“Lady Karuna, may I have a moment of your time, please?”, a strikingly blue angel bowed.

“By all means, Sri Shankaracharya”, the girl smiled and curtsied. “How can I be of assistance?”

“Since the end of my life on Earth, I meditated, thought, asked questions, and eventually decided to talk to you, since all are in agreement that you are the wisest or at least in the closest contention for that title, and you seem to be the least scary and intimidating of all who were mentioned in the same breath”, he smiled.

“It will be my honour”, she smiled and waved a hand. A coffee lounge enclosed them as to give them privacy. “I assume your inquiry will be related to the fact that the world doesn’t seem to follow the predictions your philosophy postulated”, she poured him coffee.

“That is indeed so, but were it only that, my confusion would be less, and I would merely adopt a system of belief that is better. My problem is that nobody seems to have predicted everything with full accuracy. Buddha was both wrong and right on many counts. Personalistic schools were right on some counts and wrong on others. Christians, as I see, were also wrong on many things, and yet right enough for it not to matter greatly. What is most confusing is that I see Gods who belonged to many different systems, most of which were wrong on at least half of everything they addressed, and yet it doesn’t seem to matter. My own system seemed to explain everything, and here I see that it explains the Absolute excellently, and the Relative poorly, to the point where I got literally nothing right. This in itself would be humbling enough, but I recently witnessed the fact that four peasants from Mleccha lands attained godhood very quickly, based on short instruction by the enlightened Buddhists originating from the university of Nalanda, so obviously the secret to apotheosis must be easy and straightforward to both explain and understand, and yet, I never even came close to replicating their achievement. I am thus confused and seek refuge in your knowledge, Goddess of Wisdom”, he bowed deeply.

“Your analysis is honest, straightforward and accurate, and I admire it”, the Lady nodded. “Your mind is pure and powerful and it is an honour and a pleasure to talk to you. However, allow me to direct your attention to the Gods themselves. You seem to have become aware of their particular identities and status?”

“Yes, I know all of you. There are Lord Shiva and Lady Shakti, Lord Krishna and Lady Lakshmi, your esteemed husband Lord Azazel and your honoured person, then Lord Buddha and Lady Zina, Lord Azrael also known as Yama, and his wife, Lady Hypatia of Yavana origin, Lord Jesus and his wife Lady Mary, Lord Padmasambhava of Nalanda and his honoured wives, Lady Mandarava and Lady Yeshe Tsogyal, their four recently enlightened disciples from the Christian lands, and I heard that a famous Christian philosopher and his honourable wife have today been added to the number, but I don’t know their names yet, as I just heard the news”, he reported.

“Your report is indeed exhaustive and accurate, Svamiji”, Karuna nodded. “Could you please point out the Gods who are brahmacharis?”

“I don’t think there are any, my Lady. They all seem to be married couples”.

“I also assure you that all couples attained apotheosis together; there were no individual male or female Gods who attained apotheosis, and got married later”, she confirmed. “What does that tell you?”

“It indicates very strongly that spirituality isn’t an individual endeavour, and that there is something about male and female aspects of consciousness, and especially them working together in the last stage of spiritual advancement, that makes apotheosis possible”, he conceded. “This, however, is as far as my analysis can take me”.

“I will now demonstrate something my holy Mother, Lady Lakshmi showed me right before my crystallisation into vajra. Take a look at this astral flower”, she waved her hand and a flower appeared on the coffee table. “Please, enter samadhi and feel it”, she encouraged.

“I did. Its very consciousness sings so ham, I Am That”, he nodded. “The flower exists in a state of turiya”.

“That is correct. Now, tell me, Svamiji, how are you different from that flower?”, she smiled.

“You mean, we both exist in a state of unity between atman and brahman. By my own definition, this realisation should burn out all karmic seeds and remnants and produce liberation, the way knowledge erases ignorance and light erases darkness. And yet, not only are myself and the flower different karmic entities, but we are in fact vastly different. I see what you mean: turiya does not affect the level of karma whatsoever. One who was a man before realisation does not become a flower or an elephant merely because the same brahman manifests as atman in all beings. Also, his karma is not transformed or erased, and whatever he was prior to realisation, this he remains, with the addition of realisation, which changes his understanding, but does not fundamentally alter his nature. The consequence of this, I see, is that I worked very hard on attaining a state that is initially valuable, but its repetition and extension does not improve upon this initial achievement, making the effort redundant, if not altogether useless”, he conceded.

“Your analysis is excellent”, she smiled and nodded in praise. “You are probably familiar with the Sankhya theory of Prakriti and the three gunas that make it: tamas, rajas and sattva?”

“I am indeed”, he nodded.

“This theory is a Hindu attempt to make their own version of Lord Buddha’s theory of kalapas, the fundamental particles that aggregate into larger karmic entities. This theory was the theoretical foundation of his concept of anatman, assuming that the concepts of karma and soul are not separate, in a sense where soul would have karma, but that soul in fact is karma. Buddha assumed that the concept of asmita, self-ness, is an emergent property of karma, and as such deconstructible. This was his error, as samadhi experience demonstrates – asmita is the foundation of all reality, as it is the fundamental aspect of the Absolute, and since it exist in every single kalapa, it is obviously not divisible either, as your Upanishads illustrate with the example of a single Moon and multiple vessels of water that can contain its reflection”, she nodded. “So, if every kalapa manifests asmita, and other properties of brahman, what changes as kalapas aggregate into larger entities?”

“The obvious answer is quantity. However, this does not relate to asmita, as self-full nature of brahman seems to exist in this flower as much as in myself. However, the mind changes, as well as other manifestations of sat-cit-ananda. This means that a bigger, more complex karmic structure creates a larger, more powerful consciousness, and differences exist in ratios and amounts of properties. If impurities exist, they also affect the structure of the karmic body, which now explains the purpose of yoga and other forms of sadhana; those impurities need to be removed”, he nodded.

“So, we have so far proven that asmita and sat-cit-ananda exist on a particulate level, and are not emergent macroscopic properties. We have also established that souls vary in size and complexity, and that impurities and structural flaws can manifest during the process of karmic accretion. Do you agree”?

“I do”, he nodded. “However, we haven’t established the mechanism of accretion itself, nor what makes a difference between pure and impure growth of a karmic body, and I will now make an obvious corollary from the established fact that kalapas are of the nature of asmita and sat-cit-ananda, and state that the karmic actions that promote self-realization and sat-cit-ananda in oneself and other beings are conducive to correct karmic growth. Also, actions that are opposite to that, in a sense that they extinguish self and cause spiritual darkness and suffering have a detrimental effect on the karmic body, but this is as far as my conjecture goes, and I again have to resort to your precious guidance”, he smiled and nodded to the Goddess.

“You are again correct in all your suppositions. The actions that promote sat-cit-ananda, and I will further merely assume asmita, as it is in fact the same phenomenon, since asmita is satcitanandamaya, are conducive to karmic growth, and this is for two main reasons. First is that such auspicious actions create a glow in the Relative that is reminiscent of brahman, and kalapas have an inherent longing to return to their origin in the Absolute, but they can only do so in the Relative, so they are attracted to the karmic structure whose inner light is the strongest. Goodness and manifestation of the inner nature of brahman are like a strong beacon that attracts soul-particles the way fire attracts insects. This is true also on the macroscopic level, as good people attract other good people, and Gods attract all goodness in all of the Relative, as we are the ultimate expressions of brahman. We can here establish that a karmic aggregate holds together due to the inherent attractive forces between the particles. This is a satcitanandamaya force, it is of truth-wisdom-bliss. Evil actions, that which promote lies, ignorance and suffering, that oppose reality and lead away from all that is good and spiritually useful, create areas of low-attraction or even repulsion within the karmic structure, causing it to become structurally weak and prone to breakage, limiting its further growth until the structural flaws are removed, and they are removed by correct knowledge and correction of past error by good actions. Knowledge itself is not sufficient for removing those inclusions, as it needs to counter heavy inertia of past action, so a combination of realisation, suffering and action is usually required. The difference between impurity and structural flaw is that of degree. Actions that are mostly good, but contain a seed of ignorance and wrongness, create a structure that is of impure colour. Actions that are outright evil create structural defects and weaknesses that would lead to karmic segregation”, she nodded.

“I have seen this mentioned in the context of impurities on the four lower elements, those being earth, water, fire and air. As we are in the astral world, and those obviously do not refer to the material elements, they must be a metaphor?”, he wondered.

“Indeed. Earth is, essentially, reality of a thing, its foundation in truth and fact. Believing in truth and fact grounds one in reality, and is thus purity of the element Earth. Element Water is energy, which can be pure or impure, and this is a level of interpersonal interactions. When they are pure, meaning those that promote truth, consciousness and bliss, it is said that one is pure in the element of Water. This is why the Gods always interact in an uninhibited, truthful and blissful way, and impure beings interact in ways that promote falsehoods, diminish happiness and introduce ignorance and incoherence. The third element is Fire, and by that we mean the mind in its creative function. If mind is pure, it creates actions and artefacts that affirm and promote truth, reality and bliss. For instance, one writes a book that reveals knowledge and dispels ignorance, and also makes readers feel good, causing them to partake in the inner nature of brahman. Or, one invents and implements agricultural methods such as accumulation lakes and irrigation channels, that correct for the periods of drought, thus producing food where there would otherwise be famine. If one is of impure mind, he thinks of various things that will make others feel terrible, and promote ignorance and suffering, for instance making drugs that will make people feel good temporarily, but will harm them greatly in the long run; or they invent philosophies that flatter one’s ego but eventually lead them to ruin. The fourth element, that of Air, is what we could call freedom. This element is the most abstract of the four. If one allows themselves freedom to be whatever is best and manifests the Will of God, it is said that one is pure in this element. If one imposes restrictions, such as requesting punishment for his past wrong action instead of just correcting them, or requires others to be restricted, limited and oppressed, he is impure in the element of Air. Purity of Air manifests as unrestricted love, thought and being, but unrestricted doesn’t mean of whatever nature, including evil one; it means unrestricted nature of brahman, who is sat-cit-ananda. A purity of acceptance, freedom and happiness, and allowing God to take whichever form is the best, and also forgiveness and release of spiritual fetters, is purity of the element of Air. Since that element is usually the last to be mastered, purity of Air normally signifies purity on all four elements, which starts the process of sublimation into the fifth, also known as crystallisation into vajra. This transformation fuses the gaseous particles of an astral body into a crystalline structure, where a huge cloud of astral matter compresses into a small crystal of vajra. As one evolves further, this structure can grow bigger and also the frequency of its specific energy grows higher. However, if you followed me thus far, this is where you will ask an obvious question”, she smiled.

“You mean, where does one get the kalapas for this kind of growth, as one would assume that accretion of the free kalapas from the surrounding space is a rather weak source, that might function well enough in the beginnings, but less so later on, and if I am to guesstimate, accreting all the free kalapas from the astral world would hardly contribute anything to my current spiritual size”, he nodded.

“You are again correct. Even much earlier in one’s spiritual evolution, the main source of new kalapas that integrate into one’s karmic body is not the environment, but another phenomenon entirely. You see, new kalapas are constantly being created; they are not a limited resource. The probability of new kalapas being created is the greatest in places where the manifestation of brahman in the Relative is the greatest, as this makes the veil between the Relative and the Absolute the thinnest. A soul is by definition an aggregation of kalapas in the Relative, which means it is a heightened manifestation of brahman compared to the surrounding space, and its baseline of existence itself already guarantees that new kalapas will more likely be born in a soul’s core, than in the surrounding space. However, as one performs karmic actions that are really satcitanandamaya, there’s a literal fountain of new kalapas opening in the core of one’s soul, one’s heart, metaphorically speaking, which is how good states of consciousness and good actions promote one’s spiritual growth, at a much greater scale than would be possible by mere absorption of free kalapas from the environment. And also, unlike the environmental kalapas which are always of lower energy than your soul, and you need to extract this low-energy disturbance from them by the process of suffering and yoga, the kalapas from the fountain in your heart are of the highest energy your spiritual body can hold, so they mean instant growth without any of the drawbacks that come from other methods, such as taking on karma from others, or absorbing karmic bodies of the impure beings that you had to kill”, she grinned.

“This sounds like a self-promoting process where being a beacon of the light of brahman in the Relative makes you a bigger beacon of light of brahman in the Relative, until…”, he wondered.

“Until me”, she smiled and pointed at herself. “Until the unmanifested brahman attains self-realisation as you; the opposite to what this flower or yourself do when you realize that you, in your true nature, are brahman. Apotheosis is what takes place when the unmanifested brahman realizes that it really, really wants to be Kay, and then I Am Her”, she smiled and both her eyes and the jewel on her brow lit up. “The goal of evolution is not when you become brahman, because you started by being brahman; that’s no achievement, and realization of the fact is good, but also doesn’t do much for you. The goal of evolution is when God wants to be you, because you are so incredibly attractive to God as a self-expression nexus, that God attains self-awareness and self-actualization as you, and the veil between Relative and the Absolute that used to exist within your heart, and which became permeable and produced kalapa-fountains during your evolution, breaks up and ceases to exist completely, as God becomes you, and you become a God”, she was now positively glowing, and Shankaracarya’s hair stood on end in awe, because he was looking as if at the core of a spiritual star.

“This is a good lesson for me, my Lady”, he managed to start using words again. “You know, I used to think that on Earth, it’s best to be born human; of human births, it was the best to be born a brahmana in India, and of brahmanic births, it was best to be born a man, because then you could go renounce the world and attain enlightenment. Now, I’m talking to a woman who is so far above me in every conceivable metric, that the difference wouldn’t be that much greater were I a woman from a low caste, or for that matter, a cow”, he shivered. “You are like a huge ocean, but the stunning thing is that the ocean is not trying to swallow me and drown me, but instead lifts me up and makes me float, as its waters are wisdom and kindness; the knowledge that teaches and nurtures, not knowledge that humiliates and tears down. And as for the male and female thing, I for the life of me can’t comprehend it. I used to think that gender was merely a property of the body, and as you transcend the physical, the soul remains not only genderless, but is also just one in all beings, truly. Maybe the most shocking part of my new understanding is that this is completely wrong. Can you please explain how souls can have such strong sexual dimorphism, because I have no idea how to explain this, and yet it is obviously true. You are not only God, but you are also the most feminine girl imaginable, and yet every understanding I used to have about women – how they are intellectually weaker, less prone to transcendence and so on – is obviously falsified by your person”, he shrugged, looking confused.

“We now seem to have made a full circle, coming back to the initial question of our conversation; that of the reason why Gods exist in male-female couples, with an exception of one male-double female triple. Also, your observation that the highest beings have the greatest degree of gender dimorphism, as if spiritual evolution abhors the gender-neutral, which exists in abundance on the lowest evolutionary tiers, but is literally nonexistent on the highest ones. The reason for this, of course, is not anything physical. Neither I nor my husband had a physical incarnation on Earth, and yet I am strongly female, and he is strongly male. So, obviously, the reason for our dimorphism isn’t that evolution in a human body shapes you in one direction or the other, and this then persists as you keep evolving on the higher planes. In fact, it seems to be the other way around; Sanat Kumar couldn’t design a functional physical world that wouldn’t replicate the sexual dimorphism that exists on the soul planes, and the physical differences between human sexes seems to imperfectly mirror the structure of male and female souls. The main difference is that souls don’t have sexual organs as separate structures; my entire soul, for instance, is my female sexual organ. It’s as if we exist in either left or right crystalline alignment on the level of our fundamental spiritual structure, and it can work right only if it’s either completely left or completely right. Having it part one, part another would create a fundamental imbalance, and the crystal would break in two along the separating line. Do you follow me?”, she smiled.

“I think I do. The reason why only strongly male and strongly female persons are accepted by brahman as its persons – which is the opposite of how I used to conceptualise enlightenment, by the way – is because unclear, indistinct or ambiguous spiritual gender translates to a weak and imperfect crystalline structure, which would collapse long before the point in which apotheosis becomes an immediate prospect. I also understand now that enlightenment is not about transcendence of the personal as one comes to evolve enough to be able to understand the impersonal, but evolving the personal to the point where brahman seems to decide that it is what represents its inner nature in the Relative. Also, this inner nature seems to be something that not only doesn’t discriminate against being male or female, but on the contrary, outright refuses to be just one of the two, unless it is immediately balanced by its opposite-gendered counterpart. Why this is so, is something I don’t yet understand”, he shrugged.

“It seems that the inner nature of brahman is such, that the only way to truly express it in the relative is a male-female relationship, which requires a perfect man, a perfect woman, and a perfect relationship between the two. This is something that balances reality that would otherwise be incapable of manifesting what’s on the other side. The reason brahman accepted me as Herself is because of how female I am, and because of how much I love my husband, and how much I worship my elders. The reason brahman accepted my husband as Himself is because how male he is, and because of how much he loves me, his female counterpart, and how much he adores our elders. We started pretty much as you are – as angelic beings of vajra. I was smaller and of lesser specific energy than you are now, while my husband was somewhat stronger and of higher frequency than you are. We were both newcomers; he used to be a very old and powerful demon who sought refuge in Lord Shiva, and I was a maid-servant of Lady Lakshmi. Since we were both lost in a heavenly plane, we got together, and we were so attracted to each other that we got married within minutes, and our lovemaking consisted of worshipping our elders, and drinking each other’s energy, and we grew much stronger and greater very quickly. Then Lord Shiva and Lady Lakshmi came to explain things to us, blessed our union and left us to our own devices. My brilliant husband concluded that we have everything we need now, and we continued with out sadhana of worshipping the elder Gods and worshipping each other, and we attained apotheosis that same day, becoming the first new Gods after the Primordials”, she glowed as she reminisced.

“So this is why there are no celibate Gods. Brahman, essentially, refuses this and sees it as an abomination. Any such thing would need to be corrected at a much earlier phase, or one would be stuck in an evolutionary dead end”, he nodded. “But what about the Buddhist triple? They seem to be an exception”.

“Not really. They are all either strongly male, or strongly female. The third person isn’t an imbalance, as both women are very strongly feminine, and the fact that they worship one another and it’s a full three-way marriage seems to be the proper way to balance such a union. It would be imbalanced if the females repulsed each other, but since their energies are merged and blended, it works like a three-quark union in a proton”, she smiled.

“What?”, he scratched his head.

“Oh, never mind, something from the physical world; some of the fundamental particles of the material world are structured in that way; in order to get a particle, you need two up quarks and one down quark, where two up quarks are of different ‘colours’, and the ‘down’ quark is of a third primary colour, and together they form a ‘white’ proton”, she giggled. “It’s the closest analogy for our beloved Buddhist triple that I could think of, but this structure is of course unknown to the physics of your era. I will open a data bank for you so you can absorb this knowledge”, she waved her hand and Shankaracharya’s eyes rolled up for a moment.

“Oh, I see”, he noted. “The quantum chromodynamics. So you have red and green female, and a blue male in a triple, and this is the equivalent of a, let’s say, black-white structure of a couple”, he nodded. “The women are united in their common worship of the man, and they love each other the way one would love oneself in profound self-realization, and their mutual energy exchange is self-affirming through strengthening another female self of the triple. It’s a wonderful relationship, if everybody is pure, and they are obviously perfect”, he nodded.

“The difference between their relationship and the quantum chromodynamics metaphor is that they both together create a perfect white to complement his black, but the rest of the analogy holds”, Kay nodded. “In any case, brahman strongly approves of their union and their persons, as each of them would rather die than see the third person removed from their bond, which is exactly how my husband and I feel about each other. Everything is either both of us, or none of us”, she smiled blissfully.

“What about homosexuals as a possibility?”, he wondered. “There are many male worshippers on Earth that look distinctly feminised, with proclivities towards the same sex. What happens to them here?”

“The homosexual pairs tend to be quite polar; one always plays the feminine role, and the other masculine. Remove the physical body and the feminine homosexual male usually turns out to be a female soul, because even if a soul started as mostly male and took a male body, once they start practicing femininity the soul structure turns more female. It’s the same with homosexual women. One tends to be feminine and the other masculine, and the masculine one is basically re-magnetising her soul to the male side and, unless she decides to reverse the process, turns completely male. But this is a very early stage of spiritual evolution, compared to what we are talking about here, and homosexuality is usually merely a consequence of some trauma or impurity that needs to be corrected. For instance, Mandy and Jess aren’t Lesbians, despite the fact that they see each other as wives and are sexually completely interconnected to the point where you would probably kill both of them if you tried to disconnect them. They are more like two hemispheres in the brain of a single heterosexual, very feminine woman. Yes, this is the best explanation I can think of, since they both say that the other is more like their body part, and not a different person. I’ve heard of conjoined twins on Earth, where you would have two women sharing the same body, but their brains are distinct. Now imagine them with brains completely neurally interconnected, the way two hemispheres of a normal brain are connected, and it’s a three-way connection with Paddy, as well. It sounds complicated, but to them it’s the simplest and most normal thing in the world, and brahman obviously loves being them. Oh, I’m opening another knowledge bank on human biology”, she snickered.

“I see”, he smiled after he absorbed the information.

“But what do you get if a male and a female God achieve some kind of a perfect union in the Relative? Is that even a possibility, or are they necessarily separated since it’s a requirement in the Relative?”, he nodded curiously.

“A perfect union between a male and a female God is the full version of this”, she tapped the golden jewel at her forehead. “The Throne of God. The foundation of Reality. It’s the first emanation of the Absolute, which then further separates into a male-female couple, and then manifests vajras and lesser energies, such as the astral substance”, her jewel flashed briefly.

“I think brahmacharya was a fundamental mistake, and I should have paid more attention to the tantrikas”, he waved his head in dismay. “They knew what they were talking about, while I was full of conceited nonsense”.

“I think you are being excessively harsh on yourself. Have you met a woman on Earth you wanted to marry, but you couldn’t because of your vows?”, Kay countered.

“No. In fact, brahmacharya was a good excuse not to get involved with them”, he smiled.

“You see; no harm done. Lady Hypatia was a brahmacharini herself, not because of a vow, but simply because she never met a man she would fall in love with, at least on Earth. But once she met Azrael, or Lord Yama as you would call him, her entire virginity left her in seconds”, she giggled. “It’s not about being involved with the opposite sex. It’s about finding your actual wife. Once you do, you can become a man I will want to be, so that I could make love to the woman I will want to become”, she switched to the First Person, and her jewel flashed again.

“I think I understand now”, he nodded. “But I apologise for what I said in the beginning, that you are the least scary and intimidating of all the Gods known for their wisdom. It’s actually hard to qualify – you are both so scary and intimidating in your omniscience and omnipotence, that I don’t even have the word for it. Were I human, I’d probably lose bladder control when your jewel flashes, that’s how intimidating you are. And yet, you are the gentlest, kindest most intimidating person in the world”, he smiled, waving his head in wonder. “How do you manage to be both? I would expect someone with your knowledge, intelligence and power to be a distant and terrifying towering figure, and yet you are none of that. You are approachable, kind, gentle and… cute, if that’s an appropriate thing to call an omnipotent Goddess”.

“Cute is perfectly appropriate”, she giggled. “My secret for staying grounded is my submissive feminine nature. I adore and serve my husband. I adore and serve my elders. I would never do anything that would have them think less of me, I would never disobey them, and I never want to break their trust. They are everything to me, and as I feel that, I am perfectly grounded and free to be my girly self, even if it includes providing strategical analysis for the elders, or creating, modifying or destroying worlds”, she nodded. “By staying obedient, worshipful and submissive, I am freed and grounded”.

“And how do the men do it? I mean, the male Gods?”

“They ground through their women. They have a vulnerable perfect Goddess in their arms and their love just flows to her naturally, freeing them to be their natural selves. We, men and women, keep each other sane and normal. Each on our own, we would turn into insane monsters”, she frowned. “Just look at people on Earth. When male-female love breaks down, people turn into monsters. Whether they are male monsters that explode with aggression, or female monsters disgusting in their passive-aggressive victimhood and entitlement, it doesn’t matter, as they are both vile. The male-female mutual worship, respect and service is the foundation of the world, and once that breaks, there’s no bottom on that pit of hell”, she shivered as she did simulations. “So, your brahmacharya has served you well, for a time, but as all tools, it needs to be put aside when its work is done. When you find your woman, you will lay down that tool in some shed and forget you ever had it”, she smiled at the angelic man. “Just don’t be a fool and cheat on your destined wife by finding just any woman now, because you think you should. To pick any woman is to betray the woman”.

“Augustine did the similar wrong thing – he found his true wife more than half a millennium ago, and he sent her away in order to seek spirituality. Just yesterday he understood what a mistake that was, and cried to Christ to help him fix it. Fortunately, it was all well, as she was then not ready for him, and she used that time to level herself up and become his true equal”.

“A woman is not a crutch you now need to find in order to attain godhood. A woman is also not a worldly thing to renounce for spiritual reasons. A woman you seek needs to be someone who is so wonderful, that God will want to become you, because you are the proper way to adore her”, she concluded.

“My Lady, I bow to you in deepest respect, and I will take your teaching to heart immediately and most seriously, with the greatest gratitude of a humble student who was graced to be in the presence of the Greatest and the Highest. All glory to you!”, he bowed.

“Stop apologising, Goldy”, Hildegard smiled. “I was never in your league intellectually, but I wasn’t completely stupid. I knew I was too lucky to have you, and I left of my own will when the time came. I knew you are the only one I would ever want, but we weren’t there at the same time. You had a life of a Bishop and a philosopher ahead of you, and I knew I would only stand in your way, for I wasn’t worthy of you yet”, she caressed his cheek. “But I prayed that God would bring our destinies together once we were both ready”, she smiled to her ancient love.

“When I was with you, I felt such depth of consciousness, merely from you being there, that nothing I felt in church came close, so I learned to relive that depth in my memory, and prayed to God to elevate me spiritually to that level, so I could truly be your wife, and not merely an incredibly lucky ancilla”, she laughed quietly. “I also never wanted to have another man in my bed, because I thought of myself as forever yours. In my next lives, this remained true, and I kept meditating and studying, without consciously knowing why, but of course I would remember between lives, as the Judges would awaken my memories”.

“You more than merely caught up with me, Hildegard”, he smiled. “You are so amazing now, I feel I now need to catch up with you”.

“Nonsense. Your energy grew deeper ever since we embraced, and it grows deeper still, as we breathe each other’s presence”, she dismissed the idea. “It seems that the only thing that was actually hindering your progress is the fact that your heart stopped when I went away, and I’m sorry for that”.

“And I’m sorry I didn’t always remain faithful to you. I briefly tried to fill the void with another woman, but it was an unworthy effort and brought me no happiness”, he nodded remorsefully.

“I forgive you. It was harder for you, I know. Everybody knew you were of high status and I was a daughter of a slave maid. The expectation was that I was nothing special. You only found out that it wasn’t so when you tried to replace me and you couldn’t, and you didn’t know why, and then you were ordained and all of it fell to the wayside. I, on the other hand, always knew you were special and irreplaceable. The only person who could ever come close to my memory of you was Christ himself. So, replacing you with another man wasn’t even a temptation”, she smiled.

“My only love, will you have me back? I am unworthy, and I was treacherous and foolish, but I confessed to Christ just now that I would do anything to repair that ancient mistake, where I treated my true wife as a worldly thing to renounce for Christ, only to find out that my way to God leads only through you”, he kissed her hand. “I promise to never leave you again, may Christ be my witness”.

“I will have you; for in my heart of hearts, I always remained yours”, she smiled and melted into his embrace.

…

“Let’s go and find Christ, for this time I want him to pronounce us man and wife, to make up for my old failure”.

…

“Truly, you are already married, but I bear witness to this fact and pronounce you husband and wife”, Jesus embraced them both. “Do you now know what to do”?

“I felt immense relief and spiritual growth as she returned to me and I held her, so I would suspect that further growth lies in that direction”, Augustine offered.

“Quite so”, Christ nodded. “You can get more precise details from the Teachers of Gods in the apple orchard, for they are the greatest experts in all of Heaven in matters of spiritual marriage and energy flows. However, I think you are both mature and wise enough to already suspect everything. You need to love, adore, worship and serve each other, and you also need to worship the person of God that is closest to you. Do you know who that is for you?”

“You are”, they spoke in unison, and smiled.

“Well, that makes it simple. Love each other and breathe in each other’s energy, and remember My presence and what you admire about it, for I am the Light of the World”, the Jewel in his hearth flashed and they were both momentarily overcome with bliss. “Love and worship each other, and love and worship God; and the rest is up to God, because the next step in spiritual evolution isn’t so much you choosing to become something, as much it is God choosing to become you”, he hugged them again and shooed them away to meditate.

And, as they did, the Gods were twenty one.

“Something seems to bother you, Bishop”, Christ smiled at the man. “One would think a man such as yourself would run out of bothers in a place like this”, he pointed at their surroundings. It was a green meadow in the astral Earth, where Jesus made it a point to break bread with Christians every day, and answer their questions, for they had many. It was different than what the Buddhists did in the apple orchard, but no less useful.

“I think I had my priorities wrong for so long, I’m not sure if I can get my head straight any more, my Lord”, Augustine sighed. “Christianity seemed to be about choice of You, and the correct teaching of the Church. In order to make the correct choice, one had to cast aside worldly things, wrong things, things that would seduce one away from God. I’ve read your words, and they seemed to approve of this interpretation – let the dead bury their dead, and you who want eternal life should follow me”.

“I had a wife, you know. It wasn’t formalised, the word we used for her was ‘concubine’, but I lived with her for almost fourteen years. We even had a son together; we called him our gift from God, Adeodatus. She was of lower status, so it was out of the question to elevate our relationship to official marriage, and even my mother, who was very Christian and who actually played a huge part in my conversion to Christianity, encouraged me to send her away and marry someone of proper status”.

“I loved her greatly. She was my dearest friend and companion, but since everyone around me encouraged me to treat this relationship as something frivolous and unimportant, I never assigned it with the significance it ought to have had. They had me send her away, and I did. I saw your example, as the Church presented it, and thought I don’t need a wife, that I should dedicate my life to God alone. So, I lost my wife, and soon my son died, and I think my true life died there, with them, and what was left was the vacuous word juggling and arguing about orthodoxy, the way fools would argue about wrappings while they throw away the content of the package. Now I see that not only did you have a wife, but she was with you until the end, she was with your mother under the cross, she was the one who saw you rise from the dead, and she is with you now as a fellow person of God, and the Church discarded her the same way in which I discarded my own wife. It all looks like the same fatal flaw, where we rejected the will of the living God in order to accept words and rituals bereft of meaning, deluding ourselves by thinking how we renounced the worldly things for those of eternity. Can I ever put this right?”

“The Church really messed this one up by counterfeiting Magdalena out of my life”, Jesus nodded in dismay. “Your wife is not a worldly thing. She is your opportunity to share God with someone in deep intimacy. To send your wife away because you want to dedicate yourself to God is like performing human sacrifice for the sake of nonviolence. It is as counterproductive as it is moronic and evil, and you are right to be ashamed of yourself for it, for it was a terrible thing to do”.

“However, it’s actually more complicated than that. You see, you were an angel, and she was a less developed soul. I mention you being an angel not as praise, but as a warning, for angels are usually conceited, self-righteous, dismissive of the lives of others and more focused on ‘important’ things in life, such as their career, or a higher calling, rather than the people in their lives. It is a paradox that demons tend to be more loving and caring in their earthly lives, as they don’t care so much about the abstract things, as they do about the immediate ones. Zina is a good example of this; she was a demon, and she threw herself into loving her worldly family with incredible passion. Hypatia, on the other hand, was an angel, and you can see this in her life, where her career was paramount, and her relationships with people were superficial at best. She was, however, a very kind and caring person to others, very much like you were, when they didn’t stand in the way of your illustrious career”, Jesus grinned. “The reason why I am mentioning this is because you were simply not in a good place in your spiritual life, where you could really appreciate the deep spiritual importance of your wife, and your environment merely encouraged you in your natural proclivities. She, on the other hand, was not ready for the really deep spiritual place you are thinking of now. It was not the right time for either of you. Yes, you sinned against her when she did nothing wrong and everything right, but even if you hadn’t, the difference between you was too great for you to have been able to establish the kind of a spiritual bond of joint godhood that I have with Magdalena, or what Hypatia has with the Angel of Death, or what Zina has with Buddha. We were all quite close to our companions in spiritual status. Magdalena was incredibly close to being a Goddess in our earthly life, and became one minutes after her death. Hypatia became a Goddess essentially seconds after seeing Azrael, and he was at an almost identical state of spiritual growth as her, so they achieved apotheosis together. Your wife would have needed to take a few more spiritual steps in order to match you, and you, yourself, are ready to understand the significance of it only now”.

“And you should understand that she was and is your true wife, Bishop. It was no accident that you felt such friendship and closeness with her in life, and she can be replaced by no other”, Christ nodded solemnly.

“Where is she now, my Lord?”, Augustine said in anguish. “What has happened with her since we parted so inauspiciously?”

“She vowed to remain forever loyal to you and to take no other man, and she did exactly that, in that life as well as those that followed. She was a consecrated virgin, a Christian nun, in three lives that followed. Her last life ended just recently, and I talked to her yesterday. She was a person of great esteem in the Church, almost matching your own reputation and status, as is proper. Would you like me to introduce you to each other?”, Lord Yeshua smiled.

“I would like that very much, even though I am very much ashamed of myself and I feel unworthy. It will be a great penance for me to see her chastise me, and I will bear it with humility as I fully deserve it”, Augustine nodded, with an expression of a man whose sins came to bear fruit.

“Then so shall it be”, Christ nodded, and made a hand motion. An angelic woman appeared from the shimmer in space. “May I introduce you to abbess Hildegard von Bingen. Abbess, may I introduce you to Bishop Augustine of Hippo”, he nodded.

The woman was a deep indigo-violet super-angel of the highest order, and Augustine was deeply impressed by her depth and stature. And yet, there was an air of profound familiarity around her.

“Goldy? Is that really you?”, she closed the space between them, and he could see her tears welling up. “I am so sorry to have been such an ass to you”, his own tears streaked his face. “You are known as Hildegard now, am I right?”

She just embraced him wordlessly and they wept together, as Christ shimmered out to give them privacy.

“So, let me get this straight. Since I last saw you, all four of you went to Lady Jess to teach you, because you decided you were ignorant peasants?”, Lady Hypatia smiled at the four newborn Gods.

“Well, we figured that staying ignorant would be a poor way to repay you for your kindness”, Albert smiled. “So, we looked around to see who would teach us how the world works. Jetsunma seemed to be the least busy, so we went to her”.

“And then all four of you became Gods, and then Jess chastised Lord Shiva for giving her the title ‘Teacher of Gods’?”, she sipped her coffee and snickered.

“I didn’t chastise Lord Shiva!”, Yeshe Tsogyal protested, taken aback by the very idea. “I just urged him very politely to reconsider, because my husband and wife were doing the same work as I, and it was a mere accident that I got such brilliant students, so if I am to be recognised for it, they should be as well”.

“And so all three of you got the title”, Hypatia smiled. “Quite deservingly, if I may say so, since you’ve been doing wonderful work there. Thanks to you, the level of understanding of the world among the post-Earth souls has risen dramatically”.

“And all four of you now have an official title in the lineage of Jetsunma Yeshe Tsogyal Rimpoche in the Nyingma tradition of Vajrayana Buddhism”, Kay nodded approvingly. “Which means you all now have long titles I will never manage to remember”, she pretended to nurse a headache.

“Let’s all pretend you didn’t just remember mine perfectly”, Jess tickled her in the ribs and laughed as the Mind of God tried to squirm away, giggling.

“So, what do you plan to do next?”, Lady Hypatia asked the four.

“If it is acceptable to you, we would like to join you in your work as the Judges”, Hilde looked at Hypatia. “We considered between that and joining Jetsunma in her teaching work, but we decided that, since we belong to you, we should take some of your workload away and thus make your life easier”, she smiled at her Goddess, who started to tear up and decided to hide her discomfort by embracing the girl.

“It is perfectly acceptable. All four of you are overqualified for the job, and we are honoured to have you”, nodded Lord Vishnu, who decided to save Lady Hypatia from the embarrassment of having to say something while trying not to cry.

…

“Wait, I just remembered that you referred to Lady Mandarava as your wife, and not sister-wife”, Kay scratched her jaw. “Does that mean…?”

“Yes, it’s a three-way relationship. I am her wife as much as I am his. If I didn’t love them equally, there would certainly be all kinds of jealousy or feelings of exclusion. Our minds are so intertwined, we don’t even think of ourselves as separate persons, more like one person with three bodies, all in service of each other”, Lady Jess nodded.

“That’s why you refused any recognition if the two of them don’t partake”, Goddess of Wisdom nodded. “You perceive yourselves as a single unit, that just happens to sit under three different apple trees at the same time”.

“I’m glad that you understand us. People get confused when they see us, because they always get hung up on sex and imagine two in intercourse with the odd person sticking out. That’s not at all how it is. We meditated together so much, that we would forget which body is where. Our consciousness was completely merged, and we automatically took care of each other’s needs, without even realising. Someone would be thirsty and someone would bring water. One of us would work late, and one of the others would wake up and bring more oil for the lamp and go back to sleep. I don’t even remember which one did what. So, even saying that it was a three-way marriage doesn’t do it justice. Mandarava is not so much my wife as she is a body part, figuratively speaking. You will rarely see us talking to each other, but you will see us finishing each other’s thoughts, or picking up each other’s role in a conversation. The fact that two out of three of my souls are female is merely a factoid”, she smiled.

“But what about sex? I mean, technically…?”, Kay blushed.

“Technically, sex consisted mostly of breathing each other’s energy, of surrender and worship”, Jess shrugged. “Of course we were incredibly intimate with each other, but if you visualise my husband in padmasana, and me in his lap, you’ll understand there’s not much penetration or action of any kind going on there”, she laughed as Kay was cherry red. “I would embrace him and we would breathe each other. Or I would embrace my wife and we would breathe each other. When you have three-way blending of minds and all are breathing vajra and visualising mandalas, the sex on Earth was pretty much the same as it is for you and your husband here; souls breathing each other in directly. The physical world was something that happened in the background”, she shrugged.

“I am starting to see why the three of you became Gods, and others doing apparently similar things in your tradition didn’t. You were the goal to each other, not means to an end”, Kay nodded.

“Exactly. We weren’t using each other to attain enlightenment; we used enlightenment to love and serve each other”, Jess smiled blissfully.

“I am honoured to be your friend; and by ‘you’ I mean all three of you, who are one”, Karuna bowed, and Jess Rimpoche just hugged her. “You’re not merely my friend, sweetheart. You’re my sister”.

…

“The religions and cultures seem to be amalgamating wonderfully”, Lady Shakti smiled at her husband. “A tantric Tibetan Goddess just brought four German Christians who worship a neoplatonist Greek Goddess to godhood. Also, the said Tibetan Goddess is sister-bonding with Karuna”.

“Sounds very much like heaven”, Shiva smiled. “The only kind of a religious war they could possibly have is over trying to give each other all the credit. But just imagine people on Earth seeing them. They would have an absolute fit”.

“You mean, they would try to burn them all at a stake for heresy?”, she giggled.

“Exactly”, he nodded.

“I don’t think we are even close to seeing the dumbest and craziest they have to offer”, Shakti sighed.

“Since your soul structure is essentially grafted upon a vajra carrier, your situation is different than what an angelic being would normally be facing. They attained purification of the lower four elements before crystallisation. You, however, need to consciously go though this now in order to integrate your consciousness with the carrier fully”, Goddess explained.

“Jetsunma, how do we do this?”, Albert frowned. “Are there specific ways we should approach grounding into the elements, or should we follow the classic procedure?”

“Classic procedure would probably work, but I have a specific meditation for you to go through, since your specific situation is also providing you with shortcuts that would not be available to a normal soul preparing for vajra initiation. The standard affirmation is ‘element Earth is perfect, and present in fullness in me’, and the same for each progressively higher element. In your case, the affirmation is ‘Lady Hypatia is the perfection and fullness of the element Earth, and I accept her perfection and fullness as myself’, as you meditate on her energy as you originally felt it. This is because you already have a template of perfection within your soul, that you merely need to integrate on a conscious level”.

“You spoke about treating impurities that arise in the process, and how they are to be consumed through remorse, suffering and Kundalini kriyas. Does any of this apply to us?”, Hilde wondered.

“No. Your structure is perfectly pure. The carrier your souls were grafted upon is of a perfect Divine origin, and your souls themselves were pure. They were, however, extremely undeveloped, which is why you now need to expand your consciousness by evolving structures that would normally be there in a being of your spiritual status; your problem isn’t lack of purity, but lack of complexity and substance”, Lady Yeshe Tsogyal explained.

“We understand, Jetsunma”, the young students bowed and retreated to meditate.

…

“Isalde, our children have greatly overtaken us in their spiritual progress”, Berfrid addressed his wife. “I’ve seen them with the Tibetan Goddess in the apple orchard again, and each time I see them, they look more mature and older, and I can understand less of what they are saying. We need to pick up the pace, or we’ll be left behind”.

“This is true and you are completely right”, she nodded. “Whilst I am happy that they are making such progress, we need to keep up. During our life on Earth, we were illiterate and ignorant, and now we are surrounded with such excellent opportunities for learning and growth. How are we to be worthy of our Lady’s gift if we stagnate?”

“We should seek out the Tibetan Goddess ourselves and ask that she teaches us alongside our children”, he nodded seriously.

“Shouldn’t we seek out our Lady Hypatia instead?”

“No, she is busy receiving the recently deceased from Earth, and when she isn’t, she is recovering from it with her husband in peace and quiet. It would be sinful to impose undue strain on her. Also, the Buddhist Gods have volunteered to teach ignorant souls that have been released into the astral Earth by the Judges, and this very much applies to us, because we are as ignorant as they get”, he grinned.

“Hopefully, not for too long, lest our children leave us in the dust”, Isalde smiled and embraced him.

…

“Jetsunma, we meditated as you recommended, and the results were quite spectacular”, Hilde bowed to the teacher Goddess. “As we went through each element, it is as if we opened our minds to a huge library of knowledge related to the respective element, and it poured itself into us, giving us perspective and understanding”

“This is exactly what happened”, Yeshe Tsogyal Rimpoche nodded. “The astral world is made in such a way that knowledge isn’t sequestered into some separate library, although a library does indeed exist here, for the souls that are accustomed to Earth; the books there merely connect to the knowledge that could be accessed from any place, and at any time, if you request it. The books are merely an interface”, she smiled.

“So, does this mean that by meditating upon the elements in their purity and fullness, we opened access to the all-present sources of knowledge that were poured into our minds the way water fills a vessel once the dam is removed?”, Albert smiled back.

“Yes. As I can see, you now have complex structures of knowledge and understanding related to the elements, but you need to practice more so that the process of sublimation of four elements into the fifth reproduces in your souls, thus replicating what Lady Hypatia herself attained, untold eons ago”, she confirmed.

“Yes, Jetsunma”, they bowed.

…

“I see that you have both attained the first enlightenment. I salute you”, the Goddess bowed to the stark blue, fully developed angelic beings before her. “You have now consciously attained spiritual status you had previously possessed due to your Lady’s grace, which is now fully your own, and you did her great honour”, she bowed again.

“It is all because of your priceless teaching, Jetsunma”, they bowed in unison.

“We do have a question regarding our further progress”, the girl squirmed uncomfortably. “We understand that in order to become a true God, one must have a relationship of mutual love and worship with their counterpart of the opposite sex”.

“We came to understand that we already have such a relationship with each other, but since we are brother and sister, we came to ask you about propriety”, man blushed to match his sister.

“You worry for no good reason”, the Goddess smiled at them. “On Earth, marriage between siblings is prohibited in order to prevent disorders that would arise from lack of genetic diversity. It is a purely physical precaution that has no bearing on the matters of soul. As you no longer have human bodies, none of this applies to you. So, if you feel comfortable exploring a romantic relationship, this is perfectly appropriate”.

The young angels were hugely relieved. “Thank you, Jetsunma”, they bowed, and looked at each other. “If it is all right, we don’t want to merely explore a romantic relationship. We want to be properly married as husband and wife. Will you please marry us officially?”, the girl whispered.

“Do you both agree on this?” the Goddess spoke seriously.

“Yes”, they replied in unison.

“Then you are as of now husband and wife”, she bowed. “I give you my most heartfelt blessings”.

“Now, I will teach you how to perform karmamudra techniques adapted to direct soul-to-soul contact, so that you can merge your personal lovemaking and meditation on your yidam Goddess. This is how I, my husband and my sister-wife attained godhood while still on Earth. I most heartily recommend it”, she smiled, and the newlyweds just bowed in silent adoration.

…

“It’s strange, but I understand it”, Isalde shrugged. “They are close, they are already family, they learned form Jess Rimpoche together, and since there are no human limitations, there was no reason for them not to upgrade their brother-sister relationship to one of husband and wife, if it suited them better. Honestly, it’s the most reasonable and appropriate thing to do, once you think about it properly and get past the human ideas. After all, all Gods are brothers and sisters in a sense, and they are also all merely different faces and persons of the same God”.

“This is exactly as Jess Rimpoche explained it to me”, Berfrid confirmed. “And also, she noted that you, in fact, are their sister as much as their mother, since all three of you share the same Goddess-substance that gave you eternal life”.

“I did think about it”, Isalde nodded and smiled. “The thought of my children also being my siblings is as strange as it is endearing, as is the idea of being both mother and mother-in-law to both of them. But once I’m past the initial shock, I wholly approve of their relationship change. It would be extremely weird for them to break up with each other in order to try to find someone else to marry, when they have no such inclination and it would bring them nothing but suffering”.

“Come; it is time for our next lesson with Jetsunma”, he smiled and took his wife’s hand.

…

Albert and Hilde were intertwined like a double helix of black and white vajra, drinking the nectar of devotion to their Goddess, to their Teacher, and to each other, each devotion strengthening and empowering others, until the veil in their hearts was no more, and God claimed both of them as Self.

…

Berfrid and Isalde watched in a mixture of shock and bliss as their children formed a mandala by folding space and time as if a paper flower, with themselves embraced in its centre. They understood what was happening. They, too, were good students of Jess Rimpoche, and Isalde herself attained her first enlightenment, and was now an angelic being in her own right, and not merely by the grace of their Goddess. As they observed their children’s apotheosis, they looked each other in the eyes and decided it’s time.

Jetsunma taught them well; they combined their own love, worship of the Goddess, gratitude and worship of Jetsunma herself, and, now, admiration and worship of their divine children, who were the newest God-couple at the summit of Creation.

And so, the Gods were nineteen.

…

“Apostle, have you seen this?”, Augustine prodded Paul.

“I have indeed, Bishop. Our Lord was right. Seemingly, not only have the harlots and tax collectors overtaken us into the kingdom of God, but also the serfs”, Paul snickered. “We have been lazy and complacent, my dear Bishop. Instead of learning from our betters, we have been sitting on our imaginary laurels”.

“Maybe this is an extraordinary exception; they were saved by Lady Hypatia, who sacrificed a part of her own soul for them, blessed be her holy name forever”, Augustine nodded. “But maybe I am deceiving myself. They are obviously better than me, as I encountered the Lady myself on my arrival here, and I mostly wasted my time arguing with her about theology, while they worshipped the ground she walks on, as is right and proper, as she is a sister to our Lord”, he waved his head in self criticism.

“Let’s find Peter and tell him about this. Truly, we need to repent and cast aside our stubborn ways, lest God get weary of our nonsense and cast us aside”, Paul smiled bitterly.