This entire story, from Titles to Gods as actual persons and not merely convenient shapes for That which is without name and form, is a very new realisation for me, believe it or not. It’s not like I didn’t understand it in theory. I even wrote about some of it before. It just didn’t click with me, make the connection that makes you say “aha!”. I even made mistakes recently, treating two God-persons as interchangeable, which resulted in some consternation from one of them, and shock on my side when I understood that I apparently did something awkward and offensive without ever meaning to. I was just too used to my combination of impersonal and personal concepts of God, where a person is merely a face you’re interacting with, but there’s one God behind all of them.

Interestingly, I would never treat physical or astral beings that way, because it’s obvious that they are distinct people and of course they are not interchangeable with one another. Treating them as mere manifestations of the same unmanifest reality of brahman and not as distinct people would be crass and offensive. However, for some bloody reason I assumed that this applies only to beings that are not, how would I say it, “of God”, “one with God”, enlightened, or however one would put it. Now that I look at it, there’s absolutely no reason to assume any of that, except for the fact that various teachers of Vedanta absolutely assume this interchangeability – God will appear to you as this or that, but God is One, beyond name and form.

That’s such obvious nonsense. Imagine two spiritual people who attained enlightenment. Are they now the same person? Obviously not. When they shed the physical body, are they now the same person, or, rather, is their personality lost or sublimated into the unmanifest and formless ocean of brahman? I never saw this happen, or saw evidence that it’s a thing, other than Vedanta assuming that’s how things work. However, I already knew that Vedanta seems to be unique among philosophies in getting every single practical and verifiable thing completely wrong. The fact that it got this one wrong as well should not have been a surprise that it was, but I guess Vedanta, too, is one of those rotting logs in my mind, whose remains are just left there because I didn’t get around to revisiting all the implicit assumptions that are left standing there and occupying space in my belief system after the main structure was abandoned for, well, being proven wrong.

Sure, there’s a reason why I didn’t get around to it yet. I had multiple decades filled with all kinds of emergencies, disasters and hardship of the kind that makes you deal with other stuff – I developed quite an understanding of different things, such as for instance the inner workings of this hell-hole, but I didn’t deal with the concept of darshan of different persons of God for a very long time for a very simple reason – I didn’t experience it during all those long years. I was told to expect as much somewhere in 2007 or close enough, but I didn’t expect it to be this long. All of it being of no direct consequence to the things of my immediate concern, it just wasn’t dealt with, and so some rotting remains of Vedanta were left unchecked in my belief system, causing trouble as soon as it again became relevant, because things changed a lot in the last year. As Goddess visited me, the previous visits lit up in my memory and connected, and I was able to connect the dots that were too dark to really work with in her absence. Also, the experience of darshan of different Divine beings that are completely distinct from her and from each other finally led me to the correct conclusion – that things that I know working in cases that are in my personal experience actually work like that everywhere. Souls are not just some separate waves on the ocean of brahman that melt back into the ocean with enlightenment, as Yogananda stupidly taught people. It’s actually the opposite – with enlightenment, you give God a different person and a name. You don’t become less; God becomes more. How can something infinite and all-encompassing become more? Well, it obviously can, because if now you exist as separate from God and in ignorance, and at some point you gain awareness of God and become of God, it’s obvious that God’s existence extended, and the existence of darkness and ignorance subsided. So yes, sure, the persons of God are all God in a way, but Jill and Joe are both humans and in some abstract way they are aspects of humanity, but that doesn’t mean they are indistinct and interchangeable. When a child is born, humanity gains another aspect, so to speak. When a person becomes enlightened, or liberated, or contains enough God-stuff, or whatever you want to conceptualise it as, God gains another name, form and title. There is no “The One God” in the Relative, because That stays on the other side of all manifestation. You interact with That by drawing from a pool of virtue, by becoming more of God, and the practical, Relative way this works is by absorbing additional kalapas into your spiritual body. Internally, it means expanding your soul to become more, and purifying it to become less chaotic, more clear, organised and transparent, which means more in alignment with reality. That aspect of God is not something on the outside, to be seen or interacted with, because you interact with it by being – being in truth, being in reality, being in kindness, being in awe, being touched by greatness. It’s always inside of you, as an option to choose, and an alternative to illusion and evil. But it’s also in other people, as their source of personal reality and a choice to make, and as people interact with each other from God, their choice to see God in another makes their own connection to God and choice for God greater. Eventually, God gains not only this or that choice that you make, but your entire person, and you as a person became a God. Not the God, but God. It’s weird, and human language isn’t really made for this kind of thing, and one should probably use mathematical notation, but since I’m a shitty mathematician this will have to wait. 🙂

I just know there’s going to be some person who’s going to read the things I’m writing about God and think, “oh, I might visualise God as my wife, that sounds good”. I wouldn’t recommend it, at least if you want to avoid spending eternity in a dog house. I also wouldn’t recommend looking at Krishna’s lilas as if they are something that pertains to you.

Lila is not a form of sadhana. A relationship with God is not something you visualise.

Biljana read the previous article, and smilingly commented that watching girls bathe has apparently always been a thing. I said “It’s a time-honoured pastime of the Gods. Half of them were always watching the girls bathe. The other half? They were the girls.”

If you’re not a God, don’t try to act as if you are, because that is known as hubris, and the Gods are famous for not liking it. Not liking it, as in “cast you in the lake of fire for all eternity” not liking it.

You don’t get to be Krishna’s wife because you like the idea. You get there by wanting to be dust under his feet, or a flower in his garden, or his wife’s maid-servant for a zillion years. It’s all about humility, sacrifice, adoration and growth in Divine qualities. Of course every satanist out there would like to sit on the heavenly throne and fuck God. That’s why they are sentenced to the pit of hell where they are sodomized by others like them, only stronger.

A relationship with God is something that is determined by God. If you have inappropriate, disrespectful thoughts, you never get to find yourself in God’s presence, you remain in your darkness, and your destiny is despair. If you are very honest, good and respectful, God will give you appropriate guidance and teach you. If you are a very good student, you will become an enlightened being. If you are very good at wisdom, sacrifice, love and kindness, and your samyama on God’s aspects is very successful, you might yourself become a Divine being, a person of God. At that point, there will already be enlightened or Divine beings who will be familiar with you and develop a relationship of respect and love with you. That’s the point where you figure out lila, rather than sadhana, and have varied free, unconditioned, God-based interactions.

My relationship with my girl isn’t something you can imitate, and it would be absolute blasphemy to even have such ideas. For women, imagining being God’s wife is a similar blasphemy, unless of course they already are God’s wife, in which case God will tell you himself. The correct attitude would be “let me be pure and deserving enough to be the water used by the least of God’s wives’ maid-servants to wash her feet first, and then maybe I will become worthy to be that handmaiden’s servant”. Lack of humility in beginners is something that prevents you from even starting properly on a spiritual path, and it can be your downfall regardless of how far you ascended. Also, the greatest way to become close to God is not by imagining a relationship with God, it’s by developing a state of metta and enveloping other beings with it. Be loving-kindness to others, be the truth, the reality, the source of happiness to others, and the relationship with God will take care of itself. I said imitation is sometimes useful because that’s how you can learn, but this is one of those cases where imitation is a very, very bad thing. You’re not me. I’m not a “phase” in spiritual growth that you can reach. I was Eternity before time was an idea. The way Goddess is with me is because of who I am and who we are to each other, it’s not a thing to be emulated by others unless you want to be on a shit list that’s very hard for one to remove themselves from. This is not some stupid fantasy where you can imagine yourself as this or that. Gods are not some kind of unconscious aspects of yourself that serve the purpose of your spiritual growth. They are actual persons, like you, only if you attained the greatest and highest things and evolved to the highest mode of being. They are to be treated with respect of the highest order, because if you don’t, you might find out what Goddess has under that tiny dress and then you die the eternal death, as your soul dissolves in the presence of the naked, unshielded presence of God, That which existed before Light was made, That which made Arjuna beg Krishna to hide it because he could not bear it. Tread lightly where Angels kneel.

I was just thinking (which is how, apparently, most of my articles start 🙂 ) how our concepts of God in the West are influenced, if not outright defined, by the concepts originating from the ancient middle-Eastern civilisations; Babylon, Assyria, Egypt. The entire monotheistic thing originates from there and then: you have a strict hierarchy of worshippers, saints, Angels, Archangels, Cherubim, Seraphim, and upon the Throne there is The One God, to whom all are singing praise, lest they be cast out of heaven and into the lake of fire.

Let me just roll my eyes theatrically here, because, for those who still didn’t get the memo, God is not Ashurbanipal, or Ramses, or Hammurabi. People think of those wooden statues of saints in a church, all strict and serious, and imagine God under the influence of that imagery – if the saints are like that, what must their God be like? Even more strict, distant to the point where nobody really sees him, and people pray to the saints because they feel closer, more approachable, closer to their human condition, which might make them more understanding than a distant, supreme God.

In school I read Franz Kafka’s “Process”, which is about nameless, faceless bureaucracy that swallows and destroys a man in a completely impersonal, detached manner, accusing him of unspecified crimes, for which he’s later sentenced to death and executed, and one thing struck me in particular. As he is brought before a judge, in the waiting room he sees the portrait of said judge in all the splendour of judicial paraphernalia, and someone asks him what he thinks about this judge’s status, how high of a judge this is in the judicial hierarchy? He responds that it must be a very high judge, judging by the portrait, but a man says no, he’s the lowest judge in the hierarchy, that’s why he’s making so much of a show of his greatness. This struck me as very true, because that’s how humans function. The lower someone is in the hierarchy, the more he postures. People buying all the status symbols aren’t the really rich, but middle class with aspirations. The really rich tend to keep a low profile because bringing attention to themselves is just trouble. The really, really rich tend to act completely normal. The world’s wealthiest people come here to Croatia acting completely casually, for instance Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos come to the restaurant with their wives and just order normal stuff like everyone else. Elon Musk and Joe Rogan order pizza and fuck around shooting a car with arrows. It’s the wannabes that drive Bentleys, wear flashy diamond jewellery, heavy gold chains and act with all the grace and class of pimps and drug dealers.

There’s another literary example from Isaac Asimov’s “Foundation” series, where Hari Seldon is brought to the imperial palace on Trantor, and granted audience before an unspecified person. Seldon doesn’t know who that is and is warily trying to guess in order to address him properly, and based on the simplicity of the man’s attire he guesses it must be someone really, really high in the imperial hierarchy, which scares him shitless, and he aims very high with the title he uses. He still misses, however, because it turns out this person is actually the Emperor himself. Basically, the lower courtiers will all look like peacocks, but the Emperor looks like an ordinary man in a suit. That’s what the difference between power, great power and scary power looks like. The powerful look powerful. The supremely powerful look casual. If you imagine saints in white robes, angels in white light, archangels in deep light that radiates scary levels of power, you imagine God as that super-scary, super-powerful, super-distant, never-really-seen arch-magnificence. You then imagine it would be safer to pray to some saint or an angel because you don’t want to be pulverised by lightning or something.

The Hindu concepts aren’t this stuck up or influenced by ancient middle-Eastern despotisms, but there’s still a huge difference between how a priest behaves, how a Rishi such as Vyasa or Narada behaves, and how Krishna or Shiva behave. Essentially, a beginner will look like a saint, a saint will look like some kind of a deity, and God will mess around with his friends acting like a shepherd kid. That’s because a beginner tries really hard to acquire certain qualities, and is very serious and disciplined about it, and also tries to make an impression on people, because to him spirituality is a matter of social status. A saint attained a very high spiritual state and very much tries not to lose it, and always tries to be at his best. God, on the other hand, doesn’t really give a shit. He’s not going to stop being God if he does something undignified, like messing with the girls by stealing their clothes while they are bathing in the river, so that they have to come to him naked and get them back, or hiding in a bush with Arjuna to look at the girls bathing, and setting up his friend with his sister. God doesn’t think his crown will fall off if he bows low. He’s not afraid of people not thinking he’s dignified enough. He’s not afraid of losing his status if he’s not acting distant or special enough. God just doesn’t give a fuck. In fact, exactly because he’s the most powerful, he’s easiest to reach and most approachable. He’s much closer than any saint or an angel. God is not a saintlier saint or a more powerful archangel; God is a whole different kind of a thing. There’s powerful, then there’s scary powerful, then there’s omnipotent, and then there’s the barefoot girl in a light dress, or the shepherd kid playing a flute, a carpenter surrounded by his twelve disciples, or something similarly normal and approachable that, nevertheless, makes Bogeyman check under his bed before he goes to sleep.