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.
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 realization, the mind would confuse me with a worldly desire. I would start seeking pleasures and lose the sight of my true goal of life. Therefore, I learned to be in silence and meditation to quieten the mind and sublimate the senses and cravings.
After all, nothing belongs to us. We come empty handed and we go empty handed. But our ego makes us believe that we are the owners of our possessions and masters of our relationships. However, we can see at death that the departing one owns nothing nor continues a relationship with anybody.
Just like I could see someone entering the room from one door and leaving it from another door, similarly, we enter the world from one door and leave from another one. We cannot come from nowhere and go nowhere.
It is most unfortunate that we believe in rituals and superstitions and we continue to l ive with presumptions. We create our personality traits. Sure, we have no control of where we were born, when we were born, and what we became in our pre-teens of our life. These were probably the effect of our past actions. But once we come alive with our intellect, we are capable of distinguishing between the right and wrong, and the real and the unreal, and we must choose the right path. But in this initial part of our life, our personality seems predestined. All these realizations only made me believe further in the truth that was crystallizing in my mind.
By now I realized that we are immortal souls who were having a human experience on Earth. We are a tiny God particle that forgets that our source is God. We are like the wave that thinks it is the wave, not realizing that it is actually the ocean. It just appears as the wave, but in moments becomes one with the ocean. We all seem to fight for superiority; just like the clay elephant fights with the clay mouse on who is stronger until the potter immerses both of them in the water, which makes them realize that both are just clay. If a gold bangle was to be asked the question, “What are you?”, it could either say “I am the bangle” or “I am gold”. The moment it is melted and made into a chain, it can no more say, “I am the bangle”, but it has to say, “I am gold” because that is its true identity. We too have a true identity that we often forget about as we think we are what we appear to be.
All these realizations were clearly in front of me, but the mind did not allow me to see the entire picture; it refused to put in place the missing parts of the jigsaw puzzle. Most of my questions were answered, but still there was some fog. I prayed in surrender.
It was on 31st August 2014 when I was on an Air France flight AF192 from Paris to Bangalore, it seemed that I had finally got all the answers. Surely the Talaash and the realization was a process that happened bit by bit. The knowledge was accumulating, but I was not able to see the entire picture as one clear image. On this non- stop 8-hour flight, by doing nothing else, except discovering the truth, I was steadfast in my search, very persistent and committed. I was not ready to quit. And it all appeared, as if it was a vision from God!
All those days I would sit in deep concentration and introspection, but I was not spared by the clutter and disturbances of my normal living. My mind would jump like a monkey only to find myself stressed, disturbed, and confused. But on this flight, I told the hostess I needed nothing and requested not to be disturbed. And so I grasped the vision in solitude, in focus, in total Yoga or Union, and in connectivity with God.
Before the realization, I could feel that something was missing. I had realized that I was not the body, but I am the Soul, the Divine Spirit; however, I didn't have the answers to all my questions.
My questions still remained: Who is God? Where is God? I needed answers. It was fine that I had realized – Not this, not this. I'm not this body. I'm not this mind. I am the Divine Soul. But then where was the real God that I was seeking?
So many concepts got clarity because of my study in the months that preceded this.
Are we the body? No. We cannot be the body because the body is ever changing. Our cells are dying every day and our body is being reconstituted. So we are not the body. We are something else. When we are born, we are born as a small baby. We are that, aren’t we? Then, what makes us grow as an infant into a big adult? How do we grow? It is so simple. It is because of the food we eat. The food that comes from the atmosphere, from the Earth, and from the environment gets converted into our body. So, does it mean that all the food that we eat is our body? No, of course not. We evolve from a tiny body that grows, but we are surely not the body. If we had been the body, then we would be nothing but bread and rice.
Are we the mind? The mind includes the brain that thinks. It is also the memory, the intellect, and the ego. Because of the extensive and intensive study, I realized that we were not even the mind and its constituents. These were together referred to as the subtle body, or the inner instrument. The ego had made me believe that I was the mind. This was because I had not found out the truth about God. I still believed God to be a distant unknown entity and so my Talaash, my search, was incomplete.
Yes, I believed that we were the soul and that there was reincarnation and it was based on our karma, our actions. The law of cause and effect did exist.
Some of my questions had been answered but some remain unanswered. I still wasn't clear where I essentially came from. Sure. I was the Atman or the Soul and I was governed by karma, the law of cause and effect. But how did all this actually happen? How was the universe created? I wasn't clear. What is the ultimate end? Birth, death, rebirth, death and finally what? I was still grappling. I had some fair ideas about it all but I realize now that my mind was playing tricks then, not l etting me put my thoughts and understanding together. My mind did not want me to realize the truth and I could not understand why. I was trying so hard to find the answer to this life equation.
In December 2013, Dada, who is my Guru, my mentor and life coach, had sent me an equation, but I was struggling to realize its true meaning. The equation was: Man minus Self is equal to God. God plus self is equal to man.