There’s something that puts the end of the world in perspective.

You see, in a hundred years at least 7 billion people will die. It’s a certain thing, completely unavoidable. It’s so routine it’s no longer considered much of a tragedy, because it’s been going on since the dawn of time – every hundred years or so the oldest human on Earth dies, and as he dies, everybody that was alive at the time he was born is already dead.

So, it’s not dying that is exceptional when we talk about the end of the world, because death is inevitable to the living. What is exceptional is that there are no replacement bodies, there is no longer a next generation. There is no longer an endless circle of birth and death, there are no longer human bodies to provide the experience-vessels to those who think this place has something to offer. That door had been closed.

Another thing that is associated with the idea of the end of the world is suffering. This is because the idea of individual death is associated with suffering, which is imagined to be terrible by those who have never been close to death. I have, and I know this to be nonsense. I’ve been so close to death, I don’t think it’s actually possible to get closer than I’ve been and end up with a functioning body afterwards, and I can tell you with complete certainty that death as such is only a breath away from a bad situation. When you’re terribly sick, or gravely injured, death actually halves the suffering, because it takes at least as much suffering to recover, if not more, than it did to approach death. So, basically, when you’re gravely ill, you have the option to end the suffering there by dying, or at least double the suffering by slowly climbing out of the hole that is sickness, in order to fully recover. If you’re suddenly injured, you’re usually in too much of a shock to experience much suffering, and if you then die, it’s a very swift and easy thing; however, if you wake up in the emergency room or in an intensive care unit, that’s where the actual suffering starts, if you are to get better. You can experience days, weeks, months, sometimes years of pain, disability, disfigurement or other forms of hardship, and yet, people see this process with optimism, because it’s recovery, you get to live afterwards. So it’s not suffering that people fear in death – it’s not being. They fear not being so much, they imagine it as huge suffering, a terrible thing that is to be avoided at all cost, but it’s actually the prolongation of life that causes suffering. Death ends it. It is the fear of death that makes people prolong the suffering of their elderly parents and other relatives, making their agony linger and extend the limits of suffering far more than was common throughout history, and it’s not seen as senseless cruelty that it is, because it’s supposed to fight or at least delay death, which is so feared. It is the fear of death that makes you attach your elderly parents and grandparents to machines that prolong the worst agony that precedes death, not because death is horrible, but because you are afraid.

The end of the world is the point where there’s no longer the advanced technology and medicine and misguided compassion to prolong the suffering from the point of the inevitable suck, to the point of soul-crushing, seemingly endless agony in which you forget you ever were something that is not this degradation and suffering, and that there ever was life or existence that wasn’t degradation and suffering. When you are injured or sick to the point of death, you just die, and are free from the shackles of suffering that this body imposes upon you. There is a limit to how much you can normally suffer before you die, without anyone to “help you”. It can look terrible, and it is terrible, but it is not that much more terrible than the many illnesses we all had and recovered from; the difference between influenza you have and recover from, and the one you die from is insignificant, in terms of suffering. Also, when you take a look at the historic methods of execution of the death penalty, it turns out it is easy to kill people quickly and with relatively little agony, but it takes quite a bit of ingenuity to kill them in a slow, lingering fashion. The modern life support for the sick and elderly, however, takes the cake for being the most viciously cruel, routinely sadistic and awful way of giving someone a slow, lingering death. Crucifixion and impaling don’t even come close. So, essentially, it turns out that hatred and malevolence never produced as painful, humiliating and lingering a form of death as did fear, compassion and love.

I cannot say that all people are wrong to fear death. Some are so evil, that what awaits them beyond death is much worse than any agony they could possibly experience in this life, and they are fully justified in fearing death. Some live such a meaningless, empty and trivial life, that it’s quite possible there’s no afterlife for them because there’s really nothing there, there is no immortal soul present in the body, and death cannot create what doesn’t exist to begin with. Death isn’t the same thing to all people. To the evil ones, the cruel, mocking and cynical ones, who make this life a hell for all others, death is the end of their evil playground. In death, they lose the ability to control and hurt others, and are about to face justice. They are right to be afraid, because what awaits them is indeed most terrible. Also, for those who are virtuous, whose sophisticated souls incessantly tested the limits of the world in attempt to exceed it, who improved the lives of others with love, beauty and consciousness, they are freed by death, to expand into greatness undreamt of, something that cannot even be properly imagined while limited by flesh.

But death doesn’t create. It only liberates what you truly are, in your essential nature, and what you are then faces God, and you then see the reality of it all, devoid of all deception and illusion.

The end of the world, therefore, isn’t much different, on an individual level, from the ordinary death we all face. What makes it special is not more death, because death is certain to all who now live, in any case. Also, what makes it special is not judgment after death, because that, too, is what we all face. What makes it special is that there will be no children, no continuation, and no hope projected into the world, no burial by the caring survivors; and deaths come not by trickle, but by flood. Whether you end or not, however, is quite a separate matter, dependent upon your personal relationship with God.

I’m not the greatest fan of the new, Disney-owned Star Wars movies (including the animated series). However, I do have to admit that they are at least trying to deal with some of the issues present in the original movies.

I’m talking about the concept of powerful good characters, or lack thereof, because apparently our civilization ties the concept of power so intimately with the concept of evil, the two seem to be the same thing. When you imagine power, you basically imagine Darth Vader, or Sauron, or Balrog, or Emperor Palpatine, or Voldemort. The good guys apparently can’t do much beside being gentle and comforting, forgiving, glowing in white light and they die in order to save you. Think Gandalf, Obi Wan, Dumbledore… they all manifest the Jesus stereotype of goodness, which I find outright puke-inducing. Yeah, the archetype of good power is to allow the bad guy to kill you so that you could raise from the dead, physically or as a Force-ghost, and guide your disciples by providing vague and marginally helpful advice, because you’re too good to be able to do anything useful.

Not sure it’s actually a stereotype? Gandalf, dies fighting Balrog, gets reborn as Gandalf the White, provides encouragement and white light, but doesn’t actually fight and kill anything meaningful but smiles a lot. Dumbledore, provides vague and cryptic guidance to Harry Potter, fights only defensively, fails to kill Voldemort, arranges his murder/suicide and guides Harry beyond the grave through a crumb-trail of hints. Also smiles a lot. Obi Wan, allows Luke to be raised by peasant foster-parents although he lives next door, provides a few days of vague guidance, allows himself to be killed by Darth Vader without really putting up a fight so that after his “suicide by Sith Lord” he could guide Luke in spirit. Smiles a knowing smile of a cave-dwelling saint. Jesus, teaches students things that aren’t really useful for figuring anything out beside the general “you should follow the rules sincerely, and not hypocritically, like the priests”. Arranges his murder/suicide (by instructing the students to get swords, which was punishable by death in Roman Judea), gets himself killed, raises from the dead but only to provide comfort and vague guidance to students. Yes, it’s a stereotype and obviously a Christian one, established as a rationalization for the traumatic martyrdom of Jesus. The only theory according to which Jesus could be the real God is that power in the physical world is somehow not worthy, either as a goal or as an instrument, and if you’re really “the one”, you’ll allow yourself to be killed in order to guide the disciples “in spirit”, you won’t actually do anything to fight evil. But of course, your forfeiture will be interpreted as a victory over evil, at least in spirit. My problem with this is that “moral victory” is another name for losing.

The Disney revision to the Star Wars theology is that the light/dark dichotomy of the Force is in fact an error in understanding by both Jedi and the Sith, and that the true nature of the Force is not split into light and dark, but a unity and balance of the two. This was explained very directly by Bendu in the animated series: he says that Jedi and Sith wield Ashla and Bogan, Light and Dark, and that he is balance. He sees both light and dark as, essentially, disturbances in the balance of the Force, where the light-side wielders are so afraid of the dark they are constantly tempted by it, and the dark-side wielders are constantly preoccupied by proving something to the Jedi, and as a result, neither side is truly at peace. The back story is that long ago, some civilization picked up force-sensitives from around the galaxy and brought them to the planet Tython, which was particularly attuned to the Force. There, they practiced their Force-skills and eventually established the Je’daii order, which taught the balance of the force and avoidance of the extremes of light and dark. The planet had two moons, Ashla which was white, and Bogan which was dark red, and to the Je’daii they served as a metaphor for the light and dark sides of the Force. When force-users became unbalanced, by favoring either side, attempts were made to correct it. So, essentially, Bendu is the last known remnant of the original Je’daii, and those later known as the Jedi were in fact a heretical sect, that embraced an extremist adherence to “Ashla”.

The good part of this is understanding that there’s something wrong with the Christian archetype of goodness. The bad part is that it promotes ethical relativism, where goodness isn’t sufficient, and some evil needs to be introduced into the mixture, so that balance would be achieved. So, instead of realizing that goodness was poorly defined, as something that is inherently incompatible with power, the new theory acknowledges that power is the domain of the dark side, but that one needs to get some of the dark side in order to obtain the amount of power that is necessary if you want to do anything useful and not get crucified.

The thing is, only Christians have a problem with good power. In Hinduism, for instance, Gods are not depicted as rejecting power to the point of assisted suicide. They are described as possessing great power and using it to attain good goals. “Good” is defined as attainment of higher initiation and liberation from the bondage of the lower spheres of existence, and “evil” is defined as attachment and bondage to the lower spheres of existence; essentially, it’s a dichotomy of freedom and bondage. Nowhere is there a problem with power; power is something that you obtain by various means, and use for various purposes, and if you use it wisely it produces liberation, while applications of power from ignorance and attachment produce spiritual degradation, bondage and karmic fallout. Both Shiva and Vishnu liberally use various powers, either in lilas or to vanquish some evil and solve a devotee’s problem; this kind of power is not seen as a lure of Satan or as falling prey to some temptation, it’s a completely normal thing one does when God. He solves problems using great wisdom and power. Krishna, for instance, had a situation similar to Obi Wan’s duel with Darth Vader on the death star: he decided to end his exile and vanquish his evil uncle, king Kamsa. Did he treat this as an opportunity for assisted suicide? No, jumped to his throne, dragged him to the ground and killed him easily, because God kicks ass, and good is far more powerful than evil. Is this some kind of balance between good and evil? No, it’s a better, purer definition of the good, a definition that doesn’t commit an error of relegating power into the domain of evil, but understands that power is a good thing, and therefore inherently in the domain of the good. Evil is inherently powerless, because all greatness and glory forever reside in God. Envious and spiteful, the adherents of evil can create great mischief for God and his friends, but the true cause of this mischief is not power, but manipulation and abuse of the laws of the world. When God intervenes, it becomes clear that He is the only true power, and everything else is powerful only if it takes part in God’s power and greatness.

This, however, is not what we perceive in this world. On the contrary, one of the reasons why we have such problems finding examples of good power outside of mythology is the fact that, as a rule, powerful people in this world are assholes. In fact, the worst and most evil assholes tend to gravitate towards the top of the heap of the powerful. How can this be reconciled with the Hindu vision of power? Very easily, in fact. The “powerful” of this world are merely manipulators of others. As individual persons, they are devoid of any kind of power. Physically, they are as weak as any human, and spiritually they barely hold themselves together, and that only by the fact that singular body they inhabit prevents their spiritual elements from dispersing. They are not powerful because they can bend steel, move mountains, create or destroy Universes, teleport to other planets, or something similar. No, they merely managed to attain control over larger human groups, in which every individual invests his small power towards a common goal, and then the evil individual decides what the common goal is, and how this collective investment of energy, in form of money, aircraft carriers, strategic nuclear submarines and ICBMs, will be used. They decide what the media will write in order to convince and coerce the masses, they decide how to milk the masses for money and where to put the money. They are merely spiders controlling a complex web of social interconnections, in which human individuals invest their power, and it is all directed, allocated and utilized for nefarious purposes. This is not individual power. It is the harnessed power of the collective, and this is the power that is invariably evil, and the evil ones strive for it. This power is not needed by the Gods and the saints, because they have their own; however, to the evil ones this is the only way to exceed the limitations of their personal insignificance.

In a more realistic scenario, Darth Vader and the Emperor would be ordinary, albeit old and sickly humans, in control of the vast imperial army. Only the good beings would have Jedi-like superpowers, and the real fight would consist of peeling away the layers of soldiers and weapons that protect the two evil weaklings on top of the pyramid of social power. A real Darth Vader would not be using a lightsaber, he would be using a phone. Without the invested power of others, he would be nothing. Evil doesn’t have power of its own; its power comes from manipulation of others. Good has the power of its own. Through initiation into God, who is the ultimate greatness, virtue and wonder, the good become aspects of God, and therefore they do obtain power of their own; the more you are God, the more you are powerful, virtuous and wonderful. This process of spiritual evolution is something the evil ones cannot take part of, and thus remain powerless, virtueless and insignificant.

Imagine how it must feel for the people who went to the Moon, the Apollo astronauts and the guys in the mission control, to read all the “skeptical” statements about how we never went to the Moon, how it’s all staged, how it’s recorded on a movie set, how it’s all a conspiracy and deception. Imagine training for years, after being selected because of a glorious career in the Airforce, taking huge risks and watching friends die in that Apollo 1 capsule, only to see all that madness, arrogance and evil disguised as “honest skepticism”, years later, as you watch your country discard your achievement, because the financial cost is too high, and it’s not seen as practical or useful.

Imagine living on the ISS space station, connecting to the Internet, looking up a YouTube video about space, only to see people claiming the Earth is flat, there is no space outside the “dome”, and it’s all CGI and green screen, deception for the gullible.

Imagine seeing God, being in His holy presence, having your life transformed by the greatest wonder and beauty and magnificence beyond imagination, and then see people dismiss it all, say there’s no God, there are no saints and mystics and yogis, it’s all madness and fraud, deception for the gullible. Imagine being so deeply connected with God, you can touch other people’s souls directly and open them to God, to cause a glimpse of experience, as much as they are capable of taking in, only to see them reject it, rationalize it away, and furthermore, to have people witness this and lie outright about what they saw and experienced, the very next day, and make it their mission in life to slander you in every way possible, so that nobody would believe you or take you seriously. Imagine trying to teach people how to attain what you saw, in ways you know to be reliably effective, only to be accused of trying to deceive and seduce the gullible.

Sometimes, skepticism consists of questioning the evidence in search of the truth. At other times, and, I would say, much more frequently, it consists of dismissing the valid evidence that doesn’t fit your own personal kind of madness and evil. It is wrong to assume that people have good and honest motives and they are generally good persons. In fact, it is my experience that most people’s motives are selfish, petty, evil or just outright stupid, that their hearts are filthy, their souls worthless and their existence a source of suffering to others. Oh, I used to assume that everybody is looking for the truth, and if they saw it, they would immediately embrace it, dedicate their lives to it, and tell others about it. Imagine my surprise when I tested this idea in practice and found out how incredibly wrong I was.

It must hurt to have walked on the Moon, only to see the number of “skeptics” denying it grow every day, because it’s seen as cool and rebellious. I know it hurts to have seen God, and see the atheists congratulate each other on being “free thinkers” and people of “high intelligence” because they don’t believe in all that religious bullshit. It hurts to be the target of decades-long character assassination campaigns conducted by “truth seekers” and “skeptics”. It hurts even more if you can’t just return to the Moon at will, or you can’t just experience God at will, as most can’t. At least, you can trust your memory, you can know what you saw, what you are, where you have been.

Can you even imagine the level of contempt one feels for the “skeptics”, when he knows for a fact that he’s right and that he knows exactly what he’s talking about, and they spout their worthless drivel, their only goal being the destruction and negation of reality so that they can substitute it with their worthless, harmful nonsense?

There is a special hell for the “skeptics” and other enemies of the truth: they will have to see the truth, and see how they opposed it, in their arrogance and malice. They will be locked in the agony of knowledge that can never be denied, and no amount of remorse will break their suffering. They will have to see themselves as God saw them, as those who testified for the truth saw them, and there is no greater pain. In this agony they will perish, for none can endure it for long. For this sin there is no forgiveness, because they can’t say “I didn’t know”, or “why wasn’t I told?”. You were told, you knew the truth, and you laughed the laughter of malice and contempt, ridiculing those who accepted the truth for what it is, belittling them and dehumanizing them.

God is many things to many people. To saints, He is the love of their life, their goal and the purpose of their existence, the greatest joy imaginable and the eternal life. To sinners, God is the ultimate horror, the stuff of nightmares, a drawn sword that comes to claim their lives, eternal darkness that will devour them. To all the atheists and skeptics I say this: woe to you. You will be crushed by God like cockroaches and you will feel the eternal nothingness claim you, knowing that it claims you alone, and that those, whom you ridiculed as “sheep”, “cultists” and “unintelligent believers”, will inherit the eternal life. Nothingness which you professed will indeed be your fate, but yours alone. God, whom you had denied, will exist forever, and you not at all, and those who loved Him in face of your “enlightened” ridicule, will be with Him forever, not even caring as you vanish into nothingness to which you always belonged, because the only thing that is important about you, is that you are finally gone.

On this Earth, you skeptics were the aspect of this world’s evil and godless nature, which tortured those who wanted to remain faithful to God and truth, as you tried to use all kinds of deception to instill doubt in the souls of others, so that they would forget and deny God.

But as this world fades away and flesh is stripped from us all, you will be denied, and you will be killed, as the light of God shreds you to pieces, and His voice yells at you in anger, casting you into nothingness with an eternal “no” to everything that you are, and everything you dreamed of. There is nothing as wonderful or as magnificent as that, which God has in store for those who love Him, but of that, you will know nothing.