“How bad is this?”, Azazel asked Lord Shiva, looking worriedly at his wife, who seemed not to be taking this well.

“It’s bad”, Shiva nodded, lost in thought. “I’m trying to understand the repercussions, but the short of it is that Sanat Kumar now has a true bridgehead in the real world. The game no longer ends with the loss of his control over the Jewel, which was contractually defined and which used to be a given. We thought this game had a known endpoint in time. This is no longer the case”, he mused.

“This is all my fault”, Kay whispered.

“No”, the Great Lord denied decisively, and came to embrace the girl. “You just did normal things that made sense and served a legitimate purpose. This in itself wouldn’t have resulted in any harm. However, combined with several other factors that weren’t known enough to predict for, we got this problem. It’s easy to be smart in hindsight”, he ruffled her hair and looked her in the eyes. “It’s not your fault”.

“Thank you”, she smiled weakly.

“But how is this even possible?”, Azazel went through his hair with his fingers. “I thought the Throne of God was the force that kept the worlds in existence. Wouldn’t removing a world from beneath the Throne of God have resulted in that world’s removal from reality whatsoever?”

“Only metaphorically and in the perspective of Eternity”, Shiva shrugged. “The Throne of God means alignment and harmony with the Will of God. It’s the answer to that prayer Christ formulated – ‘thy kingdom come; thy will be done’; if a world is under the Throne of God, his kingdom is here, and his will is done. It means that something is part of the Absolute’s eternal plan and Will. It is also optional, because free will does exist. God’s reign is optional. Consequences aren’t”, he sighed. “Living according to the Will of God, in the Kingdom of God, has consequences, and they are, well, the two of you”, he managed a smile. “The two of you are an excellent example of beings who chose to live the Will of God and became perfect, which is why we all love you so much, and which is why, for instance, your wonderful bride is so distraught now, because she thinks she somehow did something against the Will of God, and it resulted in a disaster. This is not so. I see the Will of God shining very brightly in her, which means it was the Will of God for this to happen as it did, so that the events might proceed in a certain way, leading to a resolution that will put everything right, but on a higher level of goodness; so, don’t be sad, sweetheart. Instead, let’s think about what this means, what were the required conditions of it happening, and what conditions need to be met in order to put it right”, Shiva kissed the jewel on her brow and she finally smiled I earnest.

“So, let’s see how this could happen in the first place”, Azazel nodded. “First of all, there are sub-planes with worse people that are still under the Throne of God. There’s a hell with fanatical murderers, inciters of murderous mobs, gangsters, rapists, torturers and other villainous souls that could rightfully have been destroyed outright, but were instead preserved in case an opportunity arose later on, where they could possibly be redeemed. So, why are they still here?”

“It’s a very valid question. It would seem that committing vile crimes and being a monster would remove one from the Reign of God, but apparently it is not so, which is what makes this case particularly interesting. So, let’s see what those godless souls were. You are saying that you created that sub-plane for souls that were born on Earth, through the process of nucleation, or bubbling off, the way water vapour is released from boiling water?”, Shiva frowned and scratched the back of his neck.

“Yes”, Kay nodded. “It was a sub-plane for the souls newly created on Earth, that were completely godless and had no sense of transcendence, or any concept of God other than Sanat Kumar”.

“So why did this sub-plane not remove itself from under the Throne of God once the first such soul was put there? Wouldn’t this technically meet the requirement of all inhabitants being godless?”, Azazel looked confused.

“That’s the easy part. The overall energy of the souls inside would have to outweigh the energy invested in creation of that sub-plane, and they would all have to be godless”, Shiva nodded. “The problem didn’t arise immediately because you needed a serious mass of spiritual energy to counter the Will of God inherent to the structure itself”, he waved the thought off.

“Why do some souls created on Earth get to be worshippers of God, while others grow to be godless?”, Kay wondered.

“It seems to be related to the conditions they developed in, initially”, Shiva offered. “For instance, if a soul is created when a human being is exposed to some religious or intellectual system that is devoid of transcendence, but requires lots of thought and emotion, it seems to catalyse genesis of souls, but those souls are not really what we are used to seeing here”, he shrugged. “They have consciousness, intellect and emotions, but they lack transcendence and the sense of belonging to it. If a soul is born out of the mutual worship of the Gods, it wants to return to that state and it drives its evolution. Also, if a soul nucleates on Earth in the presence of one of the major sources of spiritual light, this determines its nature and goals, and it wants to return to the state of fullness of this”, he nodded.

“And if you put lots of godless souls somewhere, the ideal of existence they will try to achieve is godlessness”, Azazel nodded.

“Exactly. And apparently, the worst criminals in that other place are better than this, which seems to demonstrate that godlessness is worse than murder and hatred, because hateful murderers can still have a spark of something that wants God, somewhere inside them, which makes them redeemable, while the godless souls don’t”, Shiva finished grimly.

“Aren’t we better off without them, then?”, Kay shrugged. “I mean, they wanted to be done with God; now God is being done with them, and they will eventually perish in time as they are separated from Eternity, and basically good riddance?”

“It would be as you say, if not for one thing”, Shiva agreed. “The world they occupy is connected to the rest of the astral world by its fundamental reality, and Sanat Kumar can now use it to make another, astral Earth there, that will outlive the one generated by the Jewel, and outlive his authority to use the Jewel. It will likely outlive him as well. Every godless thing in that sub-plane came to be because of his designs, and so his evil lives on, and it just jumped planes, from illusion to a lesser reality. This means it’s actually a big deal and we have to figure out a way to restore that sub-plane back to the Throne of God”.

“What would it take?”, wondered Azazel.

“It’s one of those almost impossible things that eventually come up and then someone like Lord Vishnu usually takes care of it by thinking of a solution nobody else could figure out. But essentially, you would need to have a legitimate inhabitant of that plane, not merely a visitor, but someone condemned to be there, who would at the same time be spiritually powerful enough to call to the Throne of God directly, or, alternatively, call for both myself and my wife to manifest there in power, which would allow us to form the Golden Fire and thus reclaim that world for God”, Shiva smiled. “Basically, you would need to have a person that’s holy enough to invoke me and my wife both, and be condemned to the world of the godless souls for some reason, which is close enough to the requirement of something being wood but also iron”.

“Oh”, both Azazel and Kay looked wilted.

“Don’t worry about it, we’ll figure it out”, Shiva laughed. “After all, if we could make a demon into a God, we can make wooden iron easily”.

“I just got something back”, Lady Kay turned to her husband. “A jewel, that is a whole complete soul, with memories and personality and everything, full of worship of Lord Krishna as Govinda and Lady Lakshmi as Radha the Gopi, it just integrated with me and I’m… more”, she smiled at him blissfully. “I have a whole new lifetime of devotion to my Mother and Father in me now”.

“Ah, so it’s not just me”, Zee smiled. “I had the same thing happen to me today but I was still trying to figure it out and didn’t want to mention it before I had the whole picture, but I think I do now”, he nodded. “Mine was a Sufi mystic, contemplating what he thought was the endless depth of Allah, but the seed of it was in fact my own worship of Lord Shiva, and the mystic was born out of my tear, and carried in itself the dominant trait of my soul, which is worship of my Father. I also got a crystal that became a part of me, and yet distinct, a whole soul and personality full of memories that is an expansion of myself into that life. I think we need to talk to the elders”, he smiled and kissed his wife.

…

“Ah, so this is the fruit of those good efforts on Earth. Our tears are combining with the newborn souls, and achieving enlightenment, and yet they for some reason don’t become independent angelic beings, but increase the power and glory of the existing Gods, thus participating in God’s manifestation and destiny”, nodded Lord Vishnu. “Thank you for letting us know. My wife and I have received similar crystals, but we didn’t know that the rest of you did as well”.

…

“This is an interesting development”, Lord Shiva smiled at his wife. “So far, they would either become independent astral beings, or angels, or in some cases, Gods in their own right. I don’t know whether this choice to join into us is intentional, inevitable or a natural consequence of their sadhana and origin”, he mused.

“I don’t know, but I can guess based on what my crystal feels like. It feels like someone who merged their destiny and existence with mine, doesn’t want to be anything but me, and has a whole life of worship and love that are now mine”, Shakti smiled. “But what happens if such a soul-crystal carries bad stuff along with the good? What if there are inclusions and impurities to be purified, along with the holy memories that make that life mine now?”

“Then it becomes our problem, I would say”, Mahesh nodded. “We would need to understand and resolve those spiritual lessons from their own perspective, or we could use this karma for an incarnation on Earth, that would be ours, and yet have karmic lessons to learn and things to do in the process. It opens up interesting possibilities which we might explore at some point”, he nodded and embraced her.

“I wonder what the exact rules are?”, she whispered into his ear. “Do they come only to those who cried tears of compassion over human suffering, or also those who invested efforts into helping, and are those tears and energy investments thus departing from the world, or are they just bearing fruit once they fall on fertile ground of nucleating new souls? I wouldn’t want the world to be depleted of the energy we invested there to make it spiritually richer, because it would make it a barren wasteland once more”, she sighed.

“I think it’s more complex than that. I see permanent spots of light where they nucleated, and where the tears used to be. It’s as if devotion and meditation that formed those crystals formed permanent traces in the very tissue of the world, like scars of light. It’s nothing I would have expected; a whole new phenomenon we haven’t seen before”.

…

“So, you say it’s a double gain? Our tears caused the nucleation, new souls were born, permanent traces were cut into darkness, and we got karma and memories back?”, Vishnu mused, after his friend shared his thoughts. “The tears and the good karma combined to form a specific crystal, that contains both the soul-signature of the caster, and the sprouted and enriched seed of their intent and devotion. Also, there’s a possibility of bad karma to be included, but we didn’t have anything special, other than the cultural peculiarities. Some gender-related weirdness, some cultural rigidity and framing things in a certain way that’s not necessarily quite right, some particular desires and tastes, an experience of a complete human life. All of it informative and enriching, in fact”, he nodded.

“But if this unexpected phenomenon is good, it leaves open the possibility for other unexpected phenomena that might not be as good. We must have our eyes open, and investigate”, Lord Shiva scratched his chin.

“By all means. We knew our tears and the energy conduits will do something. We also knew the souls started to nucleate. These were merely the best outcomes, the souls that attained fulfilment by joining the existing Gods as their destinies of choice. It is only reasonable to assume that this is not the only possible outcome of the process”, Vishnu frowned.

…

“Oh wow”, Kay winced, as her jewel flashed gold.

“What is it?”, her husband turned to her immediately in alarm.

“We just lost an astral sub-plane”, her face was incredulity itself.

“How do you mean, lost? It disappeared?”, Zee wondered.

“No, it’s still there. It’s just lost to the Throne of God. It switched allegiance to Sanat Kumar and is now an astral extension to his world”, she couldn’t even believe what she was saying.

“How is that even possible?”, Lord Azazel stuttered.

“Because that was a sub-plane I created for the souls that were so loyal to Sanat Kumar and so Earth-minded and lacking in any transcendental substance that Azrael and the rest of the Judges didn’t know what else to do with them, and asked me to make a special sub-plane. And apparently, there was a lot of them. Really, really lot of them, like most of everything that actually originated on Earth”, she reminisced.

“And let me guess, they all share allegiance to Satan, they all want just Earth as the only true reality for them, and they either reject God’s will, or don’t even perceive it as a thing that exists, or deserves a thought?”, he offered.

“I would say you’re spot on. We essentially offered sanctuary to beings that are not of God, and don’t recognise His kingdom, and as a result, that place is now no longer of God”, she looked at him in horror. “Have I made a horrible mistake?”

“No, I don’t think you did, but it’s still an ominous and potentially very bad thing. We need to talk to the elders again, immediately”, he hugged her.

…

“Oh”, Lord Shiva frowned.

“So that’s the downside”.

“I’ve been reading up on Hinduism lately”, Lady Lakshmi massaged her temples, as if nursing a headache. “It looks like a whole civilization that practiced only addition and no subtraction for thousands of years, and it’s the worst, most disorganised, internally contradictory chaos I have ever seen, and yet it contains some of the best ideas that have ever been conceived by humans on Earth”.

“I’ve been having an eye on them a bit, but nothing as thorough as you’ve been doing, so I would appreciate it if you could summarise it for me”, Lord Vishnu smiled at his glorious wife.

“The basics are simple enough. There was the Dravidic original religious system. Then the Aryans came and introduced their own Vedic pantheon, that also spread to Greece, Rome and with the Slavic tribes. You know, Indra the king of Heaven, elemental deities of earth, water, air and so on. That was then slowly integrated with the Dravidic pantheon and branched into a zillion sects and followings, and the hermits developed the upanishads. Then came Mahavira and said it’s all unimportant, because nonviolence is the only thing that ultimately matters. Lord Buddha built upon that and basically ignored the entire Vedic system, said that suffering is the cornerstone issue, delusion and attachment are its cause, they need to be addressed, and complete detachment from the world is to be sought. His philosophy came to be prevalent and completely sidelined and eventually extinguished the Vedic system of perpetual sacrifices and rituals that cost money and feed the parasitic brahmanic caste. Hinduism kept evolving in the background, developing a system of puja and bhakti in place of yajña, all based around the newer, much better scriptures such as the Bhagavad-gita and Bhagavata-purana”, she nodded.

“Then tantra appeared, based partly on the upanishads, partly on yoga, partly on a cult of Shiva and Shakti, and mostly on frustration caused by the sexual repression and insistence on purity and mental and social rigidity of other systems”, she sighed. “Also, everybody is trying to present their sect, cult or following as a logical interpretation of everything else, so they just keep inheriting and modifying the whole traditional structure, which at this point means that every single imaginable thing or practice is the right way, and also that its diametral opposite is the right way. They think celibacy is the way to achieve enlightenment, and they think sex is the way to achieve enlightenment. They believe faithful marital union is the only way to achieve spiritual progress, and they also believe that sex with laundry maids from the lowest caste is the way to achieve enlightenment. They believe Lord Shiva is the foundation of all Reality, and they also believe he is a weirdo practicing dark magic on cremation grounds, worshipped by demons”, she massaged her head again.

“To be honest, they got some things right. Lord Shiva is indeed the foundation of all Reality, and he is indeed worshipped by demons, ever since Azazel; I think the story got around and he’s now their favourite deity”, Vishnu smiled.

“You should see how they see you. For the most part you are a cute chubby baby, but you also have 16108 wives, and you are also half the characters from half the epics and other scriptures, while I’m both a princess, a dairy maid and a spiritual metaphor. Lady Shakti is both Shiva’s wife, but she’s like ten different women, and I’m not kidding you here, she’s a celibate, a mother, and a monstrous deity of death, chaos, madness and indiscriminate slaughter that drinks blood”, she snickered. “They manage to see Lord Shiva and Lady Shakti as both metaphors for male and female sex, for family life, liberation from the illusion, and as primordial principles of consciousness and energy”, his wife sighed. “The last part, at least, is actually true. They even included historical humans such as Alexander of Macedonia as Skanda, the general of the army of Gods or something, and the most confusing part is, they don’t actually distinguish between physical and spiritual realities. Every character from a book that has a spiritual purport is seen as an existing deity, or a child of existing deities. Everything they’ve read about must be real, and if it’s real, it must have actually happened physically. On the other hand, if something actually happened, they mythologise the historical persons to the point where they become a part of their theological narrative and pantheon. It’s an incredible mess where you can’t tell cause from effect after a few iterations, and my head hurts”, she concluded.

“Thank you for suffering through this to provide me with your blessed insight, my Lady”, Vishnu smiled and kissed her head, which instantly relieved her headache and made her feel great. “But this is not really a Hindu specialty, after all. The Greeks mythologised actual historical figures to the point where you can’t really tell what’s going on there. The Christians are very new, but they already managed to mythologise Christ into some kind of a king, they turned you into a sexless virgin and his holy wife into a repentant prostitute exorcised from demons. They mythologised some garbage dump where they throw carcasses of diseased cattle into a transcendental hell, and they think that Simon Kefa is literally standing there in the reception room of Heaven with a set of keys, reading from a literal book of life. Failing to distinguish between allegory and actual reality is just how their mind works. Also, it’s not really far from how the reality of that place works, if I’m being honest”.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, after Lord Shiva initially cracked that place, and after I did my own thing later on, permeating the spiritual undercurrent of that place with actual spiritual realities, there’s not that much of a difference between some mystic having visions of the actual spiritual beings, states and realities and then writing a holy scripture describing those realities as fictional persons, and actual physical beings embodying those same spiritual states. In both cases, transcendental reality was reached and it bore good fruits. Also, a difference between an imaginary character devoid of spiritual significance, and an ordinary human being devoid of spiritual significance is equally moot”, Vishnu shrugged. “Also, complexity and multi-faceted reality of how things actually work is something that’s easier to describe in complex imagery, and the reductionist philosophies that believe that the simplest and the most elegant explanation must be true, are self-defeating”, he concluded, rubbing her shoulders as she relaxed.

“I like the bhakti cults”, she murmured. “When they are combined with actual high spiritual states, they resemble what we do to each other, seeing and worshipping each other’s virtues and glory”, she smiled blissfully. “But then they replace that with hysteria and vacuous emotionality that I find revolting”, she frowned again. “It’s as if they alternate between interpreting something from a high spiritual vantage point, and interpreting the same thing from the base human vantage point, depending on who’s doing the reading”.

“Unfortunately, that’s the nature of that place. Imagine someone writing something, or reading it, while being attached to some of the conduits of spiritual power I installed there, building on Shiva’s work. They will describe a God’s glory and drink bliss and wisdom directly from the crack in the darkness of that world, through which they perceive the true light. And then someone else reads it without being attached to a similar conduit, and it’s merely a fairy-tale”, he shrugged. “Also, tantra starts as casting away the rigidity of the brahmanic ethos, and this creates the liberating spiritual impulse. However, it eventually degrades into debauchery and spiritual darkness, as one is lost in the chaos of the worldly energies. Control and surrender need to exist in a balance, and people forget that, and tend to think it’s one or the other exclusively. The understanding that there are different phases in spiritual development of a person, where one thing needs to be accentuated, only to be let go of after the goal of that phase has been accomplished, is important, and it’s also important to understand that not all people are the same, or at the same point in their spiritual life. This understanding of plurality and the need for complexity is important, which is why the rigid, simplistic theologies create more problems than they solve, with their ‘one size fits all’ recipes. Hinduism is chaotic, that’s true, but it’s also rigid for those who need rigidity and discipline, and it’s plural and relaxed for those who need spontaneity and freedom. If you see it as a singular theology, it’s a mess. If you see it as an encyclopedia of all theologies for all people in all circumstances, it is amazing”, he nodded.

“So, you’re saying that some people will worship you as a king with me as your queen, and some will worship us as a shepherd and a dairy maid in Vrindavana, depending on who they are, and where they are in their life? Or they will worship Lord Shiva meditating on a graveyard, being done with the world, or they will worship his holy wife as a celibate ascetic, if they are a woman in that phase, or his wife having a sexual meditation with him, if they are practicing tantra, and so on?”, Lakshmi’s tension released as she started finding her way through chaos.

“Exactly. Or they will worship Christ being whipped and crucified if they are in a hard part of their life, or they will imagine him at the peak of his power or risen from the dead if they need inspiration and an ideal to worship. They will worship One God if they need clarity and simplicity, or they will worship multiple Divine aspects simultaneously or consecutively, if they need complexity that corresponds to complex ideas and situations they are facing”, he nodded and kissed her. “Of course it’s not all true, or all false. Some of it is false, because it’s conceived and understood by worldly and false minds. Some of it is holy and true, because it’s conceived and understood by holy and true minds. And regardless of the chaos, the fact that you can reach into that huge library and find something that will fit who you are at the time, is important”.

“I can’t for the life of me get your names right”, Kay was massaging her brow. “Can we please call you something simple, like Paddy, Mandy and Jess?”, she smiled mischievously at the Buddhists.

The three looked at each other and broke into laughter. “Anything that makes you comfortable, sweetheart”, Mandy replied, and the other two nodded.

“Wait until one of the Sufi mystics attains apotheosis”, Zee grinned. “See how Abi Sa’id al-Hasan ibn Yasar al-Basri would roll off the tongue”.

“He’d become Harry in a hurry”, his wife giggled.

…

“So, you’re saying that Mara actually exists as a person; it’s not a metaphor for the worldly illusion, like Goddess Maya or something?”, Jess asked.

“Yup. One of his names is Sanat Kumara, although the rest of us demons called him ‘Satan Cucumber’, or just Dickwad”, Azazel grinned.

“The rest…”

“Yes, I used to be a demon. I know him from those times, when the material world existed merely as his fantasy about opposing the Gods and making all the souls less so that he could be equal or better. I know what inside of his head looks like. So much so, that I was disgusted to the point of seeking out Lord Shiva and asking him to teach me, and you can pretty much guess the rest of it”, he smiled.

“And the Gods just happened to give that demon the artefact of Creation? To the demon that was so evil and twisted that he motivated a fellow demon to seek enlightenment?”, Paddy scratched his head in wonder.

“Well, not directly; they understood that there’s a problem with souls not doing anything, Heaven being completely static, demons and idiots overcrowding the astral nursery because everybody normal ascended quickly and they tended to stick around, and so on. They made an artefact that encapsulates the powers of your parents, and gave it to some pompous ass in the astral plane to give access only to legitimate claimants; the idea was, some demon will create a world that will be interesting enough and challenging enough for them to remove themselves from the astral nursery and do something constructive there. Unfortunately, the Sentinel, being an ass, gave it to the worst person in the entire Creation, despite my Father urging him to reconsider because the consequences might be terrible. And, of course, Dickwad went on to create the worst of all possible worlds, with a chain of permissions originating all the way to the Will of God. Which is why they didn’t just kill him and terminate that world, and they instead keep extinguishing the fires he keeps making”, Zee shrugged.

“So, basically, as bad as that world is, its existence solves the problem that was worse?”, asked Mandy.

“Something like that. God’s will is to manifest as persons in the Relative. That simply wasn’t happening, because of multiple reasons. One of them is that it is hard, and in order to do hard things you need to be motivated, and you’re kind of not motivated if things are good. There were lots of vajra beings, the angels, but they weren’t doing the necessary steps required to be chosen by the unmanifested Absolute as his own persons in the Relative, and that, apparently, is the only way to be promoted. You can’t just decide to do it; you need to be worthy in the eyes of God. So, my wife and I were the first, after the four Ancients, and we ultimately have Sanat Kumar to thank for it”, he smiled.

“You can’t argue with results”, Paddy nodded. “Initially there were the four Gods, and now we are fifteen. However, is all the suffering, apostasy and death of souls worth it?”, he wondered.

“I don’t think the Absolute cares”, Karuna shrugged. “The point of Creation wasn’t to make a green field where all the sheep of God will graze happily forever. The point was for Me to manifest Myself in the Relative, in a diversity of persons and forms; to be Myself on the other side of the veil”, she switched to the First Person. “The kind and pleasant way was tried first, and it didn’t work. Now, the Evil One is doing everything opposite to what the Gods would have done, and combined with our efforts to help, the results are obviously much better. As for the fact that some of the formerly undecided have switched to evil, you can’t really see this as a fall and a disaster. They existed in a state of a limbo, in which a thing in the dark that you think to be a snake exists until you bring in a torch. Once there is light, you can obviously see whether it’s a snake or a piece of rope. You can’t say that light created a snake out of a rope, or vice versa. This means that the fall of the souls that decided to choose evil is a good thing. They were forced to make a choice and exit the limbo. Yes, there is suffering, but there are worse things than suffering”, concluded Kay, now quite serious.

“Such as…?”, Mandy asked.

“Such as everybody who is now undecided being summarily wiped out because they were serving no purpose”, the response came. “Such as all the souls that are now Gods, to never have been so”.

“But still, surely you must concede that there could have been a kinder, less cruel way of forcing souls to decide”, pressed Jess.

“Maybe. This, however, works. The gentler, kinder way that existed before didn’t”, Kay shrugged. “Sure, some middle ground might be preferable. Indeed, we are currently threading the middle ground, as this is no longer a world of Mara’s original design; both Shiva and Vishnu have intervened and wrought their power to make it more permeable to transcendence, and the souls now have much more to work with if they want to choose God. The option to choose the alternative is obviously useful, as it collapses the undecided souls into either snake or rope; essentially, forcing them to make the choice they themselves were unwilling to make, which means that making a world that is too good is ultimately self-defeating”, Kay managed a smile.

“But Mara is actively pressuring the souls to choose evil”, Paddy noted. “Often, someone with a sword will come and present you with a choice of submitting to evil or being killed. It’s not really a free choice”.

“No, it isn’t. But the souls had free, unforced choice before, and they chose to do nothing. Now, someone with a sword forces you to make the choice, and if you’re weak, you will submit. If you have principles and adhere to transcendence, you will die. Or you will pretend to submit and then proceed to doing good later on. What you won’t be able to do, is sit on a green meadow forever and graze”, she smiled in earnest.

“You say this as if suffering is a complete non-issue”, Paddy protested.

“Oh, it’s certainly not, and your existence is a testament to that, since you were born from the tears the Gods cried when the first broken souls came from that hell”, she denied strongly. “I myself was almost comatose from shock. It was and still is the worst day of my life, and I’m significantly older than Earth. However, it’s one thing to feel compassion for the suffering and do something about it, and quite another to stand in the way of the Will of God. And suffering, as much as we personally suffer watching it, in our own compassion, still seems to be a part of how the Will of God is manifesting itself in the Relative”, the Mind of God nodded gravely.

“Can something at least be done to mitigate the harm that lunatic is wreaking down there?”, Jess looked upset. “I mean, we can always keep some version of that world for evolutionary purposes, but eliminate that one person that always finds a way to make things worse. For instance, the West is now in ruins, thanks to his intervention. Had it stayed in its original form, where it produced new Gods on a pretty regular basis, surely it would have been more aligned with the Will of God than it is now”, she wondered.

“Maybe. I certainly don’t think his perpetual existence and evil are the Will of God. His time will come”, Goddess of Wisdom nodded.

“It all makes me think about what a terrible outcome this was of putting a powerful spiritual artefact into evil hands”, Mandy mused. “It’s as if power of that kind attracts and creates corruption”.

“We have evidence to the contrary in front of us”, Paddy smiled at Lady Kay. “Have you ever been tempted to use that jewel of yours to fix this? Kill Sanat Kumar, destroy the Jewel he is controlling, make things right?”, he asked.

“I could certainly do it”, Karuna nodded. “I am by far more powerful than he is, and killing him wouldn’t even be a challenge. Also, my jewel is much more powerful than his. I could kill it with a single command, and the material world would end. All the souls in there, however, would likely be destroyed with it. And had I done it when I first could, I never would have met you, for you would not have been. I could do it now; go back in time and flip the switch. Tell Lord Shiva and Lady Shakti not to create it at all. Not cry those tears. Save her husband from pain. Retroactively murder most of my family, because then you wouldn’t have been. Zina wouldn’t have been. Buddha wouldn’t have been. Christ and his blessed wife wouldn’t have been. Hypatia wouldn’t have been. I can certainly do it”, Kay nodded gravely, as they all shivered. “However, I will not. I know that it is not the Will of God, and I Am God, so I would know”, she smiled with the smile of Absolute showing its teeth. “Technically, I could do all sorts of things I will never do, because unlike Sanat Kumar, I am neither evil, or an idiot, or a spiritual midget. I would never use my jewel against the will of Lady Shakti, who created it and gave it to me. I love her and I will always obey her. I also love my husband and obey him, and I would never do anything that would make him think less of me. What good is power, if the only thing it can do is take my happiness and love away?”, she glowed. “So, I use my power only when I’m ordered to by the elders, or to do minor adjustments to the Creation, along the guidelines they previously approved, because I’m being a good girl”, she smiled. “Also, my power is only a glimpse of Lady Shakti’s power, so whatever I can do, she can as well, and easier. And since she didn’t, it means she knew what pain she would have gone through, and did it anyways; for what mother would will her children not to be, only to spare herself the pain of giving birth?”

“That jewel of yours is in good hands”, Paddy nodded gravely, “For you are indeed as wise as you are powerful, and you are terrifyingly powerful”, he smiled.

“Also, killing Sanat Kumar or the Jewel now would incur karmic retribution, so it would likely kill me, and create an even greater mess than we have now”, Kay nodded. “So, I’ll definitely be a good girl and obey my elders in all things”.

“It’s interesting how Mara didn’t directly oppose us in our sadhana; at least, nothing above the usual worldly stuff”, noted Jess. “It’s as if he didn’t mind what we were doing”.

“Or wanted us to be out of there as soon as possible”, mused Mandy.

“Both are possibly true”, nodded Azazel. “He had to know what you are, and he decided it would be a waste of power to try to oppose you, as it would likely fail, use up too much of his resources, and he probably counts on using Islam to wipe out everything soon enough, so there would be no lasting positive consequences of your teaching”.

“I’m afraid the last one is most likely to be true. Why waste energy on opposing you, when he can let you go, get rid of you and thus remove three great hostile powers from his system, and later wipe everything clean, the way he wiped Europe and the Middle East”, Kay nodded. “But for a while, India will be flourishing, and what you did matters. In any case, the most precious artefact of your work are you, yourselves”, Kay pointed out.

“I am grateful that you remembered me”, Lady Hypatia grinned at her husband and the Three, bowing deeply. “I am honoured to meet you, and I’m sorry for not having introduced myself alongside the rest of my family, for I had to greet the souls that recently departed Earth”.

“Lady of Piercing Insight, and Dignity of God, the honour is ours”, Padmasambhava spoke, and all three bowed. “Your work is of immense importance, so we came to see you here, knowing that you are now somewhat free”, he grinned.

“Your enlightened Divine Persons are such a healing sight for my sore eyes”, Hypatia smiled widely. “You cannot even imagine what we had to deal with recently, ever since the plague of Justinian. It felt like the end of the world, only in a spiritual sense, and unfortunately not a physical one. The contrast between what the three of you look like, and the state of my ‘patients’, is staggering”.

“If you don’t mind me asking…”, Yeshe Tsogyal sipped her coffee as they got comfortable, “How did you even manage to attain enlightenment on your own down there? There was no teaching of Buddha, so you couldn’t have had the technical knowledge. You also didn’t have a guru, unlike myself and my sister-wife. So, how did you do it? The very thought of going through it alone makes me shiver with terror, for I would certainly have been lost to the samsara”, she trembled.

“I had a good starting point, having been an angelic being of blue vajra before I started incarnating on Earth”, Lady Hypatia nodded. “This means I had a good head start, but I still had to sublimate and transcend the five elements during life, in order to build higher energy bodies, which I did as part of my meditative practice, not even knowing how practical the results were going to be, and as I choked in my throat I thought it to be spiritual ecstasy, while I later understood it to be a part of the initiation into vajra. Also, as I had good teachers and good philosophy to guide me, I managed to also raise my spiritual frequency to indigo/violet, and expand the size of my soul by calmly enduring suffering, and compassionately helping others learn and overcome ignorance. I only attained godhood once I discarnated and met my husband here, to whom I surrendered in worship and adoration, and we both ascended at once”, she glowed with a deep, brilliant smile.

“But still, you are incredibly amazing to have attained such a glorious outcome with such little support”, Padmasambhava noted, and his wives nodded in assent. “And you are saying that nothing is known about energetic yoga in the West?”, he wondered in amazement.

“No; the concept is wholly unknown. In hindsight, though, I see how adherence to high spiritual and moral principles controls and drives the spiritual energies, as if gripping the nadis in a vice, and not allowing the energy to dissipate and flow into the lower channels”, Hypatia mused. “We just didn’t think in terms of calling energetic states by their proper names; we perceived them from the level of emotions and thoughts, and how they need to be disciplined and controlled. The result, apparently, ended up being close enough to being the same, from a functional viewpoint”.

“And you were a brahmacharini, if I am not mistaken?”, asked Mandarava.

“A virgin”, her husband translated the concept.

“Yes”, she nodded. “It wasn’t so much a decision, a vow or a form of spiritual practice, as it was an unfortunate side effect of not having met a man whom I would have recognised as my husband, and also having been very much absorbed in study and teaching”, she smiled. “My husband, fortunately, later healed me of that malady”, she snickered, as he kissed her neck.

“It is a hard path”, nodded Yeshe Tsogyal. “We had it easy in that sense; each having support in our sadhana, which removed both solitude and fear of error, as any of us who reached an impasse or strayed in our spiritual practice had plenty of skilled help to assist them”.

“That was indeed a great terror for me, knowing that I must at all times be perfectly disciplined, for none could save me had I faltered”, Hypatia was grim with recollection. “I feared stumbling in the dark of that world and not having a hand to pull me straight, and this fear further strengthened my discipline and focus, for had I failed, not only would I myself have been lost, but I would also have adversely affected others who looked up to me. Even in my torturous death, I was careful not to behave in ways that would diminish my image in the eyes of others, because that would have hurt them spiritually. Later, I saw this discipline as one of the important reasons for my almost immediate spiritual ascension”.

“I see the memories of your death now”, Padmasambhava noted with great respect. “The fanatical mob grabbed you, tore flesh off your bones with shards of pottery, cut your eyes out and dismembered you, and you were worried about leaving a good example for your students, if any happened to watch or hear testimony of your death”, he spoke in amazement. “No wonder you are a Goddess, standing here as a Judge of Karma and a Divine Consort to Lord Yama, as a paragon of compassion and righteousness”, he bowed deeply. “You are an incredibly amazing person and I bow to you, again and again”, he bowed again, as did his wives.