If I look back at my life, I laugh at myself because I was climbing steps one to seven and hoping to get to heaven. Not just for 5 or 10 years, but for 40 long years I believed in ‘my’ God. I prayed, I had faith, I lived with hope and complete trust. My enthusiasm was very visible and my love for God was known. But for 4 decades, I was going up and down these steps, but reaching nowhere.
It was my Spiritual Master, my Guru who provoked me to introspect when I was 46 years old and pushed me to go on a quest. Then I realized the truth and climbed many more steps. The last two steps on the Ladder are in the hands of the Divine. There can be no liberation and unification until the body dies. It is only then that we can be united with the Divine.
But what does one do after realizing the Truth? When we realize that we are not the body we wear, but the ones who wear the body, then we become conscious of our true identity. We all have the ME – the Mind and Ego, but the one who has realized the truth, transcends the mind and ego, to live as the Divine Soul.
Imagine, you were going to buy bread from a bakery. You walked for 10 minutes and at the traffic light, you took a right turn and walked awhile more. Then, when you came to a little park, you took another right turn and walked on. It was a good 20 to 30 minutes walk to reach your favorite bakery. You did that for several months until one day you met a friend and told him about your favorite bakery. He was your neighbor and lived a few blocks on the left. He challenged you that his bakery was better, and it was just a few minutes away, right behind his house. The next day you went to your friend's house in the neighborhood. He took you through a tiny alley and in two minutes you reached his bakery. You were surprised because it was the same bakery you had been going to all these months. You struggled walking 30 minutes to get there and lost an hour each time you went to the bakery, but now you realized that it was less than 5 minutes away. What would you do henceforth? Would you still waste an hour every day following your old route or would you take the shortcut? Once you realize that your bakery could be accessed through the tiny alley, you would never return to the long route!
One who realizes the truth that we are the Divine Soul doesn't live like the body and the mind anymore. But this realization must come! Knowledge is not realization. Even if we have the knowledge, but we don't realize, then we continue to live in ignorance. Once I realized several truths about life, I transcended the triple suffering that most humans face. No doubt my body experienced pain, but I did not suffer the pain of the body. I would take the required medication and move on.
There was hardly any misery of the mind because I realized that the mind is a monkey. It swings to the past and then to the future. I also transcended the agony of the ego because I realized I was the Divine Soul.
This was just liberation from suffering while I was alive. But my goal is to escape from the cycle of death and rebirth. I realized the truth about the Law of Karma and found a way to live as a Divine instrument. If I was not the body or the mind and ego, then none of the actions that seemed to be mine, were mine. This liberated me not only from Karma that I was performing but from all the accumulated Karma, the ME – the Mind and Ego had collected life after life.
How did climbing the Ladder change my life? When I climbed on to the 8th step and started my quest, it was a turning point. Then step after step, I moved forward, towards my Ultimate Goal. Each step on the Ladder to Heaven only got me closer in my search for God. I never knew the power of silence until my Guru urged me to practise it. He made me realize so many truths like the truth of Karma, just as he helped me overcome several layers of ignorance that had made me sink in darkness.
I used to ask my Guru hundreds of questions. He used to laugh at me but he was happy to answer them. Then, one day he told me, you don't need to ask any more questions. He could probably see the difference between knowledge and realization. My life was transformed. After I was 48 and blessed with several realizations, I became conscious that God was around me all the time. I no more searched for God, for I could feel God's Divine presence in everybody and in everything. Earlier, I used to appreciate the beautiful creations of God. But now I could see the Divinity in beauty. Everything beautiful was a manifestation of the Divine. God was everywhere. I realized that God is the one reality, everything else is an illusion.
I started living a life of eternal bliss and everlasting peace, a state known as Satchitananda or eternal bliss that comes from chit or consciousness of the Sach or truth. It is a great feeling to be blessed with this consciousness, even though it is a challenge.
My goal now is to live like a realized Soul or Jivanmukta, a liberated Soul embodied in a body-mind complex. How can I possibly do that? It is by living with a steady intellect, a state called Sthitpragya, as stated by Lord Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita. All this is easier said than done. But once it is done, it is truly blissful.
For the last 5 years, my life has been a life of Yoga. Not just because I do Asanas or Pranayama or breathing techniques but because I live in constant union with the Divine. One can remain in Yoga in 4 ways. I live my life with all the 4 ways to remain in Union. I make an effort for all my actions to be Karma Yoga, done as per Divine directions, as an instrument of the Divine and I surrender all results to the Divine. My devotion or Bhakti is to be constantly united in my faith. I spend time in silence or Dhyana Yoga to communicate with the Divine. And any free time that is left, I spend in Gyana Yoga, continuing to study and gain further wisdom of the truth. My life goes round and round, as if these 4 forms of Yoga are a part of one cycle of Yoga, or Divine union that appears as four different ways but in reality is one.
I live in Divine surrender, accepting the Divine will. I know that ultimately, this body will die. I try to live as a liberated Soul, so that I can be ultimately united with the Divine. But I know that this is not in my hands. My Guru warned me several times. Realization is not liberation and unification. “Beware!” he used to warn me. “As long as we live in this human existence, we may fall prey to temptations and lose our realization to desires of lust.” Therefore, it is important to constantly live in Yoga, just as it is important to live with dispassion and detachment, discrimination, discipline and the desire for liberation and the Divine.
Each day, I pray to the God that lives in the temple of my heart to bless me to live as the Divine Soul and not to sink in Samsara, the world of attractions and distractions. I keep myself busy doing the Divine will. I believe I have only one mission—to help people realize the truth and so, I do nothing else other than remain in Yoga and focus on my mission. Even this book is a message, a flash from the Divine. I have not done anything, just followed the direction to write—'The Ladder to Heaven'. May it help genuine seekers to climb the Ladder to Heaven and realize the Truth.