I understand some people might find this disturbing, but all that New Age and religious “spirituality” is based on certain assumptions nobody actually bothers to verify, and the reaction of the “guys up there” seems to be bewilderment, in the sense of “who even told you that?”

We have a local saying here in the Balkans – “to make the bill without the tavern owner”. It loses in translation, but you will get the general idea. Basically, people made all kinds of assumptions about spirituality, spiritual evolution, enlightenment, liberation and so on, and nobody actually bothered to check with God whether any of it is actually true. It’s all basically guesswork and emotions – it would be great if x and terrible if not x, and since we live in the best possible world, the most pleasant thing we can think of must be true; or, if not, the truth must be even better.

That’s not how reality works. Ask the Dinosaurs whether they lived in the best possible world for Dinosaurs. Oh wait, you can’t because they went extinct.

Basically, the assumption that something must be possible because it would be terrible if it weren’t possible is completely unwarranted, because why the fuck would the world be designed to avoid terrible things? Does it even look as if it’s designed to avoid terrible things? Mosquitos do terrible things. Parasitic insects do terrible things. Disease does terrible things. Old age does terrible things. All of that is a natural part of the world. It’s easy to invent bullshit about how wonderful the world is or should be, from your sofa in some sheltered part of the world, but that’s not the real world; it’s your cocoon. So yes, it would be terrible if the world were a trap, and on its default settings it was designed so that nobody can get out and be saved, or even perceive anything transcendental. Every exit, every hint of transcendence, every ray of the light of God had to be bought with the blood and tears of God.

It’s terrible, but it has the redeeming virtue of being true. All kinds of sugar-coated theories sound better, but unless you have actually tested them, just be quiet, please. For all you know, everybody who ever practiced them failed terribly.

Also, about having options. You may think you have them. That, however, might not necessarily work the way you think. You may think you don’t have to listen to me, because you have Jesus, Buddha or Krishna. That may or may not be so. It may be so if you actually had darshan of said persons of God and they told you to ignore me because they will guide you directly. That’s quite possible, and darshan always has priority over other, less direct means. However, if you merely read some book, talked to some people, are a member of some religious organization, it most likely amounts to nothing. I would agree that if you have direct experience of Lord Jesus or Lord Vishnu, absolutely go with that because that’s an authentic alternative to listening to me. Even in heaven, were I restored to my actual condition and full power, that would be a valid, authentic alternative. Choice of a person through which you worship God is yours to make, and it’s one of the few actual choices you get to make, because in most other cases the choices make you, rather than the other way around. You would be fully justified to come into the place where five persons of God sit and have coffee, politely greet them all and then focus on your ishta devata and ignore the rest. That’s not seen as rejection of God, it’s seen as how things normally work. But that’s not how things normally work on Earth. Here, ideas about persons of God are usually just ideas, something equivalent to ideas about characters in some other book you’ve read. To every single person that didn’t actually have direct spiritual experience with Jesus, Jesus is a character in a book, like Gandalf or Harry Potter. You can think this or that, but until your ideas have been confirmed by God in person, it’s just making a bill without the tavern owner, as we say here. You think, you feel, you believe, but until God gives you His approval, it might all be a nothing-burger, or “onions and water”, as we say here, meaning a very thin soup. So, that’s something you should be aware of when you think you have alternatives. Your alternatives might actually be far less substantial and meaningful than you think, and equivalent to what the Jews who rejected Jesus because they “had Moses” thought they had. It was all nothing, but they lived under a misapprehension. When the Sun appears, saying “no thanks, I’ve got the Moon and the stars” isn’t a choice for light, it’s a choice against it.