“What did she do to you?”, Zee smiled. “You look like a victim of terrible violence”.

“Oh, she poured me coffee, dismantled my philosophy and taught me how things actually work”, Shankaracharya smiled at the God. “But it was more what she didn’t do that I’m recovering from”. They sat at the peaceful part of the orchard, somewhat away from the crowd that gathered to learn from the Buddhists.

“She didn’t do what I did to people I argued against in India. I would just crush them with carefully honed arguments that can’t be defeated logically. I got a power rush out of it. It was my way of waging war. The warriors had spears and swords; I had my mind, and I used it as a weapon of conquest”.

“As a child, when I was sad, my mother would make me hot biscuits and milk, and she would just sit beside me and silently comfort me until I felt better. That’s how Lady Kay felt. I felt like a seven year old boy whose mom made him hot biscuits, and just sat there in a healing presence until I got better. She didn’t tear me down. She didn’t score points. She wasn’t there to defeat me, or to teach me a lesson, or to humiliate me, or to punish me for my arrogance. She was there to make me feel better and to help me become a better version of myself; kinder, with a broader scope, less strict with myself and others, more relaxed and yet deeper”.

“I didn’t come to her in order to argue, I came to learn; and yet, I expected her to do what I would have done. I expected it to be a battle of minds, where I had to do my best in order not to be completely humiliated”.

“And then I saw what her mind is like. The challenge to her isn’t to prove she’s better. To her, the challenge is whether she will make me see the light of God. She was like my mother, whose challenge was whether she’ll make me feel better. It’s not a game of dominance for her; it’s her milk and cookies”, the man spoke in a calm, detached tone of shock.

“We had a long, complicated talk where she dismantled my beliefs, and as she did so, she explained better alternatives, and she demonstrated actual evidence for everything. It wasn’t just logic and quoting scripture, the way we used to do it in India. She was working with me to improve me. I can’t believe those Mlecchas who recently attained apotheosis went through such a process. Why me?”, he concluded and looked at Azazel directly.

“They weren’t famous spiritual teachers on Earth, unlike you”, Azazel smiled. “They didn’t have a complex philosophical system in their heads that refused to go away just because it’s obviously wrong. They didn’t have misapprehensions to defend, misapprehensions that needed a Goddess of Wisdom to argue against and carefully replace with actual knowledge. They were ignorant peasants. Their teacher told them how things worked, and they believed it and immediately acted upon it”, Zee shrugged. “Your mind is a weapon, but it’s a weapon that came to ensnare you rather than liberate you”.

“A pure mind is an instrument of liberation, while an impure mind is an instrument of bondage”, Shankaracharya smiled. “That’s what I taught others. The pure mind, of course, would be the one that saw things as I did”, he waved his head remorsefully. “I never considered my clarity and simplicity of argument to be a snare that feeds an ego’s desire to dominate and be right, and yet, that is what it was”.

“Simplicity has many forms. You tended to believe that simplicity and clarity of an idea guarantees its accuracy. But reality is messy and sometimes convoluted. Simplicity and elegance is sometimes in just allowing the mess to be what it is. And let me show you something”, Azazel pointed at the other side of the orchard, where his wife joined Lady Mandarava. They hugged each other and fell on the grass and continued giggling.

“Those two are the towering giants of mind. Their power over reality itself is immense. And yet, look at them”, he pointed.

“They have nothing to prove. Nobody to submit. No battles to win. They are free to do whatever they want, so they giggle like two schoolgirls, just enjoying themselves”, Shankaracharya nodded.

“They are the Goal”, Azazel nodded. “That’s what God looks like in the Relative”.

“The Mind of God and the Teacher of Gods giggling together in the grass and enjoying the sunshine”, the man nodded. “If I had your wife’s power, I would do terrible things with it. I know it, because I keep wondering how she doesn’t do all the things I would have done in her place. But she is so kind and relaxed with it; what I used as a sword and a set of armour, she uses as milk, cookies and giggles. Minutes ago, when I was with her, I wondered how it must be hard for you to live with someone who is so incredibly powerful in every conceivable metric, but I see now: you are the happiest man in the world, and she is a living example of what it looks like when infinite power is in the right hands”, the man smiled.

“Truly, she is a balance of infinite power, infinite wisdom and infinite kindness”, her husband smiled with an inner glow. “Blessed be the day I met her”.