Based on the knowledge and wisdom that I had acquired in the last 25 months, I did something very different. I told God, “I am nothing. You are everything.
I am like a flute, but you are the one who plays the music. The pleasure that I received in all the 25 years of achievement was all because of your grace. It was YOU in the form of my Guru who helped me transform my life to RVM and gave me contentment and fulfillment for 8 years like I had never experienced before. I thought I was the happiest man on Earth, and I would have lived and died with that belief. But it is your kind grace that made me embark on the journey to the third peak of happiness. I surrender myself to you. If it be thy will, help me discover the truth. Bless me to realize the Third Peak!”
I was in the mountains for 2 weeks, alone but in Yoga – Union with God. It didn’t matter what I ate, what I wore, or where I went. I was in silence, constantly connected, and communication with the world was practically shut off.
What helped me in my search in those days up in the mountains?
Beyond just understanding, I realized the truth of the words: Not this, not this. I am not this. I am that. I realized that this body that we seem to be is not what we are. We are the Atman, the Divine Soul.
The body is made up of the following:
- The gross body that dies
- The subtle body that is the inner instrument consisting of the mind, memory, intellect, and ego that is reborn again and again
- The casual body, the ignorance that is the cause of our rebirth
I was absolutely convinced of this truth and strongly believed that I was the Divine Soul, not the body.
I had always believed in the law of karma and how the inner instrument would be reborn as per its past actions and that the cycle of death and rebirth would continue until liberation. Now, I realized that the goal of life was not just to be happy, but beyond to attain Liberation, Moksha or Nirvana. As long as we are reborn, we would have to suffer death. But on being liberated, we would become one with God, escaping from the cycle of death and rebirth and living in the ultimate bliss of self- realization.
I could see clearly that this world is an illusion. I logically believed that neither the chicken came first nor the egg and neither the tree came first nor the seed. I realized that everything was a simultaneous manifestation of God. In a way, it was in sync with the scientific theory of the Big Bang. Except that even the Big Bang was an act of God.
Who is God? Where is God? What is God?
I resigned from this trail of thought and questions with the realization that God is beyond comprehension and that heaven and hell were not physical planes of existence, but a part of the God’s manifestation. Birth and death are controlled by God, and as human beings, we see life between the two. We know what happens in front of our eyes on Earth, but I realized that death was not the end. It was just a bend to transcend from this earthly journey upwards. Either of the two things would happen – we would be reborn with accumulated karmas for another experience as per God’s will or we would be liberated, becoming one with God.
What gives life to our body is the soul. Many people believe that there are good souls and evil souls. But I realized that the soul is nothing but the energy that gives us life. There is only one Super Soul, one source of energy – not possibly 8 billion souls apart from the trillions of souls of other creatures. Our soul comes alive at birth and departs at death as per the will of God. There may be many presumptions about what happens between death and rebirth, but only God knows the ultimate truth. I realized that my mind was my biggest enemy. It distracted me from God and made me crave and desire for worldly things that only made the journey difficult. Every time, there was a