There’s another thing from the comment section that needs to be elaborated upon:

Me: “So, judging from that, even the worst version of this dungeon was allowed from the very start, because God knew what Satan was planning from the very beginning, even the stuff Satan himself didn’t yet know. However, God obviously decided that something good will come out of it that more than makes up for all the evil. However, mind you, that’s from God’s perspective. If you happen to be one of those who got destroyed here, you might disagree with his assessment of what’s worth it, and what’s justified. However, rom God’s perspective, destruction of billions of inadequate souls might not in fact count as a bad thing, if on the other hand some of the greatest beings become the crown of all Creation. We here are conditioned to treat tragedies as a matter of accounting; the more beings die, the greater the tragedy. God, on the other hand, might see destruction of all kinds of inadequate or evil souls, or dead ends that kept existing merely because nothing said “boo!” loudly enough, the way we see lawn maintenance. From the position of a lawn, mowing must look like a great disaster and a tragedy. From the position of the owner, it is a good thing.”

I think we are having a persistent problem with the definitions of a soul, both from Hinduism and Christianity. In Christianity, you have four essential soul types: God, celestial, fallen celestial (demonic), and mortal. God is a unique soul-type of the three persons of God – Father, Son and the Holy Spirit. Celestial is the soul-type of angels, in their various choirs. Since a third of celestials fell in the rebellion, they can be seen as a slightly different type, in their destiny at least. Finally, we have the soul-type of mortals, which in Christianity means only humans, because they don’t think self-aware animals such as elephants, dolphins and others amount to anything.

Hinduism has a somewhat different perspective on this. For instance, they don’t separate celestials, demons, gods and mortals into different categories, because all of them can incarnate as either animals or humans. Hinduism recognizes that Gods are in some way much greater than typical human souls, but the mechanics of that are completely unclear, vague and often contradictory. For instance, in one place it is said that the only difference between souls is the level of self-realization, in other places the difference is attributed to the amount of unresolved karma, and in some places the difference between Gods and ordinary souls is attributed to a new element, vishnu tattva, as opposed to the normal tattva that makes generic souls. Hinduism is a mess in that sense, but in other ways it provides the best description of what things actually look like in practice.

Buddhism introduced a new element it inherited from Jainism, but then took it to a whole new level. You see, it understands karma not as something a soul has, and needs to work through in order to become pure, but as something a soul is actually made of. This is a revolutionary concept, because it explains how souls grow through karma, and why having less karma is in fact the reason why some souls are small, and having more karma and in different states of organisation is a reason why some souls are bigger and better, and the concept of mahatma, great soul, for the first time makes actual sense, because they are made of more kalapas, the fundamental particles of karma. The concept of crystallization of karma also explains the differences between less evolved souls that look basically like a cloud of astral gas, and more evolved souls where this gas was cooled down and compressed into a solid, crystalline form, after the excess kinetic energy of the individual particles was removed by suffering.

I’m trying to write as little of my own experience as possible up to this point, because I read about all of this at some place or another, but the source material is much more chaotic, disorganised and full of imagery that’s hard to understand today. I just organised all of it into something coherent based on my own experience and understanding. The reason why I’m not just using Buddhist imagery of kalapas and karmic substance is because Hinduism and Christianity sometimes have better explanations of how some things actually work in practice; for instance, Hinduism will speak of Gods and their jewellery, armour, robes and weapons, but it won’t be able to explain how those things actually work. Christianity introduced the concept of God’s persons, which is very useful in explaining what the Gods of Hinduism actually are, but despite its excellent understanding of the low-level mechanics of karma and soul-stuff, and also of the concept of incarnation of Divine beings, Buddhism has some issues on the higher echelon of things, tending to misunderstand the point of spiritual evolution altogether, where for instance both Christianity and some flavours of Hinduism get it more-less perfectly. This is why I tend to credit all three systems, rather than trying to reduce everything unto one. So, if something looks like a mixture of Buddhism, Hinduism and Christianity, where for instance I take imagery from Hinduism, explain the mechanics of it in Buddhist terms explained in ways of particle physics and thermodynamics, and use Christian-sounding words to tell you what it means and feels like, that’s completely intentional, the way you can use engineering terms to explain how a car works, and poetry to explain how it feels to drive.

All of this is more-less an introduction that is necessary for understanding how certain things work, why they make sense and why some things that look like chaos or cruelty are none of that. One of those concepts is that of pralaya, destruction of worlds.

Basically, a world is created, endures for a long while, and is then destroyed. A good example of this is the solar system. At some point it was created by gravitational condensation of matter within a supernova remnant, which created both the star and the planets. At some point, Earth became capable of supporting life, the basic compounds for which were already formed in the supernova remnant gas; the nucleic acids and so on. Then life started on Earth as it barely cooled, evolved to greater complexity through time, and was occasionally interrupted and reset by cataclysmic events, shifting evolution into different directions. At some point, Earth will become unable to sustain life; either in a global glaciation event, or when the Sun leaves the main sequence and becomes a red giant. Realistically, within half a billion years the Sun is expected to become much brighter, and that would already cook Earth quite nicely, making it uninhabitable. So, the concept of pralaya is not something that’s very hard to understand or accept as reality. I just want to explain why, from God’s perspective, it’s a good thing, and not a terrible disaster.

From a position of a single kalapa, it is the most fundamental manifestation of the Absolute in the Relative. It’s a spark of momentum of sat-cit-ananda that wants to be God in the Relative. For a kalapa, and for Absolute as well, the best outcome is aggregating with other similar elementary particles of karma into a structure that will manifest the full glory of the Absolute in the Relative. It doesn’t want to get stuck in a soul of a trilobite for a zillion years. That would be a terrible outcome. From a position of a trilobite, of course it wants to keep being a trilobite. It sees nothing wrong with that, and everything wrong with its cessation. However, when God sees that things aren’t going anywhere, he slightly massages the reset button.

I’m using terms from this world in order to make it more understandable, of course, but let’s switch to the actual world, rather than this VR. You can call the real world spiritual, astral, heaven or whatever you like, but I prefer to call it the real world created by God, because that’s what it is. It has many layers, and each layer has sections and compartments that make it complicated, but I’ll try to keep it as simple as possible. So, there you have all sorts of souls, from barely detectable clouds of karmic gas that would normally power insects, through human-type souls that are also karmic gas, but much bigger quantity, denser, more organised, capable of complex emotions and thoughts, and small soul-crystals, of karmic substance that evolved to great peace, sophistication and power through suffering that cooled down karmic stuff from gas to solid, removing both chaotic energy and impurities in the process. I could say that all soul-crystals are some type of vajra, but I don’t want to introduce unnecessary complexity into something that’s already hard to understand even for the advanced practitioners, let alone beginners; however, I don’t feel like teaching kindergarten level physics for the rest of my life either, so try to keep up. Essentially, the crystalline soul-type is where the actual fun starts, and you can justifiably perceive everything that precedes it as some kind of an attempt-to-become. Such a crystalline soul exists in what you can call a first credible state of enlightenment, although the term itself is vague and I don’t like to use it. If a crystalline soul doesn’t do something to mess things up royally, it is essentially destined to eternity and will come to some kind of a glorious ending. The gaseous attempts-to-become, however, can be wiped out and reset in a pralaya, when God grows tired of their crap. That’s why I was always hurrying my students to achieve initiation into vajra, because prior to that their fate is highly uncertain. To remain in form of gaseous karmic state is precarious and just invites trouble of all sorts. Some already existed in crystalline form prior to incarnation, but they had to repeat the process of crystallisation in this incarnation, in order to start improving upon their past achievements, and resolve issues in their crystalline structure that resulted from past errors – inclusions, cracks, impurities and so on. Every such issue can be described as a fundamental spiritual problem with understanding and approach to reality, but going into details would make this article into a small book, and it’s quite long already. In any case, soul crystallization is an important step, but it’s a step and not a destination. So, what does a crystalline soul do? The first obvious answer is that it can achieve purity and uniform integrity, resolving issues that arose from its organic, messy evolution. The next answer is that it can grow bigger. However, this is where things get more complicated, because it can also choose to belong to one of the Gods. Why one would want to do so is quite obvious; it’s the reason why Christians want to become saints in order to be able to belong to Christ in eternity. They see themselves as servants of God, as beings whose purpose is to spread and increase God’s glory. Essentially, every good Christian life is something that exists to magnify the glory of Christ, and if you remove human forms from souls and observe them in their pure, original state, the Christians would be observed as crystals of spiritual light that belong to the much larger structure of the God-person they belong to. They are, in essence, holy companions of God, and this explains why Gods in Hinduism are described as having companions and adjacent structures and entities. That is because lesser holy beings find their purpose and fulfilment in company, service and proximity to a major Divine being, whose glory they magnify and manifest. What happens to those adjacent crystals through time? They can grow by taking tasks upon themselves, in order to spread the glory of their Lord, and as they are successful, they accumulate, absorb and purify further karmic substance. However, since this is inherently risky, they can fail and be harmed or even destroyed in this process. They can also remain satisfied with their level of progress. If they grow big enough, they become companion-Gods; that, basically, is how Gods “reproduce”, and that’s also why they are all on extremely friendly terms, because all help each other grow greater and more glorious, and praise each other endlessly, because that’s completely right and proper, knowing what kinds of glorious deeds of wonder and sacrifice one had to perform to grow this big.

Without intervention, there would be too much of a separation of destinies of karmic substance, where some of it would be permanently stuck in gaseous structures that aren’t going anywhere or doing anything worthwhile, and none of it is doing much in terms of participating in or manifesting God’s glory, so God occasionally performs “controlled burns”, as forestry service would call it, where they burn down the underbrush in order to give the big trees room to grow and remove stuff that’s not doing anything other than providing fuel for big forest fires that can be quite destructive. Basically, the stuff that’s not doing anything nor going anywhere is reset in ways that either accelerate evolution in other forms, or allows greater Divine beings to absorb their karma and thus allow it to take part in God’s glory and increase his or her greatness. This is described in Bhagavata-purana, as demonic beings try to kill Krishna and thus essentially karmically offer themselves to him, because that’s what you do when you sin against someone so much greater than yourself; as he kills them, he absorbs their souls into his Divine core, and thus demons swap their miserable individual existence for being part of a God’s being and magnifying his glory. Enemies of God thus get to be absorbed into God and lose their individuality, but friends of God become companions and adjacent beings who increase God’s greatness by creating the complex field adjacent to their God. This adjacent field can change shape, for instance Krishna can cast his jewels into the world when he himself descends, and they become his companions, and demons also choose to join their destiny with his own by incarnating to oppose him, be destroyed in the process of magnifying his glory, and being absorbed into his being. After this process of group incarnation, all the involved are changed; some are greatly magnified by their glorious deeds, some remain more-less the same, and some are diminished or destroyed by betrayal and cause their God loss and suffering. The entire process, obviously, has a purpose, and everything is dynamic and quite complicated. As God himself can change shape, so do his adjacent entities, who can be seen either in their original form of spiritual crystalline structures of light, beauty and power, or in form of jewels adorning their beloved God, or in form of weapons, robes and other aspects and attributes of the Lord, or Lady in question; or they can manifest in all kinds of forms, for instance human beings inhabiting a heavenly castle, performing some lila. And of course you have major Gods who are basically all family, forming married couples and all kinds of friendly connections. Those major Gods are so immense, that it’s hard for me to even begin trying to explain the order of magnitude, but they are in practice the kindest and most friendly and approachable ones around, really; their size doesn’t make them more distant, but more everywhere, so to speak. The Christians who worship saints, because they feel closer than the great Lord, got it completely wrong; it’s the saints who feel distant and rigid, while their Lord, the major God-person, feels approachable, human, kind and lovely. It’s weird, but that’s how it is. It’s also logical – when you want to approach a person, you don’t talk to their shoes or their wedding ring, you talk to them, because that actually works. 🙂

Essentially, pralaya is a form of mercy that wipes out stagnant cesspools where karmic substance is basically prevented from taking part in God’s manifestation by being stuck in various godless forms that don’t want to go anywhere. From a position of weeds, gardening is genocide. However, nobody’s asking weeds for their opinion. By allowing karmic substance to be liberated from stagnant inferior forms and taking part of a Divine destiny again, pralaya is the supreme form of dharma.