Mountains of the East!

With Shankara at Rishikesh

They sat on the stairs at the ghat of Ganga at Paramarth Niketan, overlooking the ancient Statue of Shiva as it sat on the island in the middle of swiftly flowing Ganga.

“She starts from his locks, and yet years back she devoured him in her tides.” Shankara told Burak, pointing to the Ganga.

He then shifted his gaze at the starry sky above him. “That is the Orion – from where it all started.” He spoke t6o Burak.

“What all?” Burak asked, confused.

“All this around you, whatever you have seen.” Shankara answered.

“I don’t understand.” Burak said.

“The very life that we see now.”  Shankara answered.

“In times immemorial, before the prehistoric, before any human being ever roamed on the face of the earth, there was a cosmic battle. It occurred in the belt of the Hunter as we see it from here.” Shankara pointed towards the Orion. “There lies a higher world there to which we all belong –where we all go after our life – to be born again. That is our seed.”

“Ages back, when ice covered the earth; the vanquished of the war were exiled from the Orion to find their own world. The sages who protected them lived across the skies – headed by the seven most gracious ones. The vanquished approached those sages with a request for refuge. The sages however had another purpose to fulfill. They gave refuge, but on condition that they would leave in two years for the earth. The sages taught them the art of travelling at a speed higher than that of the light – with the speed of mind.

After two years the sages set them off for their new abode. When they reached here, they mixed up with the native life forms to acqire a body, as they were originally, mind bon, as all the cosmic beings. They formed a new species – Homo sapiens.

Some of them went to a higher world and built civilization higher than Orion.  

The seven sages are still our guardian angels who watch us from that dark space between the seven stars. The ones who control the Orion still look for victory and glory – both on earth and the higher planet. They are all mind – bodied except the beings of the earth, therefore their realm of control is mind and the senses. They repeatedly aim at controlling the human minds. That is their battleground.”

“The almighty from whose golden egg everything develops and who holds the world in the balance of his mind intervenes in this game of mind every now and then and enters the realms of the mind to balance out the opposing side whenever one side becomes heavy. The cosmic play continues in many millions of such creations all the time. We think about right and wrong, good and evil; but in reality none of this exists – it is just opposing side of the axis – which has to exist for the very existence of the other side. We are just the pawns in this game of dice, where the turn of the dice decides how much we would move – the only difference is that we have a freedom in deciding the speed of our movement and how high we would jump.”

“Whatever you say seems to make sense.” Burak  said.” But somehow, the brain tells me not to believe in it.”

Shankara smiled, “you have travelled all your life alone, haven’t you?” He asked.

Burak nodded.

“Yes.” He remarked. “It all ended in Mecca.”

“You saw me there?” Shankara asked.

Burak exhibited a sense of mild shock, more than he actually felt there. How does he know?

“You saw many other people there, isn’t it?” Shankara continued. “You were even instructed to go to the eastern mountains.”

Burak nodded silently.

“Look to the north Burak.” Shankara pointed to the snow covered peaks on the horizon. As Burak turned to have a look, Shankara completed his sentence. “Those are the mountains that you were ordained for.”

Burak took a deep sigh. He raised up from the ghat where he sat.  The water of the Ganges made a sweet music in the background. He looked towards the majestic mountains on the north  and their snow covered peaks. He never thought that the fate would take him this far. He looked back. He was talking to a kafir priest. He did not know what was going on, but there was something that was inviting him to the wilderness beyond Rishikesh. Was the seer to be his guide in this journey?