A shelter in the snow

At Himavant

The unknown effort, as well as the time lapse between their dive into the Ganges, and their arrival at Himavant had left both Shankara and Burak exhausted. The fruit of the skies invigorated them, and at the same time, made them drowsy as well. They had just rested their backs on the rock by the side of the blue Ganges, that they dozed off to the realms of sleep, to be woken-up only in the evening, by the distant tinkling of bells, as if from the small tinklets tied on the neck of the cows.

Cows? There would be no cows here; maybe just the yaks. They would use the Yaks as the cows, maybe.

The sun was setting over the mountains behind the Ganges. It was just these folds of the earth everywhere around them. Visible in layers over layers, towering over one another. Burak turned around to Shankara.

‘There must be some humans there as well.’

‘Yes, let us see. We need to move and find a shelter soon, or the night would kill us of its cold even if the wild animals don’t hunt us.’ Shankara answered.

Both got up and turned around to the sounds. The tinkling was not from the vicinity, but from a far off place. As they moved on, the sounds got a tad louder each moment. These were not the tinklets on the necks of the cows, but actually the bells. They kept moving to the direction of the sound, until, in the midway, the sound just stopped all of a sudden. Among the mountains, they weren’t even sure, from which direction the sound came, now they were left entirely clueless.

‘ Let us just walk straight. Let us hope we reach somewhere.’ Shankara said with a sigh.

They walked ahead on the snowy track as it started getting darker. It would be night in another hour. As they walked, they hit a summit and saw a valley down the peak. Burak turned around to look at the expanse around him. The sky was crisp and the air was fresh. A sight suddenly caught Burak’s eyes. A little down the peak, there was a wooden structure. He quickly turned to Shankara, who faced onto the other direction, and patted his back. As Shankara turned around, Burak pointed his finger towards the building. Shankara’s eyes widened for a moment, and then he spontaneously fell on his knees in prostration towards the structure. As Burak looked ahead, he saw a man appear on the way to the structure, and as Shankara went down in prostration, the man faced the building and went into a sajdah. Shankara, got up and pulled Burak’s arm to take him ahead, as Burak watched the man in green robes go down into sajdah again. By all means he was into the namaz, except that he faced opposite to the quiblah.

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?