“They hate us, you know. The demons you and Lord Vishnu talked about. They hate us, they envy us, they conspire against us, and they think we are the reason why they don’t grow anywhere as big as the normal souls”, Shakti told her husband in a worried tone. “I don’t know what to do about it, but the fires you two have been putting out periodically are a symptom of a deeper problem”.

Shiva thought deeply about this. “The reason why they are limited in their growth has nothing to do with us. I mean, sure, we limit their growth by killing them when they become a nuisance and start disrupting the lives of other beings, but the reason why they grow to be large dark astral beings, instead of crystallising into vajra like everybody else, is in their impurity. They have impurities and attachments in the lower four elements, which prohibits crystallisation and is a natural limit to their evolution, unless they stop being demons, repent, make amends, let go of their resentments and anger, embrace truth instead of slander, sarcasm and other evils they are so fond of, and become normal good souls. Then they would crystallise easily due to their great astral mass, and everybody would be much happier – especially themselves, because they wouldn’t end up on the wrong side of divine justice”, he mused. “What do they think is their problem?”

“I did look into it somewhat, and I can’t make heads or tails of it. It’s as if they start with resentment, envy and hatred, and then invent reasons for it as they go, and they can’t agree on a single theory because they hate each other, too, so each of them needs to have his own special theory of how we are the evil oppressors and they are the valiant freedom fighters whose only sin is refusing to bow to power”, she smiled. “Some think crystallisation is not a natural process, but something we promote in souls that we find submissive and compliant enough, supporting our oppressive regime rather than threatening it. Some think we are somehow actively harming them by curses or some weapon they haven’t been able to figure out, so that they just grow in astral substance but never ascend to the next level; they think there must be some selective inhibitor we are using. Some think that the structure of the world itself is such that it promotes a certain type of evolution that we arbitrarily set to promote what we like and inhibit what we dislike, and that they would do much better in a different world type, if only they could create it, but of course they lack the power, and that’s supposedly our fault because we hoard it all to ourselves”, she rolled her eyes mischievously. “So, basically, they are the valiant, brave victims of oppression and we are the super-villains, and if only they could get rid of us, everything would be so much better and the truly virtuous would be in power”.

“They are not very smart, are they? I mean, I understand that astral beings lack the insight into reality necessary to understand how kalapas interact, how they aggregate into larger structures and how they merge into higher-order particles, but it’s not like we’re really keeping the knowledge about this to ourselves. Anybody could ask us, as they did many times, and we told them everything there is to know, so the knowledge is widely available in the astral world, among all who consulted us or trusted the word of others who did. Oh wait, let me guess, those are the servants of the evil regime that spread the lies and propaganda of the oppressors, and are not to be trusted?”, Rudra grinned.

“Yup, exactly right. If something is true and comes from us, they instantly mistrust it, and invent wild theories about all sorts of nefarious reasons why we would want the stupid sheep to believe it, but they of course know better because they are independent free thinkers who figured it all out”, she snickered. “I don’t think the open demonic uprisings and revolts are the main problem here, because the only way they can be dangerous is if you, in your infinite kindness, ignore all caution and prudence and give one of them some weapon, blessing or a boon that can actually do harm, because anything they could think of on their own is of such a pathetic order of magnitude that it can barely harm other demons, let alone us”, she playfully poked Shiva between the ribs.

“Ow. So what do you think is the real problem?”

“They are harming the evolution of other astral beings, not just with their revolts, but with those paranoid ideas they are making up and spreading, and the normal astral souls are hardly smarter than the demons, lacking proper insight into reality by definition, which makes them susceptible to all kinds of wild theories that make some sort of sense if you’re not in a position to see for yourself. Each of those demons usually seduces and manipulates thousands of others, spreading insane ideas and evil thoughts and emotions, basically warping their perception of reality and turning them into dark entities, and none of them are going anywhere but down spiritually, breeding more resentment because that’s our fault for spraying them with a magical evolution inhibitor or something, and they eventually can’t contain their hatred and rise up against us, which is where you and Lord Krishna have your manly fun, protecting us gentle and defenceless ladies agains the Orc army”, she giggled.

“You’re in a good mood today, I see”, Shiva smiled. “But I’m going to recommend something you’re not going to like, I’m afraid, and I would hate to spoil your day, but that dress-up you and Lady Sri just had gave me an idea. You see this tiara she made for you? It’s an entity made of her crystallised power, that works like an independent thing but with her own powers and blessings. It’s separate from her, but does the same things she could. I guess the dress you made for her works the same way?”

“It does. Go on”.

“Well, the demons are saying that we are hoarding power and keeping it all to ourselves. They also want to create their own world types, where they would test different rules and types of evolution, without our interference?”

“One does; the others are dumber and less inclined to go that much into philosophy. I don’t know what his name is because he keeps making up fancy, powerful and scary names for himself; I think he wants to be a great dark Lord who is feared and respected, and has a cool name that exudes power and fear”, Shakti rolled her eyes, still smiling.

“Now comes the part you won’t like. We’ll make an entity, like the dress and the tiara. It will contain your power to make worlds, and I will sprinkle it with some of my magic sauce as well. It will be conscious and able to execute authorised commands, but it won’t have free will, in a sense where it would be able to refuse orders, kill itself or interfere in any way, so that it could execute any monstrosity the demons order it to create. And then we have to figure out a way how to give it to the demons without seeming to give it to them, because they will instantly assume it’s a trap or a trick by the evil oppressors”, Shiva rubbed his chin, deeply in tought.

“You are right; I don’t like it, but I do see where you’re going with this. I can instantly foresee all sorts of terrible evil that will result from this”, the Goddess said seriously. “But technically, we can put a respected astral being in charge of granting access to this entity; so that it would seem that the entity is intended for the sheep-servants of the evil regime, but someone who can be tricked by the demons. We’ll tell that person that it’s our gift meant for all the souls, so that they can partake in the Divine ability of Creation, that would normally be beyond their reach, since we heard that some wish to explore alternatives to the worlds we created according to our own feeling of rightness. But you do realise what will happen? The craftiest and the most dangerous of demons will manage to deceive that person, and then create some sort of a dungeon or something, that will be as far from the bright light of God’s presence as it would be possible to create, and then lure other souls inside with propaganda about how they’ll finally be able to reach some otherwise unreachable goal.”, she whispered, and then brightened up: “Oh, I see. Your magic sauce. You will actually enchant it to serve a true high purpose and make everything it does for the greater glory of God, the unmanifested Absolute. I thought you were being generous again and getting us into trouble by granting dangerous gifts to evil idiots, but I see that you’re the real brain in the family”, Shakti whispered and kissed Shiva’s ear. “I see the plan. You will make a honey pot of a sort, where all the demons and idiots will gather, and it will all seem to be a terrible disaster where souls will die or be warped into evil and then have to be destroyed, far from God’s light and knowledge, but eventually it will mop up all the demons, mop up all the idiots that are stupid enough to follow them and believe them and thus perform a great purge of the astral world, and of course that thing they’ll be making will run out of energy and entropy will do its thing there… and I see, you and I will be responsible for the cleanup, since we cooked up the whole mess in the first place”.

“Oh, we’ll strongly oppose it, of course. I will definitely issue warnings; not in my true form, of course, because then the guardian would feel obliged to obey me instantly, but I can always shapeshift into something humble and unimpressive. I can even make sure that the demon himself recognises me through the disguise, because knowing that I’m trying to prevent his plan will have him instantly trust the whole thing completely. The guardian won’t know, but he will have complete freedom to decide what to do, and if he refuses, well that’s that. If he accepts, that will have terrible consequences for him, once he understands what he allowed to happen, but that will actually be his call to make”.

“Are you sure you want to do this? There’s going to be actual danger involved. Even with your blessing, my power separated from my will is a dangerous thing. Separating the power of God from the will and wisdom of God is a terrible idea”, Shakti whimpered worriedly.

“And I will be sure to tell the guardian all of our objections, and warn him in no uncertain words. This is indeed a terrible thing we are about to set in motion, but, as you said, we have an inherent problem brewing in the astral realms, and the demonic uprisings are merely a symptom. The problem is, we need something between a honey pot and a lightning rod to funnel them all somewhere, and it needs to be of their own free will, so that we can filter out all their evil and remove the corruption they are causing where they currently are”, Shiva answered, calming his wife. “Since we’ll be responsible for this mess, we’ll also have to pay the price and transform all the nasty sludge that will result from it. It will be very nasty, I warn you. But I will render a path for success that can be followed once we’re in there”.

“Why do we always have to process toxic sludge and raw sewage?”, she whined. “Can’t we have some peace, quiet and bliss for once?”

“Nah, that’s for Radha and Krishna. They get to be beautiful, blissful and exemplary. The two of us get to eat shit and suffer, but we also get to be powerful and solve problems the others are too squeamish to deal with”, Shankar smiled and kissed her nose.

“Oh well, I guess I can live with that”, she sighed, a smile emerging. “Have the path forward firmly fixed and give me your blessing rendered out of the Will of God. Good. I’m casting my own spell around it now. It’s done. It’s a Jewel, something like Kaustubha, only different in purpose and equally dangerous. This one can be rendered safe only if you wear it, the way Kaustubha was rendered safe by Krishna. But out of your hands, you know what will happen”, she warned.

“I know. Well, Krishna did want a weapon that would bind demons so that we could kill them easily instead of trying to stab them while they run around as quickly as possible. I guess I can blame this one on him; I’ll just say we were fulfilling his wish”, Rudra grinned mischievously. “Let’s make an announcement and appoint a Sentinel”.

“Karuna, what can I do for you?”, Lakshmi addressed a young girl, who was her worshipper and only recently started crystallising her spiritual body; apparently, she wanted to talk but was too intimidated. “Lady Sri, I am very sorry to disturb you, but I wanted to ask you something”, the girl stuttered. “Do you have a minute?” “Sure, sweetheart. What is it?”

“Well, I’ve been asking myself something for a while, and I can’t make sense of it. One would expect the Creation to have a distinct hierarchy of beings, with the most powerful on top, and a pyramid of his subordinates below, all arranged by their spiritual magnitude and authority. But from what I figured out, the Creation is ruled by two married couples; you and your husband, Lord Rama, and the other couple, Rudra and Parvati. So, I would certainly want to avoid committing an offence against any of you, but I would like to know how does that work, and which one of you is the greatest, and if there’s a leader among you whom all others obey?”

Lakshmi smiled and rolled her eyes slightly, “And you want to know if your Goddess is the greatest of the four, so that you can feel proud and vindicated” “Err, no, … sorry; maybe, kind of, yes”, Karuna blushed and felt embarrassed and thought that this might have not been her best idea ever. “I mean, I would expect you to say that Lord Krishna is the supreme and most exalted one, since he is your husband, but I’m curious about the other couple”.

“Lord Krishna is indeed the most magnificent and complete embodiment of sat-cit-ananda, and shows all of us what we can potentially become. He is the goal, someone who stands at the metaphorical finish line and shows us what is possible. He is my husband, and I know him well, and I can tell you, there is absolutely no end to how amazing he is. He’s like an endless fountain of Divine Fulfilment, and merely touching him with my mind makes my hair stand on end. But I see that you now expect me to tell you something diminishing about the other couple, and I’m not going to do that; not only because nothing of the sort can be said about them truthfully, but also because that would be bad for your spiritual growth. So, first, tell me what do you know about Lord Shiva and Lady Shakti?”, Lakshmi asked her, also putting the girl at ease with a light touch of her blessing.

“Unfortunately, not much, my Lady. I know that they look rather simple compared to yourself and Lord Narayan. They seem pure and powerful, but can they really compare to you and your exalted husband?”

“Do you see the new dress I’m wearing, Karuna? Please take a closer look and touch it with your mind”, Lakshmi invited. “Pay particular attention to the kalapa density and the substance it is made of”.

The girl did as asked, and jumped back in a state of shock, as if hit by a lightning. “My Lady, this is something both incredible and terrible at once. I only recently started to crystallise into vajra, but this, this feels much denser than that. It is white, but like a lightning of power that burned my mind on contact. It’s so thin it’s barely there, but the density is incredible. Judging by the surface and volume, I would approximate that there’s enough kalapas there to make thousands of souls such as myself. This is indeed worthy of one as glorious and exalted such as yourself, and I can’t even believe such a thing is possible”, the girl managed to choke out.

“Tens of thousands, probably somewhat over fifty thousands of souls like yourself, my dear. It is incredible in both structure and craftsmanship. Lady Shakti made it for me when we were playing dress-up recently. She wielded it out of her mind in an instant and without any effort, and yet the substance she used is so spiritually dense, she could have made a small Universe populated with thousands of beautiful, smart and kind souls such as yourself with the spiritual mass that was used.”

“That is absolutely astonishing, my Lady. It boggles the mind that anyone can be so powerful, and so spiritually wealthy that they could make something like this as a gift”, Karuna’s eyes turned wide.

“Indeed, but that doesn’t really give her justice. When we were fooling around, I touched her body directly. It was like being in the nexus of all the power of the unmanifested brahman. The power to create, to destroy, and not only that, but the power of mind, of insight and clarity, and all of that in form so pure, so innocent, that I could barely control myself from kneeling at her feet and pledging myself to her as her servant. Indeed, if I were her maid-servant for the rest of Eternity, I would see that as the most blessed destiny, more blessed than if I were to be proclaimed the leader of the Four, and Goddess of all Creation. Being her friend, being able to be in her proximity, to feel her pure and powerful mind, is an incredibly precious gift”

“I don’t know what to say, my Lady”, Karuna answered. “I would have never imagined any of it, and I now understand at least some of the extent of my ignorance, and why you wanted to teach me better, for which I am very thankful. But what about Lord Shiva? My curiosity is now piqued, and I wish to know more about His Lordship, as well”.

“I will show it to you by example. Take a look at this flower. It is made of ordinary astral substance, and is an ordinary astral being. Tell me how it experiences the world, what it feels?”

“I’m touching it with my mind now”, Karuna answered. “It feels bliss, the feeling of ‘I am that, I am indeed that brahman!’, as it is a manifestation of the Absolute in the Relative, like all other beings”.

“OK, now let me show you more. I will go into it and magnify until we reach the very limits of Creation. Do you see the ecstatic energy that bursts through the veil?”

“Indeed, I do. It feels… well, very similar to the dress you are wearing. And there’s something more, there’s the sense and the spiritual aroma of the Absolute on the other side of all manifested things”.

“Yes, that energy is similar to my dress because the same person made it; this is the energy manifested by Lady Shakti in her true, original form, and the sense of the Absolute; this is the meditation of Lord Shiva, upon which the Lady created this world. The two of them are creating the foundations, the walls and the roof of the world we are living in, they are making the electricity work, the water run and the sewage go away, in a manner of speaking. And that’s not all.

Soon after she made this dress for me, she and I went to meet our respective husbands, and as she explained a few things about Order, Chaos and mathematics, Lord Shiva praised us and gave us his blessing. I can’t even describe how that felt. The core of my very soul vibrated at his praise and was magnified. I felt so honoured, so happy and so recognised, that I didn’t know what to do with myself, and it was only my insightful husband that saved me from continued embarrassment by creating a pleasant distraction. Lord Shiva is literally the root of the world, and also its pinnacle. I don’t know whether to shiver in fear of him, or feel like a happy little girl who was praised by the most holy and senior person; probably both. I now understand why my husband keeps praising him so much, because he is indeed worthy of the highest praise, and probably more, because nobody can see to his deepest depths and greatest heights as to praise him properly. He could be the most terrifying being in the world, because the way my soul vibrated to his praise shows me that he could evaporate me as easily if he was displeased with me; however, instead of being terrifying, he’s always so incredibly kind, as if he’s always looking for every opportunity to praise, bless and grant boons at even the most insignificant incitement. I sense that Lady Shakti is as composed, centred and humble because she meditates on Shiva the way Shiva meditates on the unmanifested brahman, constantly feeling his approval with her soul, and automatically adjusting her actions to stay within it, having no other desires in the whole world. So, my dear Karuna, that is the truth of the other Divine couple. There is no end to their power, glory and purity. To have them as friends, and being counted among the Four, is the greatest blessing and happiness of my life, almost as great as being a wife to Lord Rama. They are all absolutely immense, and all I can do to express gratitude for their existence is to keep showering them all with my blessings of fortune, happiness, glory and wealth”, Lakshmi finished, her smile taking a special glow as she looked within, at her precious memories.

“My Lady, I am very sorry for being so foolish before. My only defence is that I didn’t know. To ask which one of you is greatest is a completely pointless question, because from my position all of you are greatest, and yet different”, the girl shivered with awe, as crystallisation of her soul accelerated.

“You are learning true wisdom, my child. We are indeed different, and that seems to be the point, and the great joy, because if there was only one of us, or were we the same, all the pleasure of interaction would be absent, and honestly, I’m not sure if I even see the difference in the level of reality and fulfilment that I get from within; from the brahman I manifest and embody, and which fills me with reality, consciousness and bliss that radiate as my existence; my glorious husband who manifests the same brahman in fullness on the relative side; or our magnificent and hundredfold-worshipped friends, who manifest Creation out of meditation on the Absolute”.

“Sri Bhagavan, mind if I ask you something? I have an issue with my weapon.”, Shiva started. “Sure, Mahesh. What is it?”, Vishnu replied. “When I aim my trident at an enemy, they usually feel they are being targetted and start teleporting around Creation like crazy, trying to save themselves. I track them as quickly, but the problem is, there’s always that slight delay between identifying them well enough to lock on, and actually deploying the weapon, which would of course instantly kill anything at any distance, but by that time the enemy is already elsewhere. You are using a sudarshana chakra, which seems to track an enemy after the initial lock. Is that working better for you?”

“Yes, to a point. It tracks, but my enemies teleport wildly as well. The chakra maintains the lock on the soul itself, but needs to re-establish the location after each teleportation, the same way you’re doing it yourself, but my weapon has this functionality built into its design. We seem to be having the same problem, only my weapon launches and then tracks, while you track and launch only after you have the target pinned. Both essentially hit in same conditions, when the target runs out of ideas or has a sufficient delay in teleportation”, Vishnu mused. “I wish we could figure out some form of tracking that binds the target in some way that inhibits their ability to run, or something.”

“That’s unfortunate. Sure, we could always do it the way our girls do it – curse them and watch them wither and die, without lifting a finger, but that would be unmanly”, Shiva grinned, and Vishnu fist-bumped him. “Speaking about the girls, here they come; it seems they are finished with whatever girly business they had in mind. And speaking of which, wow”, Vishnu spoke with amazement. “Ladies, if one asked me before, I would have said that your beauty is legendary, supreme and impossible to improve, but you apparently did something that leaves me wordless”.

“Oh, we’ve been playing dress-up”, Lady Lakshmi answered, curtsying to the Lords and glowing at her husband. “We created dresses and ornaments for each other, using our own power to enhance the other one’s beauty, and it gave us a lot of pleasure”.

“Lakshmi made a tiara of supreme wealth, dignity and fortune for me, that is powered by my own soul but creates light through her blessings, and I created a dress for her that boosts her own spiritual attributes with the blessing of my power”, Shakti added, curtsying to Lord Vishnu and looking adoringly into her husband’s eyes. “We also talked about some stuff that we found interesting”.

“What kind of stuff?”, asked Shiva, bowing to Lakshmi and looking at his wife. “Oh, mathematics, as a matter of fact. I noticed how mathematics appears as an emergent property of Creation, but only when the principle of Order prevails, and in direct proportion to it. The more things are static, the more they can be modelled in ways of mathematics, which quantifies entities, phenomena and interactions. However, when Chaos is introduced, and things either lose their static and predictable nature, or free will of beings introduces new elements or alters existing ones, the deterministic and predictable quality of the Relative is lost.”, answered his Goddess.

“That is quite interesting”, Vishnu scratched his chin. “What do you think about the implications of this? Is Chaos disturbing the good quality of Order, thus breaking mathematical models and ruining something of value, or is it somehow for the good, if it is allowed to happen?” Shiva nodded in assent and looked questioningly at the women.

“We also wondered about this, and here is our preliminary analysis. It seems that neither Chaos nor Order manifest the will of the Absolute on their own and by themselves. Order would result in rigid laws that would negate all possibility of surprise, creativity or anything new, which is not the point. Also, Chaos on its own would break all good things, as well as the evil ones, indiscriminately. So, Chaos needs to disrupt just enough of Order to make things alive and fluid, while Order needs to guide Chaos in order to make it a force of creative disruption rather than pointless destruction. In both cases, mathematics breaks”, Shakti answered. “It is my hypothesis that this, in fact, is why we exist, and by ‘we’ I mean the four of us in particular. We are powerful enough to disrupt, and yet holy enough to do so in ways that actually make things better, rather than leaving a wasteland and injury. We are all different enough to have different approaches to things and different views on reality, and yet we are similar enough that neither of us would do something that would be seen by others as actually wrong. It’s always some kind of a good idea, even if it comes with initial drawbacks and issues, and we all trust each other’s judgment and cooperate. Any fight between us would be so incredibly destructive, that the entirety of Absolute’s manifestation and plan would instantly be destroyed, but that never happens, because it is not in our nature to oppose each other, but to assist”, Shakti finished.

“So, that’s what you were doing with the dress-up?”, Shiva smiled. “It looks like a very apt illustration of your argument, as you both managed something I would have deemed impossible – you made each other even more wonderful, and it’s not just appearance, because your blessings seem to have interacted synergically with each other’s souls, giving it tools and means of manifestation while in no way interfering with its nature, which was obviously the will of God. When I think of it, when Lord Vishnu interferes to save me from the consequences of some of my inopportune blessings, he is essentially manifesting a high-order dharma to cover for my error, but with implicit assumption that my undeserved gifts are something that disrupts staticity of lower-order dharma, and apparently you can’t disrupt it without occasionally getting it wrong, so my blessings are essentially brahman disrupting the order of justice with the chaotic introduction of mercy, and Sri Bhagavan’s intervention to save me is essentially brahman disrupting the undesired consequence of that with his own free will, that is a blessing of its own kind. And you ladies are definitely brahman introducing wisdom in order to teach us about our own nature, and in such a lovely and charming way”, he bowed deeply, as the girls blushed, not knowing where to look, because the Great Lord turned what started as an impersonal exercise in logical analysis into a very personal compliment, whose blessing made their very souls tingle with power of rightness, because Lord Shiva doesn’t use words idly.

Seeing their embarrassment, Vishnu wielded his power to create a distraction and introduce some levity, making a space for them to sit and have coffee, in the atmosphere of music and light. “So, what have you esteemed Lords been doing while we were gone?”, asked Lakshmi, sitting in Vishnu’s lap. “Oh, we talked about the weapons we use for fighting demonic enemies.”, he smiled. “We established that they both share the same drawbacks but manifest them in a different manner”. “So, why don’t you just use us instead of weapons? I can curse an evil soul and make it lose blessings that make existence possible. Shakti can curse them and make them lose all power. It would happen instantly and regardless of what the evil soul does”, she countered.

Vishnu and Shiva looked at each other. “That wouldn’t be fair to our poor enemies”, Shiva offered. “You Ladies are too powerful and formidable, and if you got involved, the poor demons would stand no chance, and we would have no fun hunting them down”, Vishnu nodded almost seriously, while Shakti poured them more coffee, spicing it up with some starlight.

There’s always been a question of what to do with souls that aren’t pure enough for heaven, and yet they are not corrupted and evil enough for hell. If you put them in heaven, they will probably corrupt heaven with their presence and it’s also likely that they would find it very difficult to exist there. If you destroy them or put them in hell, that would be unethical because they don’t actually deserve to be harshly punished. Let’s say that those are the souls that existed in bad circumstances, but essentially tried to do their best and never actually chose evil. They didn’t choose God either, though. So, what’s the deal?

The Christians invented the concept of purgatory; a place adjacent to hell, that’s for all intents and purposes hell-like, but with one significant difference: there’s hope of leaving and ending up in heaven. Basically, you need to suffer for a while, and then as your debts are paid, you can leave. Interestingly, that’s how Hindu and Buddhist hell works – you suffer greatly for your sins, but it all has a time limit. When that passes, you can leave.

The problem with this concept is how it defines the reason why souls aren’t qualified for heaven. They always imagine sins that need to be repaid through suffering, in essence something that is added upon a soul and makes it dirty. I’m not saying that such “sufferariums” don’t exist at all; I wouldn’t really know much about it in any case. I do, however, know that the problem of most souls isn’t the excess of sin; it’s the lack of substance.

When you look at most people, they’re just idiots. They aren’t concerned with spiritual issues at all, and even if they are, they are complete savages, with incredibly trivial ideas about the whole thing, asking completely trivial questions that they think are unanswerable because they never talked to someone who knows anything, nor did they read books of any substance. Their problem is a huge lack of things that ought to be there, not the excess of things that aren’t supposed to be there. Imagine it as gold ore, where you have a few grams of gold per kilogram of ore. Most of it is rock and dirt, and yet if you remove that, you’re left with enough gold particles to make it worthwhile. But what do you do if there’s just rock? Or if the substance remaining is tin and copper in minuscule quantities, and not gold? Or if the amount of gold in the ore is so insubstantial, it’s not worth the diesel fuel used for powering the machinery in the extraction process? I think that’s a better approximation of what happens when the Judges have to decide what to do with you. They need to figure out if the juice is worth the squeeze. If you’re all rock, they throw you away to be crushed into something that’s useful for paving roads or making concrete. If you’re all gold, they bow to you, tell you they are honoured to be in your holy presence, and escort you to heaven. If you’re mostly gold but also contain rock, they personally help you go through the issues, explain things you got wrong, tell you how the world actually works, show you examples, interpret things for you so that you can understand them properly, and so on. When people hear the word “judge”, they instinctively think it’s someone judgmental, but that’s not actually true; mostly, you’re the judgmental one, and the judge will be the one explaining things and putting them into a correct perspective, telling you something you thought of as a problem isn’t a problem at all, showing you what the real problems are and where you dealt with them correctly, where you didn’t know what you were doing, and where you fucked up for some reason, and then they go through reasons and show you what’s what. Basically, they are creating proper understanding and dispelling your ignorance, and the “judgment” part should be translated as “telling it as it is”. They are beings who are used to discerning truth from illusions; basically, they are Divine psychotherapists. That, however, means that they have very low tolerance for actual evil people and bullshitters. With good people, they will go through all kinds of stuff with a fine-toothed comb, but with evil people, it’s “Hell!; next?”.

So, the first aspect of purgatory is the Judge you’re facing after death. That person will for the most part be wiser, holier and more experienced than you can imagine, and they’ll also know everything about you, so I recommend not trying to bullshit them if you value your continued existence. Also, I recommend that you actually pay attention to what they are trying to tell you.

The second aspect of purgatory is what I would call heaven for humans. Rather than being adjacent to hell, where you’re supposed to suffer for your sins before you’re allowed to enter heaven, this is a place of healing and learning, where you’re supposed to work through your human stuff, understand how things actually work, and learn the inner workings of the real world after being confined to this lunatic asylum also known as the material world. Basically, you need to be deprogrammed from all the bullshit and nonsense you were programmed with here, heal all the traumatic injuries to your soul that you sustained here, and you need to learn about reality. As you do, your soul will heal and increase in maturity, you will unlearn lots of wrong things and artificial confines placed upon your thinking and feeling, and then you can move on to the place for souls that are no longer damaged, ignorant and conditioned to be bonsai cats, and into a place where you would find “normal souls” that are not yet “enlightened”. There, they undergo processes that are meant to result in them attaining eternity. I already explained the concept of astral gas being transformed into crystalline vajra, so I won’t go into that again, but that’s what’s going on there.

This is all not true heaven yet, and technically it’s all some sort of a purgatory, or a maturation process. True heaven is a place/state of eternity.

So, what about hell? Is it real, who’s there, what’s the point of it? Well, I must admit that I know very little about that. I didn’t really visit a hell properly until recently, because it wasn’t any of my business, really. What I do know is that the place I visited, right before wiping it out, contained souls that were completely and utterly godless, to such a degree that they could be in a God’s presence and see only the physical outer form, the way you would watch something on a screen and feel nothing. Absolutely zero resonance and correspondence between themselves and God. You’ll ask how that can be possible, and I don’t know, but that’s what they were. I decided there’s no point of keeping them in that buffer zone any longer and basically flushed it, and so that place was returned under God’s rule and became a section of heaven, that looks and feels just like the material world, only made of astral stuff and without all the worst stuff of the physical world, and those godless souls went where fire goes when extinguished.

Are there other similar places, “sufferariums” for the condemned sinners? I don’t know. I don’t know what the purpose of that would be. Suffering is useful if someone is to learn from it, become better, be redeemed. If someone is completely godless and condemned, they are not put into a place of eternal suffering; they are extinguished and recycled. Some people will now say that such fate, a mere eternal death, is not sufficient punishment for some terrible sinners. I disagree. There’s nothing worse than knowing that eternal life exists, that you rejected it, and it’s no longer an option for you, and you’re thrown into a composting pit with other trash (which is what the biblical word for hell, “Gehenna”, literally was – it was a name of an actual garbage dump where the Jews disposed of carcasses of diseased animals and other refuse, and where sulphur was burned to disinfect it). As far as I know, the godless souls that came from Earth were kept in that section of the astral world that was outside of the rule of God because of some reason that has more to do with Satan and his evil scheming, than because somebody in heaven decided to keep them out of pity or sentimentality. Possibly, he planned to continue the hellish and godless aspects of this material world after the term for his experiment expired.

So, there are no two eternities – eternal bliss and eternal damnation. Damnation exists in time, as do the damned, while eternity is reserved for God and the Divine ones. Also, have in mind that any kind of eternity that is not the endless sparkling fulfilment that is God, would eventually turn into a hell of boredom and desolation, and also that eternity is not a matter of infinite time, but transcendence of time. It is a state that is completely beyond the mortal beings’ ability to understand, which is why I write about the Gods in terms that are still human. The actual reality is much better than that, but it’s not conceivable by mortal minds. I can tell you a bit about the Gods’ character, but that’s but a pale shadow of reality. Heaven is beyond words and thoughts.

When I said that Goddess can frown upon something and thus make it go away – diminish and fizzle out of existence – I knew people will ask why does any evil even exist then, if there’s a being that can basically go back in time and cancel it out of existence.

The answer, of course, is complicated, because it has to do with how humans perceive time itself.

You see, people think Eternity is, basically, an infinite quantity of time. That’s not so. Eternity is a state out of time, where each point of time is a potential “now”, everything is happening “today” and everything already happened and the whole thing about time is contained in a glass sphere of memory that you can revisit; and there might be an infinite number of such glass spheres in the mind of a God. In other words, the state of an Eternal, such as the Goddess, is literally unimaginable for a timely being.

When a God or a Goddess smiles upon you with approval, it means they saw you, and they saw that you are good, whereby you attained Eternity and stopped being something that has a beginning, duration and end in time. If a God or a Goddess frowns upon you, it means your existence does not make things better, and that might mean many things for you, none of which are good. For instance, someone might destroy you as an evil to be destroyed, and thus gain glory. Someone might transform and change you as an evil to be transformed and changed, and thus gain glory. Basically, you might be a problem that has to be solved, resulting in the greater glory of God. Alternatively, you might decide to repent and change yourself into something that is to the greater glory of God, thus gaining redemption and active participation in the glory of God.

But in any case, those who earn God’s disapproval get to have their existence in time, where it will also end. That is because Eternity belongs only to God, and if you’re not of God, you have no place there.

We could speak of things that were altered and cancelled out of existence altogether, but since they were cancelled out of existence, they didn’t happen, so there’s nothing to speak of, really. In any case, realities that transcend time and space are not well suited for the human brain, which needs time and space in order to make sense of things, which is why I translate eternal things into a language of space, time and humanity; don’t confuse that with absence of transcendence and abstraction. But one corollary remains: the fact that this world was not cancelled out of existence altogether means that its existence will ultimately serve to increase the Glory of God.