A JOURNEY BACK HOME

References

INTRODUCTION

How strange is the lot of us mortals. Each of us is here for a brief sojourn; for what purpose he knows not, though he sometimes thinks he senses it

– Albert Einstein

Since time Immemorial, as soon as humans were blessed with an intellect to think, Imagine and explore beyond the obvious, they went on the greatest quest ever – The Purpose of Life.

Once we are able to address this greatest concern of humanity with our own personal experience, then on the way many other issues or queries shall also be subsequently addressed.

People have often found different ways to address this very same quest. If we find someone in the annals of history trying to find it out by scientific means than we also do find someone else who would have tried to find it by spiritual means. Many such individuals existed at some point of time who kept the hope alive to come up with answers.

People who claimed to find the answers by different means shared it with others and inspired them too to travel the same path. But soon the real path was shrouded by corrupt and false practices to satisfy the needs of those who had nothing to do with spirituality. The blind following has often resulted in chaos in the lives of followers, resulting in frustration and dissatisfaction.

It perfectly suits to our logic to understand this very fact that just mere earning of money, eating good quality food or having a great sex life is not the only purpose of life, though these things may provide us certain amount of satisfaction and happiness. These things are not the purpose of life simply because their coming and going causes us pain and suffering and further results in changes in our behaviour and attitude.

The seers, scientists, psychologists, and philosophers all have come to this very conclusion that there is a specific and ultimate purpose to our life and attainment of which shall always keep us in a state of permanent happiness, irrespective of the outer environment.

Pioneering Psychoanalyst Carl Jung’s work on himself and his patients convinced him that life has a spiritual purpose beyond material goals for he strongly believed that this journey of transformation, which he called individuation, is at the heart of all religions. It is a journey to meet the self and at the same time to experience the divine. He further says,

As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being

Ludwig Wittgenstein, one of the greatest philosophers of twentieth century, several times contemplated becoming a monk and remained connected to religion throughout his life. He wrote at the end of his first major work,

There are, indeed, things that cannot be put into words. They make themselves manifest. They are what is mystical

Viktor Frankl, the Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist as well as a holocaust survivor, underwent extreme torture and suffering in the concentration camps during Second World War, and that suffering gave him the first-hand understanding of the real purpose of life from a spiritual perspective, and he thus gave a fundamental concept called supra meaning or transcendence, which is the ultimate purpose of any man. Frankl’s primary aspiration was to create a therapy that takes into account both physiological and spiritual perspective.

Famed fighter and actor Bruce Lee, considered by his peers to be the greatest fighter of the twentieth century, was a man deeply engrossed in spirituality and religion. Greatly influenced by the teachings of Buddha, Confucius, Lao Tzu, and other great thinkers, he designed his unique style of martial arts ‘Jeet Kune Do’ on the basis of those teachings. He felt that,

To become different from what we are, we must have some awareness of what we are

Einstein could be called a spiritual scientist for he tried to understand nature by science and claimed,

Try and penetrate with our limited means the secrets of nature and you will find that, behind all the discernible laws and connections, there remains something incomprehensible, untouchable. Veneration for this force beyond anything that we can comprehend is my religion

Where an Einstein could only venerate and accept the existence of something subtle, there lived some other people as well whom we affectionately called masters, who experienced the impalpable, which lead them to the secrets to everlasting joy.

The very purpose of any religious system is best illustrated by the opening question of the Mundaka Upanishad, wherein a student asks a sage,

What is that by knowing which everything is known?

The lives of all the great masters were spent in answering it and then living the truth that they found.

The message of the masters unfolded before me by a very special person whose details I am going to share with you in the next pages of this book.

Prologue

I am Angad and this is my story. I was born to a rich family in Delhi in 1978. My father was Hindu and mother was Sikh, and so in a way I had slight understanding of both the religions and would often go to visit a temple or a gurudwara (religious place for Sikhs) occasionally in company of my parents.

During my teenage years, I followed the same patterns of life as most of us do and had experienced love, sex, pain and pleasure, and hatred and anger. Initially the best definition of love came to me when I fell for my future girlfriend, but later I understood the real importance of unconditional love and affection for all.

Failed relation somehow made me bitter towards other girls and I could see them for only one use. Another setback for me was the loss of my parents in an accident that left me shattered. As a result of both these incidents, I went on a spree of sex and booze to seek instant satisfaction and caused further damage and embarrassment to myself.

My enquiring mind tried to find peace in religion and spirituality initially, but the failure to do so increased doubts in my mind, which ultimately lead me to question the many wrong beliefs prevalent in the modern religious systems, and in the process of doing so I made some enemies as well.

Arrival of a girl in my life was a remarkable turning point. The valuable insights that she shared with me blessed me with an understanding that peace is in giving up and not in seeking more; peace is in acceptance and not in forcing things, peace is in looking inside and not in seeking out, peace is in loving and not in hating others. I would never forget her. A deep conviction that she possessed could come only from personal experience. Not only to some extent was she responsible for getting me a suitable life partner but she also inculcated in me the habit of taking up responsibility and facing challenges and thus gave me a brighter future.

The insights allowed me to understand the limitedness of intellect to grasp the reality of subtle and thus could appreciate the failure of science to reveal the truths. I understood that it is our inability to explore ourselves and find our true self that keeps us in delusion. We seek out when we have to seek within, and thus I am reminded of very fine words of a great master,

Explore and listen to your heart and you shall never be in any trouble again for all the answers lie in your heart

I understood that we wrongly use spirituality to blindly seek power, prestige, recognition, respect, and money and even to avoid our own pain and troubles. We misuse the very teachings, practices, and all the spiritual things we do and falsely think that we are creating a deeper intimacy with the ultimate truth. Our spiritual practices, paraphernalia, and concepts are merely there to support ego rather than seeking truth.

I understood the importance of being a seeker and not a blind follower and that is why we humans are blessed with an intellect, to choose the right path to self-awareness and not the wrong path of self-delusion.

All the doubts have been removed, and my firm conviction now lies in the fact that this life we are blessed with is merely nothing but just a time period provided to us to make A Journey Back Home, a home where the mind is one and undisturbed by the outer surroundings, forever lying in purity and bliss.

I cultivated a habit of writing a diary at a pretty young age and so perhaps the last twenty years have been recorded in my diary. It includes some random details or out-of-the-blue thoughts, but perhaps I would be sharing only those things that changed my perception towards everything in life and allowed me to take a journey to explore myself.

Angad,

March, 2013, New Delhi

CURTAIN RAISER

There is a charm about the forbidden that makes it unspeakably desirable

– Mark Twain

(17 August 2003, Sunday)

I would take a long sleep normally but today I was woken up by Vivek quite early by 7 am along with a girl in my bed at Vivek’s residence.

I shouted at her, Riddhi, please wake up and get out of the house immediately before the society people wake up and see you with me. I shall catch up with you in the evening at pub."

Rubbing her eyes, she replied, You idiot, what have you done to me last night? I still have headache. You just want to sleep with girls and nothing else. You must learn some manners and some politeness too. I don’t want to see your face again.

She collected her belongings and left the house.

Angad, you shall get me screwed someday. You take unnecessary advantage of my friendship all the time, said Vivek.

Do not worry, nothing will happen to you for you have been such a good friend to me, I replied with a corrupt smile.

I enjoy my life to the fullest, and finding girls for pleasure in disc, pubs and nightclubs had been a common practice for me. Last night, my hard work finally bore some fruit. Riddhi is a very nice girl and nice in a sense that perhaps she is the first girl who took so much time to get convinced in getting laid with me. She is a family friend of Vivek (my best friend) and I have been trying for her since last six months through Vivek and sometimes through direct interaction, but she seemed disinterested in any kind of relationship for she wanted to concentrate on other things in life she said. But somehow I convinced her to meet me. I met her a couple of times earlier at some other locations before I made Vivek invite her to one of my favourite hunting grounds (a disc) last night with Swati (Vivek’s girlfriend). As usual my flirting started –

Hi There, how are you? You look beautiful, I said to her.

I am good. You tell me how things are at your end? she asked back.

How can things be at my end? All my efforts have failed to make you realize that how much I like you and seek your company, I said.

I have been thinking about you lately. You have tried a lot for me Angad and I really appreciate that and perhaps in view of the same I think maybe we could give it a chance, she said with a smile.

And by the way you don’t look bad either, she said.

We occupied two seats in a corner and started to interact. She wanted to know me as a person and so asked me plenty of questions, but I was interested only in one thing it seems. The disc was very crowded and I tried to take advantage of it. In between our conversation, I would try to hold her hand, play with her hair and would comment on her beauty all the time. She was finding it all very uncomfortable and was expressing her uneasiness by keeping my hands away from her. I felt that time was ripe now for my next step.

Let me get you a drink. What would you like to have dear? I asked her.

Get me orange juice only, she replied.

I stood up went to a bartender, someone whom I knew for quite some time now and who was a partner in crime with me on many occasions. I just made an eye contact with him and he understood what he was supposed to do. He opened his drawer, took out two small pills, mixed them in orange juice, and then brought before us two glasses, one with whiskey and other with orange juice.

We both took our respective glasses and I waited for another ten minutes to see the effect. I was happy to see that she was in the process of gradually losing all her inhibitions. She was feeling little dizzy and was falling all over me. I was just delighted that my hands now got the freedom that they so desperately wanted. I explored the breadth and width of her anatomy though she still felt uncomfortable by my touch for some time and was resisting it slightly. I was forcing myself upon her.

But as soon as the pills further affected her system, she started feeling cozy and the resistance was all gone. Vivek saw this all and requested not to indulge in any wrongdoing with Riddhi, for she is a family friend. But I did not listen to him and was busy in my own planning. I knew that Vivek’s parents were out of city for a couple of days and so perhaps his house could be put to better use.

I took the keys of the house from Vivek and brought Riddhi with me to his house. I must say that handling a girl in a semiconscious state is a tough task for you are never sure which side is she moving. Right or left, both were the same for her. With much effort and hard work, I was finally able to bring her to a room in Vivek’s house and threw her on the bed. I felt elated for she was like a trophy for me for which I had laboured for last six months and the rest as they say is