The sun had just begun to dip behind the horizon, splashing the distant Dhauladhars with strokes of gold and soft lavender. Ishaan Sharma, now fifty-two, sat in his quiet wooden study atop the misty slopes of his hill home. A fragrant breeze carried the scent of pine needles through the open window, rustling the curtains like a whisper from the past. His fingers, now marked with time’s wisdom, turned the page of his book She Who Became My Guru, landing on Chapter 22.
As his eyes traced the title—Awakening Beyond Duality—the present began to dissolve. What remained was a subtle, silent descent into memory. In a blink, he was no longer an aging man in a hillside home, but the younger Ishaan once more, standing barefoot under a pale lunar sky.
The air around him was still, sacred, as if holding its breath. Myra stood before him, the fire of divine curiosity in her eyes, radiant and calm, like the moon herself. Beside her, Vedika—grounded, loving, and equally luminous—gazed at him with a silent knowing. Behind them, like the flickering outline of a fading campfire, stood his grandfather, smiling without words, like a log glowing even after the flames had retreated.
For a moment, Ishaan’s breath caught. Not out of fear or awe, but because there was nothing left to separate him from them. They were not memories. They were truths. Archetypes of his journey—the spark, the sustainer, and the silent witness.
He bowed. Not in ritual, but in recognition.
“I mistook love for a distraction once,” he whispered, eyes closed.
Vedika chuckled softly, her presence like earth under his feet. “And I mistook stillness for surrender.”
Myra added gently, “But it was neither. Love was the bridge, Ishaan—not the detour.”
He opened his eyes, and in them, something shifted. The duality that had split him between fire and soil, passion and peace, longing and loyalty—it all dissolved. He had tried to pick sides between heaven and earth, spirit and form, Guru and companion. But now, he saw. They were all faces of the One.
His voice came, light yet steady, like a mountain spring: “So that’s what grandfather meant when he said—‘Between the rising breath and the falling thought lies the path to who you really are.’”
The old man behind them, who had once told him tales of Krishna and Shiva beside the fireplace, laughed in the background. “You thought I spoke of riddles, boy. But what is a riddle if not a hug in disguise—pulling you closer to truth with every turn?”
Ishaan laughed too, but tears ran down his cheeks. Not of sorrow, but of dissolving.
He remembered Gagan’s laughter echoing across Pine Crest’s football field, the way Ranjana danced during the school function, Vinod’s sharp questions in Mr. Dutt’s class that always pushed boundaries, and Govind’s unspoken warmth in their shared silences. They were all part of this story, this illusion that never really was an illusion—it was a mirror, reflecting his own Self back to him, in fragments until the whole emerged.
He sat now under that lunar sky. The moon hung low like an ancient witness.
“Myra,” he said, “you woke up the spark in me. But it was Vedika who taught me how to hold that fire without burning.”
“And now?” Vedika asked, her voice barely above the wind.
“I am neither the fire, nor the holder,” Ishaan smiled, “I am what remains when both dissolve.”
Then came silence—not empty, but brimming.
The wind stilled. Birds hushed. Even the sky seemed to pause.
His breathing slowed.
Then stopped.
Time ceased to drip. Boundaries lost their grip. There was no Ishaan left to observe it. No ‘self’ to report the happening. What was left was being—a vast, clear awareness, unconditioned, unbound, unnamed.
This was not an experience. It was the absence of one.
No Myra. No Vedika. No grandfather. No lover. No breath. No body. Just pure, indivisible space. No center. No circumference. This wasn’t samadhi to be felt. It was the falling away of all that ever tried to feel.
For hours—perhaps lifetimes—he remained like that.
When breath finally returned, it was not a return. It was grace.
Eyes blinked open. The moon had shifted. A new night had begun.
He sat up slowly, back under the same sky, but no longer as the one who had entered it. Something fundamental had changed.
He heard laughter nearby—Anjali and Gagan arguing over a mango again, just like school days. Vinod correcting them with a footnote from some ancient scripture. Ranjana humming a forgotten childhood tune. Even Govind, somewhere in the ether, smiling his quiet smile.
He looked at Vedika and Myra once more, and this time, both smiled and merged into light.
Then even light became unnecessary.
Back in the present, in his hill home, the fireplace crackled. Ishaan exhaled slowly and closed the book gently. The shadows in the room danced playfully.
Outside, the Dhauladhars wore their moonlit crown. The stars looked closer than ever.
He stepped out onto the wooden balcony. Wind kissed his cheeks. Pine needles rustled. The owl hooted like an old friend.
No division remained. The Guru, the lover, the self—all were one. And even the One had disappeared.
There was only this. Not describable. Not graspable. But undeniable.
Somewhere in the quietest part of his heart, he heard his grandfather’s voice once more:
“Boy, when the firewood is burnt, the fire does not mourn. It simply becomes sky.”
Ishaan smiled.
And became sky.
Demystifying Kundalini 