“Lord Shiva, may I have a moment of your time, please?”, Rudra heard when he was just about to leave. Everything was about as tragically successful as they planned – the Sentinel was a damn fool, Sanat Kumar got limited access to the Jewel under certain conditions, which constrained this within the parameters of a mitigated disaster, rather than a world-ending one. Both Sanat Kumar and the Jewel vanished for the moment, which meant that he started issuing orders to the Jewel, and the first one, as expected, was to create a private place for him to plot and scheme, without being monitored or traced. That would be terrible news, were it not expected and planned for. However, allowing a known villain to get a hold of one of the major artefacts of Creation left a bad taste, and Shiva didn’t feel good about himself. Rather, he had a feeling that everything hangs on a precipice of doom, and he silently prayed to Lady Fortune and her husband Vishnu to help and guide him in this terrible mess he cooked up. And now, what does this demon want from him? “Azazel, am I right? Greetings; how may I help you?”
“I am really sorry to disturb you, but I want to talk to you about a very important matter. You see, I have seen you before, and you made the most profound impression on me, when one of my friends made a fatal mistake of challenging you to a duel, which predictably ended quite badly for him”
“I see. May I understand that you have some kind of a problem with this?”
“Not at all, my Lord. Ashanti challenged you, he struck first, you answered his challenge properly and fairly, and he lost. This is perfectly fine as far as I am concerned. What I wanted to ask you is something different. I would want you to teach me, my Lord. I recently talked to a fellow demon named Sanat Kumara, and in this conversation I realised how little I know about the nature of reality, spiritual evolution, and all those things; in fact, I realised that everything I know may in fact be completely wrong, which is why I haven’t been going anywhere for a really long time, and without proper knowledge and guidance, that is extremely unlikely to change, at least for the better. So, I am very humbly asking for your guidance and instruction, because my life is currently at an impasse”
Shiva relaxed and smiled. “And I thought you had a different proposition, that would have increased the evils of this day rather than reducing them, as this one seems about to. Have a seat, son, and tell me what you think you know first, what you think the issues are, and then I will correct you.”
“Thank you very much, my Lord; and no, unlike my deceased friend and that damn fool Sanat Kumar, who is right now conspiring against the Gods and the structure of the world, I realise that my central problem is my own ignorance. Without knowing how things actually stand, one can only dig himself deeper into the quagmire, and instead of continuing in my line of resentment and foolish action, I would like to start attacking my main enemy, which is ignorance. My ignorance goes somewhat like this: I know that souls appear and evolve. It seems that they branch into two main directions: those who evolve, and those who stagnate. Of those who evolve, some glow brighter and then disappear from our world, while the rest grow bigger, in either black or white direction, but other than being quantitatively stronger than other similar souls, nothing changes for us and this appears like a fatal stagnation. I feel that this stagnation has its root in some misapprehension or ignorance that we all share, which is why I decided to ask you about it, because you are the most powerful being I have ever seen, and if anyone knows those things with certainty, it must be you”, the demon confessed.
“OK, so first of all, I have to commend your decision to talk to me, because it is a correct one. I do, indeed, have the answers that you seek, and I am willing to share them with you, because the truth is, I am always willing to answer all questions, but hardly anyone ever asks”, Rudra started.
“The first part of your observation is correct – the souls are indeed born, out of the partially permeable veil that separates the Absolute from the Relative. Each of those souls is a core of sat-cit-ananda, made out of kalapas, the fundamental particles of karma that aggregate into more substantial structures when attractive forces outweigh the repulsive ones”, Shiva continued his explanation.
“Wow, this is already something I knew nothing about. So, souls are made of particles; they start with some core amount, and they build upon that, how exactly?”, the demon’s eyes went wide with excitement, because this was his first contact with the actual knowledge on the subject, rather than empty speculation.
“Since the kalapas are the most fundamental manifestations of the unmanifested brahman, which is sat-cit-ananda in its nature, what the particles ‘want’ is to return to their origin, so to speak, but since they are doing that in the relative world, they ‘join forces’ with other similar particles on this side of the veil, and the strongest attractive forces are those that partake in their core nature – that of reality, consciousness and bliss, since the kalapas are essentially trying to re-create brahman in the Relative. So, when a being chooses principles of truth (that being a connection between its outward actions and reality), consciousness (that being awareness of reality and acquisition of true knowledge), and bliss (that being maitreya or metta, loving-kindness towards other beings, which can be compassion towards the lesser ones, but also admiration and devotion towards the higher ones), its size grows by spontaneous attraction of free kalapas from the kalapa-rich environments, such as this astral world which we Gods internally call “nursery” or “hatchery”, because that is where the souls are born and most quickly pass through the initial phase of their spiritual growth. So, a soul grows by means of karmic accretion, which means that additional karmic matter is attracted to your soul-core and integrated into it, which is what you correctly observed by the process of evolution, in those who choose that path. You demons call the rest of them all kinds of unkind names, and we Gods are no different, since we call them ‘retards’ and ‘idiots’”, Shiva smiled encouragingly.
“That explains a lot; so, the souls that choose the path of truth, knowledge and kindness quickly accrete the free kalapas that float around the place looking for something that reminds them of where they came from, and attach to the closest thing in the proximity, I assume?”
“Yes. This force doesn’t exist only at a microscopic, but also at a macroscopic level, as you can witness in yourself as we speak. I am a great source of sat-cit-ananda in the Relative, one of the four greatest, and you currently feel excited and ecstatic because you are feeling true knowledge flowing towards you, which makes all the constitutive kalapas of your soul react. This is the true reason why the lesser souls are attracted to the greater ones, and why there are whole branches of spiritual evolution that converge towards the major Gods of Creation, which are four: Lord Vishnu, his wife Lady Lakshmi, and myself and my wife, Lady Shakti. Since we are enormous attractors of reality, and we in fact manifested the Relative Creation, the easiest and most certain path of spiritual evolution is to follow us and to learn from us, as you are presently starting to realise”.
“Indeed I am, my Lord. But what I have witnessed is that souls follow a linear process of growth, after which they either disappear from our world completely, or continue growing pointlessly, further branching into either demons, or contemptible false spiritual persons. I am missing something crucial here, and I beg you to explain it to me”, Azazel asked excitedly.
“The part you’re missing is what we Gods call ‘crystallisation’. You see, as a soul accretes karma, two different things can happen, depending on the structure of the soul itself, and by structure I primarily mean its purity along four lower elements, which are earth, water, fire and air. Those names are of course merely symbolic, but they denote principles of reality, energy, thought and freedom. If a being is pure in the element of earth, it means it is truthful and grounded in reality. If it is pure in the element of water, it means its energy is pure and unrestricted. If it is pure in the element of fire, it means that its emotions and thoughts are pure, and of the kind that liberates and doesn’t bind, both oneself and others. It is the mind that explains and teaches freely and truthfully, not the mind that creates bonds and traps. Furthermore, this principle fully extends into the element of air, which in its pure form is freedom – allowing yourself and others to be free and manifest the Absolute in their own way, and to find their own perfection, rather than conform to your limited understanding of what perfection is supposed to be.”
“And so, when a soul grows large enough, and is pure enough in all four elements, a process of crystallisation begins, where astral substance, which is normally a gaseous cloud of kalapas, solidifies due to loss of repulsive forces that normally keep the particles at a larger distance. Since those repulsive forces are made of all sorts of chaotic evils, removing those through passive and patient suffering and remorse for one’s sins causes compression of the astral gas into a solid soul-crystal, which is the point where a soul ceases to be part of this, astral world, and enters worlds of Eternity, since the soul is at that point immortal and indestructible by all means other than its own sin, if it is foolish enough to commit it”, concluded the Great Lord.
“So, when a soul fizzles out of our perception, it is actually born in a higher world, and that happens because its structure becomes of the nature of that higher world? This is amazing, my Lord, and it answers the central question that has been bothering me for an unknown period of time. I thank you so much for telling me this, and I feel this is so incredibly important that I can barely contain my excitement, so please forgive me for this”, Azazel stuttered, and Shiva smiled noticing how the word “demon” no longer applied; the being in front of him was no longer a large black cloud, but small star of white light that started to turn bluish in tone, and he grinned with satisfaction.
“You were wondering why some souls turn into large black or white clouds, instead of crystallising. The answer is very simple. The demons grow large because of their great will and motivation, but they also grow impure because of their poor character; their relationships with reality, energy, thought and freedom are flawed and impure, which we Gods call impurities on the lower four elements. However, if a demon repents, as you are doing now, the state of its four elements improves, as it no longer has a flawed relationship with earth, water and so on. You are seeking truth, your energy is flowing clearly, your mind is straight and you are embracing freedom – mine to be myself, and yours to discard your previous limitations and embrace new possibilities. As a result, your structure is changing as we speak, and in truth, you can no longer be described as a demon, but a normal pure soul that merely has greater mass than those who would attain this state earlier on in their evolution, so you in fact have certain advantages over them”, Shiva encouraged him.
“So that is what is going on, and I was wondering about that, since I am feeling strong ecstasy and excitement, and great admiration, gratitude and, can I say, a worshipful attitude towards you, my Lord, because you saved me from ignorance and darkness, and I wish nothing more than to repay you by being a kind source of light to others, that you in your incomprehensible mercy have been to me, sinful as I am”, Azazel, no longer a demon, could no longer speak as his words stopped being mere words and started becoming mantras of greater reality, as his soul crystallised into a blue crystal of vajra, and quite a substantial one at that, of a deeper frequency of energy than is normal in a transformation of a younger, smaller soul. When his astonishment with his situation passed, he realised that neither himself nor Lord Shiva are in the astral world any longer; they were in a place of great wonder, surrounded by pure crystalline beings of all sorts, some of whom he intuitively recognised as beings he once knew before their ascension.
“My Lord!”, he spoke excitedly, noticing that his very voice was a different thing now, as were his thoughts and his entire perception of reality. “I bow before you, again and again, for all eternity, for you are my Lord and Saviour”, he sang in the deep blue tone of his devotion-ecstasy that spoke reality. “My new condition allows me to see more, but as I look at you, I am in awe and terror, for you are indeed without beginning or end. Those other beings that I see here are all pure, beautiful and of Eternity, as apparently now am I, but you yourself are of an order of magnitude that is so far beyond anything I can understand, that I intuitively feel that you are the Endless, Infinite, Omnipotent and ever-Blissful Absolute that is manifested in the Relative Creation, and I have no words to describe you truthfully, because my level of enlightenment is mere dust at your feet, oh Lord!”, he sang.
Shiva smiled widely and bowed before the angelic being. “I salute you, my son, because you are the best thing that happened in this fateful and terrible day, and I feel great compassion and joy for your enlightenment. Go forth, join your brothers and sisters, and if you need me, just meditate on me as you see me now and I will come to see you”, the Lord spoke words of promise and blessing and vanished.
…
“Asmodeus, have you seen this? Hell and damnation! Azazel went to confront that God about something, they talked, and he just vanished!”
“I saw it, Perkele, I saw it clearly. The motherfucker killed Azazel. Those Gods are fucking bastards, damn them all to hell! Sanat Kumar was right about them, and we should join him when he opens that new world he was talking about, because fuck this shit already.”
“You’re right; I’ll tell the others so we can organise. Bloody hell, he just killed him!”, Perkele muttered in a state of shock and righteous anger.
…
“This is going better than I expected, which doesn’t say much since my expectations were a very low bar to clear”, Shakti beamed while she addressed her beloved husband, serving coffee. He smiled, this time with more optimism.