The war room looked more austere than the typical coffee lounges the Gods used for their private meetings; also, it was more formal. They cordoned a section of the astral world for that purpose, because it was agreed that they had to use the lowest level that all three species could normally visit on their own power – astral, angelic and Divine. Since angels and Gods could easily travel to the astral plane, and astral beings couldn’t travel anywhere else, the matter was quickly settled.
It wasn’t a war one would expect – Gods vs. demons, or any such thing. No, it was Gods, angels, demons and all other beings together, against one single person armed with a superweapon.
At the table, all of the Gods were present, as well as three of the angels that witnessed the carnage, because the rest of the angels, volunteers of course, were tasked with assisting the injured souls that kept popping up from Earth, since time was a strange thing, and Earth was exceedingly deadly.
Also, there was someone quite unexpected in attendance.
“In the name of all present, I am glad to greet a survivor and witness of Sanat Kumar’s terrible crime: Vipera the demon”, Lord Vishnu bowed to the woman sitting beside Lady Shakti.
“If it is at all possible, I would implore you to address me as Zina. This was my name in my earthly life, and I now feel it reflects my personality, emotions and choices much more accurately than my demon name”, the woman bowed back and smiled.
“Of course, Zina. But considering the terrible spiritual conditions you were in during our last encounter, I must admit that your present state is nothing less than staggering, and I mean it in the best possible sense”, he smiled. “Please, we would very much appreciate your report on the whole ordeal, and then we might have questions”.
“Well, I have Lady Shakti to thank for my present state. Her kindness, as well as spiritual magic of the kind I never even suspected was possible, is the reason for my recovery. For some reason, she took me under her care, diminished my trauma, allowed the memories from my past demonic life to resurface, while subduing my freshest, most traumatic memories, which allowed me to survive the ordeal and integrate the experience in a positive way. I also bow to Lady Fortune, who was very much with me in all of this”.
“I know this might sound shocking to you, but other than the terrible end of my earthly life, I found the experience quite rewarding and healing. As a demoness, I was, honestly, a terrible person. They called me Vipera, or venomous bitch, for plenty of good reasons, as I was mostly engaged in bullying, backstabbing and harming people who had the misfortune to be around me for whatever reason. I was spiritually sick, bored and nasty, and continued being so mostly out of routine – I was this way today because I was that way yesterday and the day before and the year before. I saw no need, and even no way to change”.
“And then I carelessly joined that newly opened world, and all my memories were gone. I didn’t know who I am, I didn’t know where I am, I didn’t know anything about my past self, and therefore what patterns to repeat. When I was born, my parents loved me and took care of me. This was the first time in a very, very long time that somebody loved me, mostly because I was such a nasty person, that nobody had a reason to. I was surrounded mostly by other demons, who were as nasty as myself, and when I met other souls, it was to bully and insult them, trying to please myself and impress other demons”.
“But as my parents and elder brothers loved me and treated me with kindness, this new state of affairs became my new normal, a routine I repeated today because I experienced it yesterday and the day before. I loved other people because that’s how we treated each other. Treating others rudely or nastily just wasn’t something that was done in our family, or in the neighbourhood. When I met my husband, I experienced a new, different kind of love, and I liked it a lot. I especially liked sex, although pregnancies and childbirths were hard. Sure, I experienced loss – four of my children died in infancy, but the love I felt for all of them was more than worth it. When I look at it now, I feel that my demon life was a colourless, dreary experience devoid of any true joy, while my human life was a combination of deep, fulfilling emotions, of many different kinds of love, kindness and pleasure, combined with a few terrible moments of loss, when my children died, and especially in the horrible end of my life, when I seemingly lost everything. However, Lady Shakti expanded my consciousness far beyond my normal limits and showed me the interconnectedness of lives and their persistence beyond the mortal form, which I couldn’t experience or even dream of in my human life. This wider perspective allowed me to accept loss, and understand that what I gained in that life defined me positively to such an extent, that I consider it my true life, in which I was actually born as the person I am now. It allowed me to interrupt my demonic routine, stop what I was doing, experience something radically different, and discover that this, in fact, is what I want my life to be like in the future. I would definitely not want to repeat being born on Earth again, with all those terrible limitations and ignorance, and with all the terrible things that could happen to me there, as I still have nightmares about Tamara being raped, but I would certainly prefer to build my future life along the lines of my life as Zina, rather than Vipera, which is why I changed my name. This is all I can think of at this time, and if any of you have questions, I will be glad to answer them”, she concluded.
“As a former demon myself, I would certainly like to encourage you in your choice and congratulate you on your excellent recovery from your terrible ordeal. You probably remember me as Azazel, the huge old black demon”, he grinned, but with great tenderness.
Her eyes went wide. “You are Azazel? But you are now a God!”, she exclaimed.
“Exactly, Zina; which means that the road ahead of you is wide open, and you have many great possibilities, if your current change is a sign of things to come”, he smiled. “However, I would now like to underscore something of great importance: Sanat Kumar intended to do great evil with the design of his world, but it seems that, at least in this case, he accidentally did something good. He intended Zina to be separated from the recollection of her true self in order to make her susceptible to the pressures of his world, but in her case, her former life was something that actually needed to be suppressed in order for other options to manifest themselves. I know that my beloved parents are overcome by guilt for their participation in creating this nightmare, but I would use this case to restate their original argument: that this is an evil, but other greater evils warranted its creation, and if some good already came of it so early, and in the worst scenario Sanat Kumar could have come up with, having all spiritual connections blocked in entirety, now with my Father’s modifications this might eventually result in even greater good, in the end”, Blade of Discernment concluded.
Other Gods nodded in appreciation, and Lady Lakshmi decided to have a word. “May I just say that I warned you that this will be no laughing matter? Nobody wants to be told ‘I told you so’, but I told you so. I approved of the project, not only because of the impeccable character of the three Gods who devised and implemented it behind my back, but also when Lord Shiva brought me up to date and informed me of all that had been done, and why. However, I noticed, and will keep reminding you until you are utterly bored of me, that some things that will come out of this will be tragedies, even if it now became obvious that good things can come out of it as well. In Zina’s case, we can see exposure to an earthly life with all its limitations as a form of psychotherapy. However, this is so only because she was also healed by the Goddess of Light, the Power of God herself, whose competence and skill are matched only by her great compassion and beauty”, she smiled at her sister, who tried not to blush too much. “Also, she had my blessing to find the way through this, which must have been of help, even if I say so myself. Harm that was done to her soul prior to the expert treatment by ostensibly the most competent healer in the world, was grim, and I will remind everybody here of how Lady Shakti herself was inconsolable yesterday, considering Zina a lost case. Her recovery was a miracle, and I would strongly advise against having miracles as a strategy”, Lady Fortune concluded her word of caution.
“Hear, hear”, Lord Vishnu tapped the table. “I would agree that we were exceedingly lucky here; part of it being the number of the afflicted souls, that was still quite low, which made it possible for two Goddesses to address an individual person with utmost care and absolute competence. However, what if it were a thousand? A million? Imagine having a million heavily wounded souls arrive in a day, and considering the cruelty of that place, that is not out of the realm of possibility. How would we treat them, and I think we all agree that we must help them in every way we can?”, he looked at the assembled Gods and saw their nods.
“I would also caution against generalising this case, as it might prove to be a statistical anomaly, rather than a rule”, voiced Michael. “Let me just remind everyone here that people we’ve been dealing with generally tend to be victims of murders, victims who have by all accounts lived peaceful lives minding their own business, and once we get to deal with the murderers themselves, we might encounter a different picture. Imagine a soul that has adopted such a path in life – for instance, those who murdered Zina and her family. They would either be tortured by guilt, or completely warped and evil because those actions actually reflected their newly made spiritual choices. We’ve seen how Zina was changed by her experiences there. It’s obvious that incarnation on Earth has transformative quality. It is reasonable to assume that transformation can go in all kinds of directions”, the angel concluded.
“That’s a valid point”, Lord Shiva nodded. “And while we’re there, have you been encountering any of the negative examples? Souls that have been turned to evil?”, he enquired.
“In fact, yes. There has been one bandit that got in a fight with another and was stabbed with a knife and died”, Gabriel answered.
“What was his soul type?”
“Now, that’s a pickle. It was one of the stagnant souls that are often referred to as ‘sheep’”, the angel nodded.
“That’s unexpected”, mused Lord Vishnu. “One would assume that demons would get to be bandits, the sheep would work in the fields and angels would, I don’t know, be philosophers, artists and religious teachers”
“Apparently not”, Zee scratched his chin. “Which makes me think in two possible directions. First, the body does its own thing, and the soul is merely a witness, a canvas upon which the image is projected. It assumes the role and then takes either the blame, or expects reward for things that in reality had not been the results of its actual choices. Or direction two, that we don’t know much about what a soul would do given the options. Basically, demons don’t seem to be very much preoccupied with going around and doing evil things to others. Zina enjoyed family life to the point where it completely transformed her outlook on life, for instance. Take a person who is energetic, vital, but ignorant and bored to tears. They will do all sorts of mischievous things if they lack direction. But give her direction, and suddenly all that energy goes into her family and the result is happiness and peace. Also, those sheep are not good just because they aren’t doing any harm in the astral plane. They are indifferent and passive. Put such a person in a situation where a body will do something evil by default, if not steered away from it, and such soul will just go along with it, picking the easy choice, which in this case would be violence and evil”, he mused.
“Be it as it may, we’ll have to do something about those souls as they come back”, Lakshmi interjected. “Imagine a gang of murderers being executed by the king for their crimes. They come here, return to the astral plane, and now they have all sorts of new ideas about things they could do to the innocent souls here. Imagine hardened murderers and rapists being set loose among the normal souls. They would be far worse than demons. For all their flaws, the demons seem to be limiting their activities to mocking and bullying. Also, those former humans, they seem to have a completely different “taste” to them, compared to souls who haven’t had a human experience. Maybe we need to accommodate for their differences?”
“That’s a good point”, nodded Kay. “So let me see what we need now. We need qualified and willing people to welcome the souls coming back from Earth, de-traumatise them, help them integrate their past and current selves, and then see where to put them. We also need to modify the astral plane, because the nursery seems very poorly suited for the new role; too many soul types would intermix and interfere with each other’s purpose. How about this: we sequester a part of the astral plane to serve the purpose of post-human integration, where the souls that used to be human could live in an environment that looks somewhat like Earth, with trees, sunsets, houses and forests, the good and normal stuff, only without imposed limitations, murderers and rapists. And regarding those, we would also need another section of the astral plane dedicated to holding those until we decide what to do with them, since we have to assume there will be cases that are so evil they can’t be allowed to intermix with normal souls, and if we’re not ready to outright destroy them immediately, we can hold them there until there’s some more permanent solution”, she said seriously, as the other Gods nodded in assent. “Lord Shiva, Lady Shakti, please give me your permission to create those sub-planes using your powers”, she looked at them and bowed. They smiled and nodded, and she closed her eyes. Golden light of her jewel flashed across the astral plane. “It’s done”, she smiled, as the angels looked at each other in awe.
“So, by the grace of our lovely Lady Karuna, we have two new astral sub-planes now; the astral Earth, and the astral jail”, nodded Lord Vishnu. I will now do the initial interior design of the astral Earth”, he added, and his eyes lost focus as he looked within. A blue light flashed and a screen appeared above them, showing a heavenly scene of pastoral beauty; green meadows, lush forests, houses arranged in small towns, and cute animals here and there. Another flash, and the post-human souls were transported there, along with an angel or two to help them adjust. A third flash, and an administrative building appeared, along with all of them transported there, together with the war room and everything, without actually noticing anything changing. “Done. Now, we have to deal with the issue of judges, or therapists, if you like. It would need to be something more permanent than the current arrangement, and we need to consider necessary qualifications”, he finished.
“If I may, I would suggest those judges or therapists to be people who have survived Earth successfully, and have a human experience, so that they could better understand the people they are dealing with. There might be emotional nuances of the experience that wouldn’t be understandable to someone who hasn’t gone through it”, Zina voiced her opinion.
“That’s a valid point”, nodded Lady Shakti. “Also, there’s the issue of competence; it must be someone who is experienced in figuring out truth from illusions, appearances and lies, meaning someone with strong analytical and discriminative abilities. It must also be someone compassionate and kind, because they would be dealing with injured souls. Also, it must be someone with patience and a propensity for nurturing and healing, but also someone who is able to make hard choices quickly and dispassionately. I would recommend that only the crystallised souls be considered for the assignment, for two reasons. First is the level of power and competence inherent to that status, and the second is to give them something useful to do, and a way to gain experiences that could prod them in new and unexpected evolutionary directions”, she smiled.
“I think that’s quite reasonable”, Michael answered, and other angels nodded.
“I would volunteer myself for the job, once I attain crystallisation”, said Zina. “I had children of my own, so I would know a thing or two about patience, nurturing and healing, and I also have a human experience behind me, so I think I could empathise with them better than most”.
“That’s actually a great idea”, Lady Shakti smiled and ran her hand through Zina’s hair, as Zina laughed. “You’re a lovely mom and you’d do great”.
“So, I think that’s settled”, smiled Lord Vishnu. “For a position of judges and healers, we need crystalline angelic beings with proper qualifications and temperament and preferably with a human experience behind them, and when Zina crystallises, which I think won’t be a long wait considering her current status and progress, she would be absolutely welcome to the job”, he nodded to the still smiling woman.
“I have a question”, Lord Shiva looked at the angels. “Do we so far have any fatalities?”
“So far, no”, Michael nodded seriously. “Zina was the closest to being fatally wounded, but Lady Shakti managed to pull her through, due to her immense power and expertise; nobody else would know what to do, honestly. The rest of them were seriously traumatised, but are integrating their past selves into the experience and are doing reasonably well. However, we are still early into the whole process and I wouldn’t rush into triumphalism at this point. We are yet to see how the incarnate angels do”, he warned. “They might do better than others, or they might be a disaster of unseen proportions”.
“Good point”, nodded Shiva. “So, now that the serious business is behind us, unless anyone else has questions, we might as well go to the next item, which is coffee”, he smiled.