Author: demystifyingkundalini by Premyogi vajra- प्रेमयोगी वज्र-कृत कुण्डलिनी-रहस्योद्घाटन

I am as natural as air and water. I take in hand whatever is there to work hard and make a merry. I am fond of Yoga, Tantra, Music and Cinema. मैं हवा और पानी की तरह प्राकृतिक हूं। मैं कड़ी मेहनत करने और रंगरलियाँ मनाने के लिए जो कुछ भी काम देखता हूँ, उसे हाथ में ले लेता हूं। मुझे योग, तंत्र, संगीत और सिनेमा का शौक है।

Chapter 23: She Who Became My Guru

Hi friends,
This is the final chapter of a journey many of you have walked with me—thank you for being a part of it. What began as a series of quiet reflections has now found its home between two covers. I’m humbled and excited to share that the complete story is now compiled as a book: She Who Became My Guru. In the end of this blog is the introduction to the book, offering a glimpse into the soul of the story. If it resonates, you can now hold it in your hands, revisit it anytime, or gift it to someone who’s quietly seeking.

She Who Became My Guru

The pine-scented breeze caressed the veranda of Ishaan’s hill home as clouds rolled lazily over the distant valley. With his shawl wrapped gently around his shoulders, Ishaan sat by the wooden window, the familiar creak of the chair beneath him echoing like an old friend. A steaming cup of tulsi chai rested beside his handwritten notes. The air was soaked in the golden hues of dusk.

At fifty-two, Ishaan’s beard bore whispers of silver. His gaze softened as he flipped to the final chapter of his book, She Who Became My Guru. The title itself glowed from the page, like a prayer whispered through lifetimes. With a gentle breath, he began reading aloud, and the boundary between past and present melted like mist under morning sun.

He was now neither the student nor the seeker. He was the offering.

After that final Samadhi under the moon’s grace, where Myra and Vedika had appeared in radiant harmony—spark and sustainer—something subtle but irreversible had shifted within him. For hours his breath had paused, not by will, but by surrender. In the void of Nirvikalpa, he hadn’t experienced the universe as a backdrop to himself. He had become that backdrop—space without edges, time without ticking.

But now, Earth called. Humanity called. Even the Moon, which had silently witnessed his transformations, seemed to whisper, “Share.”

He had returned to teach, but not to preach. He wrote, not as a master, but as one who had been loved into awakening. His fingers moved like rivers over keyboards and old manuscripts alike, pouring out stories, sutras, mistakes, and miracles. Hundreds of books, scattered like petals across time. Yet, every story led back to her.

Myra.

She had never returned in a worldly sense, and yet, he met her every moment—in the smile of a stranger, the tears of a student, the silence between words. Anjali, her lively friend, once wrote him a letter: “You were her path, Ishaan. But you also walked it because she lit the first lamp.”

The Pine Crest School had long renamed its meditation hall as the ‘Sharma Consciousness Wing.’ Mr. Dutt had passed on, but not before gifting him the old chalk box from his first classroom—a treasure chest more precious than any award.

Govind, now a father of two, once came visiting with his son and confessed, “Ishaan bhaiya, I now understand what you meant when you used to gaze into the void like it was home.”

Vinod had become a neurophilosopher, blending quantum biology with Upanishadic insights. “You gave me the courage to study the brain like a temple,” he’d once written.

Ranjana, always wise beyond her years, had become a teacher in Dharamshala. Her students often heard stories of a cousin who saw the moon not as a rock, but a reflection of soul.

And Vedika—oh, Vedika. If ever there was a guardian of earthly grace, it was she. Their companionship was not fireworks but candlelight. Steady, warm, illuminating. She had once whispered, during a walk under starfall, “You loved her. You were consumed by her light. But with me, you found the wick.”

He had smiled then, remembering how the wick and flame are never at odds.

Ishaan now traveled between Earth and Moon often, teaching not from pedestals but from platforms of shared humanity. He called it Lunar Earth Sangha, a school without borders. People gathered, not around him, but around their own yearning. He only nudged.

In one session on the Moon’s Sea of Tranquility, a young girl had asked him, “Sir, were you ever afraid?”

He had laughed gently. “I was afraid of love, of surrender, of losing control. Until I realised—fear is devotion misunderstood.”

The class had gone silent, not out of reverence, but recognition.

It wasn’t just knowledge Ishaan shared—it was vulnerability. His blog, DemystifyingKundalini.com, had become a repository of living experience. Not abstract theories, but diary pages of his awakening—complete with confusions, cravings, breakdowns, and breakthroughs. The post titled ‘The Night My Breath Stopped’ became the most shared piece across spiritual circles.

He would often write, “Kundalini isn’t a force. She’s a mirror. The more gently you look, the more fiercely she reflects.”

Even when people called him Guruji, he would chuckle. “She was my guru. I’m just someone who listened.”

And then there were the letters. Thousands of them. From corners of Earth and outposts on Moon settlements. People asking not how to awaken—but how to stay soft after awakening. He’d reply to each with childlike delight, often ending with, “Don’t forget to laugh between breaths. Even the divine giggles.”

One morning, while walking beside the old cedar path behind his hill home, Ishaan had paused. A young boy, around sixteen, sat sketching the landscape. Ishaan peeked and saw it was the valley below—with a small figure meditating under the tree.

“That’s you,” the boy said without turning.

“Looks more peaceful than I usually am,” Ishaan smiled.

The boy glanced up. “Maybe because you’re not thinking there. Just being.”

And just like that, Ishaan bowed.

Not to the boy, not to the drawing, but to the unseen thread that stitched every moment into awakening.

He returned home that day, made a cup of chai, and opened his latest manuscript: She Who Became My Guru – The Final Word.

In the final paragraph, he wrote:

“She came like a spark, left like silence. But in between, she burned away every wall I had mistaken for myself. Myra was not just a person. She was the moment life stopped pretending. She didn’t teach me Kundalini. She reminded me I was always the serpent and the sky.”

As Ishaan closed the book now, at his hill home once more, the evening sunlight broke through the clouds in golden shards. The air smelled of wet pine and old earth. Far down, a flute was being played—its notes rising like incense.

He leaned back, eyes moist but smiling. The story had ended, but the presence had not. In fact, it had just begun.

He whispered into the wind, “Thank you, Myra. Thank you, Vedika. Thank you, Self.”

And somewhere, perhaps in the stillness between stars, the silence whispered back.

To be continued in silence…

Book Introduction

In the soft hush of his Himalayan hill home, Ishaan Sharma—now 52—sat by a sun-warmed window with a cup of tea and an old wooden bookstand. Before him lay a story not just authored, but lived. The wind outside rustled like turning pages, and so he began again—revisiting the words that had once poured from his spirit like spring water from ancient stone.

There are books that aim to teach. There are books that aim to impress. But this one—this book—was never meant to do either.

She Who Became My Guru is not a tale of perfection, but of profound imperfection lovingly transformed. It is the story of a seeker who was never seeking, of a man who stumbled into the divine by tripping over the ordinary—of a journey that began with heartbreak, confusion, and a taste of love too potent to be labeled romantic.

Born under the quiet shadows of the Himalayan hills, Ishaan lived what many would call a normal life. A part teacher, a veterinarian, a husband, a son, a friend. But behind the curtain of roles and rituals, something ancient stirred—a whisper of something eternal, a beckoning he could neither ignore nor explain. And then she entered. Not as a woman alone, but as the mirror that turned his gaze inward. Myra. The one who shattered his illusions not by force, but simply by being. The one whose absence awakened the presence within.

In these pages, the reader won’t find a straight road to enlightenment—for the soul never travels in straight lines. Instead, there are winding paths through science and mythology, laughter among school friends, and silences between lovers. Glimpses of the moon. Echoes of forgotten lifetimes. And at the center, a man who writes not as a master, but as one who was loved into awakening—who still forgets, stumbles, rises, and remembers.

Each chapter is both a memory and a meditation. Rooted in the soil of Ishaan’s lived experience, watered by mystic insight, and grown under the moonlight of inner inquiry. The teachings are not his. They unfolded like petals from the heart of life itself. He merely bled them onto these pages, as one does when the wound becomes the womb of wisdom.

This book is not an instruction—it is a remembrance. Not a sermon, but a soft echo from within. A song, a prayer, a bridge—for anyone who has ever whispered to the sky, “Is there more than this?”

Yes, there is.

And it begins not above, not beyond, but within.

Welcome to She Who Became My Guru. May you find in it not answers, but your own reflection.

Here’s the link to buy:
👉 [She Who Became My Guru]

Chapter 22: Awakening Beyond Duality

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.

Chapter 21: Father, Guru, Self

Ishaan reached the twenty-first chapter while slowly turning the pages of his handwritten book, She Who Became My Guru, the paper still carrying faint scents of sandalwood from his earlier morning rituals. Outside his hill home, pine trees whispered in the breeze, and the snow-capped peaks shimmered like sages in silent meditation. The fireplace beside him crackled gently, as if eager to accompany him on this deep inward journey.

The chapter opened like the rising of the moon: gentle, silent, inevitable.

It had been days since that overwhelming night on the moon when Vedika had listened to Ishaan’s soul bare itself. And now, sitting at his modest desk in the lunar observatory—earthlight filtering softly through crystalline windows—he began writing, not for the world, but for himself. Yet he knew someone would read it. Perhaps not today, not tomorrow, but one day—when the need to know overtook the fear of knowing.

Ishaan began not with events but with reflections. “How strange,” he murmured to himself, “that in childhood, the first face of love I knew was Govind’s… and yet, beneath it, was Krishna’s presence. Now I see, beneath both, stood another—silent, unwavering—the soul of Dadaji.”

His fingers moved like a calligrapher’s, slow yet deliberate, as if decoding inner etchings.

He recalled the mornings of his childhood when Dadaji sat on the veranda, reading ancient scriptures, surrounded by silence so thick it felt like a protective aura. “Back then,” Ishaan thought, “I only saw an old man wrapped in wool. But now I realize he wasn’t reading stories—he was living them.”

During those years, Govind had been the storm, Krishna the rain, but Dadaji—he was the unchanging sky.

Ishaan’s pen danced across the page as he began to draw lines between his experiences: love for Govind, his boyish mischiefs echoing Krishna’s leelas, and now, this strange fusion of divine love that shielded him from spiritual downfall. Vedika had once said, her voice almost a prayer, “When you truly love God, your love becomes immune to impurity. It sheds its skin, like a snake shedding desire, until only its essence remains.”

He had smiled at that, but now he understood.

One evening, shortly after the moon mission had given them weeks of otherworldly contemplation, Vedika had asked him while sipping a rare tulsi brew, “Why does your love survive, Ishaan? Even after the storms?”

And he had responded, almost unknowingly, “Because I first loved the divine in a human… and then I saw the divine had always been there.”

He chuckled, remembering how she had tilted her head with mock irritation. “So, is that your secret equation? God plus Human equals Immunity to Madness?”

They had both laughed, but within that laughter was something weightless, ancient.

Ishaan kept writing.

He wrote about Govind’s childhood: how he would climb mango trees and chant self-made couplets about school teachers, how he mimicked Krishna’s butter-stealing antics and turned them into biscuit raids. How, every night, Ishaan would watch him act out scenes from Bal Leela, and how those divine stories—heard daily in their home—had slowly seeped into the soil of his heart.

He now understood: his love for Govind was never merely for Govind. It was a seed watered daily by Krishna’s mythology, unknowingly fertilized by Dadaji’s spiritual gravity. “Childhood,” he wrote, “is not so different, whether human or divine. Only the lens we place on it—purity, myth, mystery—shifts its meaning.”

He closed his eyes, remembering.

It was the day after their celestial confession. Vedika had asked him to sit beside the moon lake, where reflections looked clearer than the objects themselves.

“You know,” she began softly, “your love for Krishna didn’t shift to Myra by accident. It flowed like a river into her because love, if genuine, doesn’t end—it only changes the vessel.”

Ishaan had been silent.

She added, “It’s the same love. The same current. Only, with Myra, you had a face to hold. With Krishna, you had to build that face from longing. And when that longing found a form—Myra—it intensified.”

Ishaan remembered whispering, “But what about the danger? Doesn’t strong love corrupt?”

Vedika shook her head. “Only when it’s not purified by its source. The love that begins in devotion—even if diverted—carries a fragrance that cannot rot. And if one enters physical love with a refined heart, then even passion becomes a teacher, not a trap.”

And that had been a turning point.

In that moment, something in Ishaan shifted. He looked at the moon and realized it was no longer cold—it was a mirror. The pit between two loves wasn’t a fall—it was a bridge.

He continued writing.

Medical science had given him terms: mirror neurons, oxytocin, emotional transference. Puranic wisdom gave him metaphors. But lunar research had given him the experience—the inarguable knowing—that love itself was a medium of awakening.

He remembered Mr. Dutt’s voice, from the old Pine Crest classroom, thundering about “energy never dying.” How strange that those physics lectures now echoed in his spiritual life. Myra, Anjali, even Gagan—each had been frequencies in his inner spectrum. Each had offered reflections, distortions, or amplifications.

And yet, one figure had never left the background: Dadaji.

He remembered the day he found the handwritten letter, locked in Dadaji’s wooden trunk. A letter that wasn’t addressed to anyone but was dated three months before Ishaan’s birth.

It read:

“The one who will carry forward my fire will not be taught—it will awaken in him. May he one day find the moon in his mind, the sun in his chest, and the stars in his breath.”

Ishaan stared at that letter for hours. It wasn’t a prophecy. It was a transmission.

Later, while speaking to Vinod during a late-night tea session back on Earth, Ishaan had casually brought it up. Vinod had sipped his chai and said, “Then your Dadaji wasn’t just a grandfather, Ishaan. He was your seed memory. The beginning of your spiral.”

The phrase struck him like lightning.

Dadaji hadn’t raised him. He had implanted something.

“Father, Guru, Self,” Ishaan wrote in bold across the next page. “In the true journey, they are not separate. The guru is born as father, the self is born as disciple. One grows into the other.”

He remembered Ranjana once saying, “It’s funny how your spiritual side never needed explanation. Like it came coded.”

It had. And that code was Dadaji.

The chapter moved forward, not in time, but in depth.

He described how the mind’s idea of God always lacks form, and how strong love helps conjure that form with such clarity that it becomes real. “That’s why devotion to an unseen divine requires stronger love than to a visible human,” he noted. “It’s like painting without canvas. Only the lover’s gaze creates the shape.”

And when that divine love finds a human host—Myra, Govind, Vedika—it becomes stronger than either could hold alone. Like a dhyana chitra—those focused inner images yogis meditate upon—it gets forged not only from faith, but from memory, longing, and the fire of the search.

As Ishaan finished the final lines of the chapter, snow had started to fall gently outside his window. A slow, graceful dance. The same dance he had seen on the moon—tiny flakes of cosmic dust drifting silently.

He leaned back.

The chapter had ended, but it felt like a beginning.

Outside, the hills were turning white again, wrapping the earth in a blanket of stillness. From his hilltop retreat, Ishaan watched the horizon melt into the mist, feeling the presence of his grandfather, his guru, his self—all as one breath in his chest.

He closed the book and whispered to the fireplace, “Dadaji… I see you now.”

The fire answered not with sound, but with warmth.

Chapter 20: The Pit Between Two Loves

The morning air in Himachal carried a mountain stillness—an emptiness so complete it almost hummed. Ishaan sat on his pinewood verandah, legs folded, the old book She Who Became My Guru resting on his lap. He had turned to Chapter 20 again, not out of nostalgia, but because it always asked something of him. This chapter wasn’t ink on paper. It was memory.

His eyes traced the opening line: “She brought you here,” Vedika had said, “but I’ll walk you further.”

And in an instant, the stillness broke, as if time itself inhaled.

He had already told her once—long ago, on that impossible moonlit night after his awakening. A night that had felt like the afterglow of Samadhi, weightless and strangely natural. It had come up then, not as confession, but as a necessity. Now, while reading the chapter again at 52, he found himself reliving that same moment in full force, as if it were happening again in real-time.

On the moon, where dreams met dimensions, he had looked at Vedika’s calm, starlit face and said:

“I once loved someone… with a devotion that bordered on madness. Not just her—before her, there was him. My cousin. Govind. He was Krishna to me. Or maybe… Krishna had always been him.”

Vedika hadn’t flinched. He remembered how she’d merely nodded, her eyes like wells of cosmic understanding.
“So your devotion was pre-shaped,” she had replied. “Sculpted in love before it ever met a form.”

Even now, reading it again, Ishaan could feel that line break something open in him—something beautiful and necessary.

That memory was what birthed this chapter.

When Ishaan had first met Govind, they were just boys. But Govind’s wild laughter, his knack for vanishing sweets and sneaking into orchards, his untamed spirit—it all mirrored the stories of Krishna that echoed through their home. Govind, with his charm and mischief, was the living, breathing echo of the child-form Krishna. The love Ishaan developed for him wasn’t ordinary affection—it was bhakti in its purest seed form. A love that knew no shame, no rules, no boundary.

And in that divine mischief was concealed a spiritual safeguard:
“Love is love. If it is kept in practice, it can mix with any type of physical object irrespective of its nature, form, gender.”

Govind was his first Krishna. Not metaphorically—but experientially. The boyish play, the laughter, the disappearing laddoos, the gleam in the eyes that spoke of something far more ancient than childhood. It all forged a subconscious channel—through which Ishaan’s later love would pass, uncorrupted.

Because Krishna was there all along.

Later, when Myra appeared like a sunrise in human form, it wasn’t that Ishaan’s heart was shaken anew—it was that an old tune found a new instrument. The bhava was familiar. The fragrance, known. She reminded him not just of Krishna—but also of Govind, as if life was gently echoing a deeper pattern.

The love shifted again, just as it had from Govind to Krishna and now to her.
And still—love remained the same.

Vedika had summarized it perfectly that night on the moon, her voice filled with a quiet gravity:

“You loved Govind through Krishna. You loved Myra through Govind. The thread was always divine. Just we didn’t see it clearly until now.”

Reading now, Ishaan came to the line he had written years ago in this very chapter:

“Those who love God first cannot misuse love later. They cannot fall—because they have already risen.”

It made him chuckle softly. It was so true, so frighteningly simple. Because Krishna, that imagined and intangible flame of his childhood, had refined his love. Made it powerful yet tender. That purity had removed impurities like lust, attachment, craving, and misbehavior.

So when Ishaan finally encountered physical love again, it didn’t drag him down. It lifted him further.

There was no pit between two loves. There was a polished bridge.

On that moon, Vedika had said one more thing—he recalled it now as if she whispered it in the rustle of pine leaves around him.

“When love to Krishna becomes dhyana chitra,” she had explained, “it must be extraordinarily strong—because it lacks physical form. You have to keep recreating it every moment in your heart. That’s what makes it subtle, sharp, and sacred.”

“And then,” she had smiled, “if such love ever finds a real person—a body, a face, a voice—it explodes into something nearly divine. That’s what happened with you and Myra.”

He had nodded silently. “And with you, Vedika, that energy found a direction.”

She had tilted her head, amused. “You were always walking upward. I just gave you a torch.”

The chapter then veered gently into remembrance of Govind’s boyhood again. How he would splash into puddles right after a storm, not caring about being scolded. How he once fed the temple cow mango pickle, claiming she liked sour. How he broke his arm climbing a jamun tree to impress Ranjana, then told everyone he fell from heaven.

All so Krishna-like. Ishaan’s grandmother used to say, “Every boy is Krishna before he becomes a man. Some never stop being him.”

And that was true for Govind. In fact, it was true for every child. For every divine love.
“Actually, the childhood of everyone is similar whether it is human or god,” the chapter read, “only divinity, purity and mysticism is added to love that is to god.”

Now Ishaan’s fingers trembled slightly on the book’s edge—not from weakness, but from fullness.

This wasn’t a story.

This was a pattern. A cosmic intelligence weaving itself through the threads of his life—from Govind to Krishna to Myra to Vedika.

Each one carried him forward, never backward.

Because the moment love doesn’t possess, it transforms.

The moment it doesn’t pull down, it lifts up.

The moment it doesn’t crave, it awakens.

The wind whispered through the pines again, and Ishaan looked up from the page.

Vedika was walking along the path below, collecting pine cones in her shawl like a mountain girl from a folktale. She paused, looked up at him, and smiled.

He didn’t say a word. Just nodded.

The same way he had nodded years ago on the moon, after repeating everything he’d once disclosed.

The same way one acknowledges not a woman, but a guiding light.

He placed the book on his chest and leaned back.

There was no pit. There never was.

Just a sacred hollow where love echoed back as God.

Chapter 18: The Return of the Guru

At fifty-two, Ishaan Sharma sat wrapped in a warm woollen shawl, the late afternoon sun spilling golden light over his verandah. Nestled within the folds of the hills, his wooden home overlooked terraced pines and meandering clouds. It was here, after an early retirement, that he had chosen to spend his quieter years—closer to silence, and closer to the Self.

A cup of steaming tulsi chai by his side, he opened his favorite book once again—the one he had authored decades ago, She Who Became My Guru. With practiced fingers, he turned the worn pages until he reached Chapter 18: The Return of the Guru.

As his eyes glided over the title, the real world faded. Time folded inwards. The chapter wasn’t just being read. It was being lived. Every memory became as vivid and alive as if the present had agreed to merge with the past.

After the Tantra-infused reconnection with the divine feminine in the previous spiral of time, Ishaan found himself subtly rethreading forgotten threads of childhood, teenage dreams, and ancestral warmth. Back on Earth with his family aboard their metallic blue space car, he was granted urgent lunar leaves—partly because of the marriage invitation, but mostly because the inner pulse of the soul often chose peculiar timings for its return journeys.

The reunion at Govind’s ancestral home in Himachal was nothing short of magical. The crisp air, the scent of deodars, and the vivid hustle of marriage rituals—it all came together like a painting infused with laughter.

The celebrations were vibrant. Lanterns floated like starlit jellyfish above the courtyard. Laughter bounced between stone walls that had seen five generations grow, marry, and pass. Amidst the bhangra beats and teasing aunts, Ishaan noticed something deep—no Myra. She wasn’t part of this celebration, and yet her essence hung in the air like a forgotten fragrance. Perhaps that’s what gave the evening its hushed undertone of mysticism.

At the function, Ishaan met Ranjana, his cousin sister, who had arrived separately with some of his old Pine Crest School classmates. Their presence stirred a bubbling joy within him.

“Ishaan! Remember the time we convinced Mr. Dutt that the science lab skeleton had started blinking?” Vinod laughed, clapping Ishaan on the back.

“Oh, and Gagan spilled blue ink all over Principal ma’am’s white sari. Accidentally, of course,” Anjali chimed in.

They laughed so hard their eyes watered. Ranjana, standing beside Ishaan, nodded with affection. “Those were golden days. Who would’ve thought our paths would circle back like this?”

Later, Ishaan and Ranjana took a slow walk through the orchard behind the house, the ground strewn with early apples.

“Do you remember Govind’s mischief?” Ranjana asked, her eyes twinkling.

“How can I forget?” Ishaan replied with a grin. “He was like little Krishna, incarnated in full naughtiness.”

They began recounting episodes: how Govind once stole laddoos from the prasad thali and cleverly blamed a dog. Or when he put alarm clocks in every cupboard of their home just to create ‘a musical morning.’ And how, during a family havan, he had mischievously added color powder into the smoke to create ‘divine rainbow blessings.’

They burst into laughter. Even the trees seemed to smile. Ranjana while holding her belly grinned, ” too much laughter makes one forget to breathe!” Ishaan chuckled. “Just like Govind’s mischief used to do—remember how he replaced nanaji’s walking stick with a sugarcane pole?” “Oh yes!” Ranjana laughed, covering her mouth. “And when he added glue to his teacher’s chalk on result day!”
Both laughed until their sides ached, walking slowly under a velvet sky where constellations formed their own mandalas.

As the ceremony buzzed in the background, Ishaan sat down under a flowering pear tree. A sudden wave of stillness took over. Myra’s absence was profound, yet strangely peaceful. The earth hummed with memory.

It was then, while watching an old lamp flickering in the garden temple, that it happened.

A wave of energy rose within him, like a returning tide. It began in the spine and unfurled upward like a serpent of light. But this time, unlike before, it didn’t crash over him. It was gentle. Familiar. Guided by love.

Suddenly, the image of his grandfather, the original Guru, returned with startling clarity.

The voice was inner, yet audible:

“Reading the Puranas is far more rewarding than watching them. For when you read, your mind paints its own pictures—pictures born from your own subconscious. And these dissolve it lovingly. But when you watch them on screens, you are caged in someone else’s imagination, which might not align with your inner samskaras. It adds new layers rather than dissolving the old.”

The words struck him like truth wrapped in poetry. He remembered how his grandfather, in his simple dhoti and sacred thread, would sit under the neem tree and read out loud from the Bhagavatam, smiling gently at the clouds.

This was not the first time Ishaan had felt his energy rise. But it was only the second time it had completed the circle—reaching not just to the ajna chakra, but flowering in the heart. The sensation was different now. He was no longer chasing realization. It had arrived like a homecoming.

He folded his hands inwardly.

“Thank you, Dadaji,” he whispered.

There was no mystical thunder, no halo of divine light. Only an overwhelming sweetness, like a flute playing in the silence.

A few feet away, Vedika approached with a cup of coffee. She sat beside him quietly, watching the light play on his face.

“You look… somewhere else,” she said gently.

“I’m exactly where I belong,” he replied.

She smiled. “That’s all I’ve ever wanted for you.”

There was a pause, warm and weightless.

Then she asked, softly, “But tell me… what brought you here?”

Ishaan glanced at the sky, then turned to her. “This awakening happened because we remembered something from the past.”

Vedika tilted her head. “You mean a memory?”

He nodded slowly. “Yes. Awakening is nothing other but deeply remembering something—or someone.”

She watched him, the depth in his eyes like still water. “And then?”

“When the intensity of that remembrance crosses a certain threshold,” he said, “it transforms into self-realisation.”

Vedika looked away, as if the words had opened something within her. “So… we don’t really become something new. We remember who we’ve always been.”

He gave a quiet smile. “Exactly.”

Someone called Vedika to the kitchen. She left quietly, her absence leaving behind a hush that hung in the air. The hollow she left was soon filled as Ranjana and Gagan joined Ishaan. Thereafter, they all stepped onto the rooftop to enjoy the calm evening breeze, the fading light over the hills, and the peaceful silence that settled all around. They both settled beside him with an ease born of old familiarity.

Together, they watched as dusk gently folded into night. The city lights began to twinkle in the distance, but none of them seemed to notice. Ishaan leaned back on his elbows, eyes lost in the sky.

Ranjana broke the silence. “You know, I’ve been thinking… love really isn’t bound by form, is it?”

Ishaan smiled faintly. “Not at all. Love is love. When truly practiced, it can mix with any kind of physical object or being, regardless of its nature, form, or even gender.”

Gagan raised an eyebrow. “Like how your love for Govind shifted onto Myra?”

Ishaan nodded. “Exactly. And if that could happen—if love could move from Govind to Myra—then why couldn’t it move to an imaginary Krishna as well?”

Ranjana looked intrigued. “You mean Krishna as in… a divine figure?”

Ishaan turned to her. “Yes. The strength of my love for Govind was actually reinforced through Krishna. His stories were everywhere in my home growing up—told daily, alive in every corner. And Govind… he reminded me of Krishna, especially the child and boy forms.”

Gagan leaned forward. “That’s an interesting connection. Are you saying the love was shaped by that divine narrative?”

Ishaan smiled. “In a way, yes. The childhood of any being—human or divine—is strikingly similar. Only in God’s case, we add divinity, purity, and a layer of mysticism to make it more contemplative, more meditative. Because God, unlike humans, lacks a physical form. So we shape stories to feel that presence.”

Ranjana nodded slowly. “And when that refined kind of love finds a real human being…”

Ishaan finished her thought, “…it becomes super-contemplative. Because now, that human also brings a physical form—something divine stories never had. That makes it even more powerful.”

Gagan sat back, thoughtful. “So, love isn’t really shifting. It’s flowing—into the forms that allow it to grow, deepen, and reflect.”

Ishaan’s eyes softened. “Yes. Love doesn’t leave. It just takes new shapes.”

Later that night, with the moon rising in the clear sky and the hills echoing with the distant sound of wedding drums, Ishaan stood on the terrace alone. The stars blinked knowingly. The guru hadn’t returned as a person—but as presence.

As the chapter ended within the pages of his book, so too did Ishaan return from the past.

He shut the book slowly, savoring the final sentence like a warm embrace. The verandah was now bathed in twilight. In the valley below, the mist danced like spirit-beings, and a nightjar called from the forest.

“I’m still that boy,” he whispered to himself. “Only… a little more whole.”

And so the day faded gently into night, as Ishaan rose, not older, but newer than ever before.

Chapter 17: Tantra and Reconnection

Ishaan reached the seventeenth chapter while scrolling gently through the worn yet radiant pages of She Who Became My Guru. The golden sunlight filtered through the old Himalayan cedar tree outside his verandah, dappling the terrace floor in shifting patterns. The breeze carried a faint scent of wild jasmine and the sound of temple bells from a distant village. At fifty-two, he sat barefoot, his shawl slightly falling off one shoulder, feeling the chapters not as memories but as a sacred present moment—unfolding, breathing, alive.

As he turned the page, the memory of Moon’s silent valleys dissolved slowly into another rhythm—warmer, more embodied, more intimate.

After his long lunar posting at Pitru Loka station, Ishaan had returned to Earth not as the same man who once left. The Moon had carved him inwardly, sanded his rough edges, softened his longings. But in softening, it had also exposed him. His reunion with Vedika, though filled with warmth, had also been shadowed by a silent current—something unspoken, almost spectral.

He would lie beside her at night, hearing Diya’s quiet breaths from the adjacent room, and still feel as though some part of his soul was adrift—watching stars over the lunar dome. And Vedika, wise and quietly alert as ever, noticed.

One evening, while they were preparing halwa together—him lazily stirring, she adjusting the cardamom—she said without looking up,
“Do you know, Ishaan, sometimes the only way to return to someone is not through memories, but through energy.”

He blinked, then laughed. “Are we back to decoding tantra over dessert?”

She smiled without responding.

Both had grown up in deeply Tantric lineages—hers from a family that revered the Lalita path, his through subtle exposure via cousins like Govind and his grandfather’s eclectic library. But they had both practiced only what mainstream society permitted—mostly satvik, meditative, structured. Little touch of the left-hand path, maybe in whispers or books, but never in living reality.

But something about Ishaan’s return—his moonlit detachment, his eyes carrying forgotten verses—nudged Vedika into a sacred mischief.

She began lighting diyas earlier in the evening, adding gentle yoni-shaped lamps on the brass puja tray. The incense changed—earthier, muskier. One day, she even replaced their usual background mantras with a slow, trance-like chant of Tripura Sundari, layered with ancient Vedic drones.

The energy in the house shifted subtly. Ishaan noticed it but said nothing, choosing to watch. Until one twilight, she asked,
“Will you meditate with me? Like we did when we first met?”

He nodded. But this time, it was different.

The room was lit in a soft reddish hue. Not by decoration, but by the placement of diyas and one small red cloth covering a lamp. Vedika sat opposite him in a semi-lotus pose, her eyes half closed, her spine straight like a temple pillar. Ishaan mirrored her, unsure of what to expect. No instructions were given.

The silence settled, thick and intentional. And then, she began to breathe—not with noise or strain, but in rhythmic waves that seemed to rock the space between them.

Slowly, Ishaan joined. And for the first time in years, he wasn’t breathing alone.

Their breath mingled, met, flowed. The space between them disappeared. He felt his past selves—moon-dweller, wandering student, silent lover—melting into just a man sitting before a woman.

She opened her eyes then and softly placed her palm near his heart—not touching, just hovering.

“You’re not far,” she said gently. “You’re just… elsewhere.”

He blinked, tears rising. “I thought I had lost the doorway.”

“No. You just stopped knocking.”

The days that followed were a rediscovery of love not as romance, but as re-alignment. Tantra wasn’t something they “did”—it was a presence that began living in their home. There were no rituals laid down in manuals, but spontaneous energy exchanges—a touch, a gaze, a shared silence that thickened into stillness.

One morning, as they both sat in padmasana facing the window with the sun rising through misty deodars, Ishaan whispered,
“I used to see Myra so vividly during my early meditation days at Lunar University. The moon made her into a goddess, and my guru used to appear with her—like the moon conjured both divine and desire in one breath.”

Vedika listened, eyes closed.

He continued, “But she was never just a woman to me. She was… essence. Beyond shape. She disappeared like dawn into sunlight after we married. But I never hated her for it.”

Vedika opened her eyes. “You don’t have to bury her. We women can hold space for things your mind thinks it must erase. She’s part of your sacred fire. And perhaps… in some way, she brought you closer to me.”

He touched her hand. “That’s why I never spoke of her. Not even to my cousin Ranjana. Not to Gagan. Not even to Mr. Dutt when he probed kindly during his rare visits.”

She smiled with an amused raise of her eyebrow. “Not even to Vinod?”

“Vinod would’ve turned it into a mathematical theory,” he chuckled.

The journey into tantric rediscovery took them deeper—not just into each other, but into themselves. One evening, Vedika recalled a family tale.

“Did you know, in my lineage it’s believed that true tantra is the art of becoming transparent to the divine? Not projecting desire, nor suppressing it—but becoming so pure that even your longing is a prayer.”

“That sounds like Myra,” Ishaan whispered.

“Or like you,” Vedika countered.

There was one evening, particularly unforgettable. Rain was pouring outside, steady and rhythmic. They had done a light meditation, and Vedika brought out a bowl of kesar-milk. They sat in silence sipping it when she said,

“Tantra isn’t about rising above the body, Ishaan. It’s about making even the body divine.”

He nodded. “On the moon, I felt detached. On Earth, I feel anchored. But with you, I feel… reconnected.” Ishaan added, Tantra is already extraordinary… but what truly elevates it is the subtle presence and blessings of the Pitras who reside here in pitru loka in subtle form.

She leaned into him, forehead against his. “That’s the whole path, isn’t it? Not to escape the world, but to light it up. From inside.”

The days melted into a rhythm—practical, sacred, silly, silent. Ishaan would sometimes cook too much daal; Vedika would sometimes burn the incense stick. But all of it was part of the cosmic play. Their tantra wasn’t a grand ritual. It was two people meeting, again and again, without past, without future, only present.

And when Diya asked innocently one day, “Papa, why do you both smile so much these days?”, Ishaan kissed her forehead and whispered, “Because love has many chapters, and we just opened a new one.”

Ishaan paused reading.

The breeze was cooler now. The bells had stopped. Only bird songs remained, stitching the sky with invisible threads. The cedar shadows had stretched further along the terrace. A light cloud passed over the sun, scattering a golden glow.

He closed the book for a moment and whispered to the wind,
“Thank you, Vedika. You brought me back.”

The next chapter waited patiently.

But for now, he sat still, the memory warm, the moment sacred.

Chapter 16: The Ancestors’ Abode

Ishaan reached the sixteenth chapter while scrolling slowly through the weathered pages of She Who Became My Guru, seated on the edge of a boulder near a clear Himalayan stream in Himachal—his native land. The breeze carried the scent of pine and wildflowers, and the hush of the mountains gave the words on the page a living pulse. His fingers paused for a second on the heading, The Ancestors’ Abode, and a strange pull of nostalgia coiled around his heart. The water rippled before him, as if mirroring the grey valleys of the moon. And as he began reading, the line between memory and moment dissolved effortlessly.

Returning to the Moon wasn’t like revisiting a city or an old neighbourhood—it was like stepping into a dream you had once woken up from, only to find yourself dreaming it again, but wiser this time. Ishaan Sharma, now a seasoned veterinarian with a weather-wrinkled gentleness in his smile, stood once again on the soft dust plains of Pitru Loka, where shadows walked slowly and the silence carried songs of the past.

The Moon had changed since his student days at Lunar University, or maybe he had. Back then, his limbs were lighter, his mind more restless, and his heart flared with the intense and nameless flame of longing. Myra. Her image, back then, had been seared into the grey landscape of the Moon like a mantra. It wasn’t just memory; it was meditation. Her soft gaze, her unspoken words, her sudden silences—they had all danced in his consciousness, bathed in lunar tranquility.

Yet even amidst the deep pull of that image, something else had arisen—his Dada Guru. Whenever the image of Myra would intensify in that moonlit solitude, so would the vision of his Guru, standing silent in ochre robes, his eyes like twin moons of ancient wisdom. The Moon, after all, was Chandraloka, the realm of the ancestors, a place where meditating on lineage, legacy, and liberation came as effortlessly as breathing. Ishaan had often felt as if the Moon itself held the contemplative power of thousands of rishis and grandfathers whispering through its valleys.

Now, two decades later, Myra’s image had softened, like a perfume clinging faintly to an old letter. His wife Vedika and children Diya and Ruhan filled the space where earlier only one name had echoed. Yet, as he stepped once again onto the Moon’s surface, he felt the subtle shimmer of Myra returning—not as a woman, nor as a memory, but as a reflection of his own soul. She was no longer someone separate. She had dissolved into the great sacred fluid of his being, becoming part of what he now called awareness.

“Funny,” he once wrote in a margin, “how one who stirred the storm becomes the stillness itself.”

Back then, Ishaan remembered struggling with those overwhelming visions. To still the whirlpool, he had meditated on Govind, his cousin brother who had once lived in their home, an enigmatic figure full of spiritual curiosity. Merging Govind’s moral strength with the image of Myra created a strange alchemy—a divine Yin-Yang. Myra’s gaze turned prophetic; her silence began speaking the truths of the cosmos.

Even his Pine Crest days came back to him. He would often see Mr. Dutt, his old science teacher, in his dreams on the Moon, carrying a celestial blackboard and scribbling formulas that dissolved into Upanishadic verses. Vinod, his intelligent classmate, now a researcher in dark matter, had once joked, “Ishaan, you don’t need a spaceship. You are a spaceship.”

The Lunar University corridors had once echoed with Gagan’s voice, singing retro Bollywood while Ishaan secretly stared out the window, thinking of Myra’s absent presence. Ranjana, his cousin sister, had sent him voice notes back then, filled with homemade advice and cheerful rebukes, urging him to eat well and not let his head get lost “in those Moon books.”

But this return was not merely academic—it was spiritual. The Moon had been officially designated as a psychospiritual habitat, and Ishaan’s posting wasn’t to treat space cows or lunar llamas—it was to explore how ancestral energies affected the psychic health of settlers. He was part vet, part mystic psychologist.

One evening, while examining a Lunar Hawk—an alien-like bird adapted for low gravity flight—he saw them. Far away on the horizon, silhouettes danced. Not human. Not alien. Not ghost.

They were… energy drinkers. Beings that fed not on blood or flesh, but on contemplative energy. They shimmered like dew caught in starlight. These beings relished the deeply meditative aura of Pitru Loka. When Ishaan would sit in dhyana, meditating on the intertwined forms of Guru and Myra, he would feel his thoughts lift like incense, and in those moments, he sensed them dancing—graceful, distant, never intruding, but always feeding. And in turn, they gave back something inexplicable. A deeper stillness. A broader silence.

He recorded these experiences in a log but never sent them to Earth Control. Some truths must grow roots in silence.

Reading these pages now, Ishaan chuckled softly. “Why did I never propose to Myra, despite burning inside?” he had once asked himself.

The answer had unfolded slowly through years.

There were too many walls: cultural, social, and perhaps most formidable—the silence between them. Years had passed without a single word exchanged. Ishaan had once considered breaking that silence, but the imagined effort of convincing her, her family, his family, the rituals, the explanations, felt more exhausting than uplifting.

So he chose an arranged marriage, not because it was easier, but because it was possible.

He had written once: “Why diminish the joy of an upcoming arranged marriage by openly mourning an inaccessible love?”

Still, divine love stories from the Puranas whispered their answers to him. Radha never married Krishna. Shiva married Parvati only after years of austerity. These stories weren’t just stories—they were energy blueprints. Ishaan realized the seers had deliberately embedded love tales in scriptures so that even a flicker of romantic energy could be sublimated into a full-fledged path of awakening. Romantic memory merged with spiritual devotion, and something beyond the two emerged—something powerful and liberating.

He remembered one particular night.

A meditation session had reached an unexpected intensity. Myra’s form appeared before him not as a girl, but as a celestial goddess, her outline flickering with cosmic fire. Then it shifted, merging with the image of his Guru. Myra’s gaze became his Guru’s. Ishaan had cried then—not from sadness, but from awe.

He had understood.

Myra was not outside him.

She never was.

The chapter neared its end. Ishaan lifted his eyes from the page. The sun had dipped low over the mountains, casting orange-gold light through the tall pines. Birds fluttered back to their nests. A cowbell rang faintly from a distant pasture. Somewhere nearby, children laughed, their voices carried on the breeze like echoes from a simpler time.

He let the book rest on his knees and looked up at the sky. The Moon had just begun to rise, its faint arc glowing like a half-drawn smile. He whispered aloud, “Pitru Loka isn’t just on the Moon. It’s anywhere your soul touches its lineage… and bows.”

In the distance, the stream sang its eternal song, as if echoing his prayer: Jai Guru Dev, Jai Myra Dev, Jai the Self that was never separate.

And with that, Ishaan closed the chapter—not just in the book, but in his heart, which had never been broken, only opened a thousand times to newer skies.

He leaned back, eyes distant, memory stirring.

“I still remember the day I decided to leave the Moon,” he murmured to himself. “The medical facilities there—limited, cold, clinical—weren’t enough for an aging body like mine. I was growing old, and strangely, I found myself yearning for the things I once took for granted: the smell of soil after rain, the warmth of sunlight filtering through leaves, even the chaos of crowded streets.”

A smile flickered at the corner of his lips.

“That hunger brought me back. I took early retirement and returned to Earth. Because in the end, no matter how far you travel… home is home, and Earth is Earth.”

Chapter 15: The Lunar Posting

The morning light slanted through the window, spilling softly across the wooden floor as Ishaan reached Chapter 15 of his book She Who Became My Guru. The garden outside his Himachal home lay bathed in a serene, misty glow. The silence was not empty—it felt watchful, as if the trees themselves leaned in to listen.

His fingers slowed over the pages as the words awakened the images, not from memory, but as though the past had arrived, knocking gently at the doors of the present. It wasn’t just reading—it was reliving.

After years of earthly veterinary practice, Ishaan Sharma, now a quiet yet inwardly glowing man in his forties, found himself standing at the threshold of an unimaginable transition. An official letter from the Interplanetary Veterinary Alliance confirmed his posting to a lunar animal research center. The moon colony, once a scientific fantasy, had now grown into a peaceful sanctuary of learning and experimentation.

Ishaan didn’t hesitate.

With Vedika by his side, and their children—twelve-year-old Diya, a budding stargazer with a laugh like chimes in the wind, and five-year-old Ruhan, mischievous and wide-eyed—they climbed into their family space vehicle. The personal space car hummed quietly like a purring cat, its dashboard filled with soft-glowing panels. It wasn’t like boarding a rocket—it was more like taking a road trip through stars.

They flew over the Earth’s atmosphere, past its blue cocoon, then slipped into the milky silence of space. The children giggled at the floating toys and bubble-like drinks. Vedika leaned back, silent, her eyes filled with shifting light. Ishaan looked at her, her form silhouetted against the cosmos. So much had passed between them, and yet something had begun to flower anew in the silent understanding they now shared.

While Ishaan, Vedika, Diya, and little Ruhan floating through the velvet stretch of space in their cozy family space car, the journey felt more like a celestial vacation than a relocation. They made joyful halts at floating restaurants shaped like glowing lotus petals, where gravity played tricks and food gently orbited plates. Parks hung like magical bubbles in space, filled with soft, bouncing air-cushions and starry swings. In one dome, Diya danced in zero gravity while Ruhan giggled, chasing space bubbles. Vedika clicked pictures, and Ishaan, for once, let his heart soak in the joy—his family’s laughter echoing gently in the silence of the stars.

The Earth became smaller and smaller. And then— the moon rose, not from a horizon, but from deep within Ishaan’s chest.

As they descended toward the lunar habitat nestled on the inner curve of the Copernicus Crater, Ishaan felt an inexplicable shift. A presence.

His ancestral guru.

Not Myra. Not anymore. That image, once so blinding in its charm, now gently dissolved like moon mist in morning sun. Myra’s contemplation had dimmed day by day ever since they left Earth’s pull. And now, in this ancestral land—Pitru Loka as whispered by ancient texts—the guru of his bloodline seemed to reawaken.

“I don’t know why,” Ishaan said to Vedika one night after settling in, looking out the porthole at the glowing expanse, “but I feel like this is where he used to sit. Like… like the moon cradled him.”

Vedika smiled, wrapping a blanket around Diya who had fallen asleep on the reclining seat nearby. “Then maybe that’s why you’re here—to sit where he once sat, and see what he once saw.”

They had not brought their pasts with them. That chapter had gently closed back on Earth, in those quiet talks and opened hearts. Now, they were not trying to belong to each other. They simply were.

The moon colony was unlike any place Ishaan had imagined. Not silver, not sterile. It was alive in silence. There were bio-domes filled with blue-green vegetation, and soft artificial gravity gardens where animals from across galaxies were studied and healed. Ishaan worked at the Interplanetary Veterinary Research Lab under the mentorship of Dr. Laisha, a gentle lunar woman whose calm voice reminded him of Anjali’s—the same silence that did not demand, only listened.

There was something oddly freeing about space. You couldn’t carry your emotional baggage here; the void simply wouldn’t let you. It burned it away.

Gagan pinged him through interspace once with a cheeky message: “From Pine Crest School to Pet Moon School! Proud of you, space monk!”

Even Mr. Dutt sent a message, his voice aged but firm. “You always walked differently, Ishaan. I’m glad to see where that path led.”

Vinod, still sharp and full of data, had sent him a detailed analysis on lunar soil effects on quadrupedal muscle composition.

Govind had recently retired. Ranjana, now a joyful grandmother, had laughed during a video call, saying, “You always belonged among stars, Ishu.”

Yet, despite these distant voices, the moon had given Ishaan something he didn’t expect—stillness without loneliness.

One moonlit evening, while watching Diya draw little constellations on the frosted window, and Ruhan pretending to be a gravity-cowboy, Ishaan suddenly found himself thinking of Pine Crest School again—not the bricks or the uniforms—but the boy he was. The one who had stared too long at stars. The one who’d first heard Myra’s name like a bell inside the cave of his being.

“Myra was the flame,” he thought, “but Dada Guru was the wick.”

The insight struck not like lightning—but like moonlight. Gentle, cool, sure.

A few weeks later, while meditating in the transparent lunar chapel—a place designed for spiritual silence regardless of one’s faith—Ishaan had a vision. His grandfather, seated calmly on a rock, looking out over a field of light. Not a word spoken, but a hand raised in benediction. That was all. And everything.

He rose from that meditation with tears in his eyes.

Not sorrow.

Not joy.

Just… release.

Vedika met him in the corridor. She didn’t ask what he had seen. She only held his hand.

“I’ll cook tonight,” she said softly. “Even if the ingredients taste like moon potatoes.”

He laughed. “As long as there’s Earth masala, I’ll survive.”

Life on the moon was not perfect. But it was perfectly theirs.

They had adjusted to shifts in gravity and the delays in messages from Earth. Diya had made friends with a Martian girl named Nyra. Ruhan had adopted a small, shape-shifting pet that squeaked like a rubber duck. Vedika had started teaching yoga to fellow colony members—her classes were known for laughter and unexpected wisdom.

And Ishaan—he worked. He healed. He listened to animals who didn’t speak with words. Sometimes he sang ancient mantras while tending to injured lunar wolves. Sometimes he simply sat with them in silence, and they seemed to understand.

Slowly, imperceptibly, his sense of Self expanded.

He was no longer the seeker who needed fire to burn his doubts. He was the fire. He was the moon.

As Ishaan turned the last page of Chapter 15, the clouds over his garden lifted. A cool wind rustled the leaves. The birds were quiet, as if listening.

He closed the book slowly, placing it on his lap.

The wind carried the scent of earth and pine.

Somewhere in the sky, the moon waited.

    Did Buddha Enter Nirvikalpa Samadhi? A Seeker’s Honest Reflection

    One day, a question naturally arose in me:

    Did Gautam Buddha directly enter Nirvikalpa Samadhi while sitting under the Bodhi tree?
    Did he attain keval kumbhak—the effortless suspension of breath?
    Did he pass through Savikalpa Samadhi, where forms and ideas are still present, before going beyond?

    This wasn’t just a curiosity. I asked this from my own lived journey. I’ve touched a deep state of Savikalpa Samadhi—where the sense of “I” dissolved completely, and only pure consciousness remained. It didn’t feel like something I was imagining. It felt absolutely real. Blissful. Expansive. Still, I couldn’t stay in it. I consciously brought myself back—out of fear, maybe, or a sense that the experience was too much to hold. I massaged my forehead and intentionally lowered the energy to the Ajna Chakra, perhaps to stay grounded in worldly life.

    I haven’t experienced Nirvikalpa Samadhi yet—the complete absorption beyond all ideas, forms, even bliss. I haven’t reached keval kumbhak permanently either. But I’ve had a glimpse, and that glimpse continues to guide me. So I wanted to understand—what really happened under the Bodhi tree? Did Buddha walk the same path I’ve been walking?

    From what I’ve read and understood, Buddha passed through deep meditative states that closely resemble the stages of Samadhi described in the yogic tradition. In Buddhism, these stages are called Jhanas. They begin with focus and joy, move into silence and pure awareness, and go further into formless states—like infinite space, infinite consciousness, and finally, neither perception nor non-perception. These are not imagined states—they are real, lived inner experiences.

    In yogic terms, these states are like Savikalpa Samadhi leading into Nirvikalpa. In both systems, the mind becomes still, the ego dissolves, and a pure, unborn awareness remains. Some call this Self. Others, like Buddha, avoided calling it anything at all.

    That brings me to a deep doubt that arose within me:

    If Buddha denied the idea of a permanent soul or self, then how is Nirvana—which he attained—said to be permanent?

    The answer lies in how Buddha approached truth. He didn’t deny the ultimate. He denied that anything we think of as “me” or “mine” is ultimate. He didn’t say there’s nothing beyond—he simply refused to give it a label, refused to trap it in words. Because any word would have become another idea, another attachment. He was silent not because there was nothing, but because what is cannot be spoken.

    In that silence, there is no contradiction. Nirvana is not a “thing” that lasts forever. It is the end of all becoming, all clinging, all identification. It’s not the presence of something new—it’s the cessation of all illusion. It’s the stillness when the winds of craving stop blowing.

    So is Nirvana the same as Nirvikalpa Samadhi? Maybe not in name, but in essence, they seem to meet. One path says, “I am That”—the timeless Self. The other says, “There is no I”—only the cessation of becoming. But in both, the seeker dissolves. What remains is not “something.” It’s the background silence that was always there.

    I know I haven’t reached that silence permanently. I still feel the pull of the world. I still ground myself when energy goes too high. I use some techniques, even earthy ones, to stay balanced. My sadhana isn’t perfect, but it’s deepening. My curiosity is alive. And more importantly, my honesty is alive.

    Sometimes I wonder if that early adolescent dream-state I had—which brought more bliss and detachment than anything since—was a preview of what’s to come. Or maybe it was a gift, reminding me what I’m seeking, what I’ve momentarily touched again through tantric sadhana and now through Kriya Yoga.

    One thing I’ve learned: the journey is not always upward. Sometimes the energy rises, sometimes it settles. I no longer cling to either. I’ve realized that even bringing the energy down has its own sacredness—its own intelligence.

    Here’s a simple reflection that came through this process:

    The yogi dissolves into stillness and calls it Self.
    The Buddha dissolves into silence and says nothing at all.
    One says “I am That.”
    The other says “There is no I.”
    But both sit in the same unmoving stillness, beyond joy and sorrow, beyond life and death.

    Maybe it doesn’t matter what we call it. What matters is living in a way that moves toward that silence, that freedom. Not with force, not with fear, but with surrender, awareness, and love.

    To those walking a similar path—between glimpses and grounding, between depth and daily life—this reflection is for you. I haven’t finished the journey. But I’m walking it with eyes open and heart awake.

    And in the hush between two breaths, I sense something vast. Not mine. Not even “me.” Just what remains when all else falls away.

    Chapter 14: An Earthly Union

    The amber sun lazily kissed the mountaintops as Ishaan Sharma, now in his early fifties, sat at his favorite hillside retreat. A small tea stall nearby whistled a nostalgic tune, mingling with the pine-scented air. A familiar worn-out book rested on his lap—She Who Became My Guru. He wasn’t just reading it; he was reliving it. Each page moved not as print and ink but as a breathing echo of his past.

    As the breeze gently flipped the paper, his eyes met the title of the next chapter—
    An Earthly Union.
    And the story flowed back into him like a forgotten dream stirring awake.

    Years ago, after the cosmic intensity of Pine Crest and the silent wound left by Myra’s absence, Ishaan had found himself burning—not from pain, but from an overwhelming inner fire that refused to settle. No mantra, no meditation seemed to douse the intensity. His mind, often serene, was now flooded by Myra’s image—her laughter, her silence, the light she had once become within him.

    It wasn’t romantic longing—it was something deeper, yet dangerous. A kind of spiritual ache that refused to dissolve.

    His family began to worry.

    One of his close relatives, noticing his silent decline, suggested an arranged match. A girl named Vedika—a poised, kind, and independent woman from a distant connection in the extended family.

    Ishaan had never met her before. And with his inner fire still unextinguished, he wasn’t in a space to be picky or romantic.

    So there wasn’t much waiting time for Ishaan to select the best match, as usually happens in selective arranged marriages where one tries to choose the best fit like picking out the right attire from a bundle. He simply agreed—more out of exhaustion than enthusiasm.

    He didn’t do it for love. He did it like one reaches for water in a forest fire. A survival instinct. A hope that maybe this earthly bond would balance the heaviness of his unending contemplation. It wasn’t a step toward love, but a strategy of defense.

    The marriage happened quietly, almost too quickly.

    Vedika entered Ishaan’s world with her soft grace and subtle wisdom. She didn’t expect fireworks. But neither did she expect the coldness that followed.

    For months, Ishaan remained aloof. Not cruel—but disconnected. He didn’t even realize it at first, but Vedika could feel it in the way he’d look through her instead of at her.

    And then, slowly, his detachment turned into quiet control.

    Not by intention—but by inner pressure.

    He began instructing her on how to arrange things, how to speak, how to pray, how to carry herself in front of guests. He wasn’t trying to dominate—but the fire of Myra’s haunting presence was still flickering in his mind, making everything else appear dimmer, duller.

    Myra’s image—mystical and radiant—had become his subconscious standard. And though he never spoke her name, the echo of her presence made Vedika feel as if she was being compared to a goddess she couldn’t see.

    Unintentionally, Ishaan became a little dictator in the household, ruled not by ego but by the ghost of contemplation still clinging to his inner vision. He didn’t know how to shut it off.

    One day, after a quiet argument over something trivial, Vedika packed her things and left for her mother’s house.

    She didn’t shout. She didn’t cry. She just left—with dignity and silence.

    That evening, Ishaan sat alone. The room was clean, calm, and lifeless.

    And that’s when it hit him.

    The stillness was not peace—it was punishment.

    He looked around and found her slippers still near the mat. Her unfinished book on the side table. Her half-written grocery list on the fridge.

    And then something inside him cracked open—not loudly, but like dry earth splitting quietly before rain.

    He realized he had pushed away a person who had entered his life with nothing but sincerity. Not because he didn’t care—but because he hadn’t healed. Although he let her rest at her birthplace for a week, the very next week he went there himself, unable to bear the silence of her absence. With a softened heart and humbled spirit, he gently apologized for his behavior and requested her to return home, not out of duty, but because her presence had unknowingly become a part of his healing.

    Standing in the threshold of her childhood home, he looked at her and said, “I was wrong. Not in words, but in spirit. I never meant to hurt you. I think I was punishing myself… and you got caught in it.”

    Vedika looked at him—not angry, but unsure. Still, something in his eyes made her return.

    Not out of fear. But hope.

    After that turning point, a quiet shift entered their lives.

    The distance between them became a bridge rather than a wall.

    Yet, for years, neither spoke of their past love stories. It was an unspoken agreement—not out of fear, but because the moment hadn’t yet arrived. They lived with greater ease, greater respect. Still, there was something unsaid—something resting quietly between them.

    Then one day, much later, something unexpected happened.

    Ishaan experienced another glimpse of awakening—this time, not alone under stars or beside lakes, but through Vedika herself.

    It wasn’t dramatic. It was tender. A look she gave, a phrase she whispered, something about her presence cracked open another layer of his being. And in that silent opening, he felt his purpose with her had somehow been fulfilled.

    After awakening with Vedika — even stronger than before — the game turned over. He dismissed many people’s idea that Mayra would have been the best match for him, for now he believed Vedika was the best match. With her help, he had attained the highest awakening, which meant that his real aim was centered on awakening; all other goals were secondary. It was not only with him, but in fact, awakening is the real and final aim of everyone.

    And it was only then, after that soft awakening, that the past could be shared.

    One evening, sitting quietly on their rooftop beneath a golden sky, Ishaan turned to her and said, “There was someone in my life. She helped open something in me… I never understood what it was, but it changed me forever.”

    Vedika smiled gently and said, “There was someone in my life too. It ended peacefully, long ago… but he shaped a part of me.”

    They didn’t ask too many questions. They just listened.

    And in that honesty, something melted. As if the past, which had been frozen in their silences, finally began to flow.

    From that moment onward, something precious shifted.

    They began allowing each other to live more freely—without pressure or expectations. There was still respect, still care—but no more invisible bondage.

    They loved each other now in a new way—legally together, yes, and within human boundaries—but spiritually free. As if they were testing the truth of unforced love.

    In those days, they reconnected with a few old companions—not to return to their past, but to dissolve it completely. To free themselves from the invisible layers of conditioning that silently shaped them.

    A strange and beautiful thing happened.

    Their love deepened—but in a completely unexpected way.

    They didn’t become romantic in the usual sense. But they became truly loving.

    Without attachment.

    Without dependency.

    They remained together but detached—loving each other without asking, needing, or expecting anything.

    Now, as the last light of dusk dimmed across the sky, Ishaan closed the book softly and placed it against his chest.

    The deodars swayed above him like old monks whispering prayers.

    He smiled—not with pride, but with peace.

    What began as a marriage of necessity had become a love beyond all conditions.
    Not because they held on—but because they finally let go.

    And in that letting go, they found a bond that no fire could burn.