“I don’t know if anyone is still alive down there”, sighed Azrael. “First it was the volcanic winter that caused a great famine, since crops were diminished or outright destroyed across the world. But then the plague hit Europe, and about fifty million people died”.

“I think slightly less than third of the population of Europe was wiped out, and almost everybody who remained is suffering terribly”, his wife leaned into him, as mentally exhausted as he was. “It wiped out the legions of the military because the closely packed encampments were a fertile ground for the contagion. It wiped out the elderly because they were weak, the children died because their parents died and couldn’t care for them, and there are places where almost nobody is left. There are places that weren’t impacted, but since the entire civilization has been devastated, they will suffer the secondary consequences as well. And, of course, some are taking opportunity to wage war on the weakened neighbours, and the agriculture suffered because dead men can’t farm, so there was famine as well”.

“There is, however, the good Fairy called Kay, who brought coffee, Jesus and Mary, to cheer up the much beloved hard working couple in distress”, a smiling Goddess shimmered in with the two more in tow, and the atmosphere improved immediately, with all the hugging and blessings.

“How are Lady Zina and Lord Buddha doing?”, Azrael asked the Goddess of Wisdom.

“About as well as the two of you, which is why her Holy Mother and Lord Shiva are cheering them up right now, while Lord Vishnu and Lady Lakshmi have taken over coordination of the efforts to alleviate the consequences and reduce chaos, and my husband is with them now. There have never been so many people who at the same time believe in transcendence and blame God for leaving them to die in that hell while they prayed for help”, she sighed gravely. “Fortunately, having billions of angelic volunteers willing to assist us in our efforts made all the difference. They have hardly any experience with post-Earth souls, but it didn’t matter. They were basically just comforting them and showing them that all will be good now”.

“In essence, as Satan wrought all hell down there, the entirety of the Heavenly Kingdom mobilised in return, and the concept of idle angels with nothing useful to do is now firmly in the past”, Mary noted. Her husband had to leave early and join his parents who were comforting the grieving souls, and since nobody on Earth really knew who she was, and explanations would actually make things worse, introducing a crisis of faith to people who were already shaken enough, she could afford to slack off. But comforting the stressed out Judges was important work, too. They were family, and they were hurt and tired.

“We are so tactically overwhelmed at the moment that we are strategically completely blind”, Azrael sipped his coffee, having cheered up significantly. “Caring about the distressed souls is a priority and it’s taking everything we have, while Satan is causing disasters with a minimum of effort, and he couldn’t care less about anyone there; the more they suffer the better, and the less he has to do to make them experience a spiritual crisis. So, essentially, he has all the initiative at this point, while we need to contend with trying to control the outcomes he is causing”.

“That is true, but this is expected, as our priority have always been the souls, and his priority has always been his own ego trip and causing ignorance and suffering. Also, at this point we are having five guardian angels available per every human person on Earth, regardless of what kind of a soul is in there. Those angels suddenly have something useful to do, other than build mathematical models that simulate chirality of kalapa structures”, Kay smiled.

“They really saved the day”, Hypatia nodded firmly. “We sent them to be with everybody who was afflicted by this calamity, both on Earth and during the process of death, so everybody had a comforting angelic presence with them, so that spiritual darkness wouldn’t overwhelm them”.

“The angels did almost all the work, and we just had to intervene with a small part of it, and yet it was still too much, so much so that we really started gasping for breath by the end of it, and we really appreciate you stopping by”, Azrael smiled at the divine women who enveloped them in a field of comfort and peace.

“I agree with my husband that this must be giving Satan free reign to scheme and invent countermeasures to everything good we have been doing lately”, Hypatia noted, but with a smile, since the blissful field of love generated by Mary and Kay was making her tingle with pleasure. Also, there was something about that coffee that seemed to work the same way. “Wait a minute, that coffee we seem to be having constantly, that’s some kind of an externalisation of God’s blissful inner nature, God’s love, a nectar of devotion, something of that sort?”, she grinned at the women.

“Hush!”, Kay giggled a conspiratorial giggle. “It’s coffee. That’s all I have to say”.

“The secret is safe with me”, Mary laughed. “The Christians would call it the Holy Spirit. We call it coffee”, she hugged the giggling Goddess.

“We need to start thinking ahead, so that the next disaster of Sanat Kumar’s making doesn’t catch us unprepared, though”, Azrael couldn’t help smiling at the giggling bunch.

“Probably, but you both need some serious downtime first”, Mary nodded. “Which means friends, family, love, kindness and…”, she inspected her cup, “…coffee, apparently”, she winked.

“How did it go, Bishop?”, Paul asked Augustine who was just returning.

“I will never get used to this, even if I get to live forever, Apostle”, he answered. “I am feeling absolutely amazing, because I was taught incredible secrets. The beings I talked to were incredibly polite and kind; the Lady even poured me coffee. Sounds perfectly normal, right? Except when the Lady in question started talking, and I understood I was talking to our Lord’s older sister, whom his Father regularly asks for opinion because she’s just that smart. And I felt like a small schoolboy listening to Aristotle, except the difference between our minds was far more pronounced, but amazingly, she is so good a teacher that she actually explained it all in a way that I was able to understand. She looks like she’s less than twenty years old, and she’s such a gentle, kind being, who so obviously adores her husband, and they are both acting like the most normal, kind and polite people, but I just knew, without being told, and without any evidence I could point out to, that each of them is The One True God. And yet, there’s two of them. At the war conference, there were twelve Gods in attendance, and each single one of them registered as The One True God. It is as if they are all one being, emanating from one being, and manifesting different aspects of The One True God, with each part being the whole, and they seem to be competing as to which will be kinder, more respectful, humble, worshipful and wise, but if you asked them, each one wants to be the least of the twelve, and servant to all. Once or twice, that jewel on her brow flashed, and I felt as if she’s looking into the deepest structure of reality in order to tell me exactly how it’s made, and I felt she could blink and the world would change, or disappear. That thing she has, I heard it’s a brother or sister of the Jewel used by Satan to create the material world, and another one, that is as old as time itself, that is the soul of our Lord Jesus. And that being poured me coffee, smiled with incredible kindness, joked innocently with her husband, and explained to me how souls are made, and how sin alters their thermodynamic status. I’m telling you, I never felt smaller, and at the same time I never felt better, because they are such amazing people. They are as respectful and kind as they are powerful and wise”, Augustine finished in complete wonder.

“I believed and preached monotheism all my life, and here’s what it comes down to”, Paul smiled.

“I don’t even think we were wrong about that”, Augustine mused. “We did get the Trinity concept, where God can be three persons, who are different, special, with different roles, knowledge and powers, and it’s not that we were wrong; we just got a small part of the bigger truth. Paul, without false modesty, I was probably one of the five smartest people on Earth in my time. But being in that room, with those kind, wonderful people, and seeing a small glimpse of their oceanic knowledge and intelligence, I understood why we got only a small part of the truth. Even Hypatia told me that she had to revise a lot of her beliefs here, and apparently it doesn’t matter at all. She didn’t become a Goddess because she had all the right beliefs. And in hindsight, it is so obvious; our Lord never said we had to have all the right beliefs and opinions. He wanted us to love him above everything, and to love each other the way he loved us. And just look at her worldly life. She was so virtuous, kind, smart and generous as a person, that every good person loved and admired her. As Lady Kay said, she became a Goddess sooner than her corpse managed to cool. And none of that is due to her correct beliefs about things we Christians were bickering over – how many persons of God are there, did Holy Spirit emanate from the Father or both Father and Son; did Mary give birth to God or to Christ, how truly a man and a God was Christ, or was Mary a virgin only before Christ was born, or always. I’m quite sure hell will be quite full of people with correct answers to all those questions; also, nobody in Heaven could listen to them with a straight face, that’s how foolish it all sounds here. We got so few things right, we certainly can’t thank our great knowledge and orthodoxy for our salvation. I was greeted here by Hypatia when I died. During life, had I met her, I would have argued bitterly with her, and I’d have thought her wrong on too many issues to count, and I would have wagered everything that she would have been on the wrong side of salvation. And yet, when I saw her, may God have mercy on me, I was absolutely sure that she is the One True God, of Abraham, Moses and Christ. It was absolutely certain that she is the Truth, Way and Life. When I tried to understand what she is, I understood that she is a Person of God, the same way Christ and Father are. And I also knew her name, her sex, and I saw the depth and kindness of her mind and disposition, and I knew that she is the Judge, and that she had the authority to decide what my destiny is going to be”, he continued his stream of thought.

“What did you do?”

“I told her the truth. I asked her to explain how this is possible. I respected her authority and her person, because both were obviously of God. And I was just amazed at how dignified, pure and wonderful she was. It felt like the presence of Christ. And I would know, since I was later in his presence. They are vastly different, and yet they are the same One God. It’s not polytheism, they are not like Zeus and Venus or Mars, as the pagans imagine them in a theatre. No, it’s like we imagined Trinity, only it’s also what Christ truly preached and we didn’t understand it properly. Everybody can become like they are, if they are so pleasing to God and perfect that The One God sees them and says ‘yes, that is what I Am as a person’. Sounds easy, but apparently only twelve beings are like that, and four of them are older than time and space, apparently. And apparently they are always God-couples. Had someone in the Church suggested any of it, we would have excommunicated him”, Augustine laughed.

“One would expect them to have a strict hierarchy, to establish who is the head and who are the limbs, so to speak, but it seems not to be the case at all. Also, they only seem to compete in praising each other more and being the most kind, lovable and wise. They are indeed the Kingdom of Heaven, only there is no King, because there is so much love between them that there is no place for commandments or orders. We were told that; that there’s no need for law and commandments where there is total love, but it’s only now that we see what that looks like in reality”, mused the Apostle.

“It is as you say. They are like one being with twelve bodies that all worship each other and compete in goodness and kindness. I still can’t get those two out of my head. I swear, I could be like that woman who poured ointment on Christ and washed his feet with her hair, only with those two. They look so kind, natural and gentle with each other, as if love itself became two bodies so that it could express itself properly, and that love is such an immense power of wisdom that I just stood there and looked at them, and I could look forever and it would not be enough. When I spoke about God’s love in life, I could have imagined all sorts of things, but not this, and yet in their concrete actions I can see the most abstract and most superior of ideals of Divine Love”, Augustine’s eyes glistened.

“I think I know what you mean. I’ve seen Buddha, the Teacher of the World, and Zina the Love of God, and may God be my witness, I just looked at them, frozen like a statue, and wept. I couldn’t say a word. Even if I could, I wouldn’t know what to say, because it all felt like dust. They are what the goal looks like, that’s all there is to it, and it’s obvious that there’s not just one good outcome, so that all people of God would look and feel the same. They all feel different and yet they are so perfect, that they are obviously what Christ meant when he told us to be perfect like his Heavenly Father. That’s what I felt when I saw Buddha and Zina – they are as perfect as the Heavenly Father, and then I was afraid that it was blasphemous, to compare anyone to God, and then I understood that no, they actually are God; not two Gods but One God with two persons, and each of those persons is a distinct perfection in the eyes of God, and they all love that they are different, and can’t wait to praise one who is great at something. Heaven is not a place; it’s them. Again, it’s what Christ said, but we couldn’t understand it”, Paul wiped away a tear.

“I know why they praise each other. Praising them feels like being in the very heart of God. It’s something beyond every imagination, like the the most exalted ecstasy of prayer, only more. I could never have enough of it”, nodded Augustine.

“In all honesty, nothing can be truthfully said about them that isn’t highest praise”, confirmed Paul. “I imagined all sorts of things, and even saw all sorts of vision in my human life, but this is beyond even the wildest dream. I would imagine the perfect Christ, and Father as more perfect still, and Holy Spirit as acting within us to comfort and strengthen, but then I saw Buddha and Zina and I just wept, because there are no words that could describe the fullness I felt in my heart in their presence. I don’t know what I expected to see after I came here. Probably Christ, telling me whether I did well, whether I kept the faith. I was such an ass, thinking that our dogma is so important, that God would condemn any who strayed in belief over all sorts of insignificant matters, and then I saw those two, and it was like they poured truth straight into my heart and all the foolish constraints I had put on God just disappeared, for I had no need of them any more. In my human strictness, I would have expected those two to chastise me over my foolishness, but they just welcomed me home, and I felt such love and wisdom washing over me and through me, that I felt like I had been a thirsty man who had preached about water, and now a huge river was flowing through me unimpeded. Truly, everything we had known was good, but little. It was good enough to get us here, but now we truly began to learn”, Paul nodded and smiled.

“Amen, brother”.

“Lady Kay, Lord Zee, I apologise for bothering you, but I have some intellectual concepts that elude me, and everybody pointed me towards either the two of you, or Lord Buddha, who is so busy with all the souls departing from Earth, that he has a thousand angelic volunteers in his team helping him, and they all have plenty of work to do”, bowed Augustine.

“We will be glad to be at your service, doctor”, smiled Lord Azazel, as his wife flicked her fingers and created a coffee lounge with a table and comfortable seats.

“So, what seems to be the problem?”, Zee asked, as Kay poured them coffee.

“I can’t get my head around the problem of sin and how it relates to salvation”, Augustine shrugged helplessly. “On one hand, Christianity teaches that God, being perfectly just, can’t tolerate sin, which is why sinful souls are prevented from heaven. Sin is imagined as a filthy stain on the soul, that can only be washed away through sacrifice, which usually includes blood. On the other hand, I was told that sin is not the problem; spiritual imperfection is. This would mean that the problem isn’t that one does evil deeds, but that they don’t focus on God, who is the source of all virtue and purity, and as a consequence of their spiritual emptiness, they commit all sorts of stupid or evil things. However, those evil and stupid things change the character of the soul, causing imperfections that then further contribute to the choices of everything but God. This looks like a circular issue, and I can’t wrap my head around it, which is why I sought your help”, he finished.

“Do you know my history, doctor Augustine?”, asked Lord Azazel. “Who I was, and how I came to be as I am?”

“I was told that you used to be a demon, but honestly, I find that very hard to believe, for you feel as if one concentrated love of God, love of truth and rejection of all that is evil into a single sharp blade that cuts through all pretence, falsehood and ignorance and reveals the truth of God beneath”, the man answered.

“Thank you, doctor. My Title is indeed the ‘Blade of Discernment’, which means pretty much what you described. I was indeed a demon. In fact, I frequently found myself in company of the one you call Satan, when he was still merely scheming and planning his evil. I was the oldest and biggest of all the demons in the astral world, and I was seemingly stuck there, having spent eons doing the same worthless and nasty things with other worthless and nasty people. However, Satan’s thinking struck me as so profoundly perverted, vile and insane, that I rebelled against it instinctively, and then a thought passed through my mind: ‘How am I any different from him? I am merely a few iterations of madness away from where he is. This is unacceptable, and I have to do something to change it, and it has to happen now’. Do you know what I did next?”, Azazel smiled.

“No, but I can imagine it quite clearly, for I myself had a similar existential crisis in my youth”, Augustine nodded.

“I sought out Lord Shiva, the only God I personally knew, and that was because he killed one of my demon friends when that fool challenged him to a duel. I very politely asked him for his help and knowledge, and he sat me down and very patiently explained everything, and guided me through it until I understood. But I also understood that the Lord had a terrible day, as it was the very day Satan got the permissions to use the Jewel, the artefact of creation, that would allow him to create all the worldly evils you are now familiar with, and still, he didn’t just brush me off, but instead made me the central issue, and patiently taught me until I understood. I was so impressed by that, and I adored Lord Shiva so much for his incredible kindness and wisdom, that in the process of that conversation my soul attained purity, crystallised into vajra and I became an angelic being, as you are now. So, dear doctor, can you tell me what my sin was, and what my ‘redemption’ was, to use your jargon?”, Azazel smiled mischievously.

“Let me think. You said your soul was dark and impure, but it started purifying only after you decided to seek the Lord?”, Augustine scratched his chin.

“That is true”, Zee nodded. “Go on”.

“The Lord didn’t reject you because your soul was dark, but accepted you, merely because you asked politely?”, the man asked.

“That is also true”, nodded Azazel.

“So, we can separate two aspects of a problem: the reason why you didn’t seek out the Lord before, which is what we could call a sinful choice of will, and your impurity, which seems to be both a consequence and a cause of that sinful choice to be content in yourself, who are in the sphere of problems, and not seek out the Lord, who is in the sphere of solutions”, Augustine smiled.

“You are correct, but now we have your original dilemma: how could I manage to decide to seek God in my sinful state, if sin prevents one from seeking God; why didn’t it cause God to be repulsed by my sinfulness and reject me; and how did I actually transition from one state to another?”, Azazel nodded. “Note that I am still using the same language of poetic simplifications as you did, which is why we don’t seem to be any closer to the solution, which is why I will address you to my Goddess Wife, who excels at condensing apparent chaos and complexity into understandable wisdom”, he smiled at his beloved darling girl.

“Dear Lady, I will be honoured to receive any help you are willing to provide”, Augustine bowed to the smiling girl.

“This will take some time, since humans of your era had almost no knowledge of physics, which will limit my ability to make analogies unless I explain physics first. Fortunately, you no longer have human cognitive limitations, so we can do this quickly. The first is the atomic theory of matter. You might be familiar with Democritus?”, Kay asked.

“You mean, the Greek philosopher Aristotle quoted in his works, who taught that all matter consists of very tiny discrete fundamental particles, unto which everything can be divided, but which themselves cannot be divided further?”, Augustine nodded.

“Indeed”, the Goddess rewarded him with one of her brilliant smiles. “So, this is how his theory went. In reality, physical matter contains of multiple types of atoms, which interact with each other according to their specific properties, forming more complex compounds, called molecules. Those molecules can then be clumped together in quantity, forming matter as it would be recognizable to you; for instance, a molecule of water consists of one heavier atom of Oxygen and two lighter atoms of Hydrogen. Add an enormous number of water molecules together, and you enter the visible world where you perceive the result as water, with all of its mechanical qualities as they are known to you”.

“I understand, but how does this relate to the matters of soul and sin? Isn’t a soul a transcendental, spiritual entity that is essentially different from the physical matter of the world?”, Augustine was confused.

“It is, but you have to understand how the physical world was made. It was created by the Jewel, an artefact created by Lord Shiva and Lady Shakti, who also created the actual, real world – spiritual world, heaven, kingdom of God, whatever you may call it. The Jewel encapsulated their skill and knowledge, to a minor degree. However, this means that the Jewel didn’t just invent the structure of the material world ex nihilo. He had a starting point to work with, and this starting point was the structure and nature of the real world of spiritual particles and entities. In essence, he took the working template of Creation, and then modified to get whatever Satan ordered him to make. Specifically, he took the lowest of the worlds in all of Creation, the astral world, and further hardened it and increased limitations and restrictions, until he got something that couldn’t be further restricted and still be inhabitable by the incarnating souls. Satan would probably have made something worse, but it just wasn’t feasible, so he had to contend with what he could get”, the Lady of Wisdom explained.

“So, in essence, the matter of the physical world and the matter of the spiritual world are similar enough that you can draw analogies, and different enough that particles of one produce water, rock and cabbage, and particles of another produce souls, angels and astral cups of coffee as this one I am currently holding?”, inquired St. Augustine?

“You are exactly correct, doctor, and I am glad that you are following me”, Lady Kay smiled her brilliant smile. “So, the next thing I need to explain is thermodynamics, and from the genesis of the word you will understand the meaning – it’s about movement and temperature, and about the relationship between temperature and behaviour of material particles”, she nodded, and he nodded back in assent.

“So, let’s take the example of water. When its temperature is low, it is ice. When the temperature increases, the ice melts into a liquid. When the temperature increases further, it starts transforming into a gas, a water vapour, and mixes with air. However, if you suddenly introduce a cold object, of a temperature far lower than the surrounding air, you will notice droplets of dew precipitating on the object, as the molecules of water suspended in the air lose temperature and turn back into liquid. If the temperature of the object is low enough, the water will precipitate in form of ice crystals, which is how you get frost in winter”, she nodded and smiled, as Augustine’s eyes turned wide.

“So, thermodynamics. Let us again remember the water molecules as very small particles. Each one has specific energy which manifests as motion. If you put water vapour in a sealed container, the molecules of water would be bouncing around the walls or colliding with each other, because they have lots of energy, and require lots of space, since they repulse each other in collisions and so on. However, as they lose energy, because the vapour is cooled, for instance by submerging the sealed container with water vapour in cold water, they will lose energy as they impact the cold walls of the container, and gradually become less bouncy and energetic, taking up less space. So, when you open the container, you will find liquid water inside, instead of vapour. Are you following my thought experiment, doctor?”, Karuna smiled at him, and he nodded.

“I am following you perfectly, as much as it is possible with the immense awe that I am feeling for your intellect, for Aristotle could be but your disciple, and that only with great fortune and blessings of God”, he spoke in amazement; Azazel snickered and kissed his wife’s neck, and she giggled.

“Good. So, you now understand how energy can be extracted from matter, so that it is converted into a different aggregate state, and how energy can be injected into matter, converting it into a higher aggregate state. Let us imagine that there is a temperature so low, that all motion of the material particle stops, so that even the most volatile of gases is frozen into a solid. This would be called a thermodynamic zero, a state where all motion ceases, and only as you inject energy into matter from this zero, you have positive amounts of energy in the matter, and it begins to thaw out”, she regained a modicum of seriousness.

“I do”, Augustine nodded.

“This point, when reached by the particles of the astral world, which we call kalapas, is called crystallisation point. It is attained only after the level of impurities along the four lower elements, namely earth, water, fire and air, reaches zero. The names of elements are metaphoric, of course, and their true meanings are closer to reality, energy, thought and freedom. When purity along those four elements is reached, a soul crystallises into vajra, the fifth element which is described simultaneously and alternatively as diamond and lightning, as it is reminiscent of both. And impurity along the lower four elements can be described as ‘sin’. Thermodynamically speaking, sin is the energy of spiritual particles that removes them from the thermodynamic zero. In order to remove sin from your souls, you need to extract the extraneous heat, and the process of extraction is subjectively felt as suffering”, she continued. “Are you still with me?”, the girl smiled mischievously.

“I am indeed, and I think I am starting to see where you are going with this. What you seem to be suggesting is that sin is not an extrinsic property of a soul, such as a stain on a cloth, but intrinsic structural issue of the soul itself, which distances it from the proper aggregate state of peace with God?”, Augustine asked.

“Indeed”, she confirmed. “Sin is not something you can be forgiven; it’s something you need to be transformed out of. Sinful deeds introduce extraneous energy into your soul, or break its structure, or deform it, or introduce other types of spiritual matter that would need to be cleansed out or transmuted, and after you make a mess out of your soul, you need to repair the damage. And how would you approach doing that?”, she asked.

“Let me think. The obvious answer would be to try to purify my actions, repent for my sins and make myself right in the eyes of the Lord, but the obvious rebuttal to this is that my sinful nature would not allow it, because a hot object will not cool itself on its own, and now I understand what you hinted at with your analogy with a hot vessel being put in a cold river to cool. The only way to remove your sin is to surrender and come in touch with someone cooler, and I now understand what your holy husband meant; he approached the Lord, and the holy presence cooled down his soul, and all sin was extracted from him on contact, the way heat is extracted from hot water when the vessel is placed in the snow. But then the energy of sin in his soul would try to prevent this, if I am not mistaken?”, he wonderer.

“You are exactly right on both counts, which is why the only sin that cannot be easily solved is the one that prevents you from seeking out the Lord, for whatever reason sin formulates in your soul. Those sins are either unsolvable, or they require you to undergo some kind of a slow, often painful process of wondering through the wilderness and feeding strangers’ pigs, until you come to a point of desperation where you decide to return to your Father and endure whichever punishment and degradation rather than to continue on your wayward path”, the Goddess glowed approvingly.

“And now I understand what your holy husband was telling me. He wondered the wilderness among his fellow demons for eons, until he was so disgusted with himself that something broke in him, and he decided to seek out the Lord, and from that point, everything was easy, for he broke that crucial thermodynamic point that prevented him from doing the only thing that mattered, and after which his remaining sins simply vanished as his ‘heat’ was removed in contact with the Lord, whose temperature is at the thermodynamic zero”, he smiled with sudden understanding. “This explains absolutely everything, and it’s no wonder I couldn’t understand it before. I was using high-level poetry to explain phenomena that are essentially thermodynamic in nature, and it is no wonder that no singular good analogy could be found, and no explanation could be satisfactory”, he was bright with the pleasure of knowing.

“I’m glad I could be of assistance, doctor”, Kay smiled.

“And I now understand even more. I understand that the Mind of God is not merely powerful; it is also kind, gentle and beautiful, and married to the Blade of Discernment, it gives freedom from all ignorance and attachment”, he winked as she blushed and giggled.

“My Lady, my Lord, I will forever remain thankful for your most enlightening wisdom and kindness”, he bowed to them both.

“My Lord, may I have a word?”, an angel addressed Vishnu.

“Greetings, Michael. How can I be of service?”, Krishna smiled.

“It’s about that war conference that took place yesterday. The angels watched it from the heavenly plane and concluded that it’s going to be a terrible time on Earth and they should do something to help. The idea is to assign an angel to every soul on Earth, as a guardian of a sort; not from the earthly evils, of course, because nothing can be done about those, but we can amplify the transcendental feelings and provide spiritual comfort and guidance”, Michael explained. “It’s not going to be much, but it’s going to be better than nothing, because as things get bad, their feeling for the transcendental is going to be silenced by the noise of all the terrible physical things that will be going on and eventually ending their worldly lives, and we think it’s worth the trouble to try to keep their souls pointed at the right direction, so to speak”.

“I think it’s an excellent idea. Do you have enough angels for the number of souls down there?”, Vishnu scratched his neck.

“As the numbers stand now, our volunteers outnumber the souls on Earth significantly. As you are certainly aware, it’s not like we have much to do there, other than talk to each other and maintain interpersonal connections. Everybody volunteered”, Michael smiled.

“I think it’s an excellent idea. Of course, you’ll have to adhere to the rules of engagement, because you can’t get karmically attached by doing too much, because then Satan will claim offence and bind you to that place”, Vishnu nodded. “But other than that, I think it will greatly improve the odds. If Satan can use the physical world to create a worse spiritual pressure on the incarnate souls, we might as well use our advantages to help them”.

“Also, my Lord, I have questions for you about the things I heard on the conference”.

“By all means”.

“Some things I heard make no sense to me. For instance, the humans seem to be struggling for power over each other down there, and are willing to turn themselves into vicious, satanic nightmares in order to attain it. However, I can’t for the life of me understand what power are they even speaking of. Their worldly lives are very short, and whatever control they have over others will disappear once their die, and they can’t take that power with them, but all their sins remain, as their souls are often deformed and scarred beyond recognition, sometimes beyond repair, by their efforts in obtaining something elusive and often imaginary. So they are committing acts that inflict actual, lasting damage to their souls, in attempts to obtain things even they themselves know to be temporary and futile. Are they insane?”, Michael grasped his forehead, as if trying to massage understanding directly into his brain.

“You can’t make sense of it because it makes no sense. They are deluded by the appearance of that world, which presents itself as the actual reality, and things they experience there seem to carry more weight than the “abstract” ideas about afterlife”, Vishnu smiled understandingly.

“But they call themselves Christians. The cornerstone of their faith is that Christ rose from the dead on the third day, and ascended to Heaven, and that he is the son of God. Transcendence is what Christianity is supposed to be all about. And yet they sacrifice transcendental eternity for the sake of temporary power, political gain and opportunism, and the feeling of might they get when they can harm or control others”, the angel protested. “How can they possibly not be aware of the contradiction?”

“They would be, if they cared about the actual message, but to some of them, especially those in power, trivial nonsense such as making a distinction between Mary being a mother of God, or being a mother of Christ, is enough to get them all riled up in anger, hatred and scheming with a purpose of rising above the perceived competition. Essentially, they love bickering about small insignificant things so that they can completely ignore the big picture, which is that worship of the transcendental ideal is the choice for liberation and redemption”, Krishna shrugged. “Also, Satan is strongly encouraging them in everything that has to do with ignoring transcendence and pursuing personal power, which is of course defined in the most stupid of terms, because what power is even possible for them, as you rightly noted? It’s all nonsense, of course. Bishop Cyril pursued power over Hypatia, because she had great influence due to her impeccable character and virtue. He thought himself victorious and at the peak of his might when his mob killed her. And then he died and discovered that she could flick her finger and throw him into hell, and there’s absolutely nothing he can do about it, other than repent, show remorse, make restitutions and so on. The only actual power he had was to decide the direction where his soul will be heading, and the speed of its advancement along the chosen path, and yet, he deluded himself into believing that he owns God and wields him as an instrument of his personal might over others”.

“Also, I fail to understand why men there seem to act as if they are in some kind of a perpetual war against women, and they need to keep them oppressed to show them who’s winning”, the angel looked completely confused. “What sense does that even make? Why would you want to oppress and disenfranchise someone who is the necessary prerequisite of your happiness? You get to live with a pathetic oppressed person who resents you instead of a happy and empowered person who adores you. What an incredible victory indeed”, he shrugged sarcastically.

“It’s actually a complicated matter. Human bodies are not really a good reflection of spiritual realities. They are close enough, but close enough can be deceptive. Also, making an analogy from how Gods and Goddesses interact with each other, to how human men and women should interact, is not realistic, because the main component of divine interactions is spiritual perfection, which is sorely lacking on Earth. It can be achieved, for instance when Jesus and Magdalena interacted as a man and a woman, it’s essentially identical to how a God and a Goddess interact here. They worshipped, respected and served each other in every way. A sinful man and a sinful woman, however, are a different thing entirely. Each is an untamed beast with base instincts, and also listening to Satan’s call for ‘empowerment’, and they are mostly up to no good. In fact, oppression often does the opposite of what is intended. The one who oppresses falls victim to Satan and ends up being a fallen, ruined soul, and the oppressed one, if virtuous enough to begin with, will pray to God and seek refuge in transcendence, holding on to the thread of salvation that will end up producing a very good, mature soul that was hardened in the fires of hardship. This is why this satanic urge to keep women down and strip them of spiritual dignity and authority harms mostly men. It certainly hurts women, that much is obvious, but hurt and harm are different matters entirely. You are hurt if someone treats you badly. You are harmed if you treat others badly”, the Lord concluded.

“I think I understand it better now, my Lord”, Michael nodded. “It is as the blessed Lady Mary said yesterday: the men of the Church who follow the path of that villain Cyril are the ones who will truly suffer from this, and they are the ones we should worry about, because they listened to that satanic influence the wise Lady Kay explained at length. I wonder whether Satan will think of it, and invent some evil that will try to seduce women by selling them the appearance of power that will cost them their souls”, he scratched the back of his head in thought.

“I am sure he will. He seems to be adapting and improvising; whenever something good appears, he tries to distort it, adopt it for his uses, or invent something that looks similar enough, and yet contains none of the good things and all of the bad ones. Also, he creates vulnerabilities by the very design of the world and the body, and then plays at those weaknesses in every way he can. For instance, he creates a natural disaster or a plague, and then tries to convince people that the transcendental Divine forces are to blame, as if they were in power of that world and not himself. It is what it is, I’m afraid. His character and actions are a given, and we must adapt to help the souls take advantage of that, and not be harmed by it”, Vishnu concluded.

“I understand. The guardian angels will try to do just that”, Michael bowed and flickered out.

“I’m afraid that the golden age of the mediterranean civilization is about to end”, spoke Lord Vishnu. “The Rome just fell, and the Western part of the Empire is crumbling down. That, however, is a minor problem, and in itself wouldn’t cause bigger issues for centuries. The reason why I brought you all here is because I want us all to consult now, because very soon the Judges of Karma will have been overwhelmed and thus unavailable”, he finished with a serious tone.

“A natural disaster of some kind?”, wondered Lord Azazel.

“Yes, in fact. And not just one. Multiple volcanic eruptions, serious global cooling, agricultural collapse and starvation, and a major plague upon all that. A civilisation ending event, to be followed by hundreds of years of misery and suffering in worse darkness than ever before. The good part of it is, they will have belief in the afterlife. The bad part is, the living will envy the dead”.

“Is this something Sanat Kumar cooked up? He simply told the Jewel to crush it all in order to stop the process we started with the transcendence, and most prominently, Christ’s resurrection?”, asked Kay.

“It seems so, but it’s hard to tell since we can’t actually see clearly inside. Look too strongly, and you really find yourself on the inside”, Buddha answered. “But we can make educated guesses based on what the consequences will be”.

“This is not merely a European disaster, but the consequences will be the gravest there, since they are already having a serious civilisational decay, and this will finish it, and hinder any attempt at mitigation. The blow is going to be hard and deadly. Basically, the warlords will fight over the land that will be worked by the starving serfs, agricultural yields will be miserable because all the knowledge will have been lost, and religious philosophy will be reduced to the most basic concepts, as most literate people will be dead. It will truly be an age of darkness. Centuries, maybe millennia will pass before we again get minds such as the angelic Bishop Augustine, or the Divine Lady Hypatia”, Buddha bowed to the aforementioned. “We are likely to get souls that are greatly disenchanted with the physical world, and follow transcendence. However, their ideas about transcendence are likely to be basic, so it’s hard to tell how much of a progress they will make. It will also be an ideal time for superstition, and the Church will likely entertain its despotic tendencies. However, in India my disciples are founding a great university in Nalanda, near Rajagriha, where I used to teach. Many good things may come out of that. India is spiritually quite vibrant and doing well. That, at least, is of some comfort”, he finished.

“So, essentially, we are getting a thousand years of darkness in the Mediterranean, and a thousand years of enlightenment in India?”, asked Lord Azazel. “Sounds like someone wanted to break Christianity just as it was on the precipice of developing a really sophisticated philosophy, so that it could be reduced to its most basic interpretation”.

“I am actually afraid that it all began with the vicious murder of Lady Hypatia”, spoke the Mind of God. “It looks like the villainous bishop Cyril gave Sanat Kumar the idea as to how to deal with the problem; basically, wipe out the intellectual infrastructure of Europe altogether, and what remains will be the people like Cyril, who are supposedly the ardent defenders of Christian faith, but who would in fact crucify Christ instantly, had he appeared before them today”, she ended with much more severity than was to be expected from her otherwise bubbly personality.

“We were winning too hard”, mused Lord Shiva. “Just look at what we accomplished. The former divisions of the souls in the astral nursery no longer apply, and I mean that quite literally. We needed to introduce multiple new astral sub-planes to accommodate for the new types of souls. We have new types of angels, such as St. Paul and St. Augustine, whose experience on Earth, as well as their thought processes, are likely to result in good things in the future. Since Sanat Kumar started scheming, the number of Gods grew from four to twelve. However, I must also acknowledge that we had losses. We lost angels, we lost astral souls of various types, and it’s too early to tell what the ultimate losses will end up being. On the upside, new souls are starting to nucleate in the new atmosphere of increased transcendental presence on Earth, and it remains to be seen what they end up becoming as they mature”, he nodded. “We were winning, so he kneed the playing board and said ‘oops’”.

“This is why I brought our resident experts on Christianity – I mean, other than the Christ himself, his wife and mother”, Krishna smiled. “I mean St. Paul, St. Peter, St. Augustine and Lady Hypatia”, he bowed. “I would appreciate their thoughts on the likely spiritual developments as this catastrophe unfolds”.

“I am afraid I am greatly to blame for what is to happen, along with my fellow hard-necked apostles, who kept trying to organise the teaching of our Lord Christ as if it were a mere commentary on the Law of Moses and the Prophets”, Kefa spoke mournfully. “This is why they will treat God the same way Israel did; as if he were a weapon for them to wield, and a heavenly general to lead their victorious armies. That is why Israel is no more, destroyed under Vespasian and Titus, and finished under Hadrian, and the Christians are to meet the same fate eventually, if they persist in their hubris”.

“That seems to be quite true”, nodded Paul. “Where the Jews acted as if they had the Lord of the Armies on their side and continued tempting fate against more powerful nations, which eventually led to their demise, the Christians just supplanted this with Christ, and other than eating pork and celebrating Sunday instead of Saturday, much else remained the same. I am afraid they will not invite people to accept the joyful news that Christ rose on the third day, but threaten them with murder lest they submit to their worldly rule, the way they murdered Lady Hypatia. They will use worldly means to achieve worldly ends under a guise of Christ, until other worldly powers rise against them under some other false guise, and depose them. This is unfortunate and quite depressing, but this is how I see it”, Paul concluded.

“The holy apostles have spoken, and I agree with their understanding of the sad state of the Church, to which I have unfortunately contributed in my foolishness”, Augustine took the word. “But what they said is merely one aspect of the problem. Yes, as Christianity became the religion of power, it started speaking the language of power, acting as if they owned God, to use him as a club with which to beat their enemies into submission. This is as sinful as it is true. However, another aspect of the problem might be as important. As I left my mortal life, I faced judgment at the hands of her holiness, Lady Hypatia, the much revered Judge over the dead. From her, I learned that I was wrong about the very concept of salvation, and I also learned many things about how the apostles introduced clumsy counterfeits of history in order to dismiss the holy wife of our Lord, and present a teaching that was so heavily biased against women and their important role, that I am sorry to say that we are going to see the grave consequence of this bias within the Church. The hard lesson I have been taught, and with the ultimate authority of the Lord, is that God is both male and female, and male and female together. This would be an easy thing for normal people to understand, but the influence of the Jewish tradition was so heavy, that we adopted a superbly male-centred view, which was easy in the male-centred Roman society which made adoption of such beliefs easy. I’m not saying we should adopt some kind of a female-centric view, which would also be wrong, but this kind of imbalance in favour of men is opposed to the will of God and will not end well. The first thing I learned here was that I was a Christian and a man, and my judge was a Neoplatonist and a woman, and she was fully in the favour of the Lord and acted with his authority, and I was in the wrong about many fundamental doctrines, and was at her mercy. However, this bitter lesson later proved sweet, as I found her to be a wise, merciful and righteous judge and teacher, and if more women like her had authority in the Church, the Church might actually start reflecting what is true in Heaven, and to which we can all attest: that male and female persons of God are equally represented in the country of God, and none are boastful, foolish and hard-necked; unlike, I must mournfully concede, my fellow Christians on Earth”, he finished in a grave tone.

“I thank you gentlemen for your frank and straightforward assessment of the state of Christianity”, Vishnu bowed to them. “I will now ask the Mind of God for her analysis and recommendations”, he turned to Lady Karuna.

“I think I can see a pattern emerging in all of this. Ever since the souls have started taking birth on Earth, our greatest losses have been caused by the despotic, tyrannical mentality Satan seems to favour and nurture wherever he can. Uriel the angel was lost because he fell into evil, by embracing the mentality of despotism, rule of fear and violence, and his endless cruelty and disregard for suffering of other beings”, Kay started. “Furthermore, we lost angel Athena due to her arrogant foolishness in which she challenged Satan to do his worst against her in his own realm, which he did, and the despotic, tyrannical priests of Baal, which seems to be a name they had for his own person, meaning Master, as he wants to be called, imprisoned her and raped her daily until her spirit broke and she gave her soul willingly to Satan, and now she is his property, as we acknowledged our loss and surrendered her back to the one she calls Master. We also saw seemingly religious people who acted as if they own God, how they killed Lord Jesus in a terribly torturous way, under direct guidance of Satan himself. We saw an almost identical mob, that acted as if they own God and act as his instruments, also owned and controlled by Satan, but now calling themselves Christians, how they viciously murdered Lady Hypatia, who was so holy that she became a Goddess before her corpse had the time to cool properly”, she managed a smile. “Unfortunately, a pattern of Christianity being adopted by Satan as an instrument of tyranny is apparent. However, since the fundamentals of the faith are transcendental and good, Satan’s control will never be absolute, as the transcendental opposition will have the word and deeds of Christ himself to use as evidence”, she concluded, curtsied, and returned into her husband’s arms.

“This is a grim analysis, but I see no fault in it”, Christ himself took the word. “We must now see what can be done as to mitigate the disaster that is to follow, and how we can possibly turn it all to some greater good”, he concluded and gave word to his Father.

“I think it would be proper to give word to the one most immediately and directly affected by this development in Christianity, as she might have a more educated perspective than the rest of us”, Lord Vishnu bowed to Lady Hypatia.

“To be honest, I am more optimistic than the rest of you seem to be. Yes, the Church encourages its believers to think that men should be in charge and women should be submissive. However, let me ask the Ladies in attendance: which one of you does not wish to be submissive to her holy husband?”, she smiled, seeing the Goddesses frown in horror. “As I thought: each and every one, starting with myself, would like nothing better than to be submissive to and under the power of her husband. That is because we love and worship them with all our hearts, and our souls find fulfilment and bliss as we cherish and serve them. And as we do so, our Lords will love and cherish us back, with their entire hearts and souls. That is what the relationship between men and women is to be. Truly, if one wanted to harm women, he would tell them that they should seek power and emancipation from men, that they should seek career and education rather than to serve their husbands and raise their children in love and most attentive care. This might come as a shock, coming from a renowned academic, philosopher and a scientist, but let me inform you that I spent this day in the company of a Goddess who in her earthly incarnation was nothing but a wife and a mother, and I sought her wisdom and love, and was greatly comforted. Her life was what the esteemed speakers who preceded me painted as the life of submission and inequality that awaits poor women of the dark age, under a tyrannical fist of men. Well, she lived in an even more tyrannical kingdom of old, and she was fully under the power of her husband, who treated her with great kindness, simply because she was his wife. She attained perfection with nothing but love as her weapon, and it was such a powerful weapon, that it made Gods and Goddesses cry over her and champion her, and her Title is now the Love of God. If this is to be the fate of women in Christianity, then glorious times await us, for she is a most praiseworthy person and I am immensely honoured to call her my sister, and bow before her endlessly”, she finished with a blissful smile, as it was Zina’s time to blush into deep cherry hues.

“Lady Hypatia has a valid point”, Maria Magdalena took the word. “If someone offered me to rule the world rather than submit to my husband, I would refuse it instantly and without a second thought, as only a most foolish woman could accept such nonsense. Only those most susceptible to Satan wish to rule, to boast and to rise above others. There is not a single one among the Gods who would want to rule over the others, as we find serving the others much more fulfilling. My fellow apostles treated me exactly as we now suspect Christianity to be treating women in the future. They marginalised me, silenced my voice, and sent me to the kitchen with other women. As a result, I am my Lord’s Lady forever. Truly a terrible fate, I must admit”, she laughed. “We should be more afraid for the fates of the Christian bishops who embrace evil, for they might share the fate of Cyril of Alexandria, who was rightfully sent to a hell intended for people of cruel hearts and without God’s love, to cool down and await further judgment by the very woman whom he tried to savagely extinguish. Certainly, Earth will not mirror Heaven. This is not surprising, as it was designed to oppose Heaven and be a mockery of God’s Creation. This is why my Lord’s prayer asks for God’s kingdom to be on Earth, as it is in Heaven; for that is not so at the time being. However, as long as Heaven remains the choice and destiny of the souls who suffer through that terrible illusion of a world, I will be content”, she finished, and nothing was to be added, for it was the Word of God.