“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.

Last night I had one of those yoga nidra situations where I’m supposed to be sleeping but instead I’m having darshan-like visions, so here goes.

“I am honoured to stand in your presence, Lord Shiva”, said Vishnu. “Your nature is so holy, and your courage is so incredible, that when the rest of us feel terrified by something, you calmly absorb that darkness and evil into yourself and through your own suffering transform it into the holy light we can all feel in your presence. Everybody else desires power, but you are so controlled and absorbed in your transcendence, that Power herself is your wife, and wants nothing but to belong to you and draw inspiration for Creation from observing your holy presence, which is the closest there is to the unmanifested Absolute itself.”

“Lord Vishnu, the honour is mine”, responded Shiva. “It is indeed like you to grace me with your kind words, and yet it is you who are such fullness of reality-consciousness-bliss that you give meaning to all of Creation, because the reason and the point of Manifestation is to embody the qualities of the Absolute into a relative being, and you, in your infinitely blissful and enlightened nature, show all of us what the goal is and what we are striving for. Where others would be endlessly tempted by the Kaustubha jewel, which emanates great bliss and fulfilment, you, as the ultimate being of bliss and fulfilment, can wear it as if it were a mere trinket, because your own bliss and fulfilment are of a far greater order. All beings desire fortune, and yet Fortune (Lakshmi) herself sits contently by your side as your wife and desires nought but you, who are such a magnificent embodiment and manifestation of the formless brahman, the sat-cit-ananda, that you are the source of greatest fortune even for the Fortune herself.”

Hearing him say this, and seeing the truth of it herself, his Lady smiled, because previously she felt incredulity when Shiva would highly praise Lord Vishnu, because she couldn’t believe that any being could match her husband’s greatness, but now she just smiled in pure happiness, and so did Lady Lakshmi, blushing with excitement and pleasure seeing her husband so aptly and gloriously praised by one so holy and virtuous.

As they all stood there in deep meditation, as the presence and manifestation of the Absolute grew manifold due to the holiness of the moment, the whole atmosphere between them became changed, and an endless number of small spark-like entities precipitated, like snowflakes, and they saw that each was a new soul that was being born out of the mutual worship of the Gods.

Born out of holiness and God-worship, each of those souls can only find fulfilment and meaning of its life if it attains this state again through its own evolution.