“So, my friend, what has been the most shocking for you here so far?”, Paul sat by Bernard’s side and offered him a cup of coffee.

“Thanks, Apostle”, the man nodded. “Most shocking? I don’t know where to even begin”, he gestured. “Probably multiple persons of God. I’m still trying to get my head around that. Not just that there are more than three, but that new ones can be born when existing souls reach their final stage of evolution. The concept that one can become God sounds outright satanic, until you remember that Christ urged us to do just that, but we seem to have swept that part under the rug because we didn’t know how to interpret it”.

“The next thing are the women”, he waved his head. “The fact that women can be very holy and smart was always completely normal and expected to me. But that you can have female persons of God, that was a shock, because when one says ‘Goddess’, the first association are the Pagan deities – Artemis, Isis, Venus and so on; you would expect some fertility deity of nature surrounded by Satyrs and bunny rabbits, and similar heathen nonsense. But no, they are nothing like that. The first person I met here was Lady Zina. May the Lord forgive me, the first idea I had was that she’s someone’s assistant. But when I understood who she is, I expected the worst – a non-Christian woman is going to get her payback on an inquisitor who burns witches on a stake and whatever nonsense Pagan enemies of the Church are spreading whenever we have to punish some woman who practiced actual witchcraft, gave someone a preparation brewed from toxic herbs and toads, and the person got possessed by demons or died. So, I expected Artemis to get her payback and send me to hell. Instead, she was incredibly righteous, her account of the facts was superb, and she interpreted them all in my favour, as if she were my own attorney, and not the judge. She behaved as if it was her goal to save me, teach me, comfort me, and she even told me stories from her own life on Earth, somewhere in the early Genesis, thousands of years before Babylon was a thing, if you can believe it. She even said that Adam and Eve are a metaphor for her first group of souls that inhabited human bodies on Earth, and I believed her. Instead of being vengeful, she was just, kind, and her judgment was the most charitable and in my favour. May God forgive me, but by the end of it, I loved her as much as I love Christ himself, and since she sent me to him and I actually talked to him in person, I know what I’m talking about. He asked me about my impressions of her and I told him the truth, that she is nothing how I would have imagined a female deity, but every much as I would have imagined him, and he nodded, praising her greatly. Let me tell you, everything in the Bible about how God is jealous, I expected to see it, but they love each other so deeply, it melts my heart as I see it. He told me that the part about the jealous God is about worshipping Satan and all other unworthy things, such as the made up Gods or nature, not worshipping other persons of the One True God”, he ended the tirade with a sigh and a smile.

“Did he tell you about his wife?”, Paul snickered.

“He did, but at that point, after all that I’ve seen, that part actually felt normal”, Bernard laughed. “What actually still shocks me is how the Gods are with each other”, he mused. “They are innocent like small children, and yet there is such wisdom and power in their eyes that I just stand there like a fool and can’t get my thoughts to move. One would expect them to be strict and stern, but they feel like family members who know each other for eternity, and yet every time they see each other they react with such deep joy, as if a brother and sister who see each other for the first time after being apart for years. It’s a wonder to witness. It feels absolutely pure and innocent, and yet, God forgive me, more intimate than sexual intercourse. When I was with Jesus, Lord Buddha came by and brought us coffee. The way those two greeted each other felt like diving straight into the deep mind of God, and yet they just greeted each other in passing. I read the books of Marco Polo about Buddhism in China, and I imagined that it must be some religion much inferior to our belief in Christ, but when I saw those two, I understood that I know nothing about God”.

“Want to hear some gossip?”, Paul grinned a lopsided grin of mischef.

“?”

“Augustine became a God just recently”, Paul nodded.

“St. Augustine?”, Bernard’s jaw dropped.

“Indeed. He used to sit here with me, brooding, as you do now. Then he met his wife again, the one he wrote about and regretted leaving in ‘Confessiones’. She remained celibate in that life and three more that followed, spiritually evolving so that she could be his true match. They are inseparable now”, he smiled. “I miss our talks, though”.

“Somehow, I’m not surprised; the Goddesses are incredible. Soft as feathers and virtuous and powerful as Christ. I’ve never seen anything like it”, Bernard shrugged. “Who is the Lady?”

“You might even know her, she was quite famous. It’s Hildegard of Bingen”.

“Of course I know her. Of her, at least. She wrote excellent music and interesting books. Incredibly virtuous and holy person of bright intelligence”, he nodded. “And you say she saved herself for him through all those lives and centuries?”

“Yes. She said she found her man, and until she could be with him properly, no other man had any appeal”.

“This is such a high standard for loyalty, chastity and faith, that I stand wordless. And is she a Goddess too? If not, she ought to be, because what you are telling me is amazing”, he was stunned.

“She is. Apparently, souls become Gods in couples. No single man, or single woman, can become a God or a Goddess. It’s always a couple of perfect souls who love each other perfectly”, Paul explained.

“Be perfect as your Heavenly Father”, Bernard quoted.

“Indeed”, the Apostle nodded. “Augustine told me that his heart stopped when he sent her away, all those centuries ago, and he couldn’t make any true spiritual progress since. And when they were reunited, they both attained perfection almost instantaneously”.

“We really messed up with celibacy, didn’t we?”, Bernard nodded in dismay.

“I’m not sure about that. We’re talking about really perfect souls here, great holy people in their own right, capable of incredibly strong and pure love that is of God, and when they meet their counterpart, Divine magic happens. But ordinary people, they are more likely to be just male and female fools, doing foolish things each in their own worldly ways, making life difficult for each other. It might be better to be celibate and hone your spirituality in solitude until you are ready for this Divine form of love that makes you a brother or sister of Christ, than to lose yourself in the quagmire of worldly nonsense. That, at least, is what I am telling myself”, Paul shrugged.

“You are probably right. I would prefer staying celibate to being married to a worldly woman. But when I see those perfect, godly women, I am amazed at their perfection. It’s like seeing a female Christ, and not just one, but several different ones, all perfect in their own right. I can’t imagine myself being married to a woman like that, because I’m not worthy. But I want to be”, Bernard nodded. “It is a thing to aspire toward, because I can’t think of a more worthy goal”.

“There is a good thing about worldly marriage in a lesser standard of love”, Paul nodded. “You get to practice. Learn how to be with a woman, learn how one thinks and feels, how to help her and be a man for her. As a celibate, you are unlikely to learn any of it, and as such, you won’t know how to be with a woman, or develop spiritual features this requires. Sure, it’s unlikely that your wife on Earth and yourself are to develop the deepest form of love, like Christ and Magdalena, or Buddha and Zina, but it is going to be vastly better than lusting for boys, as pederasts do. Practice will show you both right and wrong ways, so that you can learn and improve”.

“You are indeed wise, Apostle”, Bernard nodded.

“Not as wise as Augustine, regretfully”, Paul smiled his lopsided grin.

“May God almighty have mercy on me, for I am a sinner”, a man mumbled.

“We’ll see what we can do about that”, Lady Zina smiled.

“I am Bernard Gui, my Lady. Could you please tell me where I am and what is going on? I see that I died, and this seems to be a place of judgment. Are you here to take me before a judge?”, he asked politely.

“No; I am to be your judge, Inquisitor. My name is Zina”, she curtsied.

“I see. Have you been appointed to this duty by our Lord Jesus Christ?”, he inquired.

“No, I have not. In fact, I have been on this duty for almost five hundred years before Christ was born”, she smiled. “I was appointed to this duty by his Father”, she smiled again.

“Are you not a Christian?”, he was shocked.

“I’m afraid things are not quite the way you expect them to be, Inquisitor. Just think about it: I was appointed to this duty somewhere around the time when Socrates was born. I achieved apotheosis soon after I met my husband, the Buddha, which was soon after that. You can think of me as Christ’s older sister, if that pleases you, although I am no more Christian than he is a Zinian”, she laughed. “If that makes you happy, you can look into me and ask to identify me”.

“Lady Zina, Person of God, Judge of Karma, the Love of God?”, he was shocked. “Your title is ‘Love of God’? You are a Person of God, like Father, Son and the Holy Spirit?”

“I am indeed”, she nodded.

“I sincerely apologise for questioning you, my Lady, but I don’t know what to think at this point”, the man appeared to be in shock. “On Earth, I was in charge of establishing orthodoxy and eliminating heresy, and yet if one on Earth happened to profess belief in any of what I am now seeing, I would have condemned them. And now, I am afraid it is my turn to be condemned, for I was obviously ignorant and in the wrong”, he mumbled, very much disturbed. “What have I even done?”

“Oh please, Bernard, let us dispense with judgmental and radical thinking and first establish the facts. I am not known as the ‘Love of God’ because I’m a judgmental person. None of us Judges are, despite what our title might make you believe. We are here to teach you, to inform you, to go through your past life with you objectively and see what lessons may be learned from it. Only in the most dire cases do we actually condemn souls to hell, and if you had witnessed those cases, I am sure you would agree with me that it would be a greater evil to let them roam among the normal souls, than to sequester them into a place where they can do no harm”.

“I am at your mercy, my Lady”, the man bowed humbly, obviously experiencing grave moments.

“Let me take a look at your life. You were known as a fair, pious and intelligent man with good political connections within the Church, and as such you were appointed an Inquisitor to deal with the Albigensian heretical uprising, also known as the Cathari. This was done as to ferret out the true heretics from the seduced and mostly ignorant general populace of the region, so that the true ringleaders and ideological heads of the movements could be isolated and condemned, and their seduced, ignorant and foolish followers converted back to orthodoxy. During the Albigensian crusade, many terrible slaughters were committed, starting with the one in Béziers, under the motto that went somewhere along the lines of ‘kill them all, and let God sort them out’, am I right?”, she smiled.

“It was ‘Kill them all! God will know his own’, my Lady, but your account of the facts is otherwise perfect”, the man nodded in assent.

“So, over twenty thousand people were killed in Béziers alone. Also, hundreds of men and women were burned at the stake, being stubborn Cathari ideologues, and the entire population was contaminated by this ideology, which had terrible consequences for public morality, as their ethical teaching was terrible; they were essentially allowed to do as they willed, resorting to murder, plunder and rape, they could lie as much as they wanted, and terrible things happened regularly where they were in power. The Church desired to weed out the heresy itself, but bring as much people back into the folds of the Church, and they appointed you to implement this intent. They were also intoxicated with arrogance and acted as if mad. Am I correct?”

“You are, my Lady”, he nodded.

“And so, after almost a thousand court proceedings, you condemned forty five or so hardened heretics to be burned at the stake, and prescribed penance or imprisonment for the rest who were found guilty, and the result of your work was that you successfully exterminated the Cathari infestation from the Languedoc region. Am I correct?”, she smiled at the obviously concerned man.

“Yes, you are. Your account of the events is faultless”, he nodded in expectation of punishment.

“Your efforts in establishing the Catholic orthodoxy in the region were an unqualified success, and your approach to justice was very mild, considering the numbers I mentioned before your acceptance of the inquisitorial role. Truly, one less reasonable and moderate than yourself could have easily condemned thousands more, and one could still find scarce reasons to blame him. Still, you accomplished your task, and this satanic insurgency was quenched”, she bowed.

“Wait; am I to understand that you support the position of the Church regarding those heretics?”, his eyes opened wide.

“I understand that the Church, for its many flaws, was a factor of reason, order and virtue compared to the Cathari, who were a truly Satanic infestation. Had they spread and overtaken Europe, it would have been a regression into a yet unseen darkness”, she confirmed. “This doesn’t mean that I fully support the position of the Church in everything. You will see later that its teaching leaves much to be desired. However, souls are not condemned or saved based on the correctness of their belief, but on the purity of their hearts and kindness and virtue of their deeds. If you remember, my brother Christ commanded his disciples to love each other as he loved them. The philosophical and theological content of his teaching was quite superficial, and essentially stated that one should obey the Law sincerely, and not hypocritically. His teaching was so thin philosophically, that the early Christian theologians adopted the philosophical views of the Neoplatonists, and later Aristotle, for there were none to speak of in the original teaching. So, it would be foolish to expect God to condemn people based on something Christ himself didn’t care to teach properly”, she smiled. “The reason why I condemn the Cathari isn’t their teaching. Were it but for that, their teaching would have in fact been closer to the factual state of things than the official Christian one. No; they are condemned because of their immorality, and for the fact that they embraced the satanic urges of arrogance and madness. Contrary to them, you behaved with reason and kindness, and tried to save as many people as you possibly could, without releasing such obvious madmen that it would have been a greater abomination to free them than it was to burn them”, she nodded.

“But my Lady, I condemned people because they adhered to a wrong belief, whilst I myself adhered to a wrong belief, merely a different one. Surely I deserve the same fate as those I condemned?”, he wondered.

“This is not how I choose to look at it. The way I see it, all beliefs are somewhat wrong; some more than others. In the long years of my service, I have seen perfectly holy people who adhered to beliefs that were almost completely wrong and evil; on the other hand, I have seen vile and corrupt people who adhered to beliefs that were technically quite correct. It is not belief that I condemn or absolve souls for, and neither did you. You did not condemn the heretics because they were heretics, but because they were immoral, vile, arrogant and satanic, and would have turned the world into a hellish nightmare, if unopposed. The reason why we Judges exist is the same. We need to filter out the evil souls, so that the normal ones might live in peace. We also have many separate locations for souls of different origins and character, so that they wouldn’t confuse each other and interfere with each others’ paths towards God. Don’t think that we separate people into good Christians and those who are condemned to hell. In fact, I have condemned many ‘good Christians’ to hell, because their souls were cruel and satanic in their nature, and in the choices they made in life. On the other hand, a vast number of non-Christians were good souls who in fact followed Christ’s teaching about love and kindness”, she pointed out. “My husband the Buddha, for instance, was the first great teacher of the world, and his success was an inspiration to Father to send Christ to improve upon his mission and designs. Lady Hypatia of Alexandria, as another example, is also a fellow Judge and a Person of God, a sister of Christ and our good friend. The fact that the Cathari were heretics in the eyes of the Church has absolutely no bearing on my judgment. The fact that they were attached to the satanic attractor, drunk with arrogance, and that their consciousness and actions were for the most part terrible, does”, she nodded seriously. “However, if you look at your personal feelings, you condemned the heretics based on the fact that they were vile, terrible people, who stunk of satanic defiance. Those who were not bad usually reacted well to your invitation to repent and embrace orthodoxy, am I right?”

“I see what you mean, my Lady”, he nodded. “I would not have put it in those terms during my life on Earth, but the moral quality of one’s life was indeed my main criterion of guidance, because I thought that those who are irredeemable have the air of Satan around them; proud, spiteful and full of madness and evil, while those who are merely confused and seduced react well to reason and virtue, and have modesty and humility to them”, he nodded. “But am I to understand that you do not condemn me?”

“Indeed, I do not. I am very much as you were – trying to teach and guide, to show souls light, truth and love of God, rather than find fault that would justify condemnation, for it is God’s will that souls find Him and love Him, and the will of Satan is for souls to be condemned and lost. I am appointed to this duty by God, and not Satan, which is why I try to teach and save, rather than condemn. I condemn only those who embraced Satan and evil to such a degree, that it would be a sin against the loving and truthful nature of God to absolve them”, the Goddess smiled angelically at the profoundly relieved man.

“But I must beg you to teach me, for I see that I am very much in the dark. Honestly, as I saw how things here greatly differ from all that I would have expected, I had darkest thoughts about my fate, and yet, you truly justify your title of Love of God, for I feel God’s love from you. You say you are Christ’s sister?”, he smiled.

“Indeed. He and I know and love each other ever since his resurrection, and I have served his Father for many centuries before. Truly, the earliest parts of the Bible have been at play in the time of my life on Earth, as it was before Assyria and Babylon. I was one of the first souls to come back from Earth, after it was first created”, she reminisced, as shivers went up Bernard’s neck, in understanding how ancient the holy woman before him truly is.

“Does this mean you are one of the ancients of the Old Testament?”, he wondered.

“I am their contemporary”, she nodded. “I was not someone of historical importance, merely a loving mother and a wife whose family was brutally slaughtered by bandits, and I was murdered as I tried to stop them as they were taking turns raping my poor daughter. I arrived here where you stand, but in such a terrible emotional state that I would have died, save for the mercy of my Mother, Lady Shakti, who healed my dying soul with her love and compassion, and I remain forever her loving daughter”, she smiled.

“I am sorry for the pain you suffered, my Lady”, Bernard’s eyes were wide.

“Those were cruel times, and it was very, very long ago”, she nodded slowly. “But, as you can see, I am ancient by your standards. To me, Rome was yesterday, and Carthage a day before. Ashurnasirpal was the first of our ancient terrors. And I was among the first fools who accepted Satan’s invitation to be born in that vile world, and suffered terribly as a result”, she concluded.

“You were there immediately after Adam and Eve?”, his eyes were wide in wonder.

“Adam and Eve were a metaphor for the first souls who were deluded by Satan to ‘eat fruits from the tree of telling good from evil’, because he promised that we will become Gods. Since I’m one of the first, you can rightly say that I was Eve”, she smiled. “I am an ancient fool; but fortunately, by the grace of God, I learned to love deeply and purely in my earthly life, and was saved. Later, I loved my Mother and my husband so much, that I truly attained apotheosis, becoming like Christ in my inner nature, somewhere around the times of Socrates and Plato”, she smiled an ancient smile.

“My Lady, I only now begin to understand what an incredible honour it was to have been assigned to your tender mercy”, he bowed deeply.

“I will now send you to my brother, Christ, to teach you the full truth about the world, because there is more, and yet our work here is done”, she curtsied with a blessed smile, and the man was gone.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“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.