The evening sun slanted through the golden pines that lined the path behind Pine Crest School, where Ishaan Sharma often wandered after classes. The leaves rustled in a familiar way, whispering secrets of boyhood afternoons, half-sketched dreams, and the echo of Myra’s laughter when she’d once walked beside him there.
It had been years since that chapter—The Dream Realization—closed with the breathless hush of the cosmos pressing down on Ishaan’s heart, whispering a purpose too vast to contain within earthly boundaries.
Now, under the subdued glow of a rising moon, he sat quietly beside a small pond near the school’s old library, a spot once frequented by Gagan and him. The pond was overgrown, the water lilies curled with age, but the silence still held that same haunting calm. A perfect place for old memories to rise unbidden.
“You always dive too deep,” Myra had once teased, poking his arm as he stared too long at an obscure Vedic manuscript. “One day you’ll get lost in those depths and forget to come back.”
But he had smiled, his eyes dancing with an invisible light. “Maybe that’s where the real truth lies—in the places most are too hurried to enter.”
That was the nature of Ishaan’s study—not just of books, but of the soul of things. He didn’t study about the stars, he entered them; he didn’t read about consciousness, he listened to its breath between words.
Even now, his fingers still carried the warmth of old pages, and his heart pulsed with a reverence most people reserved for temples.
The world, however, doesn’t always understand reverence.
His scores were good—solid—but not meteoric like Vinod’s. When applications opened for Baikuntha Vidya Mahavidyalaya, a cosmic-tier university on a lush exoplanet, Ishaan’s name was never whispered in the hallways of probability.
Not because he lacked potential, but because his kind of brilliance didn’t scream; it murmured, it bloomed slowly like an ancient tree, rooted deep, unnoticed by those looking for shooting stars.
Instead, Vinod got in. Gagan had cheered, not knowing Ishaan had also applied in secret.
Ranjana noticed, though.
She always did.
“You’re not hurt because you weren’t selected,” she said, offering him a steaming cup of tulsi chai one evening. “You’re hurt because you respected the material too much. And the world only respects speed, not depth.”
Ishaan half-smiled. “I studied with my heart and soul, not just my brain. I honored every word as if it carried life. Maybe that made me too slow to shine.”
“No,” she said softly, “It made you eternal. There’s a difference.”
Months later, just as Ishaan had accepted that perhaps his journey would follow a quieter trail, a silver-hued envelope arrived in the mail—marked with the insignia of a crescent moon cradling a lotus:
Chandra Vidya Vishwa — The Moon’s First Interstellar University
He sat frozen on the edge of his bed, the letter shaking in his hands.
Myra’s name flashed in his mind like a lighthouse through fog.
She would’ve known this was coming.
She always did.
He arrived on the Moon not with fanfare, but with wide eyes and a suitcase full of hand-written notes, crystals Gagan had gifted him for “good vibes,” and a photo of Pine Crest’s old classroom—Mr. Dutt scribbling metaphysics on the blackboard while pretending not to care that no one understood.
As he stepped onto the campus dome, his breath caught.
This wasn’t Earth.
And yet, it was.
Only more.
Silver gardens floated in airless pockets, their vines curling around invisible supports. Classrooms shifted dimensions with lessons—one moment an amphitheater, the next, a floating disc above Saturn’s rings.
Cultures from across galaxies mingled freely: luminous beings from Orion who spoke in pulses of color, meditative monks from Venus who had no mouths but sang directly into the soul, and even playful time-surfers from the Andromedan fringe who claimed to live every moment backwards.
But none of this overwhelmed Ishaan.
It called to him.
Because here, depth wasn’t hidden.
Here, soul was not secondary.
On his third night, while walking alone near the anti-gravity observatory, Ishaan found a corridor marked only by a single character: ॐ.
He followed it, his feet pulled by something both ancient and futuristic.
Inside sat an elderly woman—her silver hair braided with stardust, her eyes ageless. She wore a robe that shimmered like night water, and her presence felt eerily familiar.
“Ishaan Sharma,” she said without looking. “You’ve arrived late, but right on time.”
He blinked. “I don’t understand.”
“Few do at first.” She turned to him now, her eyes smiling. “You were meant for Baikuntha, yes. But Baikuntha is for the brain. Here—Chandra Vidya—is for those who carry the weight of galaxies in their heart.”
He hesitated. “Who are you?”
She smiled. “I am the echo of your Guru, the whisper of every moment you listened instead of speaking. I am the reminder that your journey never depended on outer recognition.”
He felt the space inside him shiver, expand.
She motioned to a portal behind her. “Inside is your first real test. It is not written, and it cannot be solved. You will only pass by being what you’ve always been—yourself.”
The portal shimmered.
He stepped in.
Suddenly, he was back in Pine Crest.
Classroom 4B.
Gagan was waving a paper. “Ishaan, I aced it! Vinod says he hacked the test.”
Mr. Dutt raised an eyebrow. “Hacked the universe, more like.”
Anjali turned, whispering to Myra, who looked straight at Ishaan.
And in that look, it all returned—
The dream,
The realization,
The Guru.
He remembered that she was not just his first love or his spiritual compass—she was his mirror, his haunting, his call toward awakening.
He walked slowly toward her.
“Was this all… real?” he asked, his voice barely above breath.
She tilted her head. “Does it matter? If the dream brings you closer to truth than waking life, isn’t that the realest thing of all?”
His eyes stung. He hadn’t realized how deeply he had missed her presence.
“You became my Guru.”
She smiled. “And you… became your own.”
The scene shimmered.
He came to on a marble bench inside the observatory, the stars above sharper than ever.
The elder was gone.
But in her place, a crystal pendant lay glowing—a perfect balance of moonstone and obsidian.
Attached was a note:
“The departure is not from Earth, but from illusions. The journey is not to the stars, but through the soul.”
Ishaan clutched the pendant tightly, breathing in its silent wisdom.
Back in his quarters, Gagan had just called through the interstellar line.
“Bro! You’re literally on the Moon! Don’t forget us Earthlings, haan?”
Ishaan chuckled, feeling grounded by the mischief in Gagan’s voice.
“Never. You’re still my dumbest connection to sanity.”
“Vinod said you’d probably meditate your way into a blackhole.”
“I probably will,” Ishaan replied, laughing softly, “and come out on the other side with answers no one asked for.”
“Sounds like you.”
That night, before sleeping, he opened his old diary.
The one Myra had once doodled in.
A dried petal from their favorite Bodhi tree slipped out.
He placed it carefully inside his new textbook—Consciousness and Celestial Beings.
Because some wisdom must travel with you.
Across planets.
Across time.
Across memory.
And so began Ishaan’s truest journey—not away from Earth, but deeper into the galaxies of his own spirit.
Every departure, after all, is also a return—to something we forgot we were always seeking.
And as the Moon cradled him in her luminous silence, Ishaan smiled.
Not because he had all the answers.
But because he finally knew what questions truly mattered.
Demystifying Kundalini 