CA when I shoot into the light, which I tend to do. Slightly annoying, as flaws go, but they are soon forgotten when I open the images in Lightroom.
I already had situations where something like that would annoy me, and then I would âupgradeâ to something that solved one problem by introducing five bigger ones; for instance, I upgraded the old 13â Macbook Air to a 15â Macbook Pro somewhere in 2015/2016. It was faster, had more power and memory, had much better screen, but it was bigger and heavier, and actually less usable for writing than the old Air. I actually had to get a second ultralight laptop for that, the Asus Zenbook, because the âbetterâ machine was so much âbetterâ that it was less functional for the main task I actually used it for. I also âupgradedâ from a Mondeo to a huge Audi A6 estate once; bigger is better, right, and also the kids were small so I wanted a bigger car to carry their stuff. I got rid of that car as soon as it was practical and got something smaller and more suitable. Also, a bigger house is better until itâs so big it becomes a hassle to maintain and you actually spend time looking for family members around the place because you donât know where they are.
If your shoes are too small, bigger is better, until they become too big, which is when bigger is worse. When you drive a car thatâs a bit too small, bigger is better until you feel like youâre driving a bus.
Recently Biljana and I were buying new laptops; she got a 16â Macbook Pro, and I thought about just getting one of those for myself, and then I remembered how that ended the last time I âupgradedâ, and said âfuck noâ. What I got for myself is the 15â Macbook Air; I just loaded it with enough RAM and that was it. Why did I get a âworseâ computer for myself? I actually didnât, I got a better computer for what I need it for, and I got her the better computer for what she needs it for. Itâs like multiplying two matrices, one of requirements and one of actual hardware specs; what you use it for, how you use it, what matters, and then multiply this with actual hardware properties of mass, size and performance.
Itâs not just about equipment. Most things in life require balance, where you think you need more of something until you see what it actually means. All those ideologies that feed on resentment are a good example. Communism wanted âmore equalityâ, and produced universal misery. Feminism wanted power for women, and broke civilization to the point where it would now be easier to burn it all down than to fix it. Inclusivity sounds great until you understand that it destroys criteria.
You see flaws and you think something has to change. Then you change it and see itâs actually worse.
Satan seems to have started this resentment thing first â oh, itâs not right that some souls are so incredibly large while the others like himself are pipsqueaks. Something should be done to make everybody equal. So he made a world that limits everybody to the same playing ground, and that obviously worked great for eliminating inequality. Oh waitâŚ
The answer to his âSome souls are so much larger than everybody elseâ should have been âGood; that means we have someone to admire and strive towards.â
Womenâs answer to âWe live in a patriarchyâ should have been âGreat, we love powerful men.â
The problem with resentment is that itâs a problem that presents itself as a solution. Itâs not. You can point at a laptop and say âoh, itâs so smallâ, as if thatâs a problem, and the right answer is âof course itâs small, thatâs the pointâ. The answer to arguments that try to foment dissatisfaction is to think whether something is actually problem, or a set of features you actually prefer. Everything comes with drawbacks. You think you could always use a few inches more of penis size, but your wife might say âplease noâ. She might think she could do with bigger boobs, until they start jiggling around while sheâs running or exercising, at which point sheâll start complaining about that. We seem to be incredibly sensitive to dissatisfaction and inclined to think change must be an improvement, but in reality, it seems that the only thing we actually need to change in most cases is perspective.
I need to write this down.
I talked to Romana again, and she said she finally saw what Hell looks like, as a level.
I answered this: âI know; itâs a place like any other, just without God.
There are protectors of family virtues, national or whatever identity, without God.
There are protectors of religious principles and regulations, without God.
There are Pandits who can recite all four Vedas, without God.
There are Muslims who can recite the entire Kurâan, without God.
There are Christians who cite Jesus and threaten infidels with hell, also without God.â
I was just talking to Romana about how one of the fundamental misapprehensions of my students in the early years was caused by their completely wrong understanding of the reality in general and reality of their situation specifically.
They assumed this is the real world â part of the âmultiverseâ that also contains Heaven and Hell â created by the actual One God, who is good and to whom they all matter to the point where all of Creation is their playground, and of course they will get second chances because thatâs the purpose of Creation, to give them as much chances and opportunities as they need to basically run out of bullshit to try, and they are essentially the main characters in this play, where everything else, including me and other beings, is a mere prop whose purpose is to serve their needs. Basically, if I donât serve their needs well, God will punish me, so Iâd better behave.
I donât know where people get this idea, but it seems to be ubiquitous and implicit. I know Felix helped convince them of this bullshit behind my back, telling them something along the lines of âif not in this incarnation, then in the nextâ. I was absolutely appalled when I heard this statement, because itâs not just completely wrong, itâs an absolute abomination, the worst possible thing you can think or believe. Considering the amount of damage he created, that guy must have been Satanâs pet, if not an outright avatar.
Their understanding of their situation couldnât have been more wrong, because trying out bullshit is actually a choice. If they make a strong enough choice, why would they ever get a second chance? Why would there be a next incarnation? Why would their fate not be determined in a final judgment, because they had a choice between me and bullshit, they chose bullshit and thatâs it? Why do they think people who choose against God get a second chance, as if God is stupid and doesnât get it, or as if they have no agency and their choice will somehow be seen as not final? If anything, second chances are for people who chose God and only God, and they ran out of time to become their own âfinal formâ along this choice-vector. Second chances for people who chose against God; what purpose would that serve, exactly? You think thereâs a shit eating competition, and those, who didnât eat all the shit there is, need to get a second chance? Why?
I think the fundamental mistake of religious philosophies is that they always assume that this world matters, in a sense that itâs an important place made by God and they derive all kinds of assumptions from this starting thesis, and none of that might even be remotely close to reality. For instance, if you play a complex video game, Witcher III for instance, and you are completely immersed to the point of thinking itâs the real world, and if you derive assumptions about theology based on your experience within the game, youâll get all kinds of conclusions except the right one: that it was designed and made by a few Poles who had a blast doing it, and itâs loosely based on some aspects of this world, but mostly on a made up story from a book series. Itâs not a real world made by a real God. Itâs a nth order reality, where nâN might actually be quite a bit bigger than 2, but no less than.
Itâs interesting how my early students never actually thought they could catastrophically fail. They thought their options consisted of good and better, of safe and risky, where they had âsafeâ and I offered âriskyâ, and risky was also hard and demanding. They thought that saying âno, weâre good as we are, thanksâ is a safe option, while in fact it was a decisive ânoâ to God, after which there would be no reason for further questions. They thought I was merely an option to upgrade the level of satisfaction in their personal playground of a life. They didnât understand that they were here because Gods had enough of their shit and wanted a decisive answer whether they want to evolve towards God, or are they dry branches to be pruned. They didnât understand that I, myself, didnât live in the cozy world they thought they inhabited. I knew I could fail. I already had terrible experiences that showed me how hard I can get wrecked. I had no illusions that God will help me; in fact, I knew I was expected to be someone who helps others; I was the ice breaker that had to cut a line through thick ice, for others to follow quickly before it freezes over again. I myself knew that I was always one wrong important choice away from perdition. I was taking this incredibly seriously, and I was so not fucking around. I told them they donât have much time, that itâs important that they get their shit together quickly, because the window is going to close. They chose to believe nicer tales narrated by idiots. We know how that ended.
Letâs assume God actually does care about you. You think that love is unconditional? He will love you regardless of what you do, regardless of what you choose? What evidence is that belief based on? God personally told you that it doesnât matter what you choose because itâs all the same? I donât think so. The Bible, where every âblessed are thoseâŚâ is followed by a âwoe toâŚâ? Also, I donât think so. An idea that God is a good and slightly dumb guy who just loves everybody and whose job is to forgive because he canât help it? Yeah, probably. I never met that guy, however. I think he, Santa Claus and Easter Bunny might have a blast over a beer somewhere, but I never met either of them so I canât say.
People, you should get your shit together and take this seriously. This is not your personal fuckaroundery. Itâs a trap designed by Satan for idiots whose virtue and spiritual allegiance were already questionable when they believed his bullshit, and the fact that youâre in doesnât say great things about you, unless you are by some chance Biljana, who was conceived without any participation of sin of any kind and is here for me. Even she could fuck up if she made wrong choices here, and the result would have been bad. What does that say about you? If youâre here, and if youâre not taking it extremely seriously, youâre an idiot.
Why do you think God cares about someone? Because youâre super likeable and irresistible? Or because God has a character feature that makes him like everybody, but somehow Hell still exists? How about, he likes you if thereâs something Divine in you that reacts to him? Basically, God is simply God, and that aspect of Divinity within you makes you attracted to God and makes you want it, and you interpret that as God loving and wanting you, the way children think that the Sun loves them because they feel good under it, and they draw it with a smile, because it makes them smile? But what if you decide against that Divinity, if you reject God because something felt more attractive? What if that Divinity in you simply discards you as a failed path back to God, and you just wither in your illusions and nonsense? What if choice for and against God are merely physics, like the path water takes from the mountain to the ocean? Basically, seek the point of least gravitational potential; fill lake; then continue falling to the next point of lower gravitational potential, until thereâs no lower point to fall? What if failures to reach God merely evaporate and stop being recognizable souls, and their constituent particles continue circulating in nature until they attach to something with greater potential of bringing them to God? You think failures to reach God have endless right to exist? Think again, because not really. Also, donât think itâs all about you. God also has free will. In fact, only Gods have free will, because unlike yours, their will is not conditioned with attachments, misapprehensions and nonsense. They have their freedom, and preferences, and you can have all kinds of wishes and nobody is really obliged to give a shit. If you didnât give a God reasons to like you, they donât have to. Itâs not that anyone is under any obligation to help you, or guide you, or teach you, or save you. Every single Divine being does only what they feel like doing. You think my wife is under some obligation to love me? No. Sheâs a God-person of unrestricted, unconditional freedom. She feels what she chooses to feel out of complete freedom, and nobody has any right to try to influence her. If you are not someone who makes a God feel that way about you, why do you even think youâd be worth saving? Give God a reason to care about you, and start by being a person other people will care about, because you make them feel appreciated, loved and important. If you can be a presence of God in lives of other people, chances are the Gods will love you and open doors for you. If you can only be hell to other people, chances are the Gods will give you what you worked for.
Everything matters. What you do matters, how you see things matters, how you choose to act matters, how you choose to treat other beings matters, what you accept matters and what you reject matters. It matters who your friends are, and who your enemies are. Whatever you do, someone will always hate you, unless you became such an inconsequential person that absolutely nobody cares about you enough to hate you. You want to make friends of angels and enemies of demons. Of course satanists will hate you if you made good choices and they can smell God on you. Of course good people will feel good in your company if you are a good person. If good people donât feel good in your company, why would God love you or want to be with you?
If God has no reason to love you or want to be with you, why would you exist in Eternity and not just wither and die in Time? Instead of thinking God must have a reason to keep saving you, try being someone God will want to be with.
The concept of an avatar (sanskrt. avatara) originates from Hinduism, and basically means âdowncomingâ or âdescentâ, of God into the world, of course. There are two basic understandings of how it works. The first is that itâs a normal human being, only with God as the soul, and the second is that itâs a virtual construct, an appearance thatâs essentially an interface God uses to interact with humans in order to achieve some purpose.
Within the framework of personalist Vedanta, Vaishnavism or Shaivism for instance, the concept is straightforward. God is a person, this person incarnates, retaining some or all of his powers and knowledge. Within the framework of impersonalist, advaita Vedanta, the concept is so inherently problematic it doesnât actually mean anything. To illustrate this, I will cite Sai Baba, who himself claimed to be an avatar. He stated that everything and everyone is God. Someone asked âIf that is so, and we are all in our true nature God, what is it that makes you an avatar?â Sai Baba answered âWe are all God, but I know it, and you donât, and thatâs the differenceâ.
You see the problem? Letâs say heâs talking to a yogi who had nirvikalpa samadhi in his experience. Letâs say itâs a gathering of Swamis who all had such experience, some at will. Now letâs say those yogis ask Sai Baba the same question â so, what is it that makes you an avatar?
Sure, Sai Baba was never the sharpest knife in the drawer, but in this case itâs advaita that is cornered by this question, not him. OK, sure, he acted as if being a conscious embodiment of brahman makes him something special and had them worship him like a deity, basically stating âeverything is God but Iâm particularly Godâ, which sounds like bullshit.
As always, the answer is that advaita is actually the problem, and the concept of avatars is real. They are just not some fake personal interface for an impersonal Absolute that advaita postulates.
At one point I more-less stopped using the term avatar because it implies things that very much diverge from my experience, and because people assume things that are actually not valid. Also, what does it even mean? God coming down? I prefer another, much more precise and exact, technical term from Tibetan Buddhism: tulku. A tulku is, essentially, a human being whose âsoulâ is created as the intent of compassion by a bodhisattva touches the world. They usually put it this way: Avalokiteshvara or Tara watches the world full of suffering and his/her tears of compassion fall onto the world and thus their tulku is conceived and born, translating their compassion into a human life that is meant to alleviate it and lead humans towards buddhahood. I like this concept because it understands that those high beings donât actually incarnate; their intent forms the incarnation, and the essence of their intent creates âkarmaâ of such a being, that is internally driven to achieve enlightenment and pulls others in its wake. The term tulku is not to be confused with another similar term, tulpa, which is essentially a construct of spiritual magic that creates an appearance of a human being, but is merely a strong astral imprint upon prana and physical matter. A tulpa is hardened intent of a yogi and is essentially an illusion. A tulku is a real human being with a real soul, only this soul is a result of a Godâs intent to do something in this world.
As you can see, I expanded the definition somewhat â I donât limit the concept to bodhisattvas, and I extend it to encompass the possibility of lila. If we do that, we get a technical explanation of how a concept of avatara, literally âGod coming downâ, actually works, and what kind of a being an avatara is. Technically, itâs a tulku of a deity.
So far, we are in the realm of what is more-less known, at least in very narrow circles of people who studied relevant literature. But now weâre going into the nitty-gritty of things, stuff that I managed to figure out along the way because it mattered.
For instance, a God who wants to incarnate here canât just do it. Thereâs a contract with Satan that needs to be made, because he owns this place. Alternatively, a God needs to use pre-existing karma from beings that already made the contract with Satan to incarnate, and had obligations to return to work through the remaining karma, but they in some way surrendered that karma to their ishta-devata and lost a part of their soul-mass rather than go back here and risk ruin in this hell. A God can use such karmic substance, from one or several sources, to form his/her own incarnation here. Then you get a weird combination of karma from one or multiple beings, but the incarnating being is actually a God, and the lessons to be learned in order to finalise the transformation of this karma are essentially the thing such a tulku/avatar needs to do in this life; for instance, learn that being born in a Mleccha country isnât spiritually degrading, that being born a woman isnât spiritually degrading or detracting from a spiritual path, that having a husband and children isnât something that is an alternative to spirituality but a vehicle for spirituality, and so on. Or, karma can be a source of talents, things s/he has an affinity for and learns quickly and easily, that make it easier to form competencies necessary for teaching people. Or it can be a musical talent that enables one to create physical music that embodies spiritual concepts. It can be many things, because the concept of a tulku allows for a great diversity of purposes. Itâs not just âGod comes down and formulates a new religionâ or something. Itâs much more subtle and sophisticated than that. It can allow for incarnation of Krishna and his companions who then get to have a lila and at the same time perform some useful service for the suffering souls bound to this place.
Thereâs only one case Iâve seen where karma necessary for incarnation wasnât inherited from someone who was in a hurry to surrender it all to God, but created from scratch as a synthetic entity. That thing is a wonder to behold, because the way it is formulated intimidated me like nothing else, being a testimony to its creatorâs absolute mastery of, well, God-level magic, because thereâs no other word for it. The tulku that was created in such a way is Biljana, my wife. One would expect this synthetic, mathematical perfection to create some kind of a perfect life with all the good stuff, but itâs actually not the case at all; Goddess just calculated with absolute precision what kinds of concessions she needs to give Satan to allow him to harm, attack and tempt her, what kinds of injuries she had to suffer, at the fault of her parents, Satan and all kinds of world-energies, to buy out her sovereignty from them and own herself, and so on. As I said, itâs a marvel to behold, like watching super-elegant code or a mathematical equation, containing self-destruct clauses so that Satan could not steal or misappropriate the energy contained, and with activation mechanisms that can be triggered only by me, and in very specific ways; basically, she incarnates fully when I accept her as my wife, the activation can be done only during sex, and literally only by me, because itâs done by wielding shivaratri through a physical body in a specific sequence that implies that I have a very precise skill in the physical incarnation which makes it possible for me to react to specific things that light up in her soul and require a God-level response to seal. It takes a lot to intimidate me, but having this incarnation-sealing process play through while we had sex for the first time after I formally accepted her as my wife, that was intimidating; especially since it was obvious from the code that her incarnation was set to terminate if that activation sequence wasnât successfully locked in by a certain age and so on. I know there are some idiots who ask themselves what the hell did I see in her and think it must have been just her physical beauty and sexual attractiveness, but obviously they donât know what I know. Iâve seen many things in this life. Iâve seen beings who claim to be avatars or gurus. Iâve seen Gods, Judges of Karma, all kinds of spiritual beings, Iâve seen Satan try to kill me with everything he had, and Iâve seen him die. Iâve seen the Jewel that runs this world as a virtual reality, and Iâve seen the magic it wields, but thereâs only one thing that truly intimidated me to the point of âoh shitâ, and thatâs Biljana. Imagine having sex with someone more impressive than the Jewel, the âworld-engineâ. Imagine the foolishness of beings who harmed her. I recently basically laughed my ass off when I saw that Goddess herself created herself that way to be here with me, because then it was obvious â of course it had to be her, because only the two of us can pull off something like that.
Biljana, days after “locking in” her incarnation
There is more, of course. Not all avatars succeed. Some never awaken and just fade away in misery of ordinary human existence. Some awaken partially, and thatâs the most dangerous part, because they âgetâ parts of the things they are supposed to be and do, and they get other parts wrong. The parts they get wrong leave lots of room for incredible mischief. I met several. I wonder how many exist in the world, never waking up, never realising their true potential and purpose, or achieving some things and then breaking under the illusions of the world and failure to attain strength sufficient to overcome it, or make very bad decisions. How many came in pairs, and when one failed to awaken, the other was also destined to failure and solitude? Itâs not something I like to think about, but itâs inevitable.
So yes, you can be a tulku, created by a God as a technical way to implement avatara, and you can fail, fuck up, do great damage, and condemn your âspellcasterâ to the loss of karmic substance invested in you, or worse â you can create such amounts of attachment and sin that I donât even know what happens with all that. At a minimum, you return to your spellcaster with a demerit, a Title that speaks of failure, sin, disaster and betrayal, a little shit-stain on the face of a God who made you. At worst, a God who made you will have to choose between loss of karmic substance that made you, in which case you become an ordinary spiritual being, no longer Divine, and have your own separate evolution or demise apart from your God, or try to incarnate again in order to fix it, which might not even be an option. At best, a successful avatara enriches the karma invested in it, achieving great deeds, creating Divine substance in addition to the Divinity of their maker, and after death re-joins its true being, adding to its splendour and glory.