“So, Lord Buddha, what are your impressions of your new job?”, Azrael grinned at his new buddy.

“It’s actually not that different from my previous one”, shrugged Lord Siddhartha. “I was a very famous spiritual teacher and founder of a major religion. People came to me for magical solutions to their problems, and the problems usually revolved around poverty, sickness and death. There would be a famine, and they asked for my blessings so that the rain would come. There would be a slaughter, and the panicked women would ask when their husbands would come home. There would be a plague, and they would ask me for magical healing. At least here I am not expected to perform unreasonable miracles, and the part I am expected to do – offer advice, consolation, or psychotherapy – I can actually do better and more easily. So, as far as I’m concerned, this is Tuesday”, he shrugged.

Azrael considered this. “Truly, you must be the most qualified person for this job. Not only have you been a human, so you know how it feels; you have also been doing work that is incredibly similar to this one. We are fortunate to have you, my Lord”, he bowed, and Buddha smiled and bowed back.

“So, what is your perspective on all this?”, his wife asked. “You’ve seen it from both vantage points, so you know more than anyone; certainly more than me, since I never went more than twenty miles away from my village, and I hardly knew more than fifty people”.

“It is obvious that people suffer. It is less obvious why. Previously, I concentrated on sources of suffering, and on attachment and projection, but as you eloquently pointed out before, Lord Shiva takes on terrible suffering upon himself, and he’s one of the happiest, most wonderful people imaginable, and not only is he not harmed by his suffering, but in fact seems to grow stronger from it. Also, the Gods suffer greatly when they see suffering of others, because they are incredibly compassionate and beautiful. They could easily choose to detach themselves from others, but then they wouldn’t be such beautiful people, and they wouldn’t be persons of God. You can even argue that indifference would make them into omnipotent psychopaths. So, what is it about suffering that makes it soul-crushing? Let’s take your example. You experienced pain of childbirth, typical pains of human life, occasional episode of poverty and deprivation, occasional sickness, but none of that really harmed you. What harmed you was the loss of loved ones, feeling of helplessness when they were attacked, and the impression that human life is all there is. How am I doing so far?”, he asked and kissed her temple.

“Your analysis is spot on”, she smiled and blushed. “When I endured physical pain, I could contextualise it – it would pass, it was for the greater good, or in case of pregnancy and childbirth, I chose this, I want this and I would do it again”, she nodded. “But when my children would get sick and die, I didn’t suffer because I was in pain. I suffered because they were in pain, I was losing them, I couldn’t do anything about it, and endings and separations in the physical life feel terrible and final. Most of all, the fact that something terrible was happening, and I was helpless to either stop it or avoid it was what broke me”, she shivered briefly.

“Let’s go further”, he continued. “When you were a demoness, in the astral plane, you didn’t feel physical pain, hunger or sickness, right?”

“No”.

“You didn’t care about people, so if something bad happened to them, it didn’t break you?”

“No. In fact, it would entertain me or make me laugh”, she admitted.

“You also didn’t age, and poverty had no meaning. So, would you say that such a life, devoid of classical elements of material suffering, was a blissful one?”, he grinned.

“No. In fact, it was a nightmarish existence, and in hindsight, I would say that I suffered terribly, and the emptiness from not having loved anyone was much, much worse than the suffering from losing loved ones, or seeing them suffer and not being able to help them, although pain of the latter was absolutely soul-crushing”, she remembered. “But when I lay there in the astral plane with my soul broken from loss, I felt dignity and fullness I had never felt in my demonic life”.

“So, this would conclude my demonstration. Suffering, in itself, is not necessarily a problem, since it is merely one of the elements in a more complicated equation. From what I have seen, people who inflict suffering on others are usually in a far worse spiritual condition than those who suffer. You were an extreme case, because you would have literally died without expert help, but most victims of terrible things recover successfully and quickly here. The perpetrators of evil, however, feature prominently among souls too far gone to be salvageable”, he concluded.

“I am amazed at your presentation, my Lord”, bowed Angel of Death. “Your analytical prowess is indeed staggering”.

“Thank you, my noble friend”, bowed Buddha.

“But let me summarise. Committing sinful acts is far more harmful, in general, than being a victim of sinful acts?”

“In general, but not always. Sometimes, if one is intentionally and systematically broken over a long period of time, and they have no transcendental perspective to guide them out, that can have devastating effects. We’ve seen slaves who have been castrated, raped daily, mutilated and humiliated as a matter of course, and treated as things rather than persons. On its own, that would be bad enough, but in Sanat Kumar’s world, where they are separated from a wider context of everything, such pressures can indeed kill a soul. I have been through all kinds of things down there, but I had strong will and perspective. Someone else would have been in serious trouble.”

“Also, there’s context and choice. Let’s say a woman gives birth. She knows what’s going on, she knows it’s her choice, that it’s a good thing, and that she would do everything the same again. She is in pain, but her suffering is minimal. But now imagine that she has a sickness that has similarly painful symptoms, and she knows she would suffer greatly and die from it. Her suffering from the same amount of pain and discomfort would be terrible”.

“I completely agree”, Zina nodded, “And seven pregnancies and childbirths make me the resident expert”, she smiled.

“Indeed”, both men nodded.

“So, knowledge that something is your choice, that it has a good purpose, and that it’s normal, makes terrible agony completely endurable; in essence, Zina before childbirth was in the same position as Lord Shiva when he absorbed evil karma intending to spend it, and fully knowing it would be a terrible agony for him”, Buddha looked at both of them and they nodded.

“Evidence for this is that Lord Shiva looked amazing today, and from the reaction of his wife when he returned, it’s obvious that it wasn’t child’s play. It was a God-level problem, let’s say of the same kind pregnancy and childbirth are for a human woman, but likely worse”, he continued. And yet, Shiva was empowered by the experience, the way Zina felt empowered when she gave birth”.

She nodded in assent.

“I also looked through her memories as she told me about her traumatic experiences. She shrugged off childbirths as if they were a mere inconvenience, although they were in fact physically more painful than her death”, he looked at her inquisitively, and she nodded in aggreement.

“So, suffering in that place is obviously a much more complicated affair than I previously thought. Let’s say there’s an element of choice. Let’s say if I allow you to take Tamara’s place, so that they rape and murder you, and she goes free, what do you do?”

“I would choose it instantly, and whatever they did to me, it wouldn’t matter, because I would know that I saved my girl and this thought would have comforted me through whatever ordeal”, she smiled.

“Exactly. And now we come to the point I want to make. The reason why that place causes such terrible damage due to suffering is because it deprives its victims of perspective. It cuts them off from knowledge that the entire thing is, for all intents and purposes, an artificially induced dream, where most characters are fake; beasts without riders, that work automatically unless a soul is bonded to them”, he concluded.

“Wait”, Zina started in shock, “Does it mean that my entire family, that I loved so much, consisted of mere uninhabited shells, with no souls or eternity of any kind beyond physical matter?”

“Have you met them here?”, Buddha asked.

“No”

“Have you tried to find them? Goddess, remember?”, he touched her hand gently to calm her.

“I tried now. There’s no response, no echo. Nothing”, she shrugged, but looked distraught.

“There is an order of magnitude of a hundred million human beings alive on Earth. The number of souls incarnated from both heaven and the astral nursery is a mere sub-percentage of that number, so multiple orders of magnitude less. And I am ignoring intelligent animals, which would raise one number significantly, and working with the upper range of estimates of the other. But let’s say it’s ten percent. It means that out of ten humans you know on Earth, you are likely to be the only soul among them. On the other hand, it is quite possible that all of them are souls. This would make treating others poorly a very bad thing. Treating others well, however, would give you an excellent opportunity for growth in love and kindness, which you personally experienced”, he smiled.

“So, basically, the best practice would be to treat everybody kindly just in case?”, Azrael asked.

“Yes, that’s exactly right. Treating others well is equally important for your benefit, and theirs. For instance, had Zina treated her family poorly, as some wretched people do, she would have remained a demonic being. This way, she became someone so beautiful, that Lady Shakti cried over her and did everything to save her, and in fact she became a Goddess within days since. Sure, the drawback is that her family was an illusion and she, basically, broke herself over nothing. But if we look at the actual energy equations and investments, she loved all the way to becoming a Goddess”, he concluded, and kissed his wife’s hand, as she blushed.

“So you say it’s like suffering in a dream, over dreamed, nonexistent people?”, she enquired.

“Have you ever had a dream in which you were scared, or in other ways suffered?”, he asked back.

“I have, many times”, she confirmed.

“Did you suffer less because it wasn’t real?”

“No, but I was relieved when I woke and realised it wasn’t real”, she said.

“Well, there you go”, he smiled.

“Wow”, she sighed and managed a true smile. “So it’s like entering a dark room and seeing a rope on the floor, and thinking it’s a snake, and you panic and try to see where the children are and if everybody is alive and safe. Then someone brings in a torch, and you see it’s a rope and your fear vanishes, because it was all in your mind”, she smiled in relief.

“Your family might have been in your mind; or, actually, in the mind of the Jewel that renders the simulation, but your love was absolutely real and you carried that with you. All your choices were real. All your suffering was real. And the quality of personality it all produced was real. You are one of the eight most real persons in the entire reality, and you have imaginary snakes to thank for it”, he joked.

“Also, let’s take the opposite example of Uriel, and let’s say that most of his victims were uninhabited shells. That doesn’t make his choices any less fatal, or make his soul any less terrible. Characters may be simulated, for the most part, but if you are there, and you think they are real, all of your choices are personality-forming. In fact, if you brainfuck yourself into thinking it’s all a dream and you can do whatever you want, it’s going to cause even worse damage and make you into a total basket case”, Azrael added.

“You are exactly right, which is why the only good choice is what Zina did without thinking or planning – treat everyone with greatest love and kindness, and if it turns out you were the only real person in that village, well, there will be a very good one person in the village”, Buddha concluded.

“Also, treat possibly empty shells with kindness, because you don’t actually know who’s in there. Imagine you have some people tortured and one of them turns out to be your best friend from before. That friendship is likely to end, I would say, so you will have eternal consequences of a temporary foolishness. Also, if you and I incarnated together, and we knew with absolute certainty that both of us will be in the same village; how would you treat people in the village?”

“The same way I treated my family down there – I believed that they matter greatly and I loved them”, she answered. “Which makes the ethics of the whole thing obvious, I guess”.

“Yes”, he nodded.

“How did you get so good at this, I mean analysis and explanations?”, Azrael scratched his head.

“I did this religious teacher thing for decades, remember?” Buddha smiled. “People would wake me up in the middle of the night with some emergency and I would do an excellent job half asleep and often with high fever”, he smiled.

Zina hugged him. “Never let me forget that I married the smartest person who lived on Earth so far”, she smiled.

“If anyone contradicts that statement, they will have me to deal with”, Azrael nodded in assent.

As Lord Shiva walked into their coffee lounge, his wife instantly ran towards him and threw herself into his arms wordlessly. He just smiled and held her for a time, and then they looked at each other, and he took her by the hand as they joined the others.

Shiva approached Vishnu, hugged him and whispered: “Thank you, my Lord. It helped”, as Vishnu clapped his back and smiled.

“I see you are stronger”.

“Somewhat”, Shiva grinned back. “It was a big motherfucker”.

“Language, please; there are children at the table”, Lady Lakshmi smiled, as Zee and Kay rolled their eyes.

Krishna smiled, then his smile froze, as his eyes defocused; then he smiled twice as brightly. “Guys, you won’t believe what just happened. Mahadev, you’re back just in time”, he grinned at Shiva.

“Judging by your tone, I assume it’s not another broken angel?”, Lakshmi prodded her husband.

“By your grace, oh Luck, it is not”, he grinned and kissed her. “We have two new additions to the family”, he smiled widely, and snapped his fingers.

Lady Zina and Lord Buddha appeared from the shimmer in space, and everybody was instantly around them.

“I’m so proud of you”, Shakti whispered in her daughter’s ear as she hugged her, and tears went down Zina’s cheeks.

“So, you’re the guy who managed to figure out the particle theory of karma, called Sanat Kumar by the name while there, or close enough, got initiated into vajra while incarnated into that stupid gel, formulated entire theory of detachment and divestment, and became a God half an hour after getting back here, simply from talking to my wife and daughter? It’s a great honour”, Shiva grinned at Buddha, shaking his hand and pulling him into a mil-spec hug.

“And you are the guy who just ate a super-demon for brunch, after reconfiguring the Creation the day before?”, Buddha hugged him back. “I am honoured to meet you, Sir”, he smiled.

They all sat at the coffee table. “You know that stuff you’re drinking isn’t really coffee, right? I had coffee on Earth, and it’s bitter and yukk”, Zina frowned from the memory. “We had to put all kinds of stuff, like milk and honey in it, to make it even marginally palatable. This stuff is incredible, however. Tastes like the love of God”, her smile widened.

“We know”, Vishnu smiled. “We just call it that”.

“So, Zina, Lord Buddha, what are your plans?”, asked Lady Parvati. “Are you together or…?”, she winked.

They looked at each other wordlessly, and held hands. “If you approve”, bowed Buddha. “I don’t know what we are, but I see her as my gurudevi, who taught me and guided me to greater wisdom. I never want to be separated from her.”

“I liked you since I first saw you, Prince Siddhartha”, Zina joked. “Now I adore you. And cut out the gurudevi business, please. If we’re doing this, I want to be a proper wife to you”, she curtsied to him and smiled as he hugged her.

“I officially call you husband and wife, then”, Lady Shakti smiled and hugged them both. “So, in danger of repeating myself, what are the plans for the future?”

“I want to continue serving as a Judge of Karma, that is if my husband and Lord approves”, Zina bowed to Siddhartha Gautama.

“Not only do I approve, but I would request Lady Shakti’s permission to join you. It is a most praiseworthy and compassionate job, and if you see me as worthy and qualified enough for it, it would be my honour to join your daughter there”, Buddha bowed to his mother-in-law.

“You are slightly over-qualified, but we need all the help we can get”, Parvati smiled and nodded, and his Title changed accordingly.

“This is quite fortunate, as we seem to have new arrivals”, Lord Shiva raised an eyebrow.

…

“So, you two were away for what, an hour, and not only did both of you become Gods, but you also got married, and Lord Buddha is now working here with us?”, Azrael scratched his head.

“She became a Goddess first; I was so amazed with her that I just followed suit”, Buddha kissed his bride’s hand and smiled.

“It’s too bad I didn’t bet any actual money on it, because I just knew it”, Azrael laughed. “Oh well. At least we have the most praiseworthy addition to the workforce”, he bowed.

“And I hear there’s been some new arrivals?”, Buddha bowed back. “And what exactly is the procedure?”

“Yes; you’ll see quickly enough. As for the procedure, it’s simple. The normal souls need compassion, healing and knowledge until they are well enough to be placed in the astral Earth, the place where you sat with Zina in that apple orchard. There they can think things through and see what they want to be and do next. Then there are the corrupted ones, the criminals who caused the normal ones to be traumatised; rapists, murderers, bandits, warlords, clergy. They are the actual problem, as one would want to rehabilitate them too, but they need to be really seriously sorry, not just fake it to evade the consequences. That’s where your legendary bullshit detector comes into play. Basically, if they are thoroughly corrupted and evil, throw them into the astral jail, designed exclusively for that purpose, and we’ll see what to do with them at some later point. Maybe they change, maybe we return them to Earth, see what happens and revisit. If all other options are exhausted, someone will wipe them out and purify the karmic mass, but that part is out of our hands. In case of the most terrible demonic beings, and we only had one so far, we call the Gods to deal with them”.

“Sounds good to me”, Buddha nodded. “So, basically, we treat them compassionately, but not beyond the limits of reason and good taste?”

“Exactly”, confirmed the Angel of Death. “In any case, it would be cruel to let loose any unrepentant criminals among their victims and thus traumatise the poor souls further. That’s why the brig is there; hold them separately, revisit, think of solutions and treatments at a later date, and in the worst cases, flush”, he shrugged.

“And by the worst cases, you mean …?”, Buddha raised an eyebrow.

“People who would make the normal devils want to escape hell just to get away from them”, grinned Azrael, as Buddha laughed, and Zina held him close. “You didn’t see Uriel, or at least what he became, and be thankful to all the Gods that this is the case. I still have nightmares”, he shivered.

“In any case, I have the two of you to rely upon until I get the hang of it”, nodded Siddhartha.

“Speaking of which, here we come”, Azrael pointed.

Judge of Karma, Angel of Death; Azrael; crystal of vajra, male, was feeling much happier lately. It’s not that his job was easier, nor that it had caused him much discomfort earlier, other than that terrible instance of encountering the corrupted angel Uriel. The reason for improvement in his otherwise calm and collected disposition was that he was joined in his duties by the newborn angel, Zina, who was such a fountain of constant calm joy, that he couldn’t but be affected by it.

She was also extremely impressive. Not only did she attain crystallisation so soon after her almost fatal traumatic experience and subsequent miraculous recovery by the hands of two Goddesses, but she, due to being an old and rather large demon, crystallised to a more mature angelic form than is usual for the newborns, very much like Lord Azazel. And immediately afterwards, she continued growing exponentially in devotion to her Divine Mother, Goddess Shakti, and was now a large crystal of a profoundly deep blue colour, with large parts of her being violet to ultraviolet. Essentially, she was very close to the very summit of beings that could be found in Heaven, and if he had to bet on who will become the seventh God, his money would be on her. And, quite unexpectedly, she was so much fun to be around. Azrael smiled with profound contentment.

An expected shimmer in space occurred, and a being appeared before them, one of the souls who died on Earth and returned back to the astral plane, confused, traumatised, injured and for all intents and purposes insane. Only, Azrael understood that this expectation didn’t match the reality of what he was seeing, because the being in front of him, although obviously post-human, with typical signs of being stuck in a limited existence of a human body, was different than anything he had ever seen.

It was a clear, striking blue crystal of vajra, with pure, deep thoughts, analytical, deeply observant, deeply empathetic. “Zina, tell me I’m seeing this right”, he half-turned his attention to his partner.

“I know what you mean, but let’s talk to him rather than jump to conclusions, ok?”, she suggested, and he nodded in assent.

“Greetings, Sir. I am Azrael, Judge of Karma. I am here to assist you in your transition from Earth to the spiritual planes. However, since your nature and appearance are something I have never encountered before, I would ask you to introduce yourself and tell us about yourself. I must apologise in advance, because usually the deceased humans are in a state of shock, while I am calm and collected, but in your case the roles might be slightly reversed”, the Angel of Death smiled at the man.

“It is understandable”, the man smiled back. “I just experienced a painful death, but that is to be expected in that place, and is of little concern. As for who I am, it’s hard to say. I used to be asleep for so long, but then I awoke. I removed impurities on the four elements and extinguished them by transcending into the fifth. I used to be the Jewel in the Lotus, but now the Lotus is apparently gone, and I remain the Jewel. I used to be a prince, then an ascetic hermit, and then I gave even that up in enlightenment. I am the Awakened One, and I am not anything, for Emptiness is. I used to be called Shakyamuni, and they also called me Siddhartha Gautama. You can call me Buddha, the Awakened One, for my state and my name might as well be one.”

The two angels stood there in shock, their mouths open, and they looked at each other, and then back at him.

“You managed to attain all that down there? In Sanat Kumara’s hellhole?”, Azrael managed to collect himself enough to stutter.

“Ah, so that’s his name. I called him Mara, and I understood him to be the demon of illusion who owns and controls that place”, Buddha nodded. “I had serious difficulties with him there, because he uses every energetic projection and investment to power both your bondage and that place itself. The complexity of his traps is great, and he also adapts, so it’s not always the same. I am quite unsure whether this vision I’m having is one of his yet unseen traps, or it is a manifestation of my expectations and desires that I need to let go of, and transcend”, he mused.

“Oh, this place is quite real”, Azrael nodded. “I mean, it’s a construct made of astral substance, created by Goddess Karuna to accommodate the needs of deceased humans, and furnished by Lord Vishnu. We are actual beings, and not manifestations of your psyche, as you seem to think. We, however, are also confused and in a state of shock, which is why we will now invite the Gods to join us, because you are something none of us have ever seen, and this far exceeds the parameters of our job here”, Azrael smiled to Buddha and nodded to Zina, whose eyes turned inwards as she prayed to her Mother.

“Hello, my daughter”, Shakti smiled after the shimmer in space manifested both herself and three other Gods, who just happened to have coffee with her as the call came. “Ah, so this is the cause of your excitement, my dear”, she put her arm around the smiling woman’s shoulder, and looked at the man himself. “A perfect crystal of blue vajra, excellent analytical mind, almost perfect theoretical understanding of spiritual theory… and you developed it all yourself, in the deepest illusion created by the worst of demons? I am not merely impressed, Lord Buddha; I salute you”, she curtsied respectfully. “I am Lady Shakti, wife of Lord Shiva. It is an honour to meet you”.

Buddha looked into the Lady’s eyes with deep insight and discernment, and his mouth opened in shock. “Wow. I would bow back, my Lady, but I am not sure if such a gesture is respectful enough, and worthy of what I just felt. In my experience on Earth, the gods seemed like irrelevant, self-serving beings that feed off sacrifices and provide worldly benefits in order to promote more sacrifices, all of it being irrelevant for one’s liberation. I am used to pointing my mind at something, and it dissolves into components, showing itself to be illusory. In my presumption, I took the liberty of touching you with my mind, expecting you to dissolve as an illusion, showing the underlying calm of blissful emptiness. However, my mind touched you and broke, the way a stone breaks hitting a harder stone. It’s as if vajra, the fifth element, the jewel of my awareness, is like mere air compared to what I touched, but it is not at all what I expected. You are not cold emptiness of a higher order. You are not a deeper state of nirvana. You are kind, compassionate, playful, powerful, but that’s not the right word. You are powerful in such extreme ways, it blows my mind when I try to wrap it around that. You are a God in a sense where everything one would think of as a God feels like a laughing stock in comparison. My Lady, I apologise for my presumption, and my only explanation is that you are to a Buddha what Buddha is to a dormant soul in deep illusion”, he bowed deeply to the smiling Goddess.

“I like him, Mother”, Zina turned to Lady Shakti and smiled.

“We all do, kid”, the Goddess rubbed her daughter’s shoulder. “He’s so far the most impressive being that emerged from all of this, and I expect we’ll have lots to talk about, as his understanding of spiritual mechanics, formed in that place, might in fact contain improvements on our knowledge”, she nodded, as Buddha bowed back even more deeply in return.

“I would be honoured to be of service, Goddess. And, after I think about everything more deeply, and gain better understanding about the rest of Reality, now that my mind is unconstrained by flesh, I will certainly have questions”.

“And we will be glad to answer them, Lord Buddha”, Goddess smiled at him, and other Gods nodded. “But for now, I will be leaving you with my daughter Zina, because she looks like she wants to talk to you”, she grinned.

Lady Lakshmi nodded a greeting to Buddha smilingly, and turned to Zee and Kay. “He used to be one of those dormant souls we usually call the sheep, and then he awoke. Now, he is one of the most impressive beings I have seen so far”. She looked at Lord Azazel in particular. “You were right to say that good things might come out of this horror after all, and that souls need a proper shakeup”, she curtsied.

“And you, Mother, were fully justified in warning us not to mock the sheep, nor to speak casually of the dangers and horrors”, he bowed back.

“I am glad we are all in agreement”, smiled Lady Shakti, and shimmered away, as the other Gods nodded a farewell and followed suit.

…

“I must again apologise for my presumption, Lady Zina”, Buddha mused. “Before, long before, I can vaguely remember existing, without any aim or purpose. I was, and that was enough for happiness. I was hardly anything, and it didn’t bother me in the slightest. In my earthly life, everything was ignorance and darkness. I encountered ignorant and often cruel kings and noblemen, pompous and utterly ignorant priests, ignorant people conducting their worldly affairs in darkness, all suffering terribly as poverty, old age, sickness and death ruled the world”.

“After my awakening and transformation, I saw that I am seemingly the only truly enlightened one, and started teaching. Fools challenged me; the wise listened. The only wise people I encountered were those wise enough to become my disciples and learn dharma.”

“And then, I saw you and your friend Azrael. He is much like myself, made of vajra, a buddha in his own right. I’ve seen his mind – it is calm, settled, hard as diamond and lightning. He is also old, incredibly old, and has other jewels on him, of darker colour, signifying his great achievements. I instantly liked him and felt great compassion for his sincerity, humility and kindness to the suffering souls he assists daily”.

“You, my Lady, are even stronger, more powerful, harder. The colour and hardness of vajra that makes your karmic body is greater than his, or mine, and yet you are so humble, kind and lovely, with no attempt to project authority or distance. How did you attain such admirable qualities of spirit?”, he asked the daughter of Shakti.

“You told me how your spiritual path went, Lord Buddha, so it’s quite appropriate that I tell you about mine. You see, I used to be a demoness, for untold millennia, or eons even. They used to call me Vipera, the venomous bitch. In my endless boredom, I entertained myself by molesting other souls, and inventing cruel pranks for them, so that I and other demons would have a laugh”.

Buddha raised an eyebrow. “I find this hard to believe, my Lady, as there is nothing of the sort that I can identify in you, but I guess that is how true spiritual transformation works”, he nodded.

“Yes. At one point, I naively and thoughtlessly chose to test out Sanat Kumar’s new world, Earth. I was born there and all my memories were inhibited. I didn’t know that I was supposed to be a demoness, and I knew nothing about cruelty and malice, as my family loved me and treated me with great kindness. I was soon married, and my husband also treated me lovingly and with kindness. As this became the norm of my life, it also became my true self of choice, something I wanted to be, and defend against all threats. I also experienced terrible suffering in life, but that had nothing to do with my choices; it was merely a threat, an evil that happened against my will”, she explained.

“But how did you deal with suffering? Surely it must have been an issue for you?”, Buddha enquired.

“It was, indeed. Four of my seven children died early. I grieved and cried for them, and those were dark times. Also, my life ended in a terrible way, when bandits came, killed my husband and two sons in the fields, entered our house and bound me, and forced me to watch and listen as they took turns raping my daughter, my youngest child. I tore myself away and tried to fight them off, but they killed me”, she finished darkly.

“How did you deal with this horrible experience?”, Buddha whispered compassionately.

“I didn’t. My soul broke completely. I locked myself into a memory of rocking my baby daughter to sleep, forever, and that is how I would have died, if not for Lady Shakti. The last thing I remember as darkness started to take me was her holy presence all around me, saying “no you don’t”, as she flooded my soul with incredible bliss and light that comforted me, faded out the trauma and the loss, and brought back my memories of life before Earth, so that I could remember and integrate myself. She also showed me the blissful nature or Reality, showed me how I chose to partake in it with my choices of love and kindness in my human life, and how I chose to stand against it in my cruel and harsh life as a demoness. Her love and compassion literally stitched my soul together as I was breaking apart, and I held on to her light and gained new life”, she finished, glowing brightly.

“You are right to put accent on the issue of suffering, Lord Buddha”, she continued. “Suffering is a terrible problem, and the trauma would have ended my existence as a soul, if not for my Mother’s compassion and immense skill in spiritual healing. However, in hindsight, the love and kindness that I experienced are what informed my choice, for them and against everything that threatens them. They are both the reason why I suffered so much when everything was taken from me, and also why I am the person you see before you, because I embraced my Mother and loved her with all my heart”.

“This goes significantly against my beliefs and experience, which both say that attachment is the door to suffering, and in order to avoid suffering, one needs to let go”, Buddha thought out loud.

“But you also taught compassion, if I am not mistaken?”, she argued. “How can one do both? How can one care enough to feel compassion, and let go enough to not feel suffering if the ones you care for are hurt?”

“And also, the Gods do not share your outlook on suffering. They don’t think removal of suffering is a worthy goal, in itself. I’ve seen Gods in tears, and as we speak, my Mother’s holy husband is suffering in solitude and silence, transforming evil karma of a terrible being that had to be destroyed; by choice, not by accident. Gods are not transcendence of suffering; rather, they are transcendence of indifference”, she argued strongly.

“You want to say that I’m throwing out the baby together with the dirty bath water, my Lady?”, Buddha smiled.

“Yes, and I’m glad that we can both understand the analogy, having both been human”, she smiled at him. “I think the point is to embody and manifest the qualities of the unmanifested Absolute, brahman that is sat-cit-ananda. As you become sat-cit-anandamaya, made of qualities of sat-cit-ananda, you are truly living your purpose, which is to be of God”, argued the deeply violet lady Buddha, daughter of Light. “Of all things that are sat-cit-ananda, the devotion and worship of That, which is worshipful and worthy of highest devotion, is what manifests God the most, so that the unmanifested God can say “yes, I am That, and That is what I want to be as a person”, and that is how Gods are born”, she argued as her nature transformed, and the wellspring in her heart opened in fullness, as she remembered her Mother in all of her glory and kindness.

The Buddha was powerfully shaken by the forcefulness and conviction of the enlightened Lady beside him, because this wasn’t some ignorant person telling him the usual nonsense. This was an almost-Goddess, a Buddha herself, a crystal of spiritual light deeper and stronger than his own soul, and her words resonated with such reality that he stood there in sheer awe of her, feeling what she conveyed and the reasons behind it, and he also remembered Lady Shakti, and what he felt when he did his usual “test for reality”, and found something Reality itself is based upon, that shook him to his core like nothing else. Those were not ignorant, attached people spouting nonsense that needs to be released so that nirvana can be. The lovely Lady Buddha across him had thoughts and emotions that were nirvana, emptiness of illusion and attachment, and yet fullness of blissful, delectable joy and clarity of vast, enormous consciousness and understanding of things he was only starting to consider, and his own heart opened in worship and admiration of her, bowing deeply to her lively yet profound spirit, and even more to her Mother, the Goddess whose smile haunted him, as it contained such depths of transcendence and power combined, that his carefully cultivated aloofness crumbled into dust, like a dam that released a flood in his soul, as he worshipped the greatness that was such, that his own greatness never dared to even dream of its existence.

“Lady Buddha, I bow to you, again and again. Please teach me and guide me”, he whispered to the almost-Goddess who choked in ecstasy, and touched her forehead to his own.

“God is the endless delight, endless wonder, reality beneath everything that is real, goodness beneath all the good things. He is the love behind suffering, and bliss, truth and wonder in love. See how I drink it”, she invited him, whispering as her consciousness blended with the deeper reality of God, and God loved being Zina so much, that they could no longer be apart, and was no longer the formless brahman, but Zina the Goddess, touching heads with Buddha in his second enlightenment, as nirvana, the ultimate fullness empty of all that is worthless and superficial, desired to be the wise person who worshipped Goddess Zina.

And so, the Gods were eight.

A beautiful young woman, seemingly in her twenties, sat under a tree in the astral Earth, holding her knees to her chest in thought. Zina looked at her, and a great love opened in her heart. She knelt by her side.

“My Goddess, do you mind if I call you ‘Mother’? Since you saved my soul, that is how I feel about you; I think of you as my mother, who gave me life once more”, the older-looking woman, seemingly in her forties, all-but-sang to her Lady.

“Of course I don’t mind, my dear daughter”, Lady Shakti smiled, looking not at all like she gave birth to Time itself, and yet, that’s exactly what she looked like. The older woman fell into her Goddess’ arms and embraced her. “I never loved or admired anyone as much as I love and admire you, Mother”, she choked with emotion, drinking the nectar of her devotion, and completely losing any sense of time and space. When she opened her eyes, they were no longer under the tree. There were blue crystalline angelic beings all around them, and as she became aware of herself, she saw that she was one of them – deep blue, but smaller than Azazel used to be when he ascended.

“Oh”, she whispered in her holy Mother’s ear, still holding her, still drinking her devotion.

“’Oh’ indeed, my sweetheart child”, Shakti smiled and messed her hair, and Zina laughed. “Zina, you are my great comfort in all that’s been going on lately. Looking at you and what you’ve become makes me happy despite all, and I thank you for it”, the Lady purred.

“Please bless me so that I always remain yours, holy Mother”, Zina whispered, and Lady Parvati kissed her forehead in assent.

“I demand to see Lord Ashur”, a dark, arrogant and seemingly violent soul demanded.

“I don’t know what you are talking about”, an angel appointed to greet and process the deceased responded. “I know of no such person. Are you even aware of who you are, where you are and what is happening to you?”

“Of course I am aware, unworthy scum”, the demonic creature answered. “I am Ashurnasirpal the Mutilator, second of the name, and you better bring me before Ashur, before I have you skinned alive, you wretch”, he threatened darkly.

Azrael the Judge thought what to do about this one. This was by far the worst example he ever saw; most corrupted, most powerful, made of something that looked like soul crystal, only black. Not black like the blessed shivaratri, the stuff wielded by Lord Shiva, which was black in the way mind of God that is to give birth to Light is black. This was black the way concentrated evil and hatred would be black, were they to take crystalline form. It was as if an angelic being was corrupted into something nastier than his past experience told him was possible, and he was very old. This was above his pay grade, so he turned his mind inwards and prayed to Lord Shiva to come to his aid.

Shiva instantly appeared from the shimmer in space. “Hello Azrael, nice to meet you”, he smiled. “I see you’re having some issue here”.

“Yes, Boss”, Azrael smiled and bowed to the Lord. “Here is something I have never seen before, and I decided I better call you”.

“Are you Lord Ashur?”, the dark demon inqured.

“No”, Shiva answered. “And let me see what we have here. This is a terrible criminal, Azrael. He seems to have skinned people alive, impaled them and murdered them in all kinds of terrible ways intended to increase and prolong their suffering. He ruled with fear and intimidation, gouged people’s eyes out, had their noses and fingers cut off, burned them alive and so on. His crimes are numerous, and he even made inscriptions to brag about them, in order to intimidate others. And do you know who this terribly deformed creature is?”, Shiva turned to the angel.

“Don’t you dare talk about me as if I’m not there, you worthless scum!”, the demon growled, moving towards them as if to attack them.

“Enough of this”, said Shiva, raising his hand and freezing the demon in place.

“I honestly don’t know, my Lord. He looks made of material I have never seen before; it’s as dense as vajra, but black, evil and corrupted in incredible ways I have never witnessed before. Honestly, if anyone told me such a thing could exist, I would have refused to believe it, because it contradicts everything I know about spiritual substances”, the angel shrugged helplessly. “How can this creature even exist?”

“I’m afraid it can exist, and I’m afraid we’ve seen the first of the most terrible things that have come from Sanat Kumar’s evil experiment. You see, this is your former colleague, angel Uriel”, Shiva shrugged with profound sadness. “The others need to see this as well, because I am afraid my beloved sister Lakshmi proves to be of immaculate foresight”.

“May all the Gods and everything that is holy be forever at my aid and have mercy upon me, because this is the worst thing I have witnessed in my long life”, Azrael whined in utter shock, staring numbly at the Lord.

…

“Fucking hell”, stuttered Lord Vishnu. His Lady stared at the frozen figure, as if reading from its memory, and wept wordlessly. Shakti grew pale and started shivering, while Zee and Kay just looked at each other in terror. “Fucking hell indeed”, confirmed Lord Shiva. “If there were an encyclopedia of some kind here, if you looked up under ‘fucking hell’, a picture of this creature would be there, staring at you menacingly”, he managed to make a sour attempt at a smile. “What do we do with it?”, he asked, looking at his family.

“Destroy it outright, without remainder, and someone would have to purify the kalapas because the substance is incredibly toxic”, said Lady Shakti, her voice shaking slightly. Lakshmi nodded in assent. “I approve wholeheartedly. This is the most evil thing I have ever seen: an utterly corrupted angel turned into a super-demon; more evil, warped and demonic than even Sanat Kumar, and all of the astral demons taken together; in fact, compared to this abomination, the astral demons look like naughty children throwing rocks at birds. This is worse than Satan, and it can’t be allowed to exist in any shape or form”, she shivered, as everybody nodded in assent.

“That’s what I thought, but I wanted you to see it first and tell me what you think, and I’m glad we agree”, he opened his palm and the frozen super-demon broke apart into dust, turning into a terrible black smoke that looked like it was made of a million microscopic black holes, and was absorbed into Shiva’s body. Shiva looked unwell, as if crunched under a terrible burden or pain. “I must leave you now and take some time off to deal with this, because this is not health food by any means”, he smiled weakly, as if it hurt him to think or talk, and shimmered out of their presence.

“Great Lord, conqueror and destroyer of all that is evil and impure, I salute you and bow before you, again and again”, whispered Lord Vishnu, and all the Gods and Goddesses bowed in silence.

Angel Azrael stood there, still petrified in shock, with his mouth agape, knowing only that he just witnessed the death of an Eternal, and, even worse, that it was a good thing.

“Fuck”.