THE KAILASA TEMPLT AT ELLORA CHAPTER 5

The Light That Waits

We left off when Aanya observes the Sri Yantra, a sacred symbol that implies the cohesiveness of the universe.

Aanya didn’t sleep that night. The symbol echoed in her dreams, morphing into shifting spirals that led her through narrow tunnels carved from obsidian light. She awoke before dawn, heart pounding, her sketchbook still open beside her.

Prof. Narayan was waiting near the north transept when she arrived, pacing. “I couldn’t stop thinking about the symbol,” he said. “I spoke to one of the temple priests, an old man named Bhaskaran. He told me something… strange.”

They walked together toward a lesser-known alcove behind the sanctum—an area usually roped off, overgrown with moss, and silence. Prof. Narayan continued in a hushed voice, “There’s a local legend. It’s rarely spoken of, and only to those the priests deem ‘ready.’

He paused before an ancient stone slab bearing no obvious inscription. But to Aanya’s eyes, the edges shimmered faintly.

“They say that once every hundred and eight years, a light appears inside a hidden cave beneath the temple. It lasts for seven days, then vanishes.”

Aanya tilted her head. “A cave beneath Kailasa?”

The professor nodded. “Yes. The priests call it Karunaguhā—the Cave of Compassion. The light is said to emerge from nowhere. It casts no shadow, emits no heat, and yet... it pulses with life. Some say it's a tear from Shiva himself. Others believe it’s the eye of time.”

“And the one-week miracle?”

The professor hesitated. “Those who sit within the light for seven days come out… changed. Some speak of hearing forgotten languages. Others recall lives not their own. But the most consistent report is this: they no longer fear death.”

Aanya felt something pull at her ribs, as if her chest recognized something her mind could not. “Has anyone found this cave recently?”

“Not in living memory. Most think it's a myth. But Bhaskaran said something strange last night. He said, ‘The light stirs. Someone has touched the code.”

They both looked at each other.

“It’s responding to you,” he said softly.

Later that evening, armed with a single oil lamp and a thread of reckless faith, Aanya returned to the temple. She wasn’t alone; the professor accompanied her, carrying his satchel of notes and a digital compass.

They entered through a narrow crawlspace Bhaskaran had described, hidden behind a disused shrine to Ardhanarishvara. The air grew damp and heavy as they descended, the stone walls pressing in like the breath of sleeping gods. After nearly thirty minutes of crawling and winding, the passage widened abruptly.

Aanya stepped into a vast subterranean chamber.

And froze.

At its heart floated a sphere of light, no larger than a melon, suspended midair, untouched by flame or wire. It had no color and yet shimmered with all colors, like dew spun through the eye of a prism. It cast no shadow.

It was silent.

It was impossibly alive.

Aanya’s knees buckled as she approached. The light pulsed once, softly, and within it, she saw images.

Not visions. Not hallucinations.

Memories.

But they weren’t hers.

She was a boy racing up Himalayan cliffs. A monk weeping over a broken manuscript. A woman in bronze robes singing to stars that hadn’t yet formed.

She gasped and fell back.

Professor Narayan caught her.

“This… is the light,” he whispered. “And it recognized you.”

They remained in the chamber for hours, watching the light dance between stillness and subtle motion, like a breath held just before awakening. Aanya felt no hunger. No fear. Just awe.

As they prepared to leave, he said, “Bhaskaran told me the light remains only for a week once awakened. After that, it disappears—until the next cycle.”

Aanya looked back one last time, her voice low. “What happens if someone stays with it the whole week?”

The professor’s expression turned unreadable. “No one who has… ever came back the same.”

They emerged from the hidden cave into the night air of Kailasa. The stars above were unchanged. But Aanya was not.

The countdown had begun.

Aanya decided to stay for the seven days.

The decision was neither impulse nor logic; it rose from some place deeper, older. The moment she passed through the gateway, the mundane world slipped away, replaced by a realm bathed in a light that wasn’t light at all. It shimmered not on the surface of things, but within them, inside the stone, the silence, even herself.

The hidden chamber was unlike anything she had seen within the known boundaries of the Kailasa Temple. The walls pulsed with shifting glyphs, as if the stone was remembering its own making. No dust. No decay. Time here had another rhythm.

She stayed for seven days.

Or perhaps no days at all.

In the stillness of the cave, Aanya lost track of hours. The light did not tire. It was conscious, a presence that watched but never judged.

Each day, a different facet of the mystery unfolded.

One morning, she stood before an arch that wasn't there the day before. Through it, she heard the harmonics of a hundred mantras spoken in a single breath.

Another day, she traced carvings that rearranged themselves under her fingers. They responded to intention more than touch.

At one point, she wept—not from sorrow, but because something inside her had become too vast to hold quietly.

The figure of Revanta, once only a myth carved in basalt, appeared to her more than once, not as flesh, but as transmission. He spoke not in words but in resonance. Through him, she learned that the gateway was not just a bridge in space, but in mind, in history, and in soul.

She was not the first seeker.

She would not be the last.

When the time came to return, it was not because she was finished, only because she was full.

Before sealing the gateway, she knelt and carved a message for the next seeker into the temple wall beside the arch:

To the one who listens when silence speaks—

Stone will remember.

Ask not for answers.

Ask better questions.

She traced her initials beneath the script, not for ego, but as a signal.

As Aanya stepped out from the hidden chamber and into the world of form again, the frequencies began to fade, gently, like a dream releasing her fingers. The chirping of birds, the distant calls of pilgrims, the scent of warm earth—everything was the same.

And yet entirely different.

Because now, half of her remained behind.

Not trapped.

Expanded.

A knowing that could not be unknown lived inside her now. A memory that wasn’t hers, yet fit her like skin.

Sadhguru has described this union, not in words, but mystically, that when one is seeking, mountains are no longer mountains, trees are no longer trees, and the clouds are no longer clouds; once one KNOWS, mountains are mountains, trees are trees, and clouds are clouds!

Sadhguru uses metaphors, as words cannot describe the experiential reality of that UNION.