Fiery lake at dusk

“Loving the extraordinary is ordinary, but loving the ordinary is extraordinary…” This was the spark that again ignited my will when I saw a beautiful sunset in front of me while having a walk on a beach in Odisha. The sunset was calm, and the weather was very cold because of it. I had my thick clothes on, so I felt warm, but the coldness still touched my body as Mara did to the enlightened Buddha. This dawn was spectacular, but what I had seen this morning is still unbelievable and chilling. Anyone who witnesses it, can he live his life normally? Seneca was right when he said, “We suffer more often in imagination than in reality.” What does my dream whispered?

In December 2022, I went to Puri in Odisha to witness the Jagannath Temple and many other locations in addition to it. The night I arrived in Puri, I was very tired, and I was in a very bad mood, particularly about my career graph as an Artist. Naturally, I am a very self-motivated person, but many times an artist is overshadowed by the mind and its chaos. How can any sunshine fall on this dying, cold body when the colossal sun has been covered by small clouds? I couldn’t answer this question until I saw Ishwar Himself in the Jagannath Temple. Yes! I was so agitated that as soon as we arrived in Puri, we went straight to the temple, ignoring all our tiredness. While praying and listening to the calming songs of the Gods and Goddesses, our bodies were filled with divine energy to fulfil our purposes. I entered the temple with questions and left the temple with an answer—but here, the temple is my own soul. I had questioned earlier, “How can any sunshine fall on this dying, cold body when the colossal sun has been covered by small clouds?” Here, the sun is the soul (or more precisely, Atman) and the clouds are the mind and its illusions. But where do the clouds come from? They come primarily from the sun. Without the Sun, nothing can exist! I realised that Atman, or the soul (whatever language you use), creates everything, and nothing in the Universe has its own dominance and power except Atman. Everything is one, and no problem exists until I want it to exist. With these realisations, I slept that night in bliss…

“My body aches! Where am I? Why is the sky red!” The sky was as red as blood, and it was burning my skin as if the demon himself had set the earth on fire. It was definitely a sunset when the environment should have become cool; instead, it was melting my skin like a candle. I was covered with a lot of flowers that were not burning as I was, and the sun was bigger for no reason. There was no cloud that I could see! The sun was in its glory, and everything was just blood and darkness. I blinked a few times rapidly because I couldn’t see anything clearly, and when my sight cleared, I saw a fiery lake at dusk and a mountain covered in darkness. “Is the world ending? Has the sun shown the truth to the clouds? Sometimes problems are necessary for life to function. Reality exists without interfering in normal life, because when reality interferes, then life becomes fiery…” I couldn’t think much in my dream because the heat was suffocating enough, but I was not dying. My body melted, my teeth fell out, my bones were becoming ashes, and eventually, this happened for a moment, after which I witnessed a breeze passing by, taking my soul with it.

I woke up when I saw my wife looking at her phone, and as she noticed that I was awake, she said smilingly, “Are you awake? Because we are going to Chilika Lake, and from there to a beautiful beach. I am excited, and we have to see a dawn today!”