Chereads / Dharmik Chetrapal / Chapter 9 - Journey Through Hell (4) - END

Chapter 9 - Journey Through Hell (4) - END

The humungous image of Natraja was imprinted on an invisible wall that spanned as far as my eyes could see.

Although there were no colours, no scent, no shape. It was still a mesmerizing image that couldn't be described in words.

God and the wall were one.

The cosmos ended at them and started with them.

The gigantic wall in front of me was something that was beyond my physical senses could even fathom logically.

[*grabs head in pain*]

My third eye was overworking itself in order for me to be able to try to see the entirety of Natraja. His existence was just too profound for the human sense.

As I neared the wall, Nataraja began to shrink in size. I wasn't ready to meet God yet, and thinking about the moment when I would stand in front of him, I could feel my heart race faster than ever.

Over the past decade, as I had gained the ability to control the third eye; I had formed some assumptions about the otherwordly meta-physical organ.

The all-seeing eye wasn't the same as the eye of the God Shiva from the ancient myths. It was much more than the ornament of destruction. It was also an 'Eye of creation'.

However, right then, as I stood in front of the grand Cosmos unfolding before me, they were just "Eyes" in the most literal sense. It helped me make sense of the grand revelation of the entirety of the cosmos in its purest form.

My physical eyes had long since given up on analyzing the information, it was up to my divine sense and the third eye to relay this grand narrative of the 'origin'.

I had charted the [way] for a century and had finally reached the end. The shadows that I mistakenly believed to be the end of my journey, were only the beginning.

I was standing somewhere no human had reached before and probably never will for another countless millennium.

------

As Natraja shrank, so did the pain in my temple.

Although compared to the past, much was resolved and I could easily control the third eye, it still came with a cost. The cost was the pain and huge amounts of Prana required to employ the third eye's powers.

Similar to how a new foreign sense was assimilated into my body as my own, the pain I felt trying to watch Natraja was also becoming a part of me and reducing slowly, centring itself around my temple.

The pain that kept me alive, or rather told me that I was still alive, was slowly dissipating from my body.

"I have arrived.", I said.

I firmly believed that Natraja was the one who had called me here.

I folded my hands in respect as I bowed down on the ground to pay respect.

I felt that the wall, the God, the Natraja, the Hell, and the [way], all had come to life for this very moment.

It was the only thing and everything that mattered. As well as nothing mattered at the moment. The dichotomy of existence, the 'To be or not to be' was not just a question anymore to me.

(*silence*)

I bowed for an hour and nothing happened.

"Natraja, I am here!", I said - louder.

I thought because he was so big, he couldn't hear me.

Still, there were no movements from him. It was as if everything but me was frozen in time and what I was seeing in front of me was a movie playing on the entire surface of the cosmos.

And Natraja's body, as large as ever, simply continued to shrink in that silent movie.

(*silence*)

I raised my head in the heart-wrenching silence to soak in the image of the God that was in front of me.

I stood where I was, completely silent, watching the biggest event of my life unfold, as one toe became two, two became all the fingers, and then became the ankle and the feet. I soaked in as much as I could of the humongous reality.

I was dying from anticipation.

"How long have I waited for this moment?"

It was insanity to have lived for so long with all that happened.

"I will find all the answers today."

[*teardrops fall to the void*]

I was crying.

A 15-year body with a mind of a hundred-year-old man, I was an amalgamation among amalgamations. The most coincidental peculiarity that stuck out like a thorn in the whole Universe.

Yet I was crying like an infant separated from its mother.

(*sob*)

"I'm sorry to show you such disgrace, my God."

(*silence*)

"I am just very happy to be here."

(*silence*)

"I can't tell you how much this encounter means to me."

(*silence*)

"If I were to die right here and now, I will not have any regrets."

(*silence*)

"I feel like the reason for my existence have been fulfilled."

(*silence*)

It was making me anxious.

Even after hundreds of pleas and trying to make a conversation I had yet to hear anything from the reason for my existence.

'God Please. Why won't you listen to me?', I asked him in my heart.

In that moment of desperation and ecstasy, I was slowly being consumed by the dark thoughts that I had always pushed away.

'Was it all just my own delusion?'

I doubted all my three eyes. I doubted every sense and every cell in my body.

~▄ ▄!~

A voice appeared.

I couldn't make head and tail of what I heard, but it was something at least.

'How long has it been since I heard a voice?'

Even though I could create any inanimate object in this dimension. I could not replicate sounds other than my own.

I had tried this with HP in the initial days of Hell. All the videos on HP would play without sound. Even after the awakening and with the power of creation, sounds didn't exist in Hell.

I could not believe my ears and my eyes were focused on Natraja. It was taking forever for him to shrink his size.

With a minute of silence that followed, I quickly became sceptical of whether I had even heard a voice?

'It's not right to be distracted here. I am finally going to meet my God!!', I told myself.

The existence of Natraja was my only reason for being. I have had suicidal thoughts many times in the hundred years, but I had persisted because I thought Natraja was waiting.

I had deluded myself into believing I was important to Natraja, as much as he to me.

Despite my strong mindset and rationalization, I had become totally dependent on the existence of Natraja. I lived for his sake.

I had become a fanatic.

If Natraja had asked me to kill myself, I would have done so without regret.

This is what solitude had done to me. Maybe the Gurus who go for penance in the Himalayas for years would somehow be fine, but I was only a 15-year-old child who had lost everything. How could I not rely on something as mysterious as Natraja?

The loneliness of hell was forced upon me without my knowledge. How could after a hundred years of loneliness there won't be any changes in the psyche?

~Y▄r ▄ ▄▄ ex▄▄ence~

This time it wasn't just imagination. I definitely heard the voice.

After a century of silence, my ears were conditioned to hear only my voice, therefore any slight difference would make my ears twitch.

~I'm sure I'm hearing it, but why don't I feel my eardrums vibrating?~

~▄u have en▄d en▄h~

I realized it after the third time. Someone was talking directly to my consciousness.

"God, Is that you?"

(*silence*)

I didn't get a response when I asked a question, but I would hear a voice when I would stop speaking.

"Why won't you talk? Did I do something wrong?"

I looked around me, and it was still the infinity of nothingness around me.

~Your ▄ doesn't bel▄ng in ▄. I'll ▄ your su▄▄~

As if a tubelight had finally lit inside my head, I realized what was happening.

It wasn't a conversation.

~Your incomp▄~

The distortion in voice was too significant. I couldn't make out the tails and head of the sentences that were directly being imprinted on my consciousness by Natraja.

"How can I make you answer my question, God?"

~Wa▄k to▄rds t...he light my child.~