There’s also a question of when can one justify something with the Devil or the world, excusing oneself of culpability or lack of performance.

Intuitively, the answer would lie somewhere in the open interval between “never” and “always”.

What does that mean? It means that I think neither of the extremes is acceptable as an answer, but something between them might be, but I’m not sure it’s universally the same answer. I perceived quite a bit of variability in personal karma in regard to this issue, meaning that not all souls encounter the same type or quantity of resistance here.

Also, I would cite empirical evidence of the transcendental realms. If the answer were “always”, there would be no problem posed by this world, and the hell would be empty, so to say. Every single sinner would be excused of all personal culpability by the very fact that the totality of their sin were caused by this world and, consequently, Satan who designed its parameters.

There is, however, some merit to the argument, which Romana once used effectively against Satan, making him shut up – “The entirety of all sin is yours”. Also, Krishna in the Bhagavad-gita states that atman doesn’t act or cause action; it is the gunas of nature that act. However, Buddhism makes a counter-argument that soul is in essence an aggregation of karmic substance, not the atman of Vedanta.

This is exactly my experience, but with the addition that the nature of this karmic substance does not warrant the kind of materialism that is oft encountered among the so-called buddhists, because it seems to have an originally transcendental nature, on the “atomic” level. Apparently, the transcendental atman is reflected in every single kalapa of karmic matter, and they aggregate according to the laws of karma to form larger structures, “bigger souls” so to speak.

The fact that the kalapas aggregate into larger souls, and that larger souls can break apart due to sin and the internal incoherence between kalapas which causes them to de-aggregate, means that sin is a karmic fact that exists beyond any association with either Satan or this world. This proves that “never” and “always” can not be acceptable answers to our question, eliminating them from the interval. If virtue and sin are karmic facts upon which souls are built and destroyed, it puts it squarely outside the dimensions of this world.

What this world does is a serious problem, as it creates a persistent illusion that creates an environment that makes wrong actions highly tempting, and their dire consequences unknown and suppressed until it is too late. Basically, it inhibits your memory, it inhibits the sense of God’s presence, it paints a falsely attractive picture on dangerous items, and so on. Basically, it’s like showering a school with explosive devices masked like candy. Technically, it will be the children’s fault if they touch them, but you obviously don’t do such a thing out of good intent, and you obviously can’t expect innocents not to get hurt by such action. One can easily conceive a series of abstractions that would allow Satan to evade responsibility and the victims of his actions to be innocent of sin, which would explain why it was so hard to pin anything on him, as it would depend on intent and foreknowledge, which would be very hard to prove. It also explains why most “sins” are committed innocently. People frequently act out of total ignorance, or in fact a misapprehension that inverts moral value of an act; as the Bible would say, one kills God’s prophets thinking he’s serving God by doing so. One would say that this argues heavily towards the claim that the ultimate responsibility lies with Satan and that the souls involved in such acts can be excused, but this is not exactly how it works. The explanation would be quite involved and extensive, but not knowing what exactly you are doing is often a matter of belief that is up to you. Essentially, in order to be a member of the mob that’s cheering for Christ’s execution you need to believe that he’s not who he claims to be, and that belief is squarely up to you. You need to know what he claims to be, so you can’t be excused by total ignorance, and you need to believe that he is wrong, with the strength of conviction that makes you abandon all caution that would be due in such cases. Sure, you don’t have direct insight into transcendental realities, nor you have direct insight into the ultimate consequences of what’s going on. However, your ignorance works as an excuse only to a small point, because a person with a strong transcendentally based conscience would feel grave wrongness of the situation, that would cause him to be seriously alarmed. If you’re not alarmed, and in fact spit at Jesus with all the glee of the raging mob, it trips multiple red flags against you. Sure, you may be excused of the ultimate culpability, since you are unaware and under a misapprehension, but you clearly didn’t mind passing hasty judgment without sufficient evidence, nor did your obvious ignorance of the facts prevent you from acting terribly against someone who did you no wrong, and whose innocence had to be a possibility in your mind, which you nevertheless ignored, because you liked being part of the mob, joined in purpose that gave you pleasure. There’s a whole palimpsest of complexity there, and although your actions don’t make you ultimately damned, they cannot be whitewashed either, and what remains is some degree of sin that will remain as your problem in the long run, the way St. Paul had a problem with stoning of St. Stephen, in which he indirectly participated by guarding the robes of those who stoned him, and although he himself cast no stones, the fact that he approved of the act itself and that he would have cast the stones gladly were it someone else’s lot to guard the robes, troubled him greatly in his later life. Also, the excuse that such people will give, “I couldn’t have known”, is obviously false, as Christ’s disciples obviously could and did know. You just decided to believe otherwise, and you decided that those who believed that Jesus is God are either fools or servants of a false prophet. There were obviously arguments to believe differently, but you chose against them, and against the evidence of his followers, dismissing them all in entirety. You could have known, but chose not to. There’s only a certain point to which you can excuse your choices and actions with Satan and the nature of this world, which obscures the facts and presents a false image, because Christ’s apostles had the same Satan and the world against them, and yet they chose differently, only to be called fools and sinners by you and your ilk.

Sure, invoking the fact that Satan and maya caused you to be deceived regarding the true nature of events can excuse you to some extent, but this excuse is very much like invoking an insanity defence in a trial. You may evade imprisonment, but you will be marked as a mentally insane and potentially dangerous person that will still be institutionalised in some way. Invoking “the Satan defence” is to say “I’m a small, stupid soul that lacked both greatness, wisdom and insight necessary to understand the situation properly, as those better, wiser and holier than myself managed to do”. If might make you escape the gallows, but it’s certainly earning you no medals either. The ones, however, who were under the same illusion of Satan as you, but managed to see through it enough to make wiser choices, they get to advance to higher spiritual stature, while you will at best stagnate, and most likely be degraded.

Imagine, however, what happens to those who were under the same veil of ignorance, but became Christ’s apostles. If those casting stones and spitting at him can be excused to some degree, it is reasonable to expect that the reward of those who managed to act correctly will be magnified, because they passed the trial of illusion. They proved that they would choose God even in disguise, and even with the entire world against Him, and their choice is therefore as rewarding as it was hard. Interestingly, they won’t have to invoke the “Satan defence” – did Satan make them choose Jesus as the Lord? After all, they were in the same illusory world, under the same veil of misapprehension, with the same inhibitions placed upon both memory and insight. If this fact increases their merit, as it does, it means two things. First is that the problem exists and is real; it does in fact pose a serious spiritual challenge. The second is that this problem is not insurmountable and can serve as an excuse only to a point. If a convict on the adjacent cross could recognise Jesus and choose for him, it’s obviously not something that was hard beyond the realm of human possibility, and was instead a legitimate test of spiritual character. Obviously, those who failed it and those who passed it will not have the same outcomes in the realm beyond, as if they were actors playing a role. The world will go away, but the consequences of your choices will persist.

It seems that the issue of asceticism periodically comes up whenever the issues of God and the world are discussed; this time in the comment section:

Perhaps the key to success in practice is absolute dedication of the soul and the willingness to endure everything on the path? Is some kind of ascetic life necessary for that?

I thought about it and I think it’s not a simple matter, in a sense that asceticism isn’t a singular thing, or the same thing to everyone. So, this is going to get somewhat involved.

Asceticism can be a very useful tool – putting limitations on spending money, on obtaining or replacing things, on thinking that things will solve your problems, on projecting into things and social status and so on. So, this kind of asceticism means that you don’t replace your car until it becomes unsafe and expensive to keep running due to malfunctions and servicing costs. It means you live well beneath your means, not trying to increase your apparent social status by increasing expenses to match or exceed your income. Basically, it means controlling the animal – keep it fed, but don’t allow it to get fat.

Then there’s the religious idea that you need to renounce things of the world in order to make room in your life for God. Especially, one should renounce the pleasurable things, as if everything is a God-vs-thing contention, and to not renounce a thing x supposedly means that you favour it over God. Honestly, I think this is a spiritual fallacy that can only lead one to start resenting God, and I can see nothing good in the entire concept. It doesn’t work like that at all, because one could say, with equal or better justification, that God is the origin and foundation of all things, and especially the good things are those through which we can sense God’s nature and presence more, and so the good things in our life can be seen as the medium of our personal idiosyncratic communion with God. To renounce those can be seen not as making place for God or choosing God over a thing, but as rejecting God in that one form in which He is revealed to us, however slightly and partially.

No, I think the entire concept needs to be revised. I think the central question is whether you want God to be a part of your world, or do you want to be a part of God’s world? Is God your Lord, or do you wish Him as a powerful servant to fulfil your wishes? Do you want to be a tool in God’s garden, or do you want God to be a tool in yours? That’s what the crux of the matter seems to be. People who reject God usually do it by wishing to accept God, but at their own terms, to be a part of their world, to make things better for them, to make them greater – basically, who wouldn’t want an all-powerful servant who caters to your every need? But to accept God in such a manner is to reject Him. There’s a good Star Wars analogy to this; the Sith see the Force as a tool, as a beast of burden that obeys their commands and realises their wishes. That’s called the Dark Side, and I would say the darkness is in the approach and the attitude, not the Force.

The other approach is to understand that, in order to be able to grow, you need to stop seeing yourself as the frame of reference, and accept that God is the frame of reference. Basically, God defines the coordinate system in which you are currently placed, and in which you wish to be better, according to the terms set by God. You’re not the one defining the coordinate system of rules, values and principles according to which God should act in order to be accepted by you as good and useful. You need to listen, observe, learn, outgrow your limitations and stupid ideas, and here’s where we arrive at my personal definition of asceticism: it is to renounce every wrong and limiting idea that stands between you and God. Yes, that’s somewhat abstract and hard, much harder than renouncing coffee. It is, however, far more beneficial. How about, renounce the idea that being in the presence of God depends on your personal awareness thereof? Basically, what if you are constantly in the presence of God even if you don’t know it? Would you act differently? Would your cares and priorities be affected?

Also, if you accept yourself as someone who is in service of God, or in a frame of reference that is defined by God, and your spiritual attitude, choices, thoughts, flows of energy into action, are all in God’s frame of reference, meaning they are more or less aligned with God’s nature and intent, renunciation and asceticism is to renounce resistance to God in your consciousness and actions. Asceticism is to be the presence of God in the world, ultimately, because that means that any kind of “you” that wished to make God into a tool or a servant in your personal playground is long gone.

The last articles about photography were not (just) about photography, of course. There’s a more profound message in there.

You see, people like to excuse their poor behaviour in this life with bad circumstances- it’s either “I had an unhappy childhood”, “I was of the wrong species, race, gender, or social status”, “this world sucks” or “the Devil made me do it” in general. What I want to say is that this argument amounts to “my photos would have turned out better if I had a better camera”. Yes, they probably would – by 5%. Everything else is you. I mean, sure, there are circumstances where you literally can’t do anything, but I assume that people reading this weren’t born fatally retarded or crippled, or so poor they died in infancy. I also assume they aren’t Gypsies who were forced into a life of begging on the streets with no education or prospects. So yes, I understand there are circumstances where you literally can’t do anything regardless of who you are as a soul. I also understand that this doesn’t describe the normal population in the West, especially the subset that reads blog posts on the Internet. The analogue to that would be trying to do photography with some kind of a toy camera that produces only one type of picture, with very little variability or flexibility to accommodate creative efforts by the user. Yes, some people are born or have been put into a position of passive victimhood with no agency. But that’s not you.

I’ll tell you a story. When I energetically connect with students, I am basically limited by the common denominator of abilities of the energetic system – basically, the state of the spiritual-physical interface in the physical body. In most cases, when I “enter” such a person’s physical energetics, I am limited to what they can do. However, in several instances I felt no limitations whatsoever. One of those was a female student who is known for her clinical lack of self esteem and ability to feel and project power and self-confidence, and usually feels she’s a victim of this or that; basically, the kind of person who lives on the leftist forums on the Internet where everybody is a victim of some shit, and they all applaud each other for being courageous and overcoming their circumstances and what not, when it’s all of course a lie. None of them overcame jack shit, they are there because they want to wallow in raw sewage of zero-agency. But I digress; anyway, I connected with her system, and if one were to ask me what I would expect, knowing how she acts, I’d probably say I expected all kinds of limitations and problems. What I experienced was my full unbridled power without any limitations whatsoever. It felt like jumping into a formula one car and instantly qualifying for a pole position. No limitations, no restrictions, no debuffs, instant full power that matched my own body that’s been trained for it by gradually extending its limits for years, and she had that by default. If someone put me in her body, I’d be able to manifest my full unrestricted spiritual power. That makes you think what she would do if you put her inside my body? Yeah, the same things she’s doing inside hers. It’s not the body that’s restricting her; if anything, her soul is under-utilising the body, as if the body was built for someone extremely demanding and competent, a formula one car built for the world champion, so to speak, and it’s being driven by someone’s grandma who keeps stalling it and crashing it into trees. Intelligence and mental abilities? The same as mine. Transparency and capacity of the nadis? The same, to the limits tested. Chakras? Identical capacity and transparency, to the limits tested; it drives high spiritual substances without any effort. Kundalini flow? Tested to my normal capacity with no issues. Reaching inner space with high energetics? No issues whatsoever. Even the idiosyncrasies of the system were adjusted for my type of energetics, which means I don’t have to adjust the yogic technique to the specific properties of the body, because everything just works; essentially, I could be in her body and instantly give spiritual initiations, or wield my Shivaratri whip across multiple mahat-tattvas. One may ask how is it possible for someone to just have a body like that without any kind of yogic practice? Well, some people are just born lucky, I guess, or she had a super beneficial karmic contract. She was given a body of a super-yogi avatar or something, and I just had to make myself one, because mine didn’t work anywhere near as well as hers by default. I had to stretch and extend its abilities. She could just Thanos-snap her fingers and draw the kind of power that took me decades to slowly build.

But yeah, she thinks she had terrible circumstances and bravely fought against them. I disconnected from her, and she was the limp sock again, the body waiting for orders that never came from her soul.

Yes, maybe if you had better circumstances you’d do better. Then again, maybe you’d do the same, and the better circumstances would serve as evidence of your incompetence and unworthiness as a soul. Sure, blame Satan, or Canada for all it matters. Otherwise, shut the fuck up and get good.