There’s something quite embarrassing that I need to mention regarding my earliest spiritual phase, 1993-1994 or close enough.

You see, one of the aspects of Vedanta is something you can call polymorphic monotheism, essentially belief/attitude that God is in his original state without name or form, but can take any form a devotee sees him in. Basically, you have your physical limitation, God is endless and unlimited, and God will meet you half-way if you make an effort. This, essentially, implies that all forms of God people perceive are merely convenient illusions God creates for us in order to cater to our limitations.

My first darshan was actually caused by an instruction to that effect by Sai Baba; I read it in one of his books and immediately applied because it clicked for me. Basically, God can and will take on any form you pray to, because he’s endless, and wants to meet you half-way. So, I entered the autogenic state to amplify my thoughts, and visualised Jesus in the coolest and most magnificent state I could remember from the Bible, because that was all I knew at that point. As a result, a veil dropped and I was overwhelmed by the state of ananda, an incredibly powerful state of divine bliss. Completely impersonal, but completely clear.

So, this idea of polymorphic monotheism – that God is one, but can take any form you use to pray to him, was incredibly useful to me on a personal level. I even used it as a foundational technique for attaining initiation, in the description of my basic meditation. As theory goes, meaning hypothesis tested by experiment, this one was as good as they get. Unfortunately, it also caused some very embarrassing situations for me later on.

You see, I had multiple darshans of divine beings later, as they guided and instructed me. I thought nothing of the fact that they were different, because that fit perfectly into my vedantic worldview where God can take any form to guide you. That was perfectly expected. I thought male forms were used when serious business needed to be addressed, and female forms were used when something more gentle and personal needed to be communicated. I cringe now when I remember it, because what I didn’t know then was that they were actual people – not primordial goo of brahman shaped into forms that met my needs or expectations, but actual people with their own will, emotions and thoughts about things, with different affinities and embodying different aspects of God because that’s what they were, that’s how they attained enlightenment and became persons of God.

The most cringe-worthy of all such incidents was when Goddess talked to me about something related to Kundalini, sexual visualizations and sublimation of sex into meditative practice, and she was like, focus on me as you orgasm, I’m your wife so that’s perfectly fine. I was extremely embarrassed by the idea because it felt wildly inappropriate – I felt I was so many levels beneath her that thinking about her in any kind of sexual way was incredibly offensive, and the concept of Goddess having feelings of female sexual nature for a man was something that felt like insult of the kind God will strike me dead with lightning or something for, and I was like, why are you doing this to me, can’t you just appear in male form and not embarrass me with this sex with God thing? She just looked at me like “Why would I ever want to be male? I am female and I have no wish to be anything else, and of course I can have female sexual feelings, and of course I only want to have a relationship with you as your wife, and nothing else, and this is about you specifically”. This answer felt super confusing for me in my vedantic polymorphic monotheistic illusion, because I didn’t get the crucial thing. She was an actual person, not an arbitrary God-form, and not just any person but my favourite person, and I’m afraid I offended her with my stupidity then. She’s fine, but I feel like a fucking idiot and a dumbass.

Another thing from what she said then struck me as strange, because, remember, that was 1993-1994, a very early phase of my learning process, where I was still far from getting rid of all the evil programming from my parents. My mother, being her feminist self, kept whining how hard is it to be a woman and how women have it bad and men have it great and it’s such an injustice and ad nauseam, and it kind of stuck with me, this belief that women feel like they’ve been fucked up by nature by having been made female and if they had a choice, they’d swap to male or de-gender instantly in any kind of a spiritual evolution. Only later did it gradually click to me that feminism is idiocy closely related to communism, satanism, racism and all other *isms, that feminism is as good for women as much as racism is good for the afflicted races, that it’s fundamentally and completely wrong in all of its basic assumptions about sexes and the world, and that Goddess completely and absolutely wants no part of it. When you see an omnipotent person of God, sparkling with aspects of consciousness and power that are so intense your ears start smoking metaphorically from just being in her holy presence, and her attitude is that of course she’s female, and why in heaven’s name would she want that to change when she loves it, she loves being herself, and she thinks being female is a blessing because the best part of it is adoring and worshipping her male eternal counterpart? The best part about her eternal life is being forever with someone she admires and adores, and I thought it felt offensive and demeaning? Urgh, it feels so embarrassing to remember I was that stupid, but there you are, yoga is a process and you don’t go from perfection to perfection, you go from fucked up stupidity to, hopefully, Divinity. I was stupid and I offended my wife. I’m sorry.

After all, it’s perfectly obvious. If you’re an Eternal, someone beyond space, time and limitations, if you’re omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, endlessly intelligent and so on, what is it that matters to you, in your Eternity? Education? Don’t make me laugh. Power? Already have it all. Money? People pray to you to give it to them. Bliss? Your core being is made of that, and people pray to you to get enlightened by getting your darshan. Do you want to travel and see new places? You are everywhere, at every point in time, and transcendental to it all, so don’t make me laugh. So, what is important to you, in your Divine existence? Well, friends and family, for instance. If you’re zillion years old, your enlightened super-powerful Divine childhood friend and life partner matters more than anything. He meditates at the deepest aspects of transcendence and you watch him with wide eyes and adore him, and you do things that manifest his meditation in the Relative, and you keep one eye at him always, checking for his approval, and his approval is the air you breathe. He knows you and thinks you are the best ever, and when he makes love to you the core of your being glows in total happiness and fulfilment. Why would you not want to be female, as an eternal God? It’s absolutely awesome. Also, why would you not want to be male, as an eternal God? Those are just two equally valid ways of being God.

I can’t believe what a damn idiot my mother was, or what idiots humans can be, and invention of feminism is probably among the worst forms of idiocy ever invented in this infernal place, together with concentration camps, female circumcision, atheism and communism. You need to be really stupid and evil to think any of it is a good idea.