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 to my parents, but who put life into me? If my parents gave birth to me and they were born of their parents, then what was the ultimate source of life? I pondered on the classic example of what came first – the chicken or the egg? I started enjoying my research. It was kind of exciting, challenging, and provoking in many ways. I suddenly realized that the whole world seemed to be following mythology and that the entire humanity was so busy in the world that they had no time to ask questions and find out the truth about life and creation.
People believed in God, but it seemed to be a very shallow belief. People either believed in a statue, a name, a form, a religion, or a scripture. All of these didn’t answer the ultimate question of who God is and where God is. All the religions accepted God, but they only taught people theology up to the kindergarten level; then after that, people just believed in a God! Questions of life still remain unanswered.
Life is too short – the average life span today being 75 years. Very few people had the time or inclination to search for the truth. Some were lucky enough to contact a Master, a Guru, or a Mentor who would initiate them on this path. A few would stumble upon a book or a simple thing like meditation that would make them spend time in silence and introspection, while the majority would just live and die, thinking that the goal of life was to be happy, to be good, and to help others. As long as they were giving 10% of their earnings to charity, they were convinced that they would go to heaven. I increased my pace to win the race of spiritual knowledge. Whatever I had done in the last 33 years, I had succeeded. I now challenged myself to decode the Enlightenment mystery.
What is self-realization?
What is God-realization?
I wanted to jump into it all to find the true purpose of life and to find the truth about God. For once, I was convinced that the God I thought of as God was not the ultimate God. God was beyond! It was Lord Shiva, the God I believed in for 40 years. But that was not the end. I believed in Lord Shiva, my God. I loved him more than anything else. I still do – only, even more. But my conscience and intellect refuse to accept the fact that He was just a statue or this Yogi sitting with a snake around Him, a tiger under Him, and a river flowing from His head. I was flabbergasted! How did I quietly believe this for over 40 years? Of course, it was great to believe in a God. But as mythology says, did Lord Shiva decapitate His son in anger and then later place the head of a powerful elephant and breathe life to his son, who also became a God to whom the world prays to?
At first, I felt embarrassed to even think of these things. But I realized the truth. This was just mythology – a myth, a story that our forefathers and sages created for humanity to believe in God. I realized the importance of a statue and the rituals and superstitions. How else would children be taught about God, and if children did not believe in a God, the society would be full of atheists. Thus, my personal disgust turned into humble appreciation for the religions that tried to create believers who had faith in God.
My life was evolving. By now I realized that my Talaash, my search, needed more concrete information. Beyond knowledge, it needed the grace of God and the help of my Guru, my Mentor, and other Masters.
I accelerated my Talaash and in a way departed from my Fulfillment mission of making a difference. My passion and my obsession were to realize the truth about myself and about God!
