User blog comment:DYBAD/Character Sheet/@comment-25135454-20171011120908/@comment-25135454-20171023064705

 First of all, let me make one thing clear: you  are  giving me very interesting ideas. Sometimes, when discussing my works, people get the impression that they're not giving me any ideas just because I'm answer their every doubt and suggestion. But I'm always learning and taking ideas to heart. It's wonderful being an author of your own world, isn't it? I mean... I always think "oh, I would've done that differently!" when I'm reading/watching something, but that always stops there. But on my world? I can do anything :3

I must be very careful on answering these questions because I don't have all the study needed to answer it properly, so I can only answer within the limits of my study until now. So, while prophets before Jesus had made revelations in the past, they can't really compare. One thing is receiving a message from a king by his messenger and another thing is receiving his message directly through him. The Bible was written by several divinely-inspired authors over a 600 to 1600 years long period. "Divinely inspired" doesn't mean taking everything it's written there at face value because that would be very, very careless: being written over such a long period, by so many authors... One has to be very wise while reading it. While some parts are exactly or almost exactly written as it happened, others are written as symbolical or allegorical stories. I can't tell exactly which parts, but a good guideline is that the newer books on it are more accurate to reality, while the older ones are the symbolical and allegorical ones. Other point to note is that the discussion over what is canon and what is not exists to this day, being present practically since it's first compilations. This means that even when Jesus was alive, there were discussions over which books would be part of the Torah (and that's kinda funny for me...). Like you, I was once conflicted over how much of the Bible was true and how much wasn't. Unfortunately, I can't give you the same answer that I had, because I forgot the name of the professor that did the research. To have an accurate view of the situation, we must never forget the difficulties regarding the records of those times: how many survived to these days, how illiterate were the people of those times, how few they were and how communication was slow and ineffective. Considering all that, the fact that the life, death and ressurrection of Jesus was told on over 500 records written by different people, of different languages and places, with a unsettling amount of similarity on their writing gave those events an amount of credibility well within the limits of possibility. The same professor also compared that number to the number of records of Aristotle, that were about 30. While this research doesn't give credibility to the Bible as a whole, it gives it to one of it's most important (and controversial) parts.

We can never satisfy ourselves with the "In Mysterious Ways" excuse. We have to use Reason as much as we can, but we can't believe on Reason alone. Faith is also necessary.

Well... Logic dictates that we, both personally and humanity as a whole, are going down on a neverending spiral of sadness and suffering. Such spiral getting deeper and deeper thanks to evil. And it should continue that way forever. But it will not. It has been revealed that this spiral of sadness and suffering will have an end and that evil will be defeated. That's so unbelievable that I don't get surprised on how many people can't believe it, given all the evidence that the world is forever doomed. That gives hope to us, and hope is perhaps one of the most important things to have on life. And there is more than that: even now, when we are trapped in the spiral of sadness and suffering, we are gifted many moments of happiness to relieve us of the weight of life, all hinting to the happiness that will come after.

Souls are the only thing in the entire universe that can't be created through the Ether, because they come solely from the Endless Soul of the Great Guardian. In a way, the universe is summed up on two things: Ether and souls. So the First Soul can't create souls. The Endless Soul is the only soul that can fragment itself without losing it's very identity precisely because it's endless. The First Soul, as powerful as it is, is ultimately just another fragment that came from the Endless Soul. It can't fragment himself anymore. If the First Soul seeded his soul to one of his creations, he would end up losing his soul and his powers... And becoming soulless with all the despair that comes with it.

The Great Travel is, in short, the purpose of the Universe. The Great Guardian creates the universe, then creates life to experience it and gifts it with fragments of his Endless Soul so they are given unparalleled potential to experience it all and then, ultimately, reunites with everyone of them. All their lives and memories of the Universe reunited to, maybe, create a second Universe, better than the first? I'm still not sure on this part...

Well, while the First Soul created them... He doesn't view himself as their god or master, but rather as a father. He claims no jurisdiction over them because he knows he only created them through the Ethereal Arts, that were only possible to him because he had a soul that came from the Great Guardian himself. So his soul is not really his. It came from the Great Guardian, and if the Great Guardian wills it, his soul will leave him and return to the Endless Soul and he will not practice the Ethereal Arts ever again. So he doesn't actually have any power, because all his power is essentially borrowed from the Great Guardian. While the Great Guardian would never take a soul back that way after giving it because of free will, just knowing that he could do so puts everything in an entirely different perspective for the First Soul. To him, he is a sub-creator, while the real and only creator is GG himself.

There are limits that even the First Soul, with all his power, cannot surpass. He could give them happiness and fulfillment like no other, but he would never give them souls. They would never know the self-realization that comes from practicing the Ethereal Arts and would always rely on the First Soul to do everything. The First Soul could open a portal and guide them through the Road, protecting them from all the dangers and letting them see it all, but all of them would then stop at the Paradise and stay there forever, unable to take the final step. All of them but the First Soul.

He could give them happiness, but couldn't give them infinite happiness. Infinite happiness isn't being happy for all eternity. It is something else entirely, in such a way that calling it "infinite happiness" is inaccurate. A new term should be coined to it. It's something loosely defined as being beyond all our imagination and expectation.

The First Soul doesn't blindly follow the Great Guardian. If the Great Guardian weren't there right when he awakened, who knows what he could have done given no instruction? Their relationship was not like a master and a servant, but rather as a teacher and a student. The First Soul questioned many points during their walks throughout the worlds... But the main difference in this relationship was that his teacher was omniscient, so his answers were perfect. In front of a perfect answer, a perfectly rational being (like the First Soul was, thanks to his Orb of Intelligence) would never disagree. That's why the First Soul follows the Great Guardian, but it's not a following based on blind obedience, but on clarification and true understanding.

Well, the Great Guardian does intervene. And nobody, even the First Soul, know how or when he does it. He's the master at it. The universe would be alot... Darker... If he didn't intervene. When it becomes too evident, people call it good luck. Imagine a pedestrian walking distracted that, for a reason he doesn't know, suddenly stops and a bus passes right in front of his nose. Maybe the reason came from the Great Guardian right? Evident, then the pedestrian would call it good luck. But, sometimes, the Great Guardian is way more discreet: maybe he made the snow fall more heavily last night, delaying the pedestrian at the door enough time for the bus to pass ten meters ahead of him. He would never know he was "lucky" to spend more time opening the door. He intervenes like this on events beyond counting. It's not rare and he's very active this way.

Wars are really abominable. And to the First Soul, it's no different. When he saw a war for the first time, he was terrified. Desperate. He felt he needed to stop it but, if he did it, what would be the consequences? With his power, he could stop every war and every crime on all space and time and they would end up just not getting practiced at all. People would give up doing them because it would be useless. But, should he rob people of the opportunity of solving problems on their own? I think that is the only way they learn. Buy maybe you are right: maybe the First Soul just needs to put on a limit like "no wars", and let them do everything else. But wouldn't one thing lead to another? If it's in his power to stop everything, isn't it his responsability to stop everything?

Doesn't some people on Selforge City know suffering? The daughters that were born on Selforge City don't know of it. But Lawrence and all the other women that came from other worlds know suffering, right? You know, if Selforge City ever existed on the Great Travel, it would be closer to the Great World than any world of the Road :D

