In Hindu mythology an avatar is a material embodiment of a divine being, incarnated into the material world, dedicated to educate and guide the mankind in its spiritual development. In computer graphics technology an avatar is a 3 dimensionally visible, immaterial embodiment of a human being, dedicated to be guided by a human mind to perform communication in an environment of virtual reality.

Time and era of this story are unknown. This is also a story about an avatar, but to strictly decide of which kind might be less easy...

Gurus are not always what they seem to be at the first look; when someone gets a way too high expectation of his guru, then such a worship can easily lead to a disaster - even when it is not the guru's fault. This story deals with such a guru - a beautiful, charming and extraordinary wise one, and considered divine - but this guru could certainly only be found in the Twilight Zone - the world of the unexpected.

The Glass Shrine

I tell here a story about something that never should have happened. That it happened can be interpreted as an accident, or perhaps simply as a result of reckless unawareness of some guardsmen, but possibly it was just nothing else than the result of the natural way of karmical interactions.
 

Legions of tourists had already visited Decra- Vat, which in its monumental, majestic appearance formed the sacred center of the city. Since the common spread of mass media it had reached the rank of one of the major spiritual centers of the entire planet. Like every day, the continuous stream of tourists walked along the two narrow paths leading left and right next to the temple area - their eyes and cameras starring over the surrounding walls at the many ancient stone statues and  the faithfully painted, colourful ornaments at the wooden temple roof beams. The statues in their various, awkward looking meditation postures had that unique kind of unearthly, mysterious smile on their face, that was said to be only fully understandable by enlightened human beings. Some tourists were even carrying one of these new, clumsy,  stereoscopic photocorders to record the temple in front of the panorama of the famous green mountain landscape in 3 dimensions.

Many of these tourists doubtlessly wished to be able to finally see all the inner rooms of the temple, but this was strictly forbidden, and since nobody ever got a permission to photograph or film there, lots of fantastic myths and rumours had been spun about its secrets. Not long ago it was not even allowed for tourists to put just a bare foot on the temple square, and regarding all the damage that had been done to the temple in all the centuries ago, this decision may have been not a really bad one.

Today tourists were allowed to walk around in the temple court and they even got the permission to visit and film the interior of the Large Hall, which despite of its size of a small cathedral only covered 1/4 of the ashram's building areas. Since this time pictures of its colourful interior with the gold plated, curved roof beams and the abstract ornaments on them had become a strong symbol for peace and the culture of our once so highly developed civilization.

Since the time of the wars, where the attackers burnt down the Mediateko and wiped out more than 70% of our population in the firestorm wars, in spite of now more than 400 years of further development our civilization still never has reached entirely that level of development it had before. The wars just started about such banal materialist interests like raw material resources and whether there were rights to pollute and exploit the environment beyond a reversible limit. In our own culture we always regarded life, health and the vivid nature as holy, and therefore when the conflict had reached its climax, the Mediateko got completely razed away and only melted stones remained - and upon these stones grew many myths. Some people claim it would have never existed, but there are proofs that it did. The Mediateko was once the central university library of our civilization's gathered knowledge - the scientific, philosophic and artistic brain of our culture. Its burning is still present for us as such a major cultural trauma, that it became a term for cruelty itself.

But despite of the burning, in our culture never arose blindly raging revenge needs, because when the Mediateko was our civilization's brain, then its heart was certainly the temple. The temple was also damaged and plundered in the time of the wars, but our religion had always taught us that hate and revenge is something evil, because it implies a never ending chain reaction of brutality - though there is no other enemy in wars besides the war itself. Therefore our culture could survive by overcoming the hate and even many of our enemies later did convert to our path of spirituality.

Nyu looked at the seemingly endless stream of tourists watching the temple court and at the pilgrims those got blessed by the guru in the Large Hall, which was the only public part of the temple. Nyu now felt a strange kind of happiness and smiled like one of the stone statues when he imagined all these people's desire to be enabled just to look once into the secrets areas of the temple, because he could be here every day now - Nyu was an adept.

Nyu felt a kind of pride that he had got so far, because he had been rejected so many times by the priests those had complained about his apparent nosiness, his impatience and his habit to pertly ask questions when most people stayed quiet. That he finally had met a guru who he could convince to despite educate him, regarded Nyu as a decision of the cosmic consciousness to give him a kind of last change to overcome his seemingly blatantly bad karma. Though Nyu remembered well the day of his initiation, where he had to perform the religious vows not to cause sufferance to the mankind and to always keep secret whatever he would see and learn here in the temple to preserve it for future generations. At the time of the initiation he could not imagine at all what it was that could be worth to be kept that secret to preserve it, because all known spiritual texts of our culture had been made publically available long times ago in the form of  many copies of books printed on durable paper as a result of the Mediateko burning - to prevent that an event like this could ever endanger the existence of our culture again.

People from outside had told a lot of strange old rumours about living, breathing avatars residing in the temple. Legends said that the avatars were not human beings, but immediate manifestations of the divine spirit those had dedicated themselves entirely to serve with their enlightened mind's wisdom the spiritual development of the human race. The details of such tradited avatar myths were often contradicting. Some legends described them as immortal pure- spirit beings with an ethereal, immaterial lightbody, while many other stories reported that they definitely had a material body, and in some rumours it was even claimed that they even got murdered by the enemies in the time of the wars. In other legends there were claims that the avatars once had been human beings those had risen to very high levels of spiritual development and though after their entire enlightenment got willingly reincarnated (similarly like a buddha becoming a bodhisattva). The only common element in all these myths was that the avatars had been present inside the temple, that they lived very long, that they taught and consulted people and that they were gifted with extraordinary mental capabilities - especially with an extremely good memory for recognizing people and a sense for their mind and intentions.

When Nyu had heard these legends the first time, he had though they were just old, religious superstitions. Later, when Nyu passed his first initiation and 2 monks now showed him most of the artistically awesome decorated inner rooms of the temple, in his following 1 year of novice life his conviction intensified that the reported presence of any avatars inside the temple was nothing else then just a spiritual metaphor for the presence of the spirit of the old saints manifested in all the religious scriptures, symbols and artworks everywhere inside the rooms of this sacred place.

Though Nyu remembered very well, how astonished he was on the day, when after 1 year of  novice life spent with learning the basics of meditation and studying spiritual scriptures, he had his 2nd initiation to become now an adept. At the end of the initiation ceremony in the evening he was told he would meet now his new spiritual teacher, and he was seriously warned to always keep a respectful distance to him. 2 monks guided Nyu through many long corridors and suddenly unlocked in the middle of a large, wooden relief wall painting a secret door to a temple hall he never had seen before. At the beginning the hall was completely dark. Only some rows of something like tiny, coloured light emitting diodes embedded in the roof ornaments of the seemingly quite high vault ceiling permitted a limited possibility of orientation. The 2 monks instructed Nyu to sit down now in the lotus seat on the floor here, and while his eyes began to adapt to the darkness and his ears listened to the reverberation of the 2 monks steps, he noticed that in the hall he was sitting apparently among ca. 30..40 other monks in yogic meditation postures. In front of them there seemed to be a stage- like empty floor area with something like a large cabinet. A low drone slowly rose into audibility, which sounded a bit like a choir chanting the "om" mantra, but it was way quieter. The noise turned into a steady, continuously humming, pleasant tone which stayed audible from now on. On the empty place in front of the monks now something large slowly began to light up. The first minute it stayed still so dark that Nyu's eyes had difficulty to recognize what it was. Many meters away there seemed to be a kind of large shrine in front of the group, surrounded by 3 standing, male guardsmen. The lower part of the shrine seemed to be a dark, wooden cabinet of approximately 1m height and 3.4m width, standing on a 20cm high, slightly wider stone pedestal. Upon this cabinet there seemed to be a kind of transparent showcase cabin entirely made of glass. The cabin had the shape of an at least 2m high upright prism and apparently had hexagonal ground and top surfaces and a black, ca. 15cm high roof. In the cabin something seemed to emit a dark, bluish light, but it was still too dark to see much.

Suddenly a loud and sonorous "om" sounded through the hall, and simultaneously the mysterious light in the glass cabin of the shrine turned slowly brighter and whiter. What kind of ceremony was this?! A bald man seemed to sit inside the cabin in the lotus seat. Apparently he was chanting this sonorous "om"; the man was naked besides a white, nappy- like cloth bound around his legs as underpants. Nyu couldn't see the man very well, because the shrine stood ca. 12m away and especially the lower areas of the panes seemed to be covered with fine black ornaments painted on the glass in a way that of each pane only an area in the shape of a lower semi- ellipse was left empty enough to be well suited to see through it. But from here the man looked like a perfect specimen of male beauty. He opened his eyes and spoke: "Hello Nyu - I am happy to see you. Let me guide you from now on on your path of perfectation. Be welcome, adept! Let me see you tomorrow at 9:00 to make us begin with the education...". The man now began to sing in a language that Nyu had never heard, but Nyu felt nearly like hypnotized as soon he listened to the incredible charming voice of this man. Could it be that the acoustics of the hexagonal glass cabin simply caused this incredible voice? Then he performed spectral chanting (throat singing) with a never heard precision and then he began even to sing as a soprano and within the same song he let his voice pitch jump down to the deepest bass voice and back to soprano like when it would be the easiest task for him. Nyu stood up and fascinated he walked to the cabin to see this extraordinary man from closer. But as soon he reached that carpet free, triangular, pale parquet floor area that surrounded the shrine, the 3 guardsmen immediately stopped him by each holding horizontally a dark brown, wooden, ca. 1.8m long stick in his way. The guardsmen were dressed in colourful striped, mainly orange and red, thick cloth uniforms of ancient design those looked quite uncomfortable. On their heads they wore polished, silver, hemispherical metal helmets with embossed ornaments, and in their faces now there arose an expression of astonishment and a little bit of puzzledness, just like when they hadn't realized such situations since long times. 3 seconds they just stared at Nyu, then one of them said: "Stop!! Nobody must get closer to the Avatar Shrine than 3.5 meters!". A bit scared Nyu returned to his previous place. "Avatar Shrine..." thought Nyu - could these legends be true?! The man in the shrine chanted another "om", the illumination in the shrine turned dark again and instead a little bit of light from the corridor now came from behind, because the hall door opened. All monks now silently stood up and left the temple hall through the door. Nyu also followed them before it would get too dark again when the shrine illumination would finally turn off completely.

Tonight Nyu in his small and scarcely furnished cell had intensive dreams about the avatar.

This all did happen long time ago, but Nyu remembered it like yesterday. On the next day at 9:00 he entered again the temple hall. He saw now 2 additional guardsmen standing left and right outside next to the open hall door, and this time an electric illumination at the vault ceiling of the hall was turned on. It was not very bright at all and had a reddish tint like from old carbon fibre light bulbs, but it was way better than the darkness from yesterday. There were a lot of abstract golden ornaments at the ceiling, and the mint green plastered walls apparently had no windows. This time only 11 other monks were present, but Nyu didn't know them. Some looked older, but most seemed to be around the same age as Nyu (29 years old.) Also the 3 guardsmen in their ancient uniforms stood around the Avatar Shrine again. One of the guardsmen spoke to them: "Welcome to the Hall Of The Avatar!". In the cabin there was this beautiful man again, and he said with his charming voice "Hello, I am Sri Rashtapajeiju, and will guide you from now on on the path of the spiritual perfectation of the man." Again Nyu noticed the quiet, pleasantly humming sound from the shrine. This time Nyu sat down in front of the shrine as close to it as it was allowed. 3 other young monks entered the hall and sat down on the floor too. The 2 door guardsmen also came into the hall, locked the door from inside and waited left and right next to it.

Sri Rashtapajeiju began to give a lecture about greed, hate and ignorance as the basical causes of all evil, and that the evil was nothing caused by any external kinds of devil, but only by the foolishness and unreasonability of the man himself that leads us to self- destruction. He explained the nature of the good and the evil by arguing with the sum of all freedom, which gets reduced by causing sufferance and gets increased e.g. by causing happiness and enabling creative expression to conscious beings, and he explained that this sum was controlling everybody's karma. Then finally he gave very logical arguments and illustrations that the only way of freeing us from the evil could be by changing ourselves. Nyu had already read about this topic in the spiritual scriptures, but the way Rashtapajeiju explained it - how he intoned everything with his charming voice and how he gesticulated with his hands in his glass cabin - was an incredible experience for Nyu. After the lesson Rashtapajeiju spoke: "It is time for a meditation - Let us store the learned now...", and again he chanted his "om" mantra. Watching the shrine, Nyu noticed that not only the carpet less parquet floor area, but also the wooden cabinet of the shrine had a triangular base - shaped like a prism with one side facing at the group of monks. There also seemed to be lots of fine ornaments on the dark surfaces of it, and in the center there was an oval, slightly brighter area of ca. 90cm width and 60cm height. Nyu couldn't see the ornaments too well, because the anyway quite dark ceiling lamps seemed to concentrate there light mainly at the quite dark blue carpeted area, while the shrine stayed in a twilight.

After the meditation Rashtapajeiju began to talk about that changing oneself would be often the hardest of all works and that therefore effective spiritual methodologies would be a necessary condition to enable the further development of our human race. He spoke then in this context about the yoga as a holy tool for the perfectation of the man and that he would now explain some of the advanced yogic assanas and how the adept could benefit from these body postures. Rashtapajeiju did now a headstand inside the glass cabin, and while he stayed in this posture for 5 minutes, he continued explaining that this posture would be called the "sirshassana", and then he talked about its purposes without getting even the slightest strain audible in his voice despite of his unusual body position. Afterwards he continued showing several further assanas in those he knotted his arms and legs together in various, quite uncomfortable looking ways, and again he seemed to have virtually no difficulty to talk about these body postures and their purposes, and while he warned all, that nobody should overload his body by changing too rapidly between various strenuous assanas without relaxing between them, the slim Rashtapajeiju himself seemed to have no problems at all to do so. Again he said :"It is time for meditation - Let us store the learned now...", and again he chanted his "om" mantra.

Nyu immediately had enclosed him into his hearth. When there was really any truth in the myth of a "perfect spiritual master", then Sri Rashtapajeiju certainly was one. Though instead of starting to meditate, Nyu asked the guardsmen something like why this yoga master was sitting in a glass cabin, but they just looked a bit angry at him and didn't answer at all. Instead 2 of the other monks were whispering to each other behind him and then Nyu heard a quiet, short giggling of someone reverberating in the high vault hall. Then Rashtapajeiju's incredible voice again began to sing a song; its text was simply that the instruction time was over now and that therefore for the adepts it was now time to leaven the hall, and that tomorrow at 9:00 all should come again, to walk together forward on the path of the perfectation of the man. The room light dimmed slowly darker and simultaneously the shrine illumination too - again all monks began to stand up and quietly left the hall through the now open door.

Nyu was excited and thought about whether it could be or not that Sri Rashtapajeiju was indeed a perfect master... When he really was one, then he certainly had an enormous level of control over his prana energies - and when he had this control... couldn't he use it then to give Nyu shaktipat to redirect the prana streams in Nyu's body in a way that he immediately could lead him to enlightenment?! Why was Rashtapajeiju enclosed in this glass shrine? Should it perhaps shield his prana fields in any way from the monks to prevent them from accidentally overcharging themselves with this energy of life? Nyu felt euphoric.

A smell of mild herbs and freshly baked bread was in the air. In the canteen of the ashram several hundred monks were eating their vegetarian meals. The food had been continuously optimized and improved since long times to keep them healthy, because everybody here knew that bodily health was not only necessary condition for any lasting happiness, but the intactness of the nervous system was also the physical basis of all real spiritual development. Though the food codex was strict, but the various meals were balanced well for optimal nutrition.

Nyu had sat down next to one of the monks he had seen whispering behind him in the Avatar Hall; his name was Kehtohkah. Nyu asked him about Sri Rashtapajeiju. Kehtohkah answered quietly that the guardsmen didn't like it at all to hear us adepts of the lower levels spreading informations about the avatar, because the avatar would not be real - and most monks would anyway know this, but it was a taboo. Nyu asked Kehtohkah what he meant. Kehtohkah grinned and said: "I don't know much about the avatar, but he is claimed to be more than 500 years old, and he never leaves the shrine, and these guardsmen keep everybody away who tries to examine that shrine closer." Nyu carefully expressed that he felt the strong desire to meet the yoga master Rashtapajeiju outside the shrine and that he wanted to talk to him about personal things. Kehtohkah answered: "I have watched him 4 days now and asked several other monks, but if you ask me, I think that the avatar is simply a big fraud - presumingly just one of these stereoscopic photocorder projections, mirrored with some tricks into the shrine - and the guardsmen serve no other purpose than preventing people from finding this out. Sorry for disillusioning you, but I seriously doubt that the avatar will be capable to understand and answer you at all, not to say to meet you somewhere. In my opinion he is just a pre- recorded stereoscopic bluff - not more bodily than an optical bit pattern stored on one of these photocorder cartridges. So simple is this."

Nyu felt a little shocked - could his heart be that wrong that his spiritual idol was just a fraud? Nyu reminded Kehtohkah, that photocorder recordings were just stereoscopic, but never truly 3 dimensionally viewable from different angles. But Kehtohkah just replied: "Perhaps it's some new kind of hologram motion picture technology - I don't care that much however this shrine may work."

In his cell Nyu had dreamed again the entire night long about being together with Sri Rashtapajeiju.

The next day at 9:00 Nyu and the other monks entered the Hall Of The Avatar again. As before, the 3 guardsmen stood around the shrine, and inside the glass cabin Rashtapajeiju began the day with sitting in the lotus seat chanting his "om" mantra. Nyu carefully walked left and right along the border of the carpeted area and moved his body up and down while his eyes were fixating the avatar; he tried to reassure himself that Rashtapajeiju was not just a pre- recorded 3D projection. Nyu felt a great relief when he discovered that no matter from which angle he watched him, the yoga master always still looked like a real, 3 dimensional, bodily living being and not like a flat photocorder stereo film, and that there were also no kinds of angle dependant colour shifts or blurrings visible those he had expected in an optical hologram. When the meditation of Rashtapajeiju ended, Nyu again sat down in the lotus seat at the carpet floor border as close as possible to the shrine. The avatar now began to recite an ancient story about a man who had stolen a lot and then gave it back when he became aware of the sufferance he had caused with his deed. While Nyu fascinated listened to the avatar's charming voice, Nyu this time continuously stared at him to check if he could find any evidences for Kehtohkah's claims that the avatar would be a fraud. The light in the shrine shined indeed a bit strange and the glare looked quite unnaturally, but in the distance it was impossible to find out anything concrete. Nyu wished nothing more than to know if his apparently perfect spiritual master was a fraud or not, but he feared to get in trouble with the gurus and possibly get thrown out of the ashram when he asked too much about a taboo topic. He also was a bit afraid that Rashtapajeiju could get angry when he asked such things, but Nyu could not bear the uncertainty any longer if he was worshiping nothing more than just a kind of pre- recorded film. So when Rashtapajeiju had finished his recitation, with a loudly beating heart Nyu jumped up from the floor and asked a bit stuttering: "Sri Rashtapajeiju - are you real?". Nyu had already expected that it was indeed just a kind of film, so he wondered when the avatar smiled at him and asked: "What do you mean with 'real', Nyu?". Nyu feared to annoy him with too concrete questions, though he answered: "I wanted to know if you are a real perfect master." The avatar smiled even more and said something like: "Perfection exists in the eye of the observer."

The rest of the day Rashtapajeiju spent basically with reciting some other ancient stories about the origins of brutality and its relation to sufferance and its karmical consequences, and then suddenly he started a vivid discussion with the monks about the deeds of the persons in these stories. Nyu felt happy to discuss with him, but Kehtohkah was now that person that looked really puzzled, because he had previously expected that the avatar was just a kind of pre- recorded 3D projection trick without any own intelligence, and now he had shown the capability of performing a discussion with human beings, and he had not only a charming voice, but was even capable to argue brilliantly, and no matter what the monks asked him about the topic, the avatar always found perfectly suited comparisons and analogies to illustrate the situations with a cleverness and wisdom that seemed to be superior to at least any of the adepts in the hall.

After Sri Rashtapajeiju had sung his instruction time ending song again and all monks were leaving the Hall Of The Avatar, Nyu asked the door guardsmen if it would be possible to meet the master privately. The answer was just, that Sri Rashtapajeiju would have no time because he had to instruct many other groups besides this one. Then Nyu noticed that, unlike the guardsmen around the shrine, these 2 old mans had each a sword attached to their belt, in spite of that normally it was forbidden as a serious sin to carry weapons within the bounds of the temple area. When Nyu asked why, he got the answer: "To defend the life of the avatar." Nyu asked a bit scared: "To defend his life?? - Whom should ever come in mind such a terrible idea like murdering Sri Rashtapajeiju?". The guardsmen answered that he shouldn't worry, and that the sword of his traditional uniform was rather a relict introduced after the time of the wars and that the last time a sword had been used in the Avatar Hall was more than 200 years ago. Nyu asked why the avatar was sitting in a glass cabin. Both guardsmen smiled, then one said that this would also be just a safety measure to protect him against attacks.

In the ashram canteen Nyu again discussed with Kehtohkah about the avatar. After Nyu explained that he was quite sure now that Rashtapajeiju must be a real living being and not just an immaterial projection, Kehtohkah also admitted that the avatar apparently couldn't be a pre- recorded 3D movie, but he continued to regard him as an advanced technical bluff, that perhaps was based on computer graphics instead. The discussion came to a point where Kehtohkah explained the suggestion that perhaps the guardsmen were simply remote controlling the avatar, because they were always standing around near the corners of the triangular shrine, though one of them was often behind the cabinet which could give him occasions to manipulate it in some ways. Nyu replied that these old guardsmen didn't look clever and wise enough at all to do so, and that it would need a lot of data to be transferred to let the avatar respond to the monks in the way they had realized during the discussion round. Kehtohkah asked if the guardsmen could have any kind of EEG brain wave interface in their silver helmets to control the avatar, but both found this solution quite unlikely, and the entire remote control theory seemed to make the less sense, the more they thought about it.

Finally Kehtohkah said to Nyu: "We both like the avatar, but there is a fundamental difference between us two; I believe in the truth of the philosophical conclusions and the laws derived from them forming our religion - and these the avatar teaches us in an exciting and well understandable way - but you just want to believe in the man. For you nothing seems to be more important than to believe in your perfect yoga master, while for me the Avatar Shrine is just an odd, technical presentation machine for spectacularly illustrating spiritual knowledge that anyway stands in the books." Then he said: "You should talk to Patsheiyu - he is also one of these guys here those still believe in the avatar myth." Then he pointed with his arm at a man sitting at another table.

Patsheiyu looked ca. 55 years old and had a grey moustache. When Nyu asked him about Sri Rashtapajeiju, Patsheiyu whispered that he had studied all available old texts about this topic. A little louder he explained that in the past there was a time where 8 avatars existed, those were great, enlightened spiritual masters and the major developers of the religion and that Sri Rashtapajeiju was the first of them. Patsheiyu explained that legends were telling that the avatars once had been born as human beings like us, and after their enlightenment they later willingly had decided to make their mind or spirit turn into a special form to gain unlimited lifetime for getting capable to stay from that day on bodily present forever to serve the religion here in the material world to help the spiritual development of the mankind's coming generations. The avatars at that time resided in 5 temples and were spiritual counsellors for everyone; but due to their famous wisdom they soon reached much influence on the government from that the people benefited a lot for hundreds of  years. But 408 years ago in the firestorm wars 7 of the 8 avatars got killed when the temples were raided - only Sri Rashtapajeiju here in the main temple could get saved and though stayed alive as the first and last one of his kind.

Nyu listened fascinated and asked since how long Sri Rashtapajeiju was sitting in a glass shrine and if he could meet him outside. Patsheiyu answered that he had never seen him outside and also wouldn't know details about the shrine, but in several of the legends about the avatars such shrines were mentioned and in none an avatar had left one, but in 5 of them avatars were said to have healed people by touching them, though he concluded that the shrines at least in past must have been open, but yet he still hadn't seen the shrine of Sri Rashtapajeiju open personally. Nyu's heart beat faster when he heard this, because he began to imagine that Sri Rashtapajeiju would be capable to touch his body with his energies to give Nyu shaktipat. Patsheiyu began to continue that in the Mediateko burning all the knowledge about the construction of avatar shrines was lost, and that he had watched that for maintaining and restoring Sri Rashtapajeiju's shrine, 3 times a year the president of the culture preservation institute was travelling with an escort to the temple and that on these days the corridor leading to the Hall of the Avatar got closed by 4 guardsmen at each end to hinder any other people from entering the corridor. Nyu then asked why, but Patsheiyu explained that he also didn't know more.

In the nights Nyu dreamed many times of being together with Sri Rashtapajeiju, and in these dreams he felt a mysterious, powerful happiness. Nyu remembered that after his first initiation he had also dreamed sometimes about his guru Sattvananda Yogi, but he never had realized such strong feelings for him as he now felt for the apparently perfect yoga master Sri Rashtapajeiju.

In the next weeks many interesting things had happened.

E.g. there was a lesson where Sri Rashtapajeiju was teaching the group spectral chanting. Nyu remembered well, how the avatar with his incredible voice gave sung examples about which sorts of sounds a human voice should be capable to create, and how the monks were instructed to become aware of the resonances in their nasal cavities and the movement of their larynx, and then how the entire group should reproduce such sounds of Mongolian style, which first didn't sound correct at all. While Sri Rashtapajeiju showed it again, the black oval area in the center of the wooden shrine cabinet suddenly turned out to be a display screen, on which now a bright green luminous curve of a kind of spectrum analysis of the master's singing appeared - without that anybody in the hall seemed to have pressed any buttons. When the master instructed each adept to reproduce his spectral chanting exercises again, on the display screen now appeared in orange the difference between Sri Rashtapajeiju's and the adept's sound spectrum curve, which encouraged the monks a lot to play around with their voice in ways they never had done before, and after 1 hour they gladly had discovered that all in the group could reproduce at least some of those unusual sounds the master had shown to them. Realizing to gain control over their voice, the group got a lot of fun with this. From now on every day the monks were singing together with Sri Rashtapajeiju. By directing them with his gestures and abstract graphical light patterns on the oval screen of the shrine, Sri Rashtapajeiju 2 weeks later had got them so far, that the monks had learned to sing as a choir in a way that they could imitate an analogue synthesizer and reproduce 3 famous, traditional pieces of music those had been originally composed for such an instrument.

Nyu was very astonished and felt even more fascination for Sri Rashtapajeiju when he discovered that also Nyu himself was learning to sing this way; he previously always had thought not to be musical at all. When Nyu asked the avatar how he could control the oval display screen without typing on any keyboards or similar, Rashtapajeiju just smiled and said that he would explain this later. But Nyu wanted to know more and asked him, how he could control the graphical light patterns on the screen he used to direct the choir. To Nyu's surprise Sri Rashtapajeiju didn't explain more about the screen, but began to tell now something from the time before the time of the wars, namely that there had been a long tradition of a form of visual music in our culture, which originally had been completely soundless and just consisted of projected, colourful, abstract light patterns those often flashed in very complex structured rhythms. Sri Rashtapajeiju explained that this light music had been as popular as acoustical musics today, but that by the Mediateko burning all the knowledge about it and also the compositions itself was lost. He explained that the light music later had been combined with acoustical musics and that the optical form of musical directing he had shown to the group was originally a method that had emerged from that light music art. Nyu asked again about the screen, but the master just told him that it would not be the right time yet to explain this. Nyu asked why, but the master just started to chant his "om" mantra and the shrine guardsmen complained again that Nyu should shut up, because he would disturb the instruction and hinder the rest of the group from storing the learned because it was meditation time.

Nyu felt excited; did Sri Rashtapajeiju really know things about our culture from the time before the Mediateko burning those stood not in the books...?!! In the canteen Nyu again discussed with Kehtohkah about this topic, but as expected, Kehtohkah again just continued to be sceptic and still thought of the avatar just as a piece of priest handicraft in form of some technical trick, and he argued that everybody could invent some spurious historical facts about the previous culture, because most of the verifiable knowledge was lost in the burning. Nyu replied that it  perhaps could be possible that Sri Rashtapajeiju was no real avatar, but that Nyu was convinced that Sri Rashtapajeiju was at least a real, living yoga master of a very high degree of perfection, and regarding that there was a hidden door as the entrance of the Avatar Hall, there were no logical reasons why there should not be more doors of such kinds for the master to always leave the hall unseen when the lecture time was over.

In Nyu had grown a powerful fascination for Sri Rashtapajeiju. Though the next day at the end of a lesson Nyu asked him again: "Sri Rashtapajeiju, when will you have time? I want to meet you personally." The master answered: "What do you mean with 'personally', Nyu? We see each other every day here and talk together and also meditate together in this group." Nyu explained: "You don't understand, I would like so much to be alone with you. I wish to meditate with you close together - only you and me - without all the other people around." The master looked down at Nyu and answered: "Sorry, but this would violate sacred rules. My holy task and cosmic destiny is to serve the spiritual development of all people here - not just of Nyu... I once swore a vow to dedicate my life to help to enlighten the entire mankind - I can't waste time with personal relationships."  Nyu reminded: "But I am part of this mankind too! - I just want to meet you privately outside this shrine for a short time - not always." The master replied: "I regret, but this won't be possible..." Again the shrine guardsmen began to complain that Nyu was disturbing the instruction. Nyu felt some anger rinsing and began to muse on what could be wrong with his karma that his perfect yoga master could be so mean to him.

In the next time Sri Rashtapajeiju gave many lessons about the higher levels of meditation and some essential basics of enlightenment. He had taught about the chakra system of the human body and how the energetic signal flow of the prana in the nervous system could be influenced by breathe exercises. He also had spoken about the control of conscious awareness to activate all main chakras, to let these energetic centers in the body pass the powerful signal stream of the awakening kundalinih from the lower end of the spine upwards through the spinal cord to finally reach the sahashrara chakra above the head for making enlightenment occur, and that the ascend of the kundalinih would be typically accompanied by a strong sensation of heat.

Nyu had felt a bit bored during this theoretical lesson, because this knowledge was commonly known and he had already read about these things many times in books. Then Sri Rashtapajeiju had told all the adepts not to overcharge their nervous system by attempting to reach enlightenment by too much force, and he had instructed them to care for their bodily health a lot and strictly avoid all things those would damage or maladjust their nervous system, because otherwise the kundalinih signal would get distorted and deviated in a way that it would have much more difficulties to rise to sahashrara and especially that the knowledge from cosmic consciousness could not reach the adepts spacetimely mind in an understandable way. The master then had added a warning, that instead of enlightenment rather just unconsciousness followed by an awakening with an unpleasant migraine attack and an even more maladjusted nervous system would be a typical result when somebody would attempt to make his kundalinih rise upwards by brute force when he was not ready for this.

To the end of this lecture the master began to lengthily recite a long health codex about all those things a yogi should avoid to get bodily enabled to reach enlightenment. Nyu already knew several of these items from his first initiation. E.g. no monk was permitted to use any psychoactive drugs, because these were brain destroying and tended to cause sufferance. But in this codex  now there were many additional things those should be avoided; e.g. it demanded to eat no hot spiced food and no sal ammoniac liquorice anymore. Nyu was a great fan of sal ammoniac liquorice candies, so he asked Sri Rashtapajeiju why, but the master just had answered that he would strictly recommend to regard the codex, because it would be necessary to prepare the body for the state of enlightenment.

At the time when Nyu had listened to all these warnings, he had felt a bit annoyed; didn't the old tantric legends tell that the kundalinih shakti was divine in its nature, and with its divine wisdom therefore it would come when the time was right?! Wasn't enlightenment said to be the way cosmic consciousness would free human beings from their bad karma when they had attempted long enough to give enough redemption for the sufferance they once had caused?? Karmical guilt was built up by causing sufferance and reduced by reducing sufferance - this was the physical law the karma works by, and this was completely logical. But when enlightenment could act as a kind of divine grace which was said to have even the power to free from bad karma - why should it then ever care so much about something that banal like the state of Nyu's actual spacetimely body and nervous system?? The law of karma was said to be never unfair, though in which way should this make sense?! So Nyu thought: "Apparently yet another senseless religious dogma... Why must all these priests always command everybody around by restricting everything with their dogmatisms??!" Nyu remembered well, how Sri Rashtapajeiju himself in one of his first lectures explicitly had instructed not to follow any ancient tradited dogmas without being capable to logically understand their meaning, because it otherwise would lead to senseless dogmatism which was one of the major trouble sources those hindered the mankind from further development. Though when Sri Rashtapajeiju indeed was a perfect master, why should he then command us adepts to follow such a dogma- like strict food codex? Wasn't this a contradiction? Could this mean that Sri Rashtapajeiju simply spreaded dogmas too because he wasn't that perfect? - or did he just attempt to test us all?!? From this time on Nyu had decided not to take this codex and any not obviously understandable bans of his master too serious anymore - and anyway he rather wanted to continue eating sal ammoniac lozenges.

If upon that time Nyu just would have decided to still trust in the avatar's warnings, the resulting ending of this story certainly wouldn't have found its way into the cultural history books, because in this case it certainly would not have leaded to that later fatal disaster...

In the following months Sri Rashtapajeiju had taught the group of monks many new yoga exercises about topics of becoming aware of the prana energy and learning to consciously guide it around to various locations in the own body. Also Nyu had learned to feel and guide those energetic signals. In his glass cabin Sri Rashtapajeiju then showed some new assanas and explained that these postures had the common quality of helping to rise the prana level in certain body areas. Most times the adepts then were instructed to do the same, and afterwards the master asked the adepts what they had perceived during this. But several times Sri Rashtapajeiju had smilingly knotted his extremities into such awkward assanas, that nobody of the group was capable to follow him despite of their hard trying. In these cases the master often had said: "Stop - don't hurt yourself - elasticity determines doing!", while he continued to smile that unearthly smile. Nyu remembered this very well, because he found himself strangely attracted by this bodily flexibility of his master.

Nyu also remembered that from now on it had happened multiple times that one or even 2 of the shrine guardsmen were sleeping on the floor next to the shrine, and that also sometimes one of the guardsmen simply left the temple hall for up to an hour. Nyu had afterwards discussed in the canteen with Patsheiyu that the guardsmen didn't seem to take their job too serious. Patsheiyu had answered that the shrine guard was possibly just a ritual relict from the time of the wars, and because today nobody would come in mind anymore to assassinate the avatar, the guardsmen of the present age were obviously bored.

In later lessons Sri Rashtapajeiju instructed the adepts to learn to perceive with their hands how their prana energy fields could interact with the ones of another adept's body, and he explained that astral healing would basically be done in a similar way. Each adept should choose a partner and both sitting in the lotus seat next to each other should try to carefully feel the other one's force fields with their hands. The master began to explain that such kind of energetic signal exchange could have many positive effects on spiritual development when done carefully, because it could be a great help for learning to perceive, focus and control the own prana streams. Then he mentioned that a more advanced yogi could also send a portion of his own prana through another adept's body to assist him to activate the adept's own chakras to make it easier for him to reach enlightenment. Nyu asked Sri Rashtapajeiju if this was shaktipat. The master just looked at him and nodded. Nyu's heart began to beat faster when he now asked Sri Rashtapajeiju if he could give Nyu shaktipat to enlighten him, but the master just smiled and told in one short sentence that this would be not that easy. Nyu felt a strange mixture of great disappointment and a strong desire of being together with him.

The next day Sri Rashtapajeiju began to introduce into tantrical partner yoga exercises. He taught about special assanas, in those 2 or more yogis could take part to exchange, accelerate and intensify energies by letting their bodies touch each other in special ways during meditation. The master explained that in these postures it would get possible to entirely synchronize breath, heart beat and mind of the participants to each other and that even a kind of telepathic state of fusion could be reached by advanced yogis this way. When the master began to describe these multi- person assanas, on the oval screen of the Avatar Shrine pictures of these assanas appeared. The pictures looked like negative images of ancient copperplate printings; most of them appeared in bright green or amber coloured  lines on the black background.

Kehtohkah asked if this was that stuff known from the "sex book Karmasutra". Sri Rashtapajeiju answered, that the Kama Sutra would be one of the most misunderstood spiritual scriptures, because it would be not simply a sex book, but contained encrypted instructions for faster reaching enlightenment. He began to explain that the tantra monasteries had been one of the first places of systematic scientific research - thousands of years ago before any later culture on the Earth reached their level of development again, but library burnings done by fanatics then had wiped out most of their written knowledge, which afterwards got mostly replaced by banal superstitions. Kehtohkah asked if he didn't confuse this with the burning of the Mediateko, but Sri Rashtapajeiju explained that many other library burnings already happened millenniums earlier, and that these foolish crimes had tossed the development of the mankind backwards by an amount of time that would be still unestimatable. Kehtohkah asked again what a book about sexual methods and postures should have to do with enlightenment. The master explained that careful sexual excitation would be a way to rise the prana level of the lower chakras, and he hinted that there would be even a special "sadmaithuna" ritual of holy sexual unification, which had the power to lead to immediate enlightenment when performed correctly. Nyu heard this and wanted to know more about this ritual, but the master just answered, that everything would have its time and that it would not be the right time yet to tell more about this topic. Nyu wanted to know it now, though he found this excuse depressing.

Sri Rashtapajeiju then instructed the adepts to choose a partner for meditating together in 2 person assanas. While Nyu was musing about his masters previous explanations, he failed the chance to choose a partner in the 15 monks group, though the first time he remained left while the others began to meditate together with their partners and let their prana circulate around between both partners bodies according to Sri Rashtapajeiju's instructions. While Nyu remained single and though only sat in the lotus seat, he wished he could meditate together with Sri Rashtapajeiju as his partner. 30 minutes later the monks were instructed for the next meditation exercise to swap their partners, though Nyu got chosen by Kelyapitru, a small, black haired adept like him. While both in the lotus seat hooked their arms together according to the picture on the oval screen, they were instructed to let the prana move back and forward between both partners bodies along their connected arms. The master began to sing in a kind of rhythm which should synchronize the prana flow. Nyu felt that these partner exercises indeed could mobilize the prana flows in an astonishingly strong way, and that he apparently could bodily feel also the prana force fields of his partner. While both were meditating, Nyu imagined again how it would be to meditate this way with his perfect yoga master, and how much more powerful his prana forces would doubtlessly be.

At the end of the lecture Nyu stood up and asked Sri Rashtapajeiju if the next time he could become Nyu's yoga partner, but the master replied, that he would generally not meditate with other people in partner yoga assanas. Nyu disappointedly asked if he never had tried such assanas. The master seemed to make a thinking pause; then Nyu believed to notice a little sadness in his calm, sonorous voice when the master finally answered, that today this would be better for him. Nyu thought about all the shaktipat legends and attempted to express that he wished nothing more than to meditate close together with a perfect yoga master, but Sri Rashtapajeiju just answered: "I am not what you see in me." Then he again chanted his "om" mantra and while the hall illumination turned darker, the shrine guardsmen said that it would be time for all to leave now, and that tomorrow the avatar would have no time to give lectures. Nyu asked why, but the guardsmen just demanded him a bit harshly to leave the Avatar Hall now.

The following night Nyu had an intensive dream: he was alone in the Hall Of The Avatar and took the front glass pane of the shrine out of its frame. Then he took Sri Rashtapajeiju by his hand and walked around with him in the temple court and then on a meadow in a fresh, misty morning while both were singing and then dancing together. Nyu perceived a tremendous feeling of happiness and liberation in this dream. When he woke up, he wished even stronger to be bodily together with Sri Rashtapajeiju.

The next day the president of the national culture preservation institute, Lashiute Tendephan arrived at the temple court of Decra- Vat. His vehicle looked armoured and was escorted by 3 other vehicles. He was a very tall and slim man with grey hair, and in his ancient uniform he looked very awesome and powerful. The age of him was difficult to guess; he could be 70 years old, but possibly also much older. Tendephan was said to be the greatest authority in archeological and culture historical questions, and he was well- known for his quality not to talk much. Rumours said that he also had connections to secret services. When Tendephan arrived, an escort of 6 guardsmen followed him into the temple. The temple leader Ashoka nodded and wordlessly Tendephan followed him through the long corridors until they reached that corridor with the hidden door in the wall painting that leaded to the Hall Of The Avatar. The president placed at each end of the corridor 2 of his own guardsmen together with 2 of that temple guardsmen those normally guarded the entrance and shrine. Then he disappeared with his 2 remaining guardsmen and a large, wooden trunk in the hall. Even Ashoka got never a permission to follow him, though about what he did exactly inside the hall got never known, except that his task was to preserve and maintain the Avatar Shrine.

At this day Nyu had asked the guardsmen why Sri Rashtapajeiju was sitting in a glass shrine, but they only answered that the shrine of the avatar would now get restored. When 8 hours later the president had completed his task and was leaving the temple with his 6 guardsmen again, Nyu also had asked him personally why Sri Rashtapajeiju was teaching from inside a glass shrine, but Lashiute Tendephan had not said a single word to Nyu and not even looked in his direction.

From the next day on Sri Rashtapajeiju continued with yoga lessons as before. When Nyu asked him why Lashiute Tendephan did come, also Sri Rashtapajeiju just had answered that the shrine had to be restored. After Nyu had asked the master again why he was sitting in the glass shrine, he had answered just with: "Everything has its time..." Nyu found this annoying; he wanted to know it now, not anytime later.

4 days later a further initiation ritual was performed with monks of Nyu's group. Every 45 minutes one adept at a time got called by guru Sri Sattvananda to enter the Hall Of The Avatar, while the previous adept had to leave the hall again.

Nyu was called as the 4th person to enter the hall. The 2 door guardsmen stood outside at the open entrance, and again the temple hall was completely dark besides those tiny, coloured LEDs somewhere in the ceiling ornaments. Nyu sat down again on the floor in the lotus seat. The known, quiet drone from the shrine got audible and like upon the day where he saw the Avatar Shrine first, again the bluish cabin illumination became barely visible and then very slowly turned brighter while the master chanted his "om" mantra. When the glass cabin illumination got a bit brighter and less bluish, Nyu noticed that this time apparently no other monks were in the hall; his eyes only perceived the silhouettes of 2 shrine guardsmen somewhere in the dark. Sri Rashtapajeiju then spoke with his charming voice: "Hello Nyu, be welcome! - You are ready for the next level. I will now introduce you into some of the hidden secrets of chakra meditation." After some seconds he said: "Look at me!" The master began to smile and then on his chest skin the area around his heart began to shine brighter, like when a small, hidden spotlight somewhere in the shrine was shining a light beam at it. The brighter area became a little larger, and then suddenly a picture of Nyu sitting in the lotus seat appeared on the master's naked chest. Nyu felt excited - what kind of new projection trick was this?! Then the master chanted another "om", and now the bluish shrine illumination turned slowly darker again. But what was this?! - Despite that the illumination turned darker, the master himself now stayed visible with exactly the same brightness as before - the body of Sri Rashtapajeiju was apparently glowing in the dark (!!!). Nyu gladly became aware again, that he already at the beginning had had the impression that the light in the shrine looked unnaturally. Nyu could not stop to stare at this apparently luminous body over and over again. Could it really be that the lightbody legend was true and he was indeed a genuine avatar??! Or was this just a very clever spotlight trick?

Then Sri Rashtapajeiju began to explain a pranayama breath exercise of the name "shuka purvaka" as a preparation for awaking the kundalinih. He told, that by breathing alternatingly through the left and the right nostril in a certain rhythm in combination with directing the conscious awareness in a proper way, it would get possible to charge up the ida and the pingala channel left and right in the body with prana and that by consciously activating the chakras the though accumulated prana then could be redirected to the muladhara chakra and from there upwards into the spinal channel to activate the kundalinih. The master explained that the prana in the ida and pingala channels correspond to the electrical signal levels in the left and right sympathetic nerve cords and during 10 minutes he told lots of complex further details about major and minor chakras and the rhythms involved in this process, though when he finally instructed Nyu to follow him now, Nyu expected not to be capable to do this. But again Sri Rashtapajeiju just spoke: "Look at me!", and again Nyu couldn't believe what his eyes should see now.

While the master chanted another "om", the bluish shrine illumination lit up a little bit again, the image of Nyu on his chest faded away and instead at the bodily locations of his chakras a strange kind of light got visible. Then Sri Rashtapajeiju himself seemed to become a bit bluish and then his entire body turned more and more transparent, just like if it were made of thin glass. Inside of it no bones or organs got visible, but at the locations of the chakras a kind of yellowish- white light clouds appeared, and all his nerves seemed to weakly shine as a barely visible fine network of luminous green lines. Also the entire body seemed to shine a little in this strange blue. Nyu moved his head left and right and stood up a bit to verify if this appearance was possibly just a flat image projected onto his master's skin, but the master's body indeed looked like a transparent, completely 3 dimensional object.

When the avatar began to inhale through one nostril while closing the other one with his thumb, a stream of sparkling white light moved down from his left nostril through his neck down to his lung area, and while he stopped his breathe there, the sparkling got brighter. When the master exhaled after some seconds, the light became more greenish and moved like a cloud of brightly shining particles further down through his ida channel to his muladhara chakra at the lower end of his spine, where its golden light began to shine brighter and slightly pulse by this. The avatar began to breath this way alternatingly through his left and right nostril to send prana through his ida and pingala channel, and Nyu could see how light streams and sparkling dot clouds became visible and began a complex rhythmical interplay in all those strange bodily energy/ signal channels the master previously had told about, which obviously resulted in making the light of his chakras grow brighter and brighter, while a fine kind of cobweb of green light was built up between his activated chakras, on which luminous dots travelled around. While at the beginning the movement of the dots looked like an orderless sparkling cloud, they later got more and more channelled along the web's subtle line structure, which seemed to co-ordinate the activation of the chakras.

The entire process was indeed something that was difficult to describe in words; Nyu had never guessed that a simple breath exercise about that everybody could read various partly confusing descriptions in the books should behave this way in reality. Nyu was fascinated. At the end of this demonstration the avatar began to chant a "ra" mantra, and within 30 seconds the shrine illumination rose its brightness to its normal level while his body turned opaque again - slowly beginning from his head on downwards.

Nyu stared at Sri Rashtapajeiju, who now looked like that beautiful, unearthly smiling man like before again. Feeling a mixture of awe and strong attraction, Nyu nearly couldn't believe that just a minute ago his master's body had looked transparent and luminous. Nyu was very excited - he felt urged now to decide whether he should not trust in his own short- term memory anymore, or he should simply regard the shrine as the most advanced projection trick of the planet, or if he should really regard Sri Rashtapajeiju not just as a perfect yoga master, but from now on indeed even as nothing less than the genuine, last living avatar. When this would be a trick, then Nyu really couldn't imagine how it should work. Nyu knew that reports about some researches for developing holographic 3D motion picture volume displays once had been spread with great publicity in mass media, but all these projects later were said to be cancelled successlessly already a few decades ago, because none of the resulting prototypes with their tiny screens ever had reached an even closely naturalistic image quality. Nyu also doubted that his short- term memory would suddenly hoax him, though he happily noticed to have no reason not to trust in what he saw. Nyu remembered that there had been certain ancient paintings about the chakra systems those looked a bit similar, but he always had expected that they were just illustrations of the painters imagination and not images of something really visible. Could it be that these painters also had been instructed by an avatar?

Nyu's musing got interrupted when Sri Rashtapajeiju with his sonorous, charming voice began to sing a song with an unusual, anciently sounding melody and a text about that higher knowledge should only be tradited to the worthy, because fools would make nonsense and cause sufferance with it, and that therefore initiations were created. The song ended with a sentence directed to Nyu, that he must promise not to tell what he realized here, and Nyu was demanded to repeat a sung sentence that he would promise to keep it secret and never break the oath. Nyu repeated this line, but already during this oath he decided not to take it too seriously, because he hoped to get more informations from other adepts about the fantastic transformation he just saw here.

Then Sri Rashtapajeiju told Nyu, that from now on the instruction time should start at 17:00 in the evening, and that tomorrow he should therefore be here at that time. Sri Rashtapajeiju began to chant his "om" mantra and the ceiling light turned slowly brighter now. After ca. 30 seconds the ceiling light had reached its normal brightness and the sonorous "om" ended. Sri Rashtapajeiju sang a short verse that it would be time to leave now for Nyu, but when Nyu stood up, he couldn't resist to ask him again when he could meet him privately. The master answered that this was already a much more "private" meeting than the lectures in the group. Nyu explained again that he wished to be together with his perfect master outside the shrine and get shaktipat from him, but the master again just answered: "I am not what you see in me." The 2 shrine guardsmen now held their long, wooden sticks in front of Nyu again and commanded him with a bit harsh voice that he had to leave the Hall Of The Avatar now, while the avatar didn't answer to Nyu's further asking anymore. Disappointed Nyu walked to the door and into the corridor again, while the ceiling lights in the hall turned off as soon his feet passed the threshold. The 2 door guardsmen told him that he should leave the corridor now and return to his cell. Nyu looked at his watch and was glad that the time had passed so quickly that he had spent entire 40 minutes in the temple hall - he had expected that it were just about 20 minutes.

A smell of vegetable soup with tofu and cheese was in the air when Nyu entered the ashram canteen. Nyu took a dish and spoon and with some soup he sat down at one of the long tables next to Patsheiyu. Nyu told him that he had an initiation in which Sri Rashtapajeiju became luminous and transparent, and he asked Patsheiyu if he knew more about this phenomenon. Patsheiyu warned him rather to whisper when talking about such topics, because breaking oaths could result in serious trouble with the gurus and even lead to excommunication. Patsheiyu explained quietly that descriptions of the lightbody in avatar legends were not much precise and often contradicting. Nyu asked, if he personally had already seen this phenomenon. Patsheiyu whispered that long times ago he also had the same kind of initiation with Sri Rashtapajeiju, but that he also didn't know what was behind this phenomenon. Nyu asked if Patsheiyu ever had seen the master from closer. He answered that the shrine guardsmen keep everybody away from the shrine, because it was since long time forbidden to approach it too close.

Nyu asked if he ever had attempted to reach the shrine by simply running towards it and avoiding these old guardsmen. Patsheiyu stared at him and explained quietly, but with a serious tone in his voice that he would never come in mind to abuse the trust of Sri Rashtapajeiju and though endanger his relationship to the master by such an unwise deed, because it would be not just the danger of getting punished, but also a matter of his deep respect for the wisdom of the master not to violate such a ban, which certainly would not be in use anymore so long after the time of the wars without having still a sensible reason. Nyu asked what the punishment was for doing so. Patsheiyu said that in the guardsmen's book of the Sacred Rules Of Behaviour stood that official penalty for this deed would be at least to get banned from the Hall Of The Avatar for the next 6 months, that repeated violations should get punished harder and that anything that could be interpreted as an attempt to attack or endanger the life of the avatar or to destroy his shrine would result in an immediate excommunication and ban from the entire temple district of Decra- Vat for lifetime. Nyu asked if Patsheiyu ever realized that somebody really got banned just for examining the shrine. Patsheiyu replied that he personally never saw that someone got punished this way or seriously attempted to violate these rules, but that 20 years ago on the day of his 2nd initiation the shrine guardsmen had warned his group of adepts never to attempt this and that they had recited that passage from the Sacred Rules Of Behaviour. Later in his group one quite naughty adept suddenly didn't come anymore, and when another member asked what had happened to him, the guardsmen had told that he had been thrown out of the ashram for violating the Sacred Rules Of Behaviour.

Nyu explained that he found these hard penalties not only unfair, but inconsistent, because the ban of approaching the shrine appeared like a nowadays quite senseless tradited dogma to him, in spite of that nobody else than the master himself had in his first lectures explicitly instructed not to follow any ancient tradited dogmas without being capable to logically understand why, due to everything else would lead to senseless dogmatism which is one of the major development hinderers of the mankind. Therefore when Sri Rashtapajeiju was a perfect master, then he could have actually no reason to keep the adepts away from his shrine by a ban, except perhaps as a test for the adept's wisdom if they would notice this contradiction and though manage to violate the ban. A wet, cooked bean fell down from Patsheiyu's spoon and landed on his cloth sandal, when he replied with a tiny bit of anger in his voice, that such a way of thinking would rather originate from the unlogics of a vandal than of any form of wisdom, because only vandals say that bans exist just to be violated by using force, and when the avatar decided to teach from within a glass shrine and keep the adepts away from it, then he certainly had a special reason for doing so which needed to be respected.

Nyu stirred in his soup dish and mused a few seconds about Patsheiyu's words in comparison with Sri Rashtapajeiju's wisdom and appearance, because what other reason could be there for the master to keep the adepts away besides things like simple illusion tricks, but this made no sense - apparently no other monk he knew was more convinced of the authenticity of  the avatar than Patsheiyu. Finally Nyu asked Patsheiyu if he spoke about a kind of technical projector cheat to make Sri Rashtapajeiju's body appear transparent, but also Patsheiyu expressed that he didn't believe in such a simple optical trick and he hinted that he believed that it much rather would be something totally different, which would be unknown today. Nyu asked what he meant, though Patsheiyu replied that he rather thought of some kind of miracle, a mentally controlled energy field phenomenon or a biological kind of bodily transformation like told in the legends, but that he also didn't know anything really concrete, except that the secrecy of the shrine maintainer Lashiute Tendephan appeared suspicious to him, though it was assumingly something very important.

Nyu remembered that he had assumed at the beginning that the glass cabin could be a device to shield too weak novices against an uncontrolled exposure to the strong prana energies of the perfect master - could this really be true?! Fascinatedly Nyu imagined again how it would be when his perfect master would give him shaktipat, and that as a genuine avatar he certainly could enlighten him immediately and free him from bad karma.

Later Nyu asked Kehtohkah whisperingly if he also realized in the initiation today that Sri Rashtapajeiju became luminous and translucent in the shrine to demonstrate the complex interaction of energies in the body during the "shuka purvaka" exercise. But Kehtohkah stared astonished and surprised at Nyu and told him that in the initiation some hours ago the master just had discussed with him about the reasons of ignorance and the menmadeness of foolishness, and that he had taught him a song about this topic. Kehtohkah spoke quite loudly, though Nyu reminded him to talk quieter to avoid trouble because there was an oath not to talk about the initiations, and some gurus and loyal spies in the canteen were listening. But Kehtohkah said only little quietlier that anyway everybody would know here that the avatar shrine would be just a technical gag to make the lectures more interesting, and though there would be no reason to take such taboos that extremely serious. Nyu told him that he was not convinced at all that the avatar was fake, and he tried to explain what he had seen and realized during his initiation, but Kehtohkah just guessed it to be simply an optical projector trick and found it a witty idea for a yoga master to teach chakra exercises by illustrating the prana flow by projecting a movie animation onto his own body.

During his work in the medicinal herb garden, Nyu finally asked Kelyapitru what he had realized in the initiation today, and this adept reported too that Sri Rashtapajeiju became translucent during a chakra exercise demonstration for him, but also Kelyapitru had no explanation how the avatar had done this.

When the next morning Nyu woke up in his bed, he again had had intensive dreams about meditating together in partner yoga assanas and then dancing around in the temple court in a dark evening with Sri Rashtapajeiju, who was slightly glowing in a yellowish orange during the dance, and again Nyu had felt an incredible strong joy and happiness during this dream. While Nyu did his today's duty of cleaning floors and repairing a clay wall in a small, ceremonial temple on the court, he couldn't await that it would get 17:00 to meet his perfect master again.

When Nyu finally arrived in the Hall Of The Avatar, he noticed that in this new group Kehtohkah and 3 other adepts of the old group were not present anymore, and instead 2 new adepts had been added to the group. Also only 1 door guardsman and 2 shrine guardsmen were there at this time. Nyu remembered the story Patsheiyu had told him, which made the unpleasant feeling arise in him that Kehtohkah could be missing due to punishment. Sri Rashtapajeiju began to give further lessons about chakra meditation and pranayama and how different assanas help to guide the prana to different locations of the body, but this time he didn't turn himself transparent or did any other spectacular things in his cabin; instead only some schematic luminous line pictures appeared on the shrine's oval screen to illustrate the master's instructions. During the meditations Nyu didn't manage it to concentrate himself entirely on his chakras, because as soon he tried this, in his mind continuously returned the scenes of his dreams in those he had removed the shrine's front pane and meditated and sung and danced around with Sri Rashtapajeiju. Though between the meditations Nyu couldn't resist to stare again and again at the frame of the shrine to check if the black ornamented glass panes might be removable. The cabin frame of the shape of a hexagonal, upright prism looked like when it was made of some kind of very darkly oxidized brass or copper. At the left side of the front pane frame there seemed to be indeed either a kind of narrow hinges or a latch mechanism, while at its right side Nyu's eyes seemed to fixate something like a tiny, square brass block hanging in front of a sort of vertical latch bar that seemed to cover the entire right vertical bar of the metal frame. Also lots of small screws or bolts seemed to be on the frame, and Nyu felt a bit annoyed that from the distance of the carpeted area his limited eyes couldn't show him more details. At 21:30 Sri Rashtapajeiju sang his instruction time ending song, which contained the message that tomorrow at 17:00 the adepts of the group should be back again for the next instruction time.

The next day Nyu had again joyfully dreamed about being together with Sri Rashtapajeiju. In the beginning of this dream the avatar's voice with closed mouth had told Nyu to open the door in the front of the shrine to let him out, and then he had meditated and danced together with him. In the dream Nyu realized a powerful ecstatic feeling and the luminous master told him that when he did everything right, he now would get enlightened soon. When Nyu woke up, he needed half a minute to realize that he lay on his bed and had dreamed.

During this entire following day, Nyu couldn't stop musing whether this dream indeed just had been a dream, or if it perhaps was a real telepathic message from his perfect master Sri Rashtapajeiju. When Nyu cleaned up the ashram library, he looked for the chakra diagram paintings those he remembered to look like the transparent state of the avatar. He noticed that there indeed were similarities, but in the book in that he found them were no avatars mentioned. In a desk drawer in the library Nyu found an old, ivory plated pocket binoculars; it was of that type that once had been used by opera spectators - the lenses were dirt stained and one lens had 2 cracks, but he took it with him because he knew already where he intended to use it.

Later in the ashram canteen Nyu felt relief when he discovered that Kehtohkah was still there. Nyu asked him why he didn't come yesterday at 17:00 and found out that in his initiation Kehtohkah simply had been told by the master to come to the lectures in the morning at 9:00 like before. Apparently he got assigned to a less advanced group of adepts than Nyu now, concluded Nyu and felt a bit of superiority when in Nyu the thought manifested itself that obviously the master liked him more than Kehtohkah.

At 17:00 the instruction time began in the Hall Of The Avatar. When Nyu reached the open entrance, again only one door guardsman and 2 shrine guardsmen were present. Nyu asked the door guardsman where the 2 other guardsmen were. The guardsman replied that they were helping to prepare the festival at this late time. "Which festival?" asked Nyu. The guardsman smiled and answered astonishedly: "Do you really don't know that tomorrow the yearly world peace festival takes place in the temple court? All of us guardsmen will be there and play in the marching band of the traditional parade." Nyu was excited - when tomorrow all the guardsmen were on the festival, then this was possibly his great chance to meet Sri Rashtapajeiju.

Nyu entered the hall and like every time he sat down at the front border of the carpeted area to see the shrine from as close as possible. When Sri Rashtapajeiju began his lecture, Nyu took the old binoculars out of his pocket and did a quick look through it into the direction of the shrine. The master looked indeed a bit luminous and glossy, and the shrine illumination seemed to be especially designed in a way to enshroud this. But what Nyu interested much more was the closing mechanism of the shrine. The frame of the cabin looked like an old, handmade, precise piece of fine metal work with lots of little screws or bolts in it, and the front side frame seemed to be anchored with a system of various interconnected thin latches. The sharpness of the dirty, old binoculars was not the best, but when Nyu looked at the lower right corner of this frame, he discovered that apparently a tiny, golden shimmering lock was hanging on a bow there. Nyu couldn't believe it and decided to stare at it for longer. The thing looked basically like one of these tiny, flimsy padlocks made of cheap bolted tin like those from diary books, and it was attached from outside - this made absolutely no sense. Before Nyu could look at it again, one of the shrine guardsmen walked in front of Nyu and requested him loudly in a harsh tone to give him the binoculars, because it would be forbidden to focus optical devices at the avatar. A bit frightened from the sudden interruption Nyu gave him the requested object, which the guardsman put into his pocket and walked back to his previous place. Nyu asked why it was forbidden and that he wanted the binoculars back, but the guardsman just answered that the purpose of this sacred rule was to protect the avatar against possible attempts of attacks with camouflaged ray weapons. Nyu found this idea really absurd; how could it be that the guardsmen still followed such an ancient rule from the time of the wars - or was this just a false excuse? Sri Rashtapajeiju looked at the guardsman and said with a calm voice and his unearthly smile: "Is this really necessary? This adept is just admiring me." Then he nodded at Nyu, but the guardsmen didn't give the binoculars back.

Nyu continued to stare at the small lock with his bare eyes and mused about its reason. Could it really be that his dream was true and Sri Rashtapajeiju had telepathically demanded him for help because he was kept caught inside this shrine? The lock didn't look solid, and also the shrine itself with its thin latches had in no way the appearance of a safe or something indestructible. Nyu already intended to ask the guardsmen why there was the lock, but a single second before he asked, he began to realize that perhaps of all just the guardsmen were those persons those kept Sri Rashtapajeiju in captivity. Nyu felt a little horror - when this was the case, then he needed to be extremely careful, because when there was such a dark secret, then he would doubtlessly get in serious trouble and assumingly never would can see Sri Rashtapajeiju again when it would come out that he discovered it and intended to free him. When Sri Rashtapajeiju showed 2 further advanced meditation assanas and all the adepts looked at him, Nyu now had the unpleasant feeling that this situation resembled in an eerie way a trained circus animal that was admired by hundreds of staring spectators every day while it was kept imprisoned its entire life long in a way to small cage. At the end of the instruction time Sri Rashtapajeiju told that tomorrow the world peace festival would begin a 8:00, but that at 17:00 he would give lectures like usual and that he then would talk about the historical backgrounds of this festival.

Nyu thought: "When there is any chance to free his perfect master, then certainly during the festival...  and when I have freed him... then as the reward the master will doubtlessly enlighten me and though free me from all my bad karma."

After Sri Rashtapajeiju had finished his instruction time ending song and all adepts were leaving the hall, Nyu did a look at the entrance door. The door in the wall painting seemed to be of ca. 3cm thick wood and was painted mint green from its other side. The lock looked just like an old, but ordinary simple room door lock, except that it had no door handle from outside and that it apparently once had been replaced, because there were 2 additional empty screw holes and a crack in the wood of the door edge. The metal bar at the door frame with the hole for the lock bolt also looked like replaced and was worn out. Nyu avoided to stare too long at the lock to avoid to appear suspicious to the door guardsman, but from what he saw, the door would be doubtlessly easy to crack open.

Nyu knew that he would need appropriate tools to crack locks, and many tools were in the art restoration workshop of the ashram. Nyu had already worked there a few times, and he knew that it had a broken window frame that didn't close properly anymore. Though at 1:30 in the night, when he assumed that most people in the ashram were sleeping, Nyu got up from his bed, put on his sandals again, took his emptied clothes bag and his pocket torch. Then he climbed out of his cell window. It was cold and windy when he crossed the dark, wide temple court in his pyjama, but he had avoided to wear his violet monk robe to prevent it from getting dirty or torn in a suspicious way. Finally he arrived at the workshop at the opposite corner of the court. When Nyu pushed the defective window open, an empty paint can loudly rumbled down onto the floor. Nyu's heart beat louder because he feared that someone would hear him - nothing happened. Nyu switched on his pocket torch. Most tools here were for wood or stone works - big and clumsy, partly rusty things with wooden handles. No fine mechanic tools or anything picklock- like was here like Nyu had hoped. The best usable things he found were wood carving chisels of various sizes, a wire cutter, a piece of strong wire and a small, square tin box which looked like an old and scratched biscuit box and contained various small metal things. Nyu stuffed these objects into his clothes bag and pulled the window closed from outside again. After crossing the temple court Nyu had to climb into his cell again. Scaredly Nyu discovered that in the row there were 3 of the cell windows open. Nyu had kept his room light off to avoid to get seen, and now he couldn't remember which window was his one; when he would enter the wrong, then the cell occupant could doubtlessly betray him. Nyu then realized a strong feeling that he should enter the rightmost one, and indeed he found himself back again in his own cell. "Has the master telepathically guided me?", Nyu thought. Nyu then hid the tools in an old book box under his bed. This night Nyu didn't sleep well; he couldn't stop thinking about the guardsmen, Sri Rashtapajeiju and shaktipat, and he remembered again and again the dream where Sri Rashtapajeiju told him that he would get enlightened soon when he did it right.

The next day Nyu got waked at 7:20. After breakfast in the canteen he was demanded by the other adepts to come with them to the world peace festival. It was a warm spring day. The festival had already begun, and a temple actor group was performing the ritual plant dance, in which the species spirits of various plants and the one of all plants were prayed for and praised as an redemption for the necessary kills of the many members of their species for the ashram's vegetarian food and other necessary purposes during the last year. It was also remembered of all the unnecessary sufferance done to plants in the world when people let them senselessly starve in flower vases etc. Various other ceremonies about wars, peace and charity followed, and at 14:45 finally the parade began, in which Nyu saw the guardsmen play the traditional songs within the marching band. Nyu knew that it was time now to do that what needed to be done.

On the way to his cell Nyu's heart beat faster and faster. In his cell Nyu grabbed the portable book box from under his bed. The box was of thick cardboard covered with worn off red cloth, had a lid and handle and was designed to hold the common 4 volume cultural encyclopedia together in a handy shape. Now filled with all these heavy, rusty and sharp edged metal tools, the old box was seriously overloaded, though when Nyu walked with it through the stone spiral staircases and corridors, he expected that every moment the bottom or handle would intend to tear off and distribute the so suspicious box contents loudly rumbling all over the floors and stairs. 2 times Nyu saw another monks and tried to behave as normal as possible. When Nyu finally arrived at the wooden wall painting relief with the hidden entrance door to the Hall Of The Avatar, Nyu was glad that the box was still in one piece. As expected, the door was closed, locked and no guardsmen were in front of it. Nyu bent the piece of wire in the shape of a picklock, carefully inserted it into the keyhole and attempted to turn it. The lock didn't open - the wire was too soft and just bent. Nyu removed the wire and checked the box if he had a better key replacement, but it was nothing there. Nyu looked at the artistically painted and carved door surface and felt a bit guilty to damage it. But his yearning to meet and free Sri Rashtapajeiju was much stronger, though he took out the largest chisel as a lever to open the door. With a cracking noise some wood splintered near the lock , and immediately the door was open. This was easy - apparently the wood part at this place once had already been broken and re- glued before. A bit scared Nyu noticed that it was completely dark in the temple hall; only the many tiny LEDs in the ceiling ornaments were visible. Nyu looked for his pocket torch and his scare turned into a little panic when he discovered that he had forgotten it. Nyu felt that it was to late to return to his cell to fetch the lamp now. When guardsmen were in the hall, then they already had seen him anyway, and when Sri Rashtapajeiju wasn't there, than it also wouldn't help to fetch it. Nyu suddenly heard steps somewhere in the distance on the corridors. The reverberation from all the white corridor vault ceilings made it impossible for Nyu to estimate well how far they were away, though he quickly hid the wood splinters from the floor in his box, entered with it the dark temple hall and pulled the door closed.

Nyu felt his heart beating and carefully asked into the dark: "Hello! Is here anybody there?". Nyu first heard only his own words a bit eerily reverberating in the high vault hall. He already expected in his mild panic that nothing else would follow, but after 2 seconds suddenly the familiar drone from the shrine got audible together with the well known "om", while the ceiling lights turned brighter, and within only 4 seconds they had reached their usual brightness. Nyu felt a great relief; Sri Rashtapajeiju sat in the lotus seat in his shrine and said: "Hello Nyu, I am astonished to see you!" Nyu looked at the shrine; the shrine looked like always, and there were indeed no guardsmen surrounding it. Nyu walked to the front border of the dark blue carpeted area, and he felt a kind of awe which continued to hinder him for many seconds to put a foot onto that uncarpeted area, that triangularly surrounded the shrine and had been previously forbidden for him for so long. The master spoke: "I already expected you would attempt to come to me, but it is something very particular that an adept really manages it to be alone with me." Nyu felt pride to be here - so long he had waited for this moment - he was sure he had followed his perfect master's telepathic dream messages correctly - he had cracked the door lock and now certainly all his dreams would come true.

Carrying his box of tools, Nyu stepped onto the parquet floor and walked a step closer to the shrine. The master spoke: "I think I know the reason why you are here, Nyu... You did come to receive the holy shaktipat from me. I also wish much I could do this for you - but I guess this will be impossible." A bit angry Nyu replied: "Why that? I am here now and I want to get shaktipat." Sri Rashtapajeiju looked at him and replied: "You are quite sulky, Nyu. I guess you don't even know what the holy shaktipat is - but your yearning and your fascination for me seems to be honest. Possibly karmical interactions brought you and me together to fulfil my cosmic destiny." Nyu found the reply of the master quite arrogant, though he already thought about giving an insulting answer of the kind that it would be the job of a genuine avatar to give shaktipat, but he avoided to do this because he had wished nothing more than to get together with Sri Rashtapajeiju; Nyu had admired him so much, and when he now would annoy him, then his perfect master would possibly reject Nyu completely and then Nyu certainly would never get freed from his bad karma. Nyu instead thought about that when Sri Rashtapajeiju had really telepathically called him to get released out of his glass prison, then the master would deserve it well for his arrogance to stay captive a little longer.

Just after Nyu had thought this, the master suddenly said: "We will see what I can do for you. Take off your robe, stand upright towards the shrine with closed eyes, breath slowly and relax." Nyu's belief got stronger that the master was telepathically communicating with with him - apparently the master just had read that previous, unspoken threat thought in Nyu's mind and now tried to be more co-operative to get freed. Nyu dropped his robe onto the floor and Sri Rashtapajeiju started to sing now in a kind of slower getting spectral chant rhythm and held his right hand palm towards Nyu's naked chest. Nyu tried to relax, but his mixture of anger, expectation and excitement kept his heart beating fast and prevented any serious relaxation. Instead he thought about all the shaktipat legends and expected to realize something spectacular, but standing upright this way was neither mentioned in the legends nor did it feel like an appropriate meditation assana. The master told Nyu multiple times to open his mind and concentrate his awareness to his spine and lower chakras, but Nyu rather tended to open his eyes several times to see what the master did, and this prevented Nyu even more from relaxing. After 10 minutes the master chanted an "om" and told him that the exercise was over. Nyu didn't get enlightened now, but disappointed; nothing spectacular had happened except that while Nyu's eyes were open during the exercise, the master's hand palm seemed to shine slightly brighter than the rest of his skin. Nyu began to doubt; had this really been shaktipat? The old legends described the process and its effects much different from what Nyu just had realized here.

Sri Rashtapajeiju asked Nyu what he had felt. Disappointed Nyu replied "nothing" and asked: "Was this really shaktipat?" The master seemed to hesitate 2 seconds and then answered: "No, but something similar." Nyu felt teased. Why did Sri Rashtapajeiju not say yet that he wanted to get freed, and why didn't he give Nyu real shaktipat? Could it be that this entire situation was just a kind of test? Nyu remembered his impression that the shrine cabin was possibly designed to shield the master's energy fields from the adepts and that in some of the ancient shaktipat legends bodily contact to the master was mentioned as a key element. Nyu began to muse: when this really was a test, then he perhaps just needed to ask the right questions to win. Nyu asked: "Dear Sri Rashtapajeiju, can you be so kind to give me shaktipat?" The master answered: "How many times do you intend to ask this, Nyu? It doesn't help to ask me the same thing over and over again!" This gave Nyu an idea; possibly this test was one of those common games where the number of allowed questions was limited and only yes or no could be the answer; when this was true, then he certainly needed to avoid to ask too often. Though Nyu asked: "Sri Rashtapajeiju, has the shrine to do with that it is impossible for you to give me shaktipat?" The master answered with a little delay: "Yes, but this is more complex and I think you wouldn't understand the reasons." Nyu asked: "I read in the scriptures that you in former times gave adepts shaktipat - is this true?" The master answered: "Yes, but the last time I did was more than 300 years ago." Nyu asked: "Do you still give other adepts shaktipat?" The master said: "No, I don't do this anymore." Nyu asked: "Does the glass cabin hinder you now to give shaktipat?" Sri Rashtapajeiju hesitated some seconds and asked Nyu, why he wanted to know this. Nyu found this behaviour strange for a test; he felt that the master tried to hide something - obviously the answer was yes. Nyu thought of the legends and asked: "Sri Rashtapajeiju, would you theoretically still be capable to give a person shaktipat when you could touch it?" The master looked at Nyu, stopped smiling and spoke slowly in a strangely serious tone: "Nyu, I know you like me... Please don't ask me such questions... This is no interrogation." But Nyu continued asking: "Are you capable to leave this shrine?" With a noticeable hesitation in his voice the master answered: "I swore a vow to dedicate my life to be here to help the spiritual development of the entire mankind. My place is here. This is where I belong." Doubtlessly Sri Rashtapajeiju was kept captive here, thought Nyu. The way the master evaded Nyu's questions resembled in an eerie way either a traumatized torture victim or a person that got seriously threatened and continuously observed by its captors. In Nyu rose rage against the guardsmen. At this time for Nyu the situation seemed to be completely clear - he remembered his dreams and felt sure he knew what he had to do now.

Nyu grabbed his box of tools and walked towards the shrine. The steady droning tone of the shrine was much more noticeable here. Nyu was excited; never he had been so close to his idol before. When Nyu looked at the master, he noticed that of the glass panes not only the outer rim of the lower area was covered with fine, black, ornamental patterns, but also the clear, parabola shaped, transparent area above them was not entirely clear, but also completely covered with a very fine, irregular looking, non- right- angled net pattern of very thin black lines those disturbed the view at the interior a bit, just like when Nyu was looking through a fine curtain of black lace. Sri Rashtapajeiju in his cabin looked a bit luminous and strangely glossy, and wearing a white, silk- like cloth like a nappy as underpants, he seemed to have not a single hair on his ascetic, but beautiful body. The master had continued to smile his unearthly smile and despite of his apparent captivity he looked like when he enjoyed it to be admired by Nyu. Nyu noticed that the fine woodgrain ornaments on the dark brown surfaces of the shrine's base cabinet despite of their poor visibility apparently had been created with tremendous artistic devotion and skill. Besides decorative ornaments there also seemed to be something like sanskrit characters on the shrine, but Nyu couldn't read sanskrit. Nyu walked around the shrine and regarded it from all 3 sides, and he noticed that despite the sides looked much alike, the ornaments and sanskrit characters seemed to be slightly different at each side, and only the front side seemed to have the latch mechanism on its frame. Nyu regarded the mechanism; it seemed to consist of a dozen of mechanically interconnected latches. All components had a dark, oxidized patina on them, but their precise construction looked rather like the work of a watchmaker than of a locksmith. Nyu stared at the lock; the only component that was installed to restrict the movement of the mechanism was apparently indeed just the tiny, golden padlock in front of the lower, right latch. The oxidized mechanism looked much like when it hadn't been moved often during the last years. Nyu thought about how the master could get food when he was captive in the glass cabin for so long. Though Nyu looked through the glass panes up at the cabin ceiling. There were various small cylinders and cubes concentrically mounted under the ceiling. Some of the cylinders obviously were small lit spotlights, but the roof itself seemed to be bolted to the frame and it looked not just like unremovable, but Nyu couldn't even see anything like ventilation holes. Nyu wondered about how the master could get air to breath in the cabin, but Sri Rashtapajeiju definitely had no problems to breath, and while Nyu regarded the slow breathing of his smiling and quietly meditating master, he felt that even just watching this already had a calming effect on Nyu. Nyu thought of the legends in those it was reported that perfect spiritual masters could live without any nutrition just from cosmic energies. Nyu had always regarded them as exaggerated - could they possibly indeed be true?

Nyu looked again at the tiny padlock; it was only 1.5cm small, a bit dusty and looked indeed just like one of these flimsy diary book locks of brass tin. Nyu turned it in his hand; it was locked and at the bottom it had a little keyhole. Nyu looked into the small tin box of metal parts among his tools if he could find a proper key replacement for it. The master suddenly looked at Nyu and asked "What are you doing?" Nyu knew well what he intended to do now and answered with a smile: "...that what needs to be done!" The keyhole was only ca. 3mm high and 1.5 mm broad, and in the center of its round end was a small pin that was designed to fit into a hole in the key shaft. The wire piece Nyu had was too thick to fit into the tiny key hole, though he couldn't find a better key replacement than an old jigsaw blade. As soon he tried to insert it, Sri Rashtapajeiju spoke: "Don't touch this!" Nyu thought of the guardsmen, and that they would possibly punish the master when they would discover a manipulation and Nyu failed to free him. Though Nyu attempted not to visibly damage anything. Nyu carefully inserted the jigsaw blade into the keyhole and picked around in it. The master said: "Nyu, what you do is wrong. Don't do this." There seemed to be the strange kind of fear in the masters voice - doubtlessly he would get terrible trouble with the guardsmen when he would actively encourage anybody to free him, Nyu thought. Nyu continued to carefully pick, but the lock didn't open. The master continued: "Stay away from this lock - you know that this is forbidden..." Nyu tried to move the jigsaw blade with more force and picked with it in different directions. The blade cracked and a very short piece of it remained stuck completely inside the lock. Nyu tried to pick it out with the other piece, but it was jammed and didn't move at all, no matter how hard Nyu tried.

Nyu looked at his watch; it was already 15:37. At the latest at 17:00 the shrine guardsmen would be back, though Nyu decided to crack the lock by force. He took the wire-cutters out of the box to cut the bow of the lock; it needed just one short press at its handles and the thin metal bow was split apart. Nyu mused a bit why there had been such an easily breakable lock - could this also be just part of a test? Nyu removed the broken lock from the latch and held it towards Sri Rashtapajeiju. But the master shouted: "Please go away - I understand that you admire me, but when you furthermore want to like me, don't continue." Nyu found this excuse absurd - he knew already that Sri Rashtapajeiju was luminous and looked different from average people, but as a supernatural being had the right to look so, found Nyu, and Nyu found this pretty and couldn't understand why his perfect spiritual master should have any reason to ashamedly hide his real, divine appearance. Apparently he had a terrible trauma, thought Nyu. Nyu tried to push the now lockless latch with his hands, but it didn't move. He carefully tried to slide the latch by using a small chisel as a lever, but it still refused to be moved more than 1/2 millimeter. The master continued: "Please leave this door closed, Nyu. Believe me, it would be better for us both - don't continue..." Nyu avoided to use too much force to move the latch. The latch mechanism looked quite complex and parts of it were not accessible from outside, though when Nyu accidentally would bend the metal somewhere by using too much force, then it possibly would  jam entirely. Nyu also remembered Patsheiyu's words, that it was punished very hard to attempt to destroy the shrine. A broken padlock was one thing, but to damage the shrine itself was certainly something else. Again the master said: "Don't open the shrine  - you don't know what you are doing." Nyu regarded the contents of the tin box again and discovered a small can of sewing machine oil in it. The latch mechanism was completely dry and had apparently not been oiled since multiple decades. But as soon Nyu took out the oil can, the master shouted: "Do not oil! Please go away with the oil can..." Ignoring this, Nyu began to oil the easier accessible parts of the latch mechanism, but he tried at least not to dirt the shrine with spilled oil. Again the master shouted with a dose of seriously sounding panic in his voice: "Please(!) be careful with this oil and put it away." Nyu found this apparent kind of phobia quite strange and mused about what nasty kind of torture his captors possibly could have done to him. After the oiling was completed, Nyu put the oil can away and carefully began to loosen each reachable latch and slide bar of the mechanism separately by pushing  them back and forward a millimeter with the small chisel. Again the master said: "Don't open the shrine. I am not what you see in me. Please leave the door closed." Nyu found the continuous complaints of the master quite a pain - why was Sri Rashtapajeiju complaining about getting freed? Or could it be that this was also just part of some obscure kind of test? When it was just a test, then it could be well that the master needed to be freed in spite of this to win, and when he was really captive of the guardsmen, then it would be doubtlessly also nothing less than Nyu's holy duty to free his master to get freed from his bad karma.

Nyu continued to use the chisel as a lever to move that latch where the padlock had been. All latches now seemed to be movable, and Nyu decided to use a big chisel as a lever to unlock the mechanism. Nyu knew, when this now wouldn't work, then he needed to climb onto the 1m high wooden cabinet to loosen and oil also the upper latches manually. Nyu pushed the latch with a little force, and happily he noticed that with a metallical cracking noise not just this latch slid about half a centimeter, but also the remaining latches moved too. The master said: "Nyu, please be very careful... The shrine was built to protect me.  I am not what I seem to be - I am not what you see in me." Nyu ignored this and attempted to slide the latch a further centimeter. All latches did a jerk. Suddenly a short, hissing noise sounded like when someone was opening a soda water bottle. Confused Nyu listened to the shrine and thought of Sri Rashtapajeiju's warning; had the attempt to open the door activated an automatic defence mechanism that now released some kind of toxic gas? Nyu waited a few seconds, but nothing bad seemed to happen. Nyu pushed the latch further; at the last centimeter of its way it got stuck again. He used a little more force at the chisel, and suddenly with a loud noise the door sprang open. The last thing Nyu noticed was a warm, invisible cloud of a very chokey kind of gas flowing from the open cabin downwards to him.

Sleepily Nyu perceived that a kind of small alarm bell was clanging continuously approximately twice a second somewhere and a familiar voice just had finished a sentence with "gas atmosphere". Yawning he opened his eyes and found himself looking upwards at the golden ornamentation of the high vault ceiling of the temple hall. He was lying on the parquet floor in front of the shrine and noticed the open glass door hanging at the left side high above his head, and a weak, indefinable chemical smell was in the air. Obviously he had been unconscious. Nyu looked at his watch; it was 15:57. Scared that it was already so late, Nyu remembered what he had been about to do now and got immediately completely awake again. Nyu stood up and noticed that his unintended rest on the floor had been so uncomfortable because he had lain upon the large wood carving chisel. Nyu put the tools back into the box and looked at the shrine. "What a lousy automatic self- defence mechanism ...", he thought, "I am still awake and still alive, and you stupid mechanism won't defeat me!" The familiar droning sound of the glass shrine had turned into a much harsher noise now which seemed to come out of the open cabin. The door was hanging widely opened on 2 little hinges at its left side. Nyu noticed that a row of 4 small, green glowing sanskrit characters had appeared on the oval screen, but he couldn't read sanskrit. Sri Rashtapajeiju still sat in the lotus seat inside the open cabin and smiled his unearthly smile. Proudly Nyu looked at him; without the ornamented glass pane in front of him the avatar's entire fascinating lightbody now was fully visible and looked really unusual and glossy - much different from the appearance of just an ordinary mortal human being, thought Nyu and was sure he would get enlightened soon by his perfect master. Indeed the master twinkled and nodded at Nyu, and spoke: "Ok, now it has happened anyway. I will give you the holy shaktipat under one condition - wipe off your oily hands as good as possible on your robe!" Nyu found this request quite bizarre; he had cared so much not to dirt his robe and now this. Perhaps it was just a kind of symbolic ritual thought Nyu, walked to his robe on the floor and thoroughly wiped his hands on it. When Nyu returned to the shrine, the master said: "Something else... drop your watch! You must not have metal parts on your body." Nyu looked at the watch and carefully laid it onto the stone pedestal below the shrine; it was 16:03 now. Nyu expected that the master would continue to annoy him with many more of such requests, but he said just: "Now sit down in the lotus seat here with your back towards me.", while he pointed with his index finger at the outer rim of the wooden shrine cabinet in front of him. The dark brown woodgrained area in front of the cabin frame was only ca. 27cm broad, though Nyu would have preferred to get the shaktipat somewhere on the floor instead of sitting 1.2m high on such a narrow sill, but he thought of how stubbornly the master had reacted previously, and though he decided better to follow his master's instructions, climbed onto the wooden cabinet, dropped his sandals, and only wearing his underpants he sat down now in the lotus seat in front of the open glass cabin.

Sri Rashtapajeiju instructed Nyu just to close his eyes, relax and breath slowly. The continuous high clanging of the small alarm bell somewhere in the shrine cabinet was still present and the harsh drone turned into a kind of loud chirping when Nyu had sat down so close to the open glass cabin of the shrine, though Nyu expected already that up here he again wouldn't be capable to relax and realize nothing. Then Nyu felt that his perfect master began to tenderly rest one of his hands at the lower end of Nyu's spine, and his other hand seemed to irregularly move along his spine up- and downwards while it touched Nyu's back either not or only extremely lightly. Nyu was excited that he finally had managed it his first time to feel the touch of his idol. In opposite to his expectation, Nyu relaxed immediately and noticed, that from the avatar's lower hand a strangely vibrant, eroticizing force went through Nyu's body, while the other hand emitted something that felt like a very weak, pulsing kind of static electricity. Also the chirping noise seemed to change its structure each time the master moved his hands. Nyu found this feeling pleasant; he couldn't remember that anybody else's hands ever had created such perceptions in him during the energy work lessons. Nyu noticed that the master quietly spoke something like that this was his first time since 307 years that he got enabled to touch and feel a human body again in the shaktipat. The unusual feelings in Nyu's body turned a little stronger and warmer and then stayed at a fixed level and didn't change anymore.

Nyu couldn't guess how long he had spend this way, but after a subjectively quite long appearing time the chirping noise sounded different again. Sri Rashtapajeiju chanted an "om" and took his hand off Nyu's back. Then the master told that the shaktipat was finished now and asked Nyu how he had felt. Nyu had indeed enjoyed the warm and energizing feeling, though it took him 30 seconds to become aware of his own, rapidly increasing disappointment that he still wasn't enlightened yet. Though instead of answering, Nyu asked the master: "What went wrong?" Sri Rashtapajeiju asked astonishedly: "What do you mean with 'went wrong', Nyu?" Nyu replied loudly: "Didn't you notice by your telepathy that I am still not enlightened? Your shaktipat has failed!" The master asked: "Did you really expect to reach a state of enlightenment by my shaktipat?" Nyu got angry; hadn't the old holy scriptures explained that the kundalinih shakti was a divine force within the human body and that an avatar was a directly incarnated embodiment of the divine and therefore was equipped with power over it?! With anger in his voice Nyu shouted: "You are not just my perfect master, you are an avatar. The legends clearly tell that avatars have the magical power to enlighten people by shaktipat." Then he complained: "Why haven't you enlightened me?" After a few seconds of obvious perplexedness Sri Rashtapajeiju answered: "Nyu, you understand something wrong. The old legends do not always tell the entire truth. Much knowledge was lost in the burning of the Mediateko and also in previous wars. Many of the legends were only orally tradited by unknowing or egoistic people for many generations and though got modified and falsified a lot before they got written down. The shaktipat doesn't work that easy like you may think. I guess you read the wrong books. I am not what you see in me." Nyu couldn't believe it; after all his effort he was now finally together with the last living avatar, and he apparently refused to enlighten him. Nyu shouted: "What's the matter with you? Are your prana forces to weak to power up my kundalinih? Try it again to give me shaktipat, but this time with more energy, please." Sri Rashtapajeiju answered with a calm voice: "Nyu, reaching enlightenment is a matter of precision, not of force. It is a very complex process of reconfiguration of the entire nervous system. When your nervous system is still too maladjusted to correctly understand the software I can send to it, then it would be rather dangerous than helpful to increase the sheer intensity."

Nyu demanded: "I want you to enlighten me. I don't fear too high energy. Give me shaktipat!" The master spoke: "Ok, It is not my holy destiny to make my adepts suffer, though I don't want to disappoint you. I will try to do my best. Simply increasing intensity wouldn't help, but now where the shrine seal got broken anyway, we can possibly try a completely different variant. But be warned! Since I am here I never have performed this before with anybody, because it got strictly forbidden to me as too dangerous to do such exercises. I don't know if this will have success. When you in spite of this all really want this, then you need to turn yourself around and carefully climb into the shrine to sit down in the lotus seat with clasped hands in front of me - but don't touch me with your hands and never - I stress never - attempt by any reason  to climb deeper into the glass cabin; you must always stay with your back at the exit. Nyu found the warnings strange, but he had already heard many other strange warnings of his master today and none of them had caused any serious trouble. Excited he unknotted his legs from the lotus seat, massaged his slept in feat and carefully crawled from the narrow sill over the hard, 2cm high metal frame bar into the cabin where he sat down as his master had instructed.

It was a bit stuffy and warm inside, and the harsh noise in the cabin was now unpleasantly loud, just like when at least 100 grasshoppers were continuously chirping around Nyu, but Nyu didn't mind about this because he never had been so close to his idol. Nyu noticed that he was sitting on a floor of a kind of black glass and that the bluish shrine illumination was shining down at him. This bluish light originated from the concentrical ring of tiny cylindrical spotlights at the cabin ceiling, and Nyu could verify now that it indeed was mainly focussed against the outer glass walls of the shrine, while the largest area of the black floor remained nearly unlit to enshroud the luminescence of Sri Rashtapajeiju's fascinating lightbody. Nyu couldn't stop to stare at his idol; he was smooth and shiny like a china statuette, and despite he was alive and breathing. Even in its normal state the avatar's body seemed to be very slightly transparent. Nyu's heart beat quite fast when he thought of that he now was in that situation he had wishfully imagined so much during the chakra exercise lessons. The master told Nyu to relax and breath slowly. Nyu noticed that the sonorous voice of the master sounded much tinnier here, which certainly had to do with all the reflecting glass surfaces around. Then the master held his right hand palm in front of Nyu's eyes and touched with the middle finger very slightly the center of Nyu's forehead, while he began to direct the palm of his other hand at Nyu and slowly moved it up and down in ca. 30cm distance to the vertical center of Nyu's trunk. Nyu noticed a mild, unusual, but not unpleasant chemical smell when the avatar's right hand approached his face, that reminded him of the smell in a pharmacy. Then the bluish shrine illumination dimmed a bit darker and the master's hand began to flicker very fast but not brightly in orange, and the flickering then started to get slower and slower while Sri Rashtapajeiju's other luminous arm and hand slowly turned brighter in a kind of yellowish orange. Nyu tried to relax and felt the pleasant feeling arise that he already had enjoyed during the previous shaktipat. The master instructed Nyu to close his eyes and began with rhythmical spectral chanting, which droned now quite harsh and a little unpleasantly loud in the cabin, and Nyu felt that the rhythmical structure of it seemed to interact with the rhythm of the flickering of his right hand in front of Nyu's closed eyes, and both rhythms formed a complex rhythmical pattern which felt quite unusual. From the master's luminous left arm seemed to radiate a stronger field of static electricity at Nyu now, which was dosed just that intense that it remained slightly below the threshold of unpleasantness. That particular, pleasant feeling that was risen by the shaktipat got stronger than the last time and concentrated itself this time particularly strong at the chakras at Nyu's heart, stomach and genital area. But again it finally stayed at a steady level for a while, then master's "om" sounded again while the bluish shrine illumination turned slowly brighter, and again the master said that the shaktipat was finished now.

Nyu felt energized and strong now, but soon he got aware that he had had no enlightenment experience and that basically everything else still felt like usual, except that his heart was beating a little stronger and he felt sexually excited. When Sri Rashtapajeiju asked him again what he had felt, Nyu shortly described his feelings and again he complained: "Your shaktipat has failed. I'm still not enlightened." The master began to explain: "Nyu, shaktipat doesn't always lead to enlightenment at once - it just accelerates the process. Theoretically I would need to give you many more sessions of shaktipat, but I can't. It is 16:29 - only 6 minutes remain until the guardsmen will return from the festival. You must leave me now. Close the shrine door, shut the latches and go; otherwise the guardsmen will make serious trouble."

Scare shook Nyu; he hadn't expected that it was already so late; 6 minutes were damned short to flee with Sri Rashtapajeiju. Why hadn't the master warned him earlier? Nyu thought of that doubtlessly something terribly cruel would be done to the master by the nasty guardsmen when they would see that the shrine lock had been cracked and someone had been together with him. Nyu remembered that he had come to free Sri Rashtapajeiju, thought of his dreams and realized that this was perhaps his only chance ever to flee with him, because the guardsmen could certainly find Nyu's finger prints in the shrine soon, and then Nyu would doubtlessly be banned from the entire temple district of Decra- Vat forever. Nyu unknotted his slept in legs from the lotus seat and shouted at the master: "Come with me!". But Sri Rashtapajeiju answered: "Sorry, I must stay here. Perhaps we can be together again during the world peace festival of the next year." Nyu got upset; why was the master not coming with him? Nyu said: "I am here to free you. Flee with me. You are free!" The master replied in a strange, serious tone: "Nyu, What do you mean with 'freeing me'? I am free. It is my cosmic destiny to be here. I once swore a vow and decided by my own free will to choose this form of life to stay here and educate the future generations. I can't come with you." Nyu got angry and successlessly attempted to imagine what kind of cruel brainwash torture his captors could have done to this unique, graceful, so incredible wise, supernatural being that it now refused so stubbornly to acknowledge to be kept captive like a trained circus animal. Angrily Nyu shouted: "What ever they have told you, it is a crime to keep you imprisoned in this glass cage.", but the master with clasped hands in the lotus seat sat just there like a traumatized child and didn't react.

Nyu shouted again: "Come with me!". The time was running out, though while Nyu with still slept in feat attempted to crawl backwards out of the cabin, he quickly decided to pull Sri Rashtapajeiju by force towards the cabin exit. Without much looking and thinking, Nyu grasped the master's left arm and immediately pulled at it with much force like when he attempted move something very heavy. The next moment Nyu remembered was that still before he realized what had happened, he immediately found himself catapulted by the swing of his own strong jerk towards the cabin exit; within fractions of a second Nyu tried everything to avoid to slip further and fall with his head first 1.2m downwards onto the parquet floor or the stone pedestal below the shrine, and though he tried to grasp with his left arm the lower edge of the open shrine door. Nyu's slipping finally stopped, but a loudly smashing and shattering noise showed Nyu that something very bad had happened. Nyu looked out of the shrine and saw, that his failed attempt to grasp the open shrine door had slung it with such an impact against the metal frame, that the upper tiny hinge at the cabin frame now was cracked off and the lower one was bent downwards while the frame of the smashed door was still hanging on it. In the frame hang something down like a torn piece of  foil ribbon cable, but the large, splendidly ornamented glass pane that previously had formed the front of the shrine cabin, lay now shattered in hundreds of sharp pieces on the parquet floor, and Nyu's sandals lay among them.

Nyu was desperate; he remembered Patsheiyu's warning about the 'Sacred Rules Of Behaviour': penalty for attempts to destroy the shrine was to get banned from the temple district forever. Now it had happened; this couldn't be hidden or overlooked like a cracked padlock, though doubtlessly his only chance to get out of this situation successfully was to flee with his perfect master. The master sat still in the cabin and looked like always. Nyu climbed back into the cabin and shouted: "Come with me!". The master replied: "Understand! - I can't! - Never attempt to touch me again!" Nyu got angrier and thought about whether the avatar could have intentionally pushed him back so hard, but he was sure that without a little force he would never make the apparently badly traumatized master follow him.

Upon this time Nyu couldn't estimate at all how much strength he should expect in the ascetic, but superhuman looking, luminous body of his idol when he would touch him again. Nyu remembered well how his perfect master in yoga lessons multiple times had shown quite strenuously looking, long enduring handstands and similar bodily exercises without any noticeable exhaustion, therefore he decided to be this time more careful and aware to react on possible defensive attacks. Very quick, but with great care like when he had to catch a rattlesnake, Nyu grasped the left arm of Sri Rashtapajeiju and slightly pulled at it, and only half a second later Nyu felt terribly shocked; this shock was in no way an electric one, but rather a deep feeling of horror, because what Nyu saw and felt here, was the least he would have expected, and he still couldn't believe it. By the force of the weak pull, the master's entire body had slipped a few centimeters over the black, smooth glass floor. Nyu carefully released the arm and touched it again; the arm of Sri Rashtapajeiju felt like made of a kind of very thin, inflated latex - almost like an ordinary toy balloon. Very carefully Nyu pulled at the arm again; the master's clasped hands loosened from each other and Nyu felt that the hand seemed to be of the same thin, inflated, luminous material. Nyu pulled the arm carefully towards him; the arm stretched slightly, and then the master's entire body slipped half a meter over the smooth glass floor towards Nyu. With both hands Nyu touched the master at the left and right side of his chest; Nyu could feel the slowly moving rips in the breathing, luminous body, but basically also here the body felt not much different than the smooth membrane of an inflated latex balloon - perhaps it was not as tightly stretched as the rubber of a fully inflated toy balloon, but a little stretched it definitely was. In a state of puzzledness and surprise Nyu grasped with both hands the master under his armpits and carefully attempted to lift his glossy lightbody off the floor. Nyu couldn't believe it; his perfect master, who was as tall as himself, seemed to weight only about 1.5kg. Nyu had lifted him 50cm high now, and the master in the lotus seat was just smiling down at him without saying a single word. Nyu didn't know what he should think of this astonishing kind of miracle; the situation was too absurd for him to be capable to think any clear thought, though after some seconds he put his master back on the cabin floor. The master asked: "Have you examined me now from close enough, nosy Nyu?!"

Nyu was totally upset; he was aware that the time was running out, though he requested the master again: "Come with me!". Sri Rashtapajeiju shouted: "I can't! Do you still admire me? Why don't you go away? I had warned you. You should not have done this to the shrine door." Nyu looked down at all the spiky glass shatters, thought of the balloon- like, certainly easily vulnerable skin of the master's body, and not least to calm himself he shouted : "Don't worry, my beloved master. I will carry you over the sharp broken glass and free you. All will be bliss! All will be bliss!" The master answered with a sound of fear in his voice: "Don't try to touch me again. You only would injure me. Go away!" Nyu grasped the master's left arm, climbed out of the shrine cabin and tried to pull him carefully out, too. The master inside the cabin slipped and crawled towards the exit, but as soon his body was about to reach the cabin frame, he suddenly sat down and didn't move any further. Nyu pulled stronger and expected already that the lightweight body of Sri Rashtapajeiju would easily get pulled out of the cabin now, but instead Nyu felt that the master's hand got softer and saw that the arm now quickly stretched about ca. the half of its original length while it got much thinner, its luminosity faded away and it finally turned transparent. Scared Nyu carefully released the master's arm. The arm snapped back to its old length, but needed about 7 seconds to get luminous like before again. Nyu got aware that he needed to do something different to get his perfect master out here in one piece. Though he grasped Sri Rashtapajeiju's trunk with his both arms, clasped his hands behind the master's back and carefully attempted to pull him out of the shrine. But as soon as Nyu began to apply force to the master's body, a low, technical buzz sounded from the master and Nyu felt an unexpected, vibrating kind of counterforce that attempted to pull the master back into the cabin. Nyu realized that apparently a kind of electric magnet somewhere was preventing the master from leaving the shrine. Nyu decided to pull stronger, which caused the buzz to grow louder.

The master shouted now with a very tinny, distorted sounding voice: "Release me! You must not do this... the force field generators - you damage the shrine! Stop this!" Nyu didn't intend to give up at all and pulled even stronger; he wanted to take his master with him - he was sure this was his only chance. At the cabin ceiling now a lightning bolt discharged between 2 of the black cubes, and a bit of black smoke came from there. With a feeling of having success Nyu replied: "This doesn't matter - I don't care about this nasty glass cage - you are free!" Nyu was sure to be about to defeat the force field and pulled at him even stronger; the buzz got tremendously loud now and the vibrating counterforce now rattled and shook Nyu's arms so vigorously, like when he was pushing his hands against the diaphragm of a 400 watts stage bass loudspeaker at maximum volume. Around that skin area of the master where Nyu held and pulled at him, the master's skin slowly seemed to get warmer and then began to light up and flicker fast and brightly in red and green. The master apparently shouted something, but the buzzing was so loud now that Nyu couldn't understand anything. Another lightning discharged with a weak bang at the cabin ceiling, but the master still remained captive inside the cabin by the force field. Nyu began to become aware that by his strong pulling in conjunction with the quaking counterforce the master's entire body had begun to deform in a way much similar like when Nyu was attempting to pull with his arms a large, complicated shaped latex balloon by force against its buoyant lift under water. The only difference in the behaviour was that, unlike a horizontal water surface, the strange force field here was acting vertically and seemed to pull everywhere with equal strength at the master's entire smooth and rubbery feeling skin surface to keep him in the interior of the glass shrine cabin. Scaredly Nyu realized that this force field could be strong enough to tear Sri Rashtapajeiju's strange, stretchable, luminous body into shreds when Nyu would further continue to pull at him.

Exhausted Nyu released the master's body; immediately the terribly loud, technically buzzing noise fell silent. Only the small alarm bell was still rhythmically clanging twice a second somewhere in the shrine cabinet, and the chirping noise was still in the air. The master quickly crawled back to his place in the center of the shrine cabin and sat down in the lotus seat again. Nyu looked at him; the skin areas where Nyu had attempted to pull his master out of the shrine by force was still sporadically flickering brightly in red and green, and in the pauses between the flashes they looked now much more transparent then previously. Confused Nyu stared at the flickering skin area. The master said with a strangely calm voice: "You must leave me now. It is already 16:33 - the guardsmen will come back soon." The master's once so beautiful voice now didn't sound charming anymore; it sounded rather tinny and seemed to be in a strange way slightly distorted. Nyu looked for his watch; it still lay below the shrine on the pedestal and the time the master had told him was correct, but Nyu knew that running away was no alternative for him. Nyu began to climb back to his previous place inside the glass cabin and asked the master: "How can I destroy the force field to free you?" The master shouted now beggingly with an eerie, tinny and synthetically sounding voice: "You don't understaaand! I am not what you see in me. My power source is built into this shrine. Only its energy keeps me alive. I can't leave the shrine to come with yooo!"

This had been too much for Nyu. Following his dreams he had come to free his perfect master and get enlightened by him. He indeed had opened the shrine like in his dreams and had got shaktipat from the master - but without success. The master had claimed he would just need more sessions with him, but due to the smashed shrine door Nyu was sure he would get banned soon from the temple district forever and though never see him again, and now he discovered that also his last chance and yearning wish - to flee with his perfect master - had turned out to be something completely impossible. Nyu was now entirely desperate; he felt he was about to loose everything.

Nyu felt that something here was terribly wrong. In him rose the diffuse impression to be cheated, though it struck him like a shock when he now remembered Kehtohkah's conviction that the avatar would not be real and possibly could be remote controlled. Suddenly Nyu couldn't believe anymore how himself could have repressed this possibility for so long. Nyu felt anger and began to perceive the pain from his right foot that he had hurt by the glass shatters. Again he thought of whether this entire absurd situation could be just a form of test. Nyu though about whether it was really supernatural that the master could tell the exact time without a clock and he remembered the master's previous apparent phobia against oil and that latex rubber gets destroyed by contact with it.

The borders of those damaged looking, transparent skin areas of Sri Rashtapajeiju's body where Nyu had grasped him very hard to pull him out of the shrine began to flicker brighter in red and green. Starting there, now rainbow coloured light cascades began to run upwards and downwards his body. Nyu's impression quickly turned into a concrete suspecting assumption when after a few seconds a discharge- like sounding electric crackling got audible from the master, and suddenly Sri Rashtapajeiju's entire lightbody flashed brightly white a single time and then it immediately got transparent and remained in this state - only filled with a kind of dim bluish light. Nyu stared at the bluish transparent figure and asked: "What are you?". The master replied: "What kind of answer would satisfy you most, Nyu?". Nyu felt disillusioned and terribly cheated. He realized the hurry of the outrunning time and angrily he shouted: "Don't play games with me. You know well what I mean. You are no human being." The bluish transparent Sri Rashtapajeiju shouted now with a synthetically sounding kind of tinny crying: "No, I am an avatar. What do you want else from me?" Nyu couldn't accept this - in a fury driven by the assumption that someone frauded him with technical tricks, he felt how his previous admiring turned into hate; he shouted: "This is a test - isn't it? I don't believe you anymore, you electric, inflated, remote- controlled rubber puppet dummy. You are not human. Who controls this counterfeit avatar? What kind of show trick is this here?" Sri Rashtapajeiju again cried synthetically: "I am no trick, I am an avatar and I am real. You are not human... - to me!" Nyu felt hoaxed by this statement. With the same artificially sounding voice the master continued: "I expected you could react this way. I warned you not to open the shrine, but you didn't listen." Nyu replied surlily: "You want to be an avatar - prove it to me!"

A mild, yellowish light began to illuminate the master's white, thin, nappy- like underpants; it seemed to originate from the muladhara chakra down in the his bluish, transparent body while the chirping noise turned louder. Then the master in the lotus seat said: "Look at me!", and slowly he lifted off the black glass floor and smilingly he began to levitate about 40cm above the floor in the air. The master made a gesture with his hands and now he slowly floated towards Nyu. Nyu found this performance amusing and smiled, but remembering the pulling force field in the shrine he refused not to expect anymore to be teased by an unknown puppet player somewhere. Nyu looked at the master's body and noticed that there seemed to be lots of tiny black dots everywhere distributed on his entire transparent skin; the skin was not perfectly clear, but well transparent enough to look inside and through the entire body. Nyu could see now that there were many details he never had noticed before, because all larger structures inside the master's body were that transparent that they were almost invisible. There were also various small, very fine, unidentifiable, symmetrically arranged structures inside, but they didn't look biological, and the supporting main structure of the entire lightbody seemed to be a complex arrangement of  transparent membranes those apparently formed several complicated shaped inflated air chambers of various sizes. Nyu didn't understand what all this was, but he was sure that it looked definitely much more manmade than divine. Not least to ease his frustration, Nyu shouted with sarcasm in his voice: "You are just a strange kind of electric rubber doll that pretends to be an avatar. You are not real." The master replied with his tinny voice: "How can you be so sure? This is not logical. I guess you have no idea of what an avatar is. You can never have seen anything like me. I am a genuine avatar. What kind of proof do you imagine?"

Nyu should get an idea now, but this idea was perhaps the worst that could happen. When Nyu would not have been in the expectation to get punished and banned from the temple district soon and there would not have been the panic that at any moment the guardsmen could return, the following event certainly never would have happened.

Nyu remembered the Kama Sutra discussions during the tantrical partner yoga lectures and got an idea, and he felt that this was his absolutely last chance at all to reach his goal of enlightenment. Nyu didn't know if what he intended to do now had any chance of success, and he still doubted that this strange, glossy, artificial looking figure could be an avatar, but he wanted to know the truth and expected that doing it could in no case be worse than letting the last minutes with his master pass unusedly and finally despite get arrested by the guardsmen. Nyu shouted: "You want to prove to be an avatar?! Then enlighten me! Do with me the sadmaithuna!" Sri Rashtapajeiju smoothly landed on the floor and answered with a serious voice: "This is impossible. You don't know what you talk about." Nyu grasped the left arm of the master and shouted: "I want you to do with me the holy sexual intercourse. You himself have told me that the prana force transmitted by it can enlighten people at once." The master shouted: "You don't understand; the tantrical sadmaithuna is not just intercourse. It is a complex ceremonial ritual of mystical unification. It can't be performed here and I couldn't do it anyway. This is completely impossible. I can't enlighten you with it." In a mixture of rage, indifference, disillusionedness and the despaired expectation that he had no second chance and needed to bring everything to an end, Nyu decided to ignore his words; he grasped the master's lightweight body with his both legs, pulled him closer towards himself and spoke: "When you are a genuine avatar, then your prana forces will be strong enough to enlighten me."

Nyu felt a strangely vibrating energy between his clasped legs where he held the master's body, which reminded him of what he had felt during the shaktipat. Nyu embraced the master and could feel his breathing. The master smelled a bit strange like pharmacy, and the chirping noise here was a bit loud, but his entire luminous body seemed to emit that warm, pleasant, vibrant kind of energy which Nyu remembered so well from shaktipat. Nyu felt eroticized by it and began to feel a bit surer again that this could be the strong prana of a genuine avatar. With the words: "Sorry, I need this enlightenment to get rid of my bad karma now!" Nyu quickly lifted with his left hand his penis and scrotum over his underpants and pulled the master's white silk nappy cloth down. Astonished Nyu saw that the avatar had no genitals; between his legs there was just a smooth surface of the same glossy, transparent, inflated feeling material like his entire luminous body, and looking through it, there was a yellowish white light cloud which appeared to be the master's muladhara chakra. Also the other chakras in his body were barely visible as yellowish white lights. Nyu never had seen anything like this before. The master shouted with his tinny voice: "Enlightenment is not a magic power that conjures away bad karma. Karma is a physical law and can not be cheated."

Nyu again felt frauded and shouted: "Why do you lie again? You can't deceive me any longer. I won't go away from you before I get enlightened." At this time Nyu didn't care anymore if the master was a real avatar or not; he felt his only chance in exposing himself more to the master's prana energies to get enlightened before the guardsmen would return. The master was sitting in the lotus seat; Nyu decided to try to sit down with his buttocks upon the master's legs to get his muladhara chakra in closer contact with him. When Nyu relocated his body weight on the lap of the master, he noticed how his weight began to deform the transparent legs of the master's strange, inflated lightbody, but a hum began to sound and his position stabilized. Nyu felt how the vibrating energy grew stronger and slowly began to energize Nyu's entire body. The master shouted with his tinny voice: "Don't do this. You are about to hurt me!" Nyu didn't take this complaint seriously; he was sure the master would doubtlessly scream when he had pain. Instead the master spoke: "You don't understand. Bad karma is caused by reducing the sum of freedom - by causing unnecessary sufferance. The only way of getting rid of a bad karma is to learn what in the world is wrong and causes the sufferance, and though get enabled to reduce it and not to cause such sufferance anymore." During this Nyu had begun to press his penis against the master's lightbody to pick up more of that sexually exciting feeling energy he felt pulsing through him. Nyu saw that the chakras in the avatar's body began to light up brighter now and that an energetic feeling like weak static electricity came from him.

Nyu pressed his naked chest and stomach against the upper part of the master's transparent body and embraced him tighter. The hum grew louder and the master shouted with that tinny sounding voice again: "Get up! You will damage my body!". But Nyu ignored this; in his desperate mind it sounded just like another trick to take away his last and only chance to get enlightened; he feared that immediately the guardsmen would return. The humming tone grew even louder and turned into an unpleasant buzz. Also the chirping grew so loud like when an entire swarm of locusts around Nyu was producing it. The diffuse bluish light inside the master's transparent body began to separate into zillions tiny, bluish sparkling stars, those mainly appeared among his chakras, but also filled his arms and legs. The energizing, vibrating feeling grew much stronger now and Nyu expected every moment to get enlightened. But again the master shouted with a now very distorted and synthetically sounding voice: "You hurt me! - Understand! - The purpose of karma is not punishing, but learning. All the consciousness is part of one and wants understanding. The enlightenment is a process of reconfiguration of the nervous system that makes people learn and perfects the way of thinking  - and by this act of learning the necessarity for their bad karma vanishes - only by the learning to understand they get freed. You can't reach enlightenment by raw force." The desperate Nyu at this time again thought of a trick or test and could not accept this; he wanted the enlightenment now and believed to do now sadmaithuna.

The strong energy Nyu felt had still not enlightened him; in the expectation that the prana intensity still was not high enough to activate his kundalinih, Nyu began to rub his penis at the transparent lightbody of the master; sitting on the elastic, inflated lap of him, this began to set his own and the master's body together into a rhythmical swinging. Nyu began to notice that in the rhythm of his swinging the volume of the buzz got modulated in a pulsing way that it grew louder while he swung downwards and quieter while he moved upwards again, and the brightness of the muladhara chakra and the intensity of the bluish sparkling inside the master's lightbody also got influenced in a similar way by the movement. Again a lightning bolt discharged with a pinging noise somewhere between the black cubes at the cabin ceiling. The master shouted with a synthetical, cryingly sounding voice: "Nyu, you must not do this. The gravity force fields - you hurt me!", but Nyu only thought of getting enlightened and rose the intensity further. The master shouted: "What you do is unlogical and can not help you. You overload your and my body!" The experience of excessive energy and sexual excitation maladjusted Nyu's nervous system and began to swirl around all impressions and flushed the warnings and arguments of the master down in Nyu's desperate mind like water inside a flushing toilet. Nyu didn't care that he was loosing control over himself and began to rock and swing even more to rise the intensity even higher. More lightning bolts discharged at the cabin ceiling and Nyu noticed that again black smoke came from those cubes. The master's body began to vibrate so violently now like when Nyu was sitting on a running spin drier full of sport shoes and a pocket load of marbles. The master shouted with a terribly distorted sounding voice: "You overload the graviton field guidance system. Nyu, eeyoo must not do this. Please stop this!" Nyu saw that under the black glass floor many small objects began to glow orange, like when there were a kind of electron tubes at a distance under the floor. The sparkling stars in the master's transparent body turned now into bundles of zillions of fine, blue flickering lightnings, those seemed to arc now also among the black dots at the inner side of the lightbody's skin. Nyu felt how the feeling of static electricity grew so strong that it slowly began to get unpleasant. The master shouted: "Stop! Intensity only maladjust your nervous system. Enlightenment is a matter of precision, not of force!", but Nyu's maladjusted nervous system had no control anymore that could have made him intending to stop, though Nyu couldn't accept anything else anymore than that this would be part of his way to enlightenment, and he continued.

A lightning bolt from the ceiling shot down and hit Nyu. Like in slow- motion he noticed how he tipped over and fell upon the master's body towards the center of the black, hexagonal glass floor. Nyu felt the electric pain of the impact and thought of whether the master could have hit him with anything so painfully. The master shouted: "Go away from the floor center, Nyu! This is very dangerous!", and  Nyu began to feel a tiny doubt now that this was a correct way to reach enlightenment. Nyu moved his legs backwards into a more comfortable position and noticed that the glass floor here seemed to bend easily when he moved, but furthermore driven by his totally maladjusted nervous system he couldn't stop anymore; though Nyu lay down on the master's transparent body and attempting to continue to do sexual things with him, Nyu rhythmically swung up and down and the volume of the loud, technical buzz did the same; an orgasm began - and the next thing Nyu remembered was that something smashed and rumbled loudly, then it went downwards, darkness and there was terrible pain.

Nyu needed about 10 seconds to realize where he was. The loud buzz had fallen entirely silent and also the chirping noise was gone; only the small alarm bell was still clanging. It was quite dark around him and everywhere were large, black pieces of broken glass; he obviously had fallen through the glass floor half a meter deep down into the interior of the shrine cabinet. Nyu felt the hard, slightly dusty, warm feeling surface of a kind of large, silverish, hexagonal metal chassis under him; close to its corners were many strange technical components visible; they somewhat resembled very old electronics and some of them were glowing like electron tubes, but Nyu couldn't identify them. Nyu looked for the master and began to notice that Nyu still lay with his right leg upon the left leg of him, but the master's leg was slack and deflating; obviously the air was escaping from it. Nyu stared at the now motionless and unlit remains of the transparent body, and angry about his own pain and the despair that his enlightenment attempt had failed and everything had went so wrong, he shouted into the void: "I knew it!  He was just a remote- controlled electro- magnetic puppet. Hey you puppet players! - the test is finished now; your counterfeit avatar dummy is broken. The game is over! You can come out now and arrest me!" Nyu expected that at any moment the guardsmen would return.

Suddenly Nyu noticed how the the vishudda chakra in the master's neck and his muladhara chakra lit up yellowish again The master spoke with a tinny, synthetical sounding voice: "I aam no fraud. I am avatar. The process of transformation: knowledge was lost in the Burning. No'otechnology - system of mental data transfer - the best were elected. Rashtapajeiju the teacher - I am all what he once was." Nyu felt terribly shocked and couldn't believe it; a single thought rushed through Nyu's mind and wiped away all others - had the avatar been real?! In panic Nyu got up, bent himself over his once so beloved master and put the broken glass pieces away from him to protect him from the sharp edges; during this Nyu discovered that the once downward facing side of the black glass shatters was covered with a complex network of fine, golden traces - like when it had been part of a large microelectronic circuit. While the shrine illumination turned brighter and less bluish now, the master spoke slowly and with a terribly distorted, synthesized sounding voice: "I swore the vow to deserrrve mankind... rrreceived a lightbody to stay forever. I survived the wars, but maintenance knowledge was lost - nobody can build a new one anymore - since 307 years I remained conserved... enclosed under protective gas atmosphere. You came..." During the last words the master's voice turned quieter while his muladhara chakra grew brighter and brighter. Sri Rashtapajeiju's face flashed up a few times in its normal, non- transparent state and faded away again. His muladhara chakra grew even brighter and a bluish lightning flashed through the master's body. The master spoke: "Eeyoo have overrloaded mee. It may get dangerous. You must go away now... Go away..." But Nyu felt that he couldn't go away; in his mind he began to remember all the lessons he had spent with him in the time he had seen him as his perfect master. Nyu desperately remembered the dreams where he had danced with him - and now the master told him to leave him alone while he was lying there like a dead jellyfish. Nyu embraced the master; quietly the chirping  noise sounded again, the bluish light began to fill the master's arms again and the master laid his arm around the back of Nyu. The master's muladhara' chakra slowly began to reach the brightness of a small light bulb now, while the other chakras turned completely dark. Nyu noticed that the master didn't react anymore. More and brighter lightnings arced inside the master's body. Nyu looked at the dark heart chakra, put his ear at the master's chest and noticed that there was no heartbeat; only a quiet humming was audible. Nyu had no knowledge if this was normal for an avatar, but in his panic like a reflex he pushed his hand palms strongly on the master's chest like he once had learned in first aid training as heart massage; only fractions of a second later with a shock Nyu noticed that his push - instead of reviving Sri Rashtapajeiju - had instantly crushed most of master's ribs, those now audibly plummeted into his transparent body like when they had been of very flimsy and brittle acrylic plastic. Nyu cried: "I won't go away, my master. I won't leave you!", and he embraced him again. Instead of breathing, the master's chest began to pulse now like when it was slowly inflated and deflated by a hidden mechanism. Green sanskrit characters flashed on his transparent forehead a few times, and only a single time for the duration of 2 seconds the master's entire body turned intransparent and luminous again like it had been in former times.

During this short time Nyu could watch that there were lots of very small, transparent holes visible in the apparently severely damaged, luminous, orangish flesh coloured inner layer of Sri Rashtapajeiju's skin, through those the bluish and yellowish light from inside his body now shone almost like stars of a nightly sky. Those skin areas where Nyu had violently grasped and pulled at him in the failed attempt of getting him out of the shrine looked damaged most; they remained completely transparent and though were only illuminated by the dim bluish inner light. At their borders, where the luminous layer was still intact, a fine network of transparent cracks was visible, through those the bluish light from inside fell in a way just like when it was passing the cracked paint of a damaged, opaque, orangish tinted glass painting. Within only 3 more seconds the entire body faded darker and turned fully transparent again.

Nyu already had yearningly hoped that soon the master would get up and all would be like before, when suddenly a very strong electric discharge arced with a crackling noise inside the master's stomach area. Nyu felt that this one was different from the previous harmless bluish lightnings, and with a feeling of horror he saw that he was right. A small, black, rectangular component in the body began to glow, and beginning there grey smoke started to distribute itself everywhere like fog inside the transparent trunk of the master. With a terribly distorted, eerily synthetically sounding voice Sri Rashtapajeiju gasped: "Neee'yooo ... what eeyooo have daaahn???  He'aaa'rrrrr'llp  meeeeeh!". A last time the master seemed to attempt to inhale, but something was wrong; his partly smoke filled chest instead now started to inflate larger and larger to approximately 1.5 times its original size. While it continued inflating, Nyu tried his best to press with his arms and body weight the inflating upper part of the master's body as good as possible together - fearing that the body of his once so beloved master could at anytime explode into shreds like a cheap toy balloon. While Nyu carefulliestly lay down with his own naked chest upon the inflating, unpleasantly electrically charged feeling chest of the master to protect it by squeezing from further expanding, suddenly a weird click sounded inside Sri Rashtapajeiju's body. Nyu perceived how his master's now almost twice its normal size inflated, oval, tight and smooth feeling chest finally grew slowly smaller again. But before Nyu could get in any way happy about this, he had to notice that this happened only because the smoky air inside it now partly had started to flow down into his master's stomach section, which now had begun to inflate instead, while it slowly turned intransparently grey by the smoke. Air chamber by air chamber of the smooth, glossy, transparent trunk of the avatar's complex body structure slowly began to fill up with it and though turned foggily grey. Nyu felt at his legs that also the thighs of the master's legs started to slowly inflate bigger; Nyu fearfully thought of what possibly overlooked pointed glass remains or other sharp edged technical components could do to his master's so vulnerable body in this state - things those still easily could lie around here on that hard, warm, dusty metal surface of the shrine's hexagonal chassis he and Sri Rashtapajeiju were lying upon. While the exhaustedly sweating Nyu continued to stabilize the master's upper, still most tightly inflated body area by carefully squeezing him with both arms, Nyu could hear his own, desperately hammering heartbeat when he had to see and feel now how even the transparent arms of his beloved Sri Rashtapajeiju - those arms he knew so well that the master had used to clasp in his yoga lessons and with those he not even half an hour ago just had given Nyu shaktipat - now were swelling about 1/4 thicker and turning slightly longer while they also started to fill with that terrible, light grey, fog- like stuff.

Finally something flashed up white somewhere in the middle of the almost completely with grey smoke filled body, and Nyu happily noticed that now with a quiet, snoring noise the master had begun to exhale the grey, awfully smelling smoke through his nostrils; while though expelling the air he started to deflate soon and approached his normal body size again. Nyu stopped pressing the master's body together, and totally exhausted from the exertion and everything he had gone through during the last half hour he lay down closely next to him. Hardly less desperate than before, Nyu regarded the now greyishly discoloured, still smoke filled, dimly flickering and dust stained body; remembering how beautiful his beloved perfect master Sri Rashtapajeiju once had looked like from outside his shrine, and remembering all the warnings he had told him not even an hour ago and those Nyu had ignored, Nyu felt now the strong need to tenderly embrace him - again Nyu cried: "I won't go away - my master! I won't leave you!".

Nyu began to get aware again that he had feared almost nothing more than that the guardsmen could do anything bad to his perfect master, only to realize now that nobody else than Nyu himself had caused all that to him what here just had happened. Through Nyu's mind rushed a stream of memories with scenes of all the experiences and lesson he had realized with Sri Rashtapajeiju - intense scenes of how he had sung together with his beloved master and of all the joyful dreams he had had about him. While Nyu got more and more intensely aware of what he had done, he felt that something else here was terribly wrong... The master in his arms had not just expelled all the surplus air to return to his previous body size, but with a chilling feeling of horror Nyu noticed that various sections of his master's once so beautiful and admirable lightbody had silently begun to slowly deflate and now were shrinking further and further, until in Nyu's arms he remained at only about 2/3 of his original body size, while inside that greyishly tarnished, smoke filled and now slacker and rubberier feeling, deformed piece of misery that so hardly resembled the avatar's once so charming and graceful lightbody anymore it still sporadically flickered and flashed multiple times. Almost like sarcasm in Nyu's mind now resounded imaginary words of Sri Rashtapajeiju's voice instructing: "Look at me..." - well known words the master often had spoken during his yoga lessons and those therefore likely came out of Nyu's own memories; Nyu tried hard to muse about whether they also could be a telepathic message, but Nyu failed to concentrate.

The last events Nyu remembered were that some of the fine black dots everywhere on the master's body slightly lit up reddishly, while the master's arm around Nyu's back finally had felt so hot that Nyu had feared to be burned by it. But Nyu hadn't dropped him - he only had cried again and again: "What I did was wrong!!! I won't go away - my perfect master... I never will leave you!". At the end the chirping had fallen silent, while with a quiet, hollow and tinny sounding, sizzling noise even the master's transparent head began to fill with the grey smoke and started to shrink; only his face remained at its original size - slowly distorting - just like when there was a stiff, clear, mechanical plastic mask inside... Nyu got unconscious.

When Nyu got awake, only the rhythmical beeping of his own heart on a heart monitor made him convince that himself was still alive. When he opened his eyes, he found himself in a bed in a small, white room; with fear he discovered that he looked into the old faces of 2 of the shrine guardsmen, in those for a moment he still saw those torturers he had imagined while he had cracked open the shrine. As soon they noticed that Nyu woke up, one of the guardsmen looked at Nyu and told him, that he should better stay in bed, because he had several bruises, cuts and 2nd degree burns. Nyu didn't worry much about his own wounds; he had only one serious sorrow - Nyu asked cryingly: "Is my master ok? What has happened to Sri Rashtapajeiju?" The other guardsmen said with a serious voice that he should calm down and wait.

Surprised Nyu noticed that Lashiute Tendephan, the president of the culture preservation institute, entered the room and spoke to the guardsmen: "We always had feared that sometime something like this would happen..." One of the guardsmen replied: "Better talk first to our patient - his only sorrow seems to be the avatar." Without any of the usual formalities, but with his famous poker face the tall man stiffly walked towards Nyu and shook his hand. Nyu felt a bit fear to ask him, but then he asked: "What has happened to the master?". Tendephan replied with an emotionless intonation like a TV newsreader: "The force field generation and control system of the avatar shrine got severely damaged, and the electro- migration damaged remains of the body of the avatar can only be rated as a total loss. But we make progress in deciphering the graviton guidance technology from the age before the Mediateko burning. The cybernetic control components from within the shrine cabinet already have been fully emulated, and the quantum uncertainty dynamics research has shown first successes in replicating the microstructure of the intention sensitive version of electro- luminescent, semi- isotropic elastomers, although the replication of an entire body of membranes of such materials will only be possible after the factory for the material has been finished." Confused Nyu asked: "What does this all mean? Is Sri Rashtapajeiju dead?" Lashiute Tendephan fetched a small, clear plastic box of his pocket and opened it. Inside was a small, red, crescent- shaped electronic printed circuit board, which basically only had a battery holder and an 1cm small, black plastic blob on it. The black blob was one of that kind that was known from cheap electronic devices to contain a single, low power microchip, and on the board was also a tiny plastic loudspeaker mounted. Tendephan plugged a small electronic camera with separate viewfinder monitor into a jack on the circuit board and switched it on. With the words: "Backup systems are important. This module works also with the oval screen." he turned the viewfinder towards Nyu. A well- known and beautiful face appeared on the small monitor, and from the tiny speaker suddenly sounded a very familiar voice: "Hello Nyu, I am astonished to see you. I also had wished so much to touch a human being again, but why you have been so cruel and have done this to my poor body? I hope we soon can see us again to begin with the next lessons..."
 

In the dedication of his life to the development of his adepts, this avatar had given everything he could in his spiritual lessons within the bounds of the physical limitations of his possibilities. But the adept Nyu hadn't accepted this - ignoring all his warnings and lessons he had used force due to his too high expectations of him. In Decra- Vat the resulting penalty for Nyu's deed got way less hard than Nyu had expected, but the life had taught him a lesson that he never should forget - a lesson that freed him from all his karmical guilt...

And to always remind him of Sri Rashtapajeiju, a piece of him had unified itself with Nyu forever; at Nyu's left shoulder remained a burn scar, in which like a tattoo stayed enclosed for his entire life a melted remain of the master's body - it was only a tiny, clear, smooth and soft piece of elastomeric plastic - nearly invisible and non- toxic - but it was a plastic that had been created presumably thousands of years ago - produced with the lost knowledge of a highly developed civilization - by a culture that lived in ancient times somewhere nearby in a fertile valley - among high and misty mountains far away in the Twilight Zone - the world of the unexpected.

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