“What is happening down there?”

Padmasambhava and his wives were, quite expectedly, overrun by the millions of confused newcomers who were more interested in the bare fundamentals of their new situation, than complex theory. As a result, they felt as if they’re forced to teach kindergarten.

“You know about the plague”, Kay smiled at her friend and handed him a cup, which he gratefully accepted. “The physical issues with the interruption of lives and destruction of the sophisticated aspects of the European civilization are obvious. However, there are also sociological and geopolitical ramifications. The Mongol empire seems to be collapsing because of the plague. Constantinople is half-empty, because half the population died from the plague. It is not going to be able to resist Muslim invasion, which is going to be either very bad or outright terrible, depending on the level of resistance Europe will be able to field to counter their advance, but Constantinople was the last heavily fortified position to halt their advance. On the positive side, Spain seems to be gaining ground and will likely oust the invaders from their part of Europe”, she made a dispassionate delivery.

“The worse problem is that Europe went mad. There seems to be a biological reason why infectious disease and xenophobia and paranoia are very tightly correlated. Obviously, strangers tend to introduce pathogens your group doesn’t have immunity for, and getting rid of strangers is a biological instinct for dealing with epidemics. Unfortunately, it almost never seems to work right. And also, they don’t have an intellectual understanding of infectious diseases. Their theories are all completely wrong as they don’t understand the concept of microscopic organisms that cause infection. They think it’s caused by a combination of impure environment and personal moral weakness. So, as the Catholic clergy assisted the sick and the dying, they disproportionally got infected and died, which people interpreted as a sign of moral corruption of the Church, and not a sign of compassion, which it was. On the other hand, as some group didn’t get sick, people interpreted it as a sign that they are the ones who ‘poisoned’ them, and persecuted those minorities – the Jews, for instance. Also, as neither the official medicine nor the Church could help them, people asked all sorts of weird groups for helps – remnants of Paganism, village herbalists, various heretical groups hiding from the public eye, and outright witches; you know the kind, usually some old woman making potions and powders that contain all sorts of dangerous substances that can kill you if you mess up the dosage, and are hallucinogenic in the best of cases. So, you have a population that is already more than half crazy. You have a witch that gives someone a strong hallucinogen prepared from plants, toads and fungi. That person hallucinates Satan and demons. Everybody concludes that the witch is in league with the Devil if she can summon him to torture the poor person. Occasionally the victim of poisoning actually dies due to overdose. People decide that the witches caused the plague because they are in league with the Devil, and they invent all sorts of stories, and it soon becomes completely insane and loses almost all touch with reality. They torture the witch until she would confess that she personally killed Jesus, and use ‘confession’ as confirmation of their insane theories. They bring that to the Inquisition, which tells them that they are insane and it’s all in their heads, but they don’t accept the answer because the Church is ‘discredited’ and they go to the worldly authorities, which burn the woman at a stake as entertainment for the crazy mob. Also, they burn the Jews and the occasional heretic for good measure. In addition to that, the Church has a problem, because so many monks and clerics died from the plague, that their monasteries are empty and they try to fill them with people who are sorely unqualified compared to the cream of the crop they used to collect earlier. As a result, the standard of education of the clergy is greatly inferior and the reputation of the Church degrades further. All kinds of things try to fill the vacuum, from the developing sciences to outright nonsense; but mostly outright nonsense. The top of the Church handles mostly politics. Since there is a serious drop in the spiritual level of the whole civilization, various complaints form against the Church, and there is increasing talk of need for reformation, but there’s nothing concrete yet. There is, however, abundance of prejudice, paranoia, xenophobia, hatred and spiritual darkness. There’s going to be a terrible century at least, and then, I’m afraid, Satan’s actual plans are going to start coming to fruition, and we’ll see his attractors starting to match or even overpower the Divine light we managed to permeate the world with”.

“No wonder I’ve been getting all sorts of weird questions from the newcomers”, he nodded. “And by weird, I mean all sorts of nonexistent demons and nonsense which they treat as if they were fact and not hallucination. Their grasp on reality is tenuous at best, which makes our work here twice as hard as it ought to be, because we first need to dissuade them of outright nonsense, which is hard, and only then can we teach them anything true and useful, which is all taking a toll on us. Imagine trying to talk to a person who thinks the Jews caused the plague by consorting with all sorts of demons to poison wells, and that their madness and base urges are caused by succubi, incubi and other sorts of nonexistent demonic beings sent by the Jews and the witches. And if you convince them it’s all nonsense, then they think absolutely everything spiritual is unreal and nonsense as well”, he sighed in exasperation. “We are tired of this”.

Kay just hugged him. “Please try to hold on. Hopefully it will get better, but until then, I can buy you breathing room by freezing local time for those crowds, so that you can take some time off whenever you feel overwhelmed, which seems to be now”. Her jewel flashed, and the masses of disturbed souls froze in place. “Go take the girls somewhere and meditate. Or swim in a pond. Or tickle Jess and Mandy for me”, she giggled. “They won’t even know you were missing until I release them”.

“Thank you, sweetheart”, he sighed deeply and managed a smile. “You are a life saver”.