“I am AiR, not ‘Atman in RVM’” – I declared, because as long as I said I was the ‘Atman in RVM’, AiR had competition. There was duality between AiR and RVM. I knew if I wanted to start being AiR, I had to stop being RVM, even stop being called the “Atman in RVM”.
My 50th year of life thus started with a new gift – a new name, AiR. People stopped calling me RVM because I was not RVM. They knew that RVM was gone and AiR was born. It was like a new life, a new journey!
By now, AiR had already realized that AiR was an Atman, a soul and that the Atman was a tiny particle of the Creator or God. I realized that everything was a manifestation of God. This whole world was an illusion. And like a dream that was very much real while it was happening, it was nothing at the end. As AiR, I knew very clearly that I was fulfilling a role given to me by God. But my mission was very clear – to realize God, not to go back to the body–mind that I was not, not to create fresh Karmas, and not to die again only to be reborn and to suffer again and again.
I stopped seeking happiness, because every time we seek happiness, we create waves of joy and sorrow. We are glad and we become sad. Why create desires that would lead to disappointments? Why seek happiness as the body–mind, which we are not?
I am the Atman.
I shall not seek happiness.
I shall just be happiness.
Thus, AiR started living in a beautiful state of everlasting bliss – a state of ultimate joy – knowing that God is everywhere, even in my heart and in every cell of my body. Everywhere!
In one of my readings, I found the story of Adi Shankaracharya going to the mountains when he was just 8 years old. And then, he met Shri Govindpada Acharya – his future Guru. The master asked him, “Who are you and what do you seek?” Adi Shankara replied:
I am not the body, I am not the mind
I am not the ego
I am not the five elements of earth, air, water, fire and space.
I am Shiva. I am Shiva. I am God.
I was so inspired by Shankara’s answer, and I realized that God lived in the temple of my heart. God was everywhere. God is in everything.
Whatever I was doing, I realized I was not doing it. It was God who lived in the temple of my heart using this body as an instrument to do whatever He wanted. I had surrendered in total faith. I was just a flute and His divine music was playing through me.
AiR lives a very simple life with just one objective: To be a Liberated being. We all are human beings with a divine soul. The goal of a human being is Liberation. Liberation eventually comes when our journey is over and we transcend body and mind. However, we can also attain liberation while alive. That is a state of a Liberated being – one who has been liberated while alive, one who has experienced a mystic death, one who knows that he is not the body–mind–intellect–ego, and one who realizes that he is the Soul, a tiny drop of the Creator. He does not seek anything and thus does not create karmas. He lives a life of renunciation in deep love and longing for God, with complete control of the mind–body cravings.
Air is also subject to the onslaught of the wandering mind and the cravings of the senses. While AiR realizes he is not the body, mind, ego, and intellect, still AiR is in the physical form of the body and is not excused from waves of physical desire that have to be subdued and transcended as AiR evolves further on the journey towards God-realization.
AiR tries to live in Yoga – in union with God, in complete awareness of the ancient wisdom of the scriptures.
This Soul is God and because AiR believes that every human being is a manifestation of God, AiR sees God in everybody and everything.
God is everywhere, in everything. Realizing this was not easy, because while God manifested as a saint, even a thief was a manifestation of God. Therefore, it was a challenge to live with the knowledge that nothing is good or bad. Everything is perfect. God has his own ways, and we are no one to judge or evaluate what God has done. We all are a manifestation of the supreme power and God lives as the soul in our hearts.
One who has realized the truth of “Not this Not this, I am that”, the Divine Soul, stops living as the body mind intellect complex. He no longer wonders what came first, the chicken or the egg. The whole world is a simultaneous manifestation of God.
I read a story in the scripture, which said that God is supposed to have said, “I am one, let me be many”, and so in a flash, the whole world appeared. Science endorses this theory in its own way and calls it the Big Bang theory. The only thing that science does not state is that there is a supreme power that created the Big Bang.
I stopped to think how could the whole universe appear as a big bang, without a creator? Is it possible for the mountains and the trees, the rivers, the clouds, the birds and the animals, the plants and the trees, the insects and the human beings, each unique in its own way to have appeared without a creator or a power? I wondered in admiration!
Therefore, I continued my journey in complete amazement of God, knowing that I myself was a microcosm of the macrocosm that was God. God is in me! I had no doubt of this, just as Shankaracharya had said, “God is in me. I am a part of God”.
The challenge for AiR is to live as a Liberated Soul, to be the Soul, and not be the body–mind that the Atman was manifested as. It is a tricky situation, also dangerous, for the world would try to pull the body–mind into the Illusion, offering the body all the sense pleasures. If the intellect is weak, it would fall prey to the ego, which could let the mind–body go astray and become a prisoner of the world.
Therefore for AiR, the challenge is to live in stillness, in renunciation, with deep love and longing, and in Yoga. It is not an easy task, but once the realization comes, there is no need to suppress any feelings or cravings because these emotions are transcended and sublimated with the knowledge that we are not this body–mind but indeed the Soul. The Atman starts controlling the intellect that controls the mind and the body.
The journey now is about realizing God, spending time in communication with the power, reading scriptures that could be understood by one who is realized, knowing that we are the ultimate seer and not the eye that sees. The eye sees the object, the mind sees the eye, but we are that true self, the Soul that is watching the mind. We are the fourth state of consciousness.
The challenge for AiR is to continue to live as a realized soul, with attributes of a Liberated being, as a Yogi who is always connected to God, as one who is happy, cheerful, peaceful and tranquil, and as one who is compassionate and desireless, positive, and detached because he is awakened and lives with forbearance, contentment and fulfillment. He is liberated and lives in surrender and joyous acceptance. He is an inspired soul who lives with faith, hope, and trust. He is fearless, focused, and grateful and lives with humility. Thus, for AiR to become angry is not being AiR; there could be no negative emotions. To feel stress or to be pulled back into the world only showed that the Liberated being was losing its tug of war with the human being.