A Modern Odyssey : Journey Between the Island of the Sun and the Island of the Moon!
The philosophical content of this website is based on a theme, which is common to most religions of the world. It deals with the cycle of life, death and regeneration, which perpetuates life after life. The world's oldest epic Gilgamesh is based on the same theme: Gilgamesh makes a journey in search of immortality over the dark ocean of death to find the plant that will make him immortal. On the way he meets the moon-goddess, who wants to marry him and offers him all the wealths of the world. At the end Gilgamesh to
o can not escape the destiny bound to the cycle of life, death and life again. Homer's Odyssey too depicts this eternal theme of the mortal life bound to the wheel turned by the darkness of the night, when the moon rises and the world falls in sleep, and the illumination of the day when the sun awakens all to life again everyday.
The Modern odyssey in the Cyber-age, written by Anup Rej, is spun around the journey between the Island of the Sun by the shore of life, and the Island of the Moon, lying in the realm of beauty and Aphrodesian love, where the female seduces the journeyman and binds him to his destiny. He passes by the Island of the Witches, where the moon-goddess appears in her killing and destructive form as the queen of the underworld. The man possessing different and cotradictory human nature, that is universal, makes the journey in search of a meaning of life and an escape from the Wheel. It starts in the "village life" where competetion, war, truimph, death and destruction live side by side love and sensual enjoyment. Then he enters the realm of imagination, dream and myth, where the female beauty enchants the mind and entraps his life in a destiny, that he can not escape. The third part of the journey passes through the realm of Apollo. In this sphere he tries to overcome the destiny by intellectual understanding of the world through reason. Thus he gradually moves away from the realm of the senses, and finally arrives at a spiritual adobe beyond the realm of reason. There he receives enlightenment.
The story is told in a way that relates the philosophical content of Buddhism and Christianity as well. After receiving enlightenment the journeyman returns to the world as Bodhisatta. In the suffering world, the Christian theme appears through the life of the promethean and the orphean man. The existential question, "how to live and find meaning in life" is the central aspect of this literary-philosophical website.
The mortal seeking meaning of life and an escape from the wheel, turned by the sun and the moon, confronts different natures of himself in different stages of life: As a progenitor of Prometheus, he seeks wealth, truimph and dominance; as a man possessing the Dinoysian nature he sinks in joys and ecstasies derived from the sensual world; as a follower of Apollo he searches in knoweldge and intellectual contemplation the meaning of life; and as an orphean man he finds his path to the Divine world through meditation and spiritual contemplation.
Man's destiny
In village life: With power of sword and desire to truimph over all.
As a dreamer: Searching love and beauty beyond the suffering life.
As a man of knowledge: Reising heavenward to win the Paradise.
As a mystic and a monk: meditating along the mountain way.
Going from village to the mountain and coming back to the village again.