Inside, he found himself again seated in darkness. Resting atop a plane that had no texture, no direction, no edge. It was neither solid nor empty. It simply was. Before he could shape a proper thought, something unseen moved behind him. just like two hands, gentle, almost tender, covered his ears.
In that instant, the world died. Sound vanished first. Not silence, but the absence of silence too, as if the concept itself had been erased. Then touch dissolved. The feeling of sitting, of weight, of balance, gone. Sight collapsed inward, swallowed by a deeper darkness than the one he already occupied. Taste, smell, even the faint sense of breath—all extinguished one by one, like lamps snuffed without smoke.
"What… is happening?" he thought, though the thought itself felt delayed, distant, as if it had to travel a long way just to reach itself.
It felt as though existence had pressed a palm against him and said: Stop.
"Why are my senses stopping?" His thoughts echoed without sound. "This feeling… it's like everything has been muted. No, deleted. Even the idea of sound is gone." Panic tried to rise, but panic required sensation, and sensation no longer obeyed him.
He turned inward, because there was nowhere else to turn.
"Where am I… again?" The question felt tired, worn thin by repetition across realms and states. "Why does my body look like this?" He looked down, or rather, knew without seeing and perceived himself as a translucent black figure.
He concluded calmly. "This must be inner conscious or my soul." A pause followed. "Then why is it black? And why is this entire realm black as well?"
"If this is a realm," he thought, "then there must be an exit." The idea of outside formed in him, not as direction, but as intention. And intention, here, was enough.
The plane responded.
He moved, not by walking, but by willing movement, and the darkness ahead folded, parting like a curtain made of ink. As he crossed what felt like a threshold, something strange occurred. A tingling sensation rippled through his form. Fragmented impressions brushed against him, voices without sound, faces without shape, emotions without names. They surged and faded before he could grasp even one.
"I can't hear them," he realized. "I can't see, smell, or taste either." There was no fear in the realization, only observation. "Then this confirms it. This is not an external realm."
A thought crystallized, slow and deliberate.
"This is my inner space."
He paused, letting the idea settle. "Or more precisely… my mind." A faint clarity emerged. "Might be my unconscious mind."
He reflected. "The conscious mind is the surface, the part that interacts with the world. It governs awareness, perception, deliberate thought. What we see, hear, choose. Memories we can recall at will live there."
"Beneath that lies the subconscious," he continued. "Where experiences settle over time. Emotional memories. Habits. Reflexes. Things once conscious, now automatic. Reactions that no longer ask permission."
He moved deeper, and the darkness thickened.
"And beneath even that… the unconscious mind." His thoughts slowed, reverent. "A place where buried memories, instincts, impulses, and fears reside. Things that passed through awareness once, but were pushed down, forgotten, suppressed, sealed."
A realization dawned. "That's why it's dark. Because it lies beyond perception. Like the deep sea, unseen, but constantly shaping the waves above."
As he moved further, faint black lines flickered across the darkness, thin, jagged, branching like lightning frozen in place. The closer he went, the more of them appeared, crisscrossing the space endlessly. "Those are… pathways," he understood. "Neural impressions. Memory traces. Emotional scars." A bitter half-thought surfaced. "So many."
Then another realization followed. "My sight is sealed..." At that moment, without sound, without vibration, a voice appeared.
What you are thinking is incorrect.
He stiffened, though stiffness had no physical meaning here.
You cannot open this world now, the voice continued, calm and ancient. Go and raise your sleeping energy first.
"Who are you?" he thought instinctively.
Do not ask how I can contact you, the voice replied, almost amused. Even if I told you, it would be of no use at your current state.
A pause.
Remember this: if you wish to achieve something, you must both accept it and destroy it.
The paradox struck him like a silent bell.
You must either destroy it or create it, the voice went on. You must either break through it… or soften it until you can pass through. Resistance alone will not open this world. Submission alone will not either.
He absorbed the words slowly. "Then… should I accept those memories?" he thought. "Gather them into a single point and move forward?"
That is also incorrect, the sage-like voice answered. His confusion deepened. "Then what is correct?"
Always move forward toward light, the voice said. Even within the densest darkness, there exists light. That is truth.
A pause... But remember, light is not always the guide. Sometimes… darkness is.
His thoughts trembled. "Darkness as a guide?"
Light reveals, the voice explained. Darkness teaches restraint. Light shows you what is. Darkness teaches you what you are without seeing. Also, the voice continued, softer now, never abandon your old things when new things enter your path. Growth is not replacement. It is continuation.
He felt something shift inside him a new direction. From now on, the voice concluded, walk your own path. Not the path of light alone. Not the path of darkness alone. But the path you carve between them.
The presence began to fade, leaving behind a vast, patient silence. He remained seated in the darkness, senses still sealed, yet his mind strangely calm. He walked.
He walked without ground, without direction. He moved because movement was the only verb left to him. Again and again he advanced into the darkness, yet nothing changed. No scenery unfolded. No horizon shifted. The blackness neither thinned nor thickened. It simply endured, vast and indifferent. "I don't see the path," he thought. "I don't even know if there is a path."
The voice returned, calm and distant, as if echoing from the deepest layer of his being.
Go forward. Find the light.
He walked longer. There were no markers, no sense of distance. He could not tell whether he had walked for moments or lifetimes.
"Where is it?" he wanted to shout. "Where is this light you speak of?" He tried to call out, to force his will outward, but no voice answered. "There is no path here," he thought bitterly. "Nothing exists here at all." The voice answered at once, softer now, almost testing him.
Are you going to stop?
He paused, surprised, not by the question, but by how quickly his answer rose.
"No," he replied within himself. "Why should I? I was able to come this far. Why should I stop now? I will continue."
And so he did.
He went and went and went.
Somewhere within the formless dark, a sound began to pulse. Not through ears, but through existence itself.
Om…
It was deep and slow, like a massive drum struck far away.
Om…
Each beat felt older than memory, heavier than thought. His senses were still sealed—he could not hear, could not feel—yet the vibration reached him all the same, resonating through whatever he now was.
Om… Om…
After what felt like a very long journey, he stopped.
He did not know why. There was no sign, no wall, no change in the darkness. Yet something inside him said: here.
The voice spoke again.
Why do you walk, yet still fail to find the path?
He did not answer immediately. Thoughts tangled inside him, knotting and untying at once.
"Why are my legs still walking," he wondered, "when I know there is no path?" A strange realization surfaced. "Am I walking forward… or am I walking in circles?"
He looked inward.
"Where is the light?" he asked himself. "Is this darkness outside of me… or inside me?" The question lingered, sharp and unsettling. "If I keep walking like this, I feel I will never find it," he reflected. "Yet… if I sit here and truly think, I feel as though I might." That contradiction disturbed him more than the endless void.
"Then why didn't I feel this before?" he wondered. "Why now?" A sense of time, long absent, suddenly pressed down on him. "Why does it feel like time is passing? Like I am aging… like I am approaching the end of my life?"
The questions began to cascade, unstoppable.
"If I go forward without seeing what lies in the darkness… if I never understand where the light truly is… then why was I sent here at all?" His thoughts sharpened, almost desperate. "Who sent me here? Who is real in this place? The voice? Me? Or something watching from beyond?"
A bitter thought surfaced. "Is my life nothing more than an illusion? A puppet's dance? An object for others to observe and discard?"
"No," he told himself firmly. "None of that is true." He felt something invasive then, like whispers brushing against his mind. "These thoughts… they aren't mine. They're being placed here. Like someone is chanting into my head, trying to lead me astray."
Suddenly, a memory surfaced.
He was sitting before a sage. The sage's voice echoed clearly within him now, untouched by distortion. Peace comes from the inside, not the outside.
The words settled like a stone in water.
Thousands will speak around you, the sage had said. Millions of sounds may reach your ears. But in the end, only one voice will be heard, the one you choose to listen to.
Become the pathfinder of your own path.
The memory faded.
Again, the sound pulsed.
Om… Om…
This time, it no longer felt distant.
He stopped walking.
Instead, he sat down within the darkness, folding into himself without resistance. He did not search for light. He did not chase sound. He did not push forward.
He simply was.
The chanting continued, steady and patient, as if the darkness itself were breathing with him. And for the first time since entering this realm, he felt something unfamiliar yet undeniable—
Stillness.
Not emptiness.
Not despair.
"First," he reasoned, "I should have become white within the darkness realm, but instead, I became dark within darkness. Where every breath was turmoil, I calmed it and strengthened my will. Meanwhile, in the white realm—where I should have dissolved into black, I was flooded with memories, emotions, senses. Yet even there, I learned to calm them." The contrast struck him like a slow bell toll. "Now, everything here is stable. Nothing touches me. Nothing disturbs me. And yet… something is wrong."
He looked around not with eyes, but with awareness.
"This space is darkness," he continued inwardly, "but not empty darkness. It is thick with hidden emotions, compressed wills, suppressed instincts. If my senses were not sealed, I would already be crushed by their presence." He paused, weighing the truth carefully. "If I break this place, I could seize its energy. If I control it, I could shape it. Either way, it would become mine."
But another thought followed, quieter yet heavier.
"This darkness is also a mirror. It can show me the reality of the outside world—without disguise, without noise. So no… I do not need to break it."
A resolve formed. "I need to walk again."
He rose and moved forward into the darkness once more. Again and again he walked, letting time pass unmeasured. The darkness remained unchanged, infinite and impartial. After a while—he could not tell how long—he stopped.
"No," he realized suddenly. "This isn't right. Something here is deeply wrong."
He sensed it clearly now: infinite energy surrounded him, yet infinite darkness opposed it. Neither consumed the other. Neither yielded. A perfect, suffocating balance.
He sat down.
This time, he did not chase clarity. He did not analyse immediately. He allowed his thoughts to surface—and then, one by one, to dissolve. He calmed his mind again And then it struck him.
"So that's it," he murmured inwardly. "It was never the outside affecting me. It was always my inside." He did not stand. He did not walk outward anymore. Instead, he remained seated upon the unseen plane. For the first time, something unfamiliar happened.
He felt as though he took a breath.
His translucent black body moved, subtly. Air, or something like it, entered through where a nose should be. The sensation was distant yet undeniable. His lungs responded, expanding and contracting, slow and heavy.
"So even this body breathes," he observed calmly.
When he moved again, the movement was inward. He travelled through himself.
From the nose downward, he followed black veins branching like rivers through a night landscape. He felt his heartbeat, not as sound, but as rhythm. It rose and fell, steady yet powerful, echoing through his being. His lungs flattened and swelled again, pulling unseen essence into him, releasing it back into the void.
Veins stretched endlessly, dark and luminous at once. Kidneys pulsed softly, filtering something far subtler than blood. "This is my inside," he realized. "But not just flesh." As he went deeper, a vibration passed from head to toe, smooth and continuous, like magnetic waves aligning iron filings.
Om…
The sound resonated through him again, not from outside, but from everywhere within. It flowed through marrow and nerve, through thought and silence alike.
He did not linger on it.
"There is something even deeper," he sensed. "Beyond organs. Beyond breath."
He moved past the familiar rhythms, past structure, past form, toward a darker, quieter centre where even darkness seemed to hesitate. The further he went, the more the world around him thinned, as if reality itself were becoming an idea rather than a place.
Then he became smaller, far smaller than before. Not shrinking in body, but in scale of awareness, as if his sense of "self" were condensing, folding inward beyond ordinary dimensions. Vastness inverted. What once felt infinite now felt intimate.
He found life.
Tiny living things grazed and drifted everywhere, luminous specks feeding upon unseen currents, crawling through dark rivers of essence. They lived without doubt, without ambition.
He thought. "Such small creatures… and yet so many."
He examined his body, still black, translucent, like shadowed glass. Within it, entire ecosystems pulsed. Countless lives moved, fed, died, and were reborn, never knowing the being they sustained.
"What fragile gods you are," he murmured inwardly.
He reached out, intending to touch them. But the moment his intent sharpened, a feeling surged up: attachment. A soft, dangerous warmth. The same sensation he once felt while staying with the sage. The same pull that came with cherished memories, the comfort of belonging, the sweetness of being held by meaning.
He withdrew his hand and moved past them without hesitation.
He went deeper.
Bones rose around him like pale mountains, vast and silent. He passed through them effortlessly and saw something carved within, spiralling patterns, layered and recursive, like steps etched into eternity. A helix. Not merely of flesh, but of life's intention, winding endlessly upward and inward at the same time. "So this is the staircase existence climbs," he reflected. "Step by step, mistake by mistake."
He did not stop.
He passed the molecular level. Then beyond it. Structures dissolved into vibrations, vibrations into probabilities. Even those he crossed. Distance lost meaning. Walking became a metaphor, yet he continued.
He did not know how long he moved.
Then it came.
Emotions, sudden and violent, surged toward him like grasping hands. They wrapped around his limbs, his chest, his throat. The scent of perfect food filled him, rich and intoxicating, awakening hunger he thought long dead. Visions of luxurious banquets, silken beds, bodies warm with desire flashed before him. Heavenly music drifted through the void, melodies designed not to be heard but to be obeyed.
A voice whispered from nowhere and everywhere, sweet as poison."Rest. You have walked far enough. Take what is offered. You deserve it."
His steps faltered, for a fraction of a moment. Then he spoke, calmly, without force.
"It does not affect me… anymore."
The bindings loosened. The scents dulled. The music frayed into noise. He walked through them as one walks through fog, untouched.
Another barrier shattered soundlessly.
He arrived at a vast plain.
Demons stood there, countless, shifting, ever-changing. Some were tall and crowned with horns like broken halos. Others crawled, formless, screaming without mouths. An army of black surged and recoiled like a living tide. They clashed with one another endlessly, tearing, merging, reforming.
Chaos incarnate.
As he observed them, understanding dawned—not fear, not disgust, but clarity.
"They are instinct," he realized. "Desire. Emotion. Will. Survival. Change."
Each demon was a truth stripped of restraint. Hunger without morality. Fear without reason. Passion without boundary. They were not evil. They were necessary. Yet they were unruled.
As he stepped forward, the demons noticed him.
Some roared in challenge. Others laughed. A few knelt instinctively, sensing something they did not understand. The army shifted, responding to his presence like iron to a lodestone.
But then—
Something felt wrong.
His gaze lifted.
Ahead stood a gate.
Circular. Ancient. Broken.
He walked toward it along a narrow path that formed beneath his feet, and when he reached the end, he stood before the shattered threshold. Symbols were carved into its remains in 3 corners, worn yet defiant.
Śānti → Triśūla → Om.
Around it, words spiralled in a sacred circle, etched so deeply they seemed to bleed meaning into the air:
Jāgṛhi Jāgṛhi Kuṇḍalinī,Mūlādhārād utthāya Svādhiṣṭhānaṃ āruhya…
He did not know the language. The words flowed into his mind uninvited, settling with the weight of inevitability. His lips moved before thought could intervene.
"Rise," he said softly, yet the realm trembled."Rise, O Kundalini.Rise from the root and ascend.Ignite the fire of will.Purify the heart.Cleanse the throat.Illuminate the inner eye.Free me from all bindings.Cut away the chains of darkness…"
The moment the words left him, the demons screamed.
They surged forward, black tides crashing against his will, trying to drag him back, to drown him in raw impulse. Claws tore at the ground. Fangs snapped inches from his form.
He did not raise his hand. He did not attack.
"You are not my path," he said quietly.
The demons recoiled, howling, as if struck by a truth more painful than violence.
He came back again on that same path. He found himself back where he had been before, seated upon the plane of darkness.
Silence returned.
He began to think again but before the first thought could fully form, a voice rang out, sharp and urgent.
"Stop."
The voice carried authority layered with panic.
"You lost your chance," it said. "You cannot hold it anymore if you go further."
He frowned in irritation. "Why are you always distracting me?" he asked calmly. "Do you have no other work?" The voice shifted, adopting another tone, another face. "I am warning you. This path ends in loss." He laughed softly. "It is my life," he replied. "How I walk it is my will. I will not bother with you anymore. Babble as much as you like."
The voice hissed. "You will die."
"Then let death come," he said evenly. "That is something for you to fear, not me. For me… it is enjoyment."
The silence thickened.
"If I do not step forward," he continued, voice steady and sharp, "how will I know whether life or death waits? Who are you, faceless one, copying voices, wearing borrowed expressions, trying to drag me back into emotions I have already destroyed?"
The voice faltered.
"Remember this," he said, eyes calm, unyielding. "Today, I will do it. Even death will not be able to claim me."
He sat down in lotus position.
To be Continued...