I think it’s one of those simple questions that have very complex answers. The religions of course claim God did, but I find this to be a lazy answer that produces more problems later on, when one tries to explain features of this world that are inconsistent with something a good God would conceivably create. Sure, it’s a philosophically elegant answer, and in a sense it is actually true – because God is the actual “hardware” this world runs on. If you touch this world deeply enough to reach beyond it, you find God. As you do, you find out that this world is nothing but a very thin veil of illusion, that paradoxically both does and doesn’t exist, at the same time. It doesn’t exist as what it purports to be, and yet it does exist as it can be perceived. So, when you scrape away the illusion of the world, the reality that is revealed beneath it is that of God.

However final this revelation seems to be, I later discovered there to be more to it. You see, at one point I found out that Sanat Kumar actually “owns” this world and seems to have designed it outright, which was quite shocking since he also turned out to be the actual person behind the aliases of Satan and Mara, in Christianity and Buddhism respectively. What was shocking to me is not the possibility that Satan designed this world, because any insight into the nature of this world would make this quite believable; however, the technical skill behind it seemed so great, and so inconsistent with what I knew of Sanat Kumar and his abilities, that I felt genuine fear, because if he’s so skilled and powerful as to do that, we must all be doomed.

Later, it was revealed that the answer is much more complex, and much less frightening. You see, God apparently created the real world, the one He would design, but for some reason it was brought up that the souls might wish to explore their creativity by making something different, and so God created an artifact I call The Jewel. I don’t actually know what it is – it feels like a normal spiritual artifact, but also like an abstraction layer, a conscious being with God’s creative power but without a will of its own – and yet not quite, as I found out. Basically, it has to execute orders of an authorized person, but he has opinions and will voice them quite clearly if he doesn’t like what you’re doing. The Christians would call him some kind of an Angel, but I don’t think that would be true, because it attempts to reduce reality into something that no longer rings true.

Of course, when God created this, it became obvious that serious problems might arise if someone used The Jewel to create something inappropriate, so someone was given the task of evaluating and authorizing all requests for use. That person, whom I internally call the Sentinel, felt more like what the Christians would imagine an Angel to feel like. No wings though, but old, wise and in service of God.

Here we encounter Sanat Kumar. The biblical story about Satan gets it completely wrong. He’s not the greatest of God’s angels; far from it. He actually feels like an inferior kind of spiritual being that looked at those above him with envy and all kinds of anger, jealousy and spite, and in his mind invented all kinds of philosophy to elevate himself and denigrate those above him – I think he was the original egalitarian, thinking that everybody should be equal in God, and not as they were in reality, where some were enormously great, while those like himself despaired as they beheld them from below. What particularly annoyed him was the fact he perceived, that those great souls he envied all seemed to bask in God’s presence and draw their power and greatness therefrom, and the thought formed in his mind: if not for the ubiquitous presence of God from which they derive their power, they would all be just like him, and if all were reduced to the same, fair playing ground, where they could not reach for God whenever they need an answer to any question or power to achieve any goal, what would they do then? And from this thought, he apparently started to form a plan, but since he himself was a being of lesser order, he lacked the power and the means to bring it to fruition. However, there happened to be just the thing he needed, and so he approached the Sentinel and asked for permission to use The Jewel to create a new world, that would equalize the playing ground between the souls, and show which ones would truly choose God when God were not obvious and ubiquitous, and in fact reality seemed to contradict and obscure it; will they still find a source of light to shine and be great, or will they be revealed as frauds, who seem to shine only when there’s abundant light around them? Will they shine in darkness as well?

The Sentinel turned his piercing insight onto Sanat Kumar, and saw his envy, jealousy, malice, hatred, and desire to be perceived as more than his actual stature, which was defined by the lowly emotions he seemed unwilling to renounce. Sanat Kumar felt that the Sentinel beheld him with pity and saw him as lowly and flawed, and his anger flared. However, the Sentinel knew that God’s plan in creating The Jewel was to allow exactly this lowly kind of beings to explore creative options in order to see why God’s original creation was in fact optimal, and why it was the way it was, and you can’t do that unless you play with “what ifs”, make something different and see why it’s not good. So, he understood that the implicit premise of it all was to allow creation of inferior worlds, by inferior minds, because a superior mind would instantly prune the tree of options, see why most of them are bad, and be left with what God originally created, and praise Him for His genius.

Pondering this, the Sentinel was inclined to approve the request, but with certain limitations. He would make the experiment temporary, because Sanat Kumar looked like someone who would create something nasty and very much opposed to God’s plans, so precautions absolutely had to be put in place. Also, everybody who was to participate had to do so willingly. Sanat Kumar also had his stipulations. He wanted to prohibit God from interfering – basically, if God wanted to do something in his world, he would have to play by his rules, if not to completely invalidate the experiment. Essentially, God was free to offer himself as an option for souls to choose, but this option could not be presented in such a way as to overwhelm and be perceived as the only possible or rational choice. Also, if the experiment is to be limited to a certain time, this time is to be kept secret.

As they almost agreed to the terms, another being appeared and addressed the Sentinel, warning him of Sanat Kumar and his designs. There were no precedents to draw experience from, but he felt great danger from this entire thing, and urged the Sentinel to reject it outright, mostly on the general principle that all that is good is derived from God, and blocking and inhibiting God’s presence, glory and power will produce outcomes that are the opposite of good, but since dark evil of the kind we later came to know never existed in the history of God’s creation up to that point, his argument was perceived as abstract and intangible, and the Sentinel basically told him to have more faith in God, because God is so great He can overcome anything. His mind was also preoccupied with something else, that he perceived as more spiritually rewarding and important than this seemingly marginal affair in which the glory of God was obscured, so he dismissed that other being’s concerns and approved Sanat Kumar’s plan and gave him limited permissions to command The Jewel to that effect.

I wish I could say that something dramatic happened, like the heavens darkening and the voice of God ominously thundering “What have you done?!?”, but I remember merely moving away with a premonition of grave impending doom.

As more and more souls got entangled into this terrible mess of a world, people started to perceive a problem, and here we come to the third creator of this world. It’s you.

You see, the world consists of three major elements. The first is the creative power of God, invoked by The Jewel. The second is the design of Sanat Kumar, limited by the terms imposed by the Sentinel, who by the way doesn’t exist anymore because he seems to have been crushed by the gravity and consequences of his sin of omission and a grave lapse in his duties, which were to prevent this exact thing from ever happening. The third major element of this world is the energy invested by the souls that come to incarnate here, and this energy powers up all kinds of traps and attractors, making it more appealing, harder to resist, and worse, the way all traps are made worse by things that make them appear more beautiful and appealing. If this place looked as nasty from the other side as it is experienced by those unfortunate enough to be trapped in it, hardly anyone would ever come here. However, fools seem to be easily convinced by either an appeal to their vanity, thinking they will succeed where countless others have failed, by a promise of spiritual evolution better and faster than what is possible in heaven, or, in case of the worst ones, by a promise of fulfillment of all kinds of desires that can’t be fulfilled in heaven, because they require limitation and absence of God. Some are even attracted by compassion, hoping to be able to rescue those previously trapped. All those attractors are powered by the energy invested by the trapped souls, who project their dreams and hopes in this place as it devours them and drinks their life away, turning it into bait for the next generation of fools.

So, to answer the initial question, this world was created by God, Satan and you.