My Talaash or “search” actually started in August 2013 when my Guru asked, “What is the purpose of life? Is life just meant to live and die, or is there a deeper meaning to life?” This got me thinking. I had achieved so much success, name, fame, and money. In fact, I had achieved everything I wanted! Despite all the pleasures, I could not escape the questions that life was throwing at me.
There were a few turning points in this phase of life. I stumbled upon the word “Enlightenment” as the third peak of happiness and began to understand that achievement and fulfillment were just little hills as compared to this enlightenment mountain of joy, bliss, and peace. I didn’t know much about it. But the knowledge acquired by reading revealed to me that one should progress on the journey of self-realization and God realization. I wondered what more was there to realize about self and God. I am what I am, and God is what God is. And thus, I was just going round in circles.
But then, when my Guru, my Master, was also provoking me, something intuitive made me do something very strange. I decided to stop doing everything else. I would only search for answers to the 9 questions that had confronted me. I suddenly became passionate about finding the true purpose of life. It was my obsession to find if the third peak of joy actually existed. I didn’t know what it meant, but I was led into this third journey.
I lived in a beautiful office, surrounded by wonderful people and some amazing animals – dogs, ducks, rabbits, geese, birds, and fish. One evening when I returned from a meeting, I was shocked to find that about 50 beautiful fish that used to circle around my office in a tiny pond were all dead. I wondered what happened. I asked everybody and received some lame answers and reasons. I concluded that I couldn’t diagnose the cause of their death. And I learnt that nothing could stop death from happening and that except for God, no one could control death.
I went to my library and started looking for some spiritual books. Over the last 33 years, I have created a library of a few thousand books. I came across a book on Gautama Buddha and his life and teachings. While reading it, I picked up some amazing truths that Buddha had stated. Buddha taught that this world is ultimately suffering and no one could escape from this suffering. He analyzed that anybody who is born must die. The life journey included growing, but then in most cases, one would decay because of disease or just die. He believed that life was a cycle of death and rebirth, and that this cycle was checkered with unavoidable suffering. There was only one way to escape from this cycle of death and birth. Buddha called it Nirvana. I was impressed and inspired by Buddha’s concept of Nirvana, but didn’t know how to get there.
I was a staunch believer in God, and for nearly 40 years, I would go to the temple every Monday and fast the whole day, expressing my devotion and love for God. Over the last few months, I found myself talking to the statue in the temple and asking, “My God, where are You?” “How do I communicate with You?” “How do I come to You?” “I want to express my gratitude; You have given me everything.” Then, as if by magic, a voice spoke to me and made me understand that God was a power that was beyond human comprehension. I learned about spirituality and realized that religions and the Gods of the world were created for humanity to accept and believe in a God. I understood that it would be so difficult for children to believe in a formless God. I accepted the reasoning, but I was challenged by a bigger question: “Where was God, who was God, and what was God?”
By now, my life journey seemed to be evolving and getting ready for another transformation. My passion was on fire. I delegated all my work to my second in command and actively started searching for the third peak – the peak I have now titled as Enlightenment. The Hindus called it Moksha, the Buddhists call it Nirvana, and the spiritualists call it Enlightenment, whereas men of the world called it Liberation.
This pushed me further into my search, my Talaash. It got me thinking more about birth. Of course, I was biologically born