Of Gods and Mystics

Jiro was a pleasant God. He was joyful, exuberant, playful. He loved to dance, dancing was very deeply rooted in his nature. Actually so were his other qualities, he was an intense being through and through.

He did not create the universe in which he resided, he did not create the people in it. Jiro did not create any of the world’s other inhabitants either. Not a single tiny weasel, not a cockroach, not an ant, not even a piece of toast haphazardly covered in butter so that the vast majority of it resided on one side, leaving the remaining side bare.

Jiro had also not been around for the eternity of time, birth-less, having always existed. No, his birth could be traced back to one particular day, 16 January 2022, a rather cloudy one, in the North East of England.

There was a Mystic who was traveling across the world. He loved to explore the seemingly limitless possibilities which life provided. The Mystic was always on the lookout for more exciting and extraordinary experiences.

He was kind, at least some of the time. Understanding, again, most of the time, but primarily, and almost always unless he had exhausted himself, he was a passionate, fiery individual. One could compare him, maybe not to a pure bright red flame, but to a pleasant yet no less fiery orange one.

Whatever capabilities and aptitudes he had as a Mystic, however, you know, things like energizing a room, or making water in a glass behave in such a way that if you drank it, it would make you feel completely renewed and reinvigorated. Or simply cooking a meal so good that as you were eating it you were sure whatever was entering your mouth was nothing but divine in its nature and you would kill just to have another helping of it the next day.

Such were his capabilities. However, when it came to earning money, his passion and enthusiasm for life were suddenly nowhere to be found. He was perfectly capable of meditating for a whole day when he desired, but tell him he had to perform what he saw as a menial, routine task, and he’d rather fall asleep, which is quite a statement as Mystics very often see sleep as a waste of time and optimize their bodies so that they need as little of it as possible.

Yes, he could concoct a seemingly perfect meal, but tell him that he has to prepare food for 8 hours straight and he’ll eventually find it almost torturous.

He was also good at dealing with people and their issues, but tell him he has to talk to them for a whole workday, day in day out, and in about a day or two he’ll be clamoring to get out of whatever job was requiring him to do so.

In this world, however, it was very useful to possess some amount of money. Yes there were monks and mystics out there living on whatever food people brought to them as offerings, but this one, he liked to travel, and to his lack of amusement, gifting food was not a custom everywhere, so most of the time when he was out there in the world, he needed money.

This was one of those times when he was slowly running out of it and had acquired himself a job. Not just any one, a well respected and well-paying one which many of you would have been thrilled by. He however was anything but thrilled by it.

Day after day he was performing the tasks, without much option to quit as he really needed to get paid. His life eventually started to feel very repetitive and boring to him.

“Such a drag”

“Another day..”

“One day I’ll be back on my travels!”

These thoughts would go through his head on a daily basis.

Additionally, he had also become accustomed to a lifestyle of better quality. He no longer wished to travel almost broke as he would back in his younger years. The Mystic had become what you might call a ‘fat cat’.

So it went on, his life kept going, he stuck at the job and kept becoming more and more frustrated with it. Many people perform this feat for almost their entire lives, the Mystic however was a very intense individual and after nearly 3 whole months he had finally had it.

One day after he got out of the shower, just before performing his morning rituals and heading off to work, his emotions and frustrations reached a new peak.

Joy, laughter, exuberance was what he wanted. He desired to feel spontaneity, creativity, he desired adventure. The Mystic desired the qualities of a dancer. Not just any dancer, a powerful, limitless one. Not even a human one, but a God. A colorful, flamboyant God, an extravagant God, a beautiful God, a playful God, a fabulous God! A God of joy, exuberance and dance!

At that point, as he was standing in the bathroom his energies reached such a high peak that they could not be contained. His desires, his needs, his goals, everything inside him was reverberating with immense intensity brought on by the combination of his emotions, his nature and years of spiritual practice. In that moment the energy released outwards. it was one of a kind, piercing every object in the house with magnificent force. It felt as if it was going to break all the lightbulbs and fry all the electronic equipment on the ground floor.

The Mystic himself was amazed at what had just happened. Partly by the immense release of energy, and partly because he wasn’t alone anymore. He was standing in a presence of another. And not just any other. A God.

There are nations out there where people create Gods on a regular basis, and there is nothing stopping anyone from creating more than 1 deity. So in practice, this can lead to having more Gods than people. This was nothing unusual in some parts of the world. But it was one thing to create a being in your mind, give it a name, characteristics, and quite another to have it stand in front of you. Invisible to the average eye, but possessing impossible to ignore presence when one was as sensitive to life as the Mystic was. It was almost as if he could see him. The presence was so strong, so vibrant. It was overwhelming. The Mystic stared into what one minute ago was empty space and was now reverberating with exactly the qualities he had envisioned so strongly. The feeling of awe flooded his body.

You’d be forgiven to think that this story will continue describing the Mystic and the newly born God traveling together. Dancing around the world, living their lives to the fullest, and making the world they oyster. Doing the seemingly impossible, reaching new heights, and flying past established limits. Having a great time and making jokes about their respective mortality and immortality.

Yes, those things did happen and when they came to an end the Mystic was not the same person he was when they started. Every day living in the presence of this God he would be reborn fresh, malleable, and every day he would become more joyful, free and wild. But this is not that story.

It was now the year 2088, just over 66 years since Jiro came about in a small bathroom in the middle of Yorkshire, England. The God was sat on a thick tree branch. One of those wide, comfortable ones, which mattered to him strictly aesthetically. Physically he still had no body of his own, so in that respect the rare find of a comfortable branch was lost on him. He would pretend to pick an apple from the tree and eat it. A smile of satisfaction would came about on his non-material body.

During his travels with the Mystic he had shaped it to be the same shape as a human body. Mostly because him and the Mystic felt that it improved the sense of comradery between them the most out of all the body forms they tried, and there had been plenty. A cat, a dog, a panther, a lion, a whale, an owl, a dragon, a fish, a frog, a flamingo. The form he was created in didn’t have a very distinct shape. It was oblong, about a metre tall. Jiro was playful in nature so he would fly around, bending and changing his form as he would spiral and whizz through the air. Very quickly he developed precise, fine-tuned control over the shape of his body.

The first few forms were copies of objects he could sense in the house. Key, mug, knife, flower. There was a golden bird in one of the paintings in the Mystic’s living room. That was Jiro’s first ‘live’ form. He liked it very much, as did the Mystic, and Jiro kept the form most of the time initially, although not before trying out a bunch of larger and more complex forms, including that of the Mystic himself.

“I don’t like that one much,”

the Mystic would joke.

Jiro, sat on the branch was now pondering his next move. With his nature powerfully unchanged, his yearning for freedom and exploration burned as bright as ever. There were still many distant lands to discover. Some wild, others less so. Some forgotten. Some were rare places of particular beauty and vibrancy, which not many could appreciate and feel to the same extent as Jiro.

Still, he had found that above all else the comradery of a fellow traveler magnified the experience the most. It transformed it, for him it became incomparable to the alternative, and to his annoyance, as he had also found in the last 6 years of traveling without the Mystic, it was irreplaceable.

As strong as his desire for freedom and exploration was, the realization that his life was not anymore as grand as in the past, was becoming an equally strong source of frustration for him. As joyful as Jiro was, his yearning for the highest peaks of experience was as strong as it once was in the Mystic.

It turns out there are many interesting places you can go and see if you are a non-physical being, It’s not just because you can fly, pass through physical barriers with ease and completely skip any queue waiting to get into a castle or a museum. The world available to you is much wider than that. It includes as an example the whole world of disembodied beings who, primarily driven by their residual desires and compulsions still roam this world, invisible to the average human eye. Some people might call them ghosts.

Jiro had heard about a whole city, of such beings which he thought could have been an exaggeration. Making use of forgotten ruins which were once used as a ground for a variety of occult practices the ghosts have established a community. This already rubbed Jiro the wrong way. The handful of occult practitioners he had encountered over the years haven't exactly been his kind of people. “Too serious,” he thought. He much preferred the company of dancers, magicians, or circus acrobats. He encountered a girl once around 8 years of age traveling with a circus group, who was very slightly able to detect Jiro’s presence. “I’ll check with her in a few decades, she could be good company,” he thought at the time.

You may or may not have wondered what had happened to the Mystic. Interestingly enough there isn't much to say. After having lived a full, satisfying life he consciously left his body at the ripe age of 92, about a year or two before he would have died otherwise. You see, some mystics have the ability to do that. They can sense what feels to them like a good time to leave, and in our Mystic’s case, he felt that he had experienced everything in life which he wanted, and at that point even if he wished to remain, he could not have lived life with the intensity he was accustomed to anymore. Not wanting to drag things out, he left with a promise to return to this world in another lifetime.

Jiro wouldn’t say that traveling was a fast process for him. Yes, the physical world provided little resistance for him but his form was still bound by other laws, as much as he desired to be completely boundless so that physical distances wouldn't pose an obstacle for him. He still had to drag his non-physical body, as graceful as he was, from an apple tree somewhere in eastern Croatia to a bunch of forgotten ruins in India.

He took the equivalent of a deep breath and started gliding towards his destination. He didn’t have much desire to stop on the way. There was no need to eat or drink, and he had no knowledge of anything he’d want to see more than this ghost town he had heard of.

After about 14 hours of what would have looked like a graceful waltz through the air, he had arrived within a mile’s radius of where he had heard this exciting specimen of a location was.

Jiro immediately felt a very strange aura the place had. Not one he had felt before during his years on earth. Jiro felt excited. He glided further in the direction of this strange sensation.

“Halt!”

A fellow non-material form appeared in front of him. Jiro bowed gracefully as was in his nature. He’d do it the way a magnificent and skilled dancer would bow after a show. Sometimes he’d bow like a dancer would bow before a show, It depended on what mood you found him in.

“Who are you!?”

muttered the ghost who had the look of a rather angry man with a large belly. Jiro presumed this was what he must have looked like before death. Not many beings could shapeshift the way he was able to. The ghost made a motion like he was sniffing Jiro.

The air around them shifted. The strange aura started to take second place to what was starting to feel like musical vibrations. Joyful, powerful, free. The feeling kept increasing in intensity.

The ghost looked puzzled but was clearly under the influence of this new mysterious phenomenon. The wariness and suspicions which were up until now written on his face have all but vanished making way for an expression of astonishment and joy.

“This is who I am,”

replied Jiro with a little nod.

“Can you tell me what this place is?”

he added.

With his expression growing ever more joyful, the ghost turned to Jiro.

“Come traveler! Let me show you! I’ll introduce you to the others.”

There was now a little musical bob to the ghost’s movements.

Jiro followed him bringing all the qualities which he was currently radiating along with him.

As they ventured into the ruins more and more ghosts started appearing. Some sooner, others later, they would all fall under Jiro’s influence. They started becoming rather friendly and playful.

“Ooh, here is the well.”

The ghost leading Jiro pointed at a rather large chasm lined with bricks. The other disembodied beings were starting to make pirouettes in mid-air, flying around the well, diving into it, and flying back out. One could get the idea that all they were missing was a non-material ghost ball to throw around. Jiro looked down into the huge well. It was so deep that you couldn’t see the bottom even though a lot of light was getting into it due to its huge diameter.

“Come play with us!”

The ghosts flying around invited Jiro.

He was as per usual more than happy to dance, to go with the flow. Jiro glided into the center of the chasm with grace greater than that of the most skilled acrobats and gymnasts. He was now flying with the ghosts taking everything in. All of them seemed to be having fun now. If someone saw this curious spectacle they would be amazed at the swiftness and playfulness of these beings. They were so numerous, and each one was livelier than the next in its own unique way. With the aura of Jiro the God of joy and exuberance in the center, they danced all day and all evening. New ghosts would join, others would leave bobbing musically. On it went.

One of the ghosts was really excited.

“Jump down!”

he said to Jiro

“We’ll catch you!”

Jiro found that very humorous. For one a ghost wouldn't be able to ‘catch’ him, he’d just go straight through, and two, gravity was of no concern to Jiro. He could glide up, down, upside down, and inside out, as he pleased.

Jiro performed a backflip and jumped.

Two of the ghosts moved towards him in order to catch him. First one to no effect, Jiro went straight through. The second one also to no effect. Jiro smiled inside in his own way. He was now falling down this rather large chasm. What was down below he wondered. He decided to keep falling.

The well turned out to be unnaturally deep. By the time he reached the bottom, there was very little light left. After an expertly graceful landing that would have made any gymnast envious, he looked around. It was very dark but he could see a small house towards one edge of the well.

“Halt!”

A small wrinkly creature was standing in front of him. Jiro had no idea who or what this creature was. He had seen many beings on his travels but none quite like this one. He repeated what he had done on the surface. The creature’s face started to show signs of ease. Jiro looked in the direction of the house. The same uneasy, strange aura he earlier sensed on the surface was emanating from deep inside it. The creature’s eyes were now enlarged with surprise as its face slowly started turning from being at ease to showing vibrancy and life.

Jiro was still in his human-shaped form. The creature tried to grab him by the hand but failed to make any contact and its own hand went straight through.

“Come, come!”

Now with a fully joyous expression, the creature invited Jiro towards the house. The door opened as if pushed by the wind as they got close to it. They went in.

The inside was rather dark looking but reasonably cozy with some candlelight and a fireplace. There was a large wooden table and a tall woman was standing behind one of the chairs with her back for the most part facing towards Jiro and the creature.

“Who are you?”

she asked, and seemed a little cold, irritated.

With one small shift of his being, Jiro made the air vibrate in such a way that if you were there you would have felt like you were at the best party you’ve ever been to. The way the air would have felt, its quality would have been like music itself, touching every cell of your body. Even those grumpy ones which don’t normally move around too much. The experience would have been one of a kind.

“My slaves..”

she muttered.

“The products of MY creation!”

she was visibly losing her temper at a very rapid rate.

“WHAT HAVE YOU DONE!!!”

Black, dead, terrifying serpent-like eyes were now staring deep into Jiro. Their blackness was deeper than anything Jiro had seen. Voids, seemingly empty at first glance yet when staring into them one would start becoming flooded with fear. Whatever the being in front of him was, it tapped into pure evil, it was more than predator, more than destructor. He looked into those eyes and they touched him deeply. At a level that he didn’t even know existed.

Jiro was the epitome of the joyful, happy, exuberant qualities assigned to him at birth. He had always radiated them to one level or another. Now, for the first time in his short time in this world, he began to feel those qualities being disturbed, interrupted. Another force was now reshaping his being to no longer be the carefree dancing God he’d always been. To be deconstructed, and perhaps become part of this strange aura he felt. Or to be simply destroyed. He had never wondered about that before, it wasn't in his nature to wonder a thing like that. Now it seemed like a real possibility.

The being in front of him enlarged its glowing eyes. Its determination to destroy Jiro was the only thing he’d ever felt which could match in intensity his own desire for freedom. It would have been difficult, maybe even impossible to run. Fighting this thing also seemed out of the question. Whatever he’d be able to do to it would be the equivalent of a small pick and it would only drain him from energy hastening his own destruction. No matter, neither of those things were what he wanted to do anyway.

“This might be it,” Jiro thought. His entire life he had taken steps towards joy, towards ecstasy, freedom. He felt his time was running out and decided to take one more step towards that, a large one, one which would be remembered.

As his adversary’s eyes kept enlarging, as he could feel its hatred in the air, with himself being suffocated second by second, soon to be departed from this world, he focused everything he had left, everything he was made of back in that tiny bathroom by the man who became his best friend. Jiro intensified his energies best he could, sparing nothing. With this focus and intensity, he chose to change his form one last time. Not into a bird, or a human, nothing silly to make the Mystic laugh either. He chose to spread himself as wide as it was possible, to become part of everything which was around him, everything above ground, the ghost settlement, all the fields and forests around it. To become part of the animals, plants, the very air and water which sustained these lands. Internally he performed one last pirouette.

20 years later a barn owl was sitting on a tree branch. It wasn't a particularly thick or comfortable branch but it seemed the owl was very intrigued by what was going on beside it, entranced even you might say. A young boy maybe around 16 years of age was sitting cross-legged by the tree, chanting with great focus. He’d kept this up for a very long time, it may have been hours. Drops of sweat started to appear on his forehead. He kept up the chanting retaining the focus and intensity. About half an hour had passed. The owl still there had started moving in a very peculiar way. It was as if it was playing with a hula hoop. Its hips slowly but visibly began to rotate. With a very unfazed look on its face, it continued the motion, very slowly increasing the size of the circles it was performing. The boy finished the chant yet again, but this time instead of repeating it, he opened his eyes, the look of focus changing into one of joy. With his mouth wide open he exclaimed.

“You’re here!”

In front of him was a small golden bird.