Early Religious Background
Today’s topic is a little confrontational. I’ll share about my life, my obsession. It can be a bit provocative as well. You might not agree with everything that I say, and that’s fine, but it will give you a different window of perception to spiritual seeking and the desire for God, reality, truth—whatever name you call it, it goes by different names.
I was born in a small town in India. My parents were very religious and orthodox, and that was my first introduction to religion. I remember in India, most of the houses will have a small altar of gods. In some houses, you’d have a room dedicated. It’s a very small room called the Pooja room where you have all the gods. And the interesting part is most of those altars have all the gods possible. You’ll have Shiva, you’ll have Vishnu. For some reason, Brahma is not there anywhere though he’s all over the Upanishads. Then you’ll have Lakshmi. Lakshmi is the goddess of wealth, and you better have Lakshmi because even though you’re very religious, you’re terrified of poverty. So each house has to have Lakshmi, that’s a given. Then there were other gods, minor gods. In our altar, we had Christ, we had Buddha, we had Sai Baba. So we had a lot of gods there.
What’s the thinking behind having all these gods? I later understood it was fear. They wanted to please all the gods and they wanted to be sure that no gods were left out. So what was the reason for having all these gods? You know, one God is enough. But what I learned was, you know, you pleased Lakshmi to have wealth, and then you pleased some other God for something else.
Early Fascination with Shiva
When I was very young, like 8 or 9, I used to love playing with mud and sand and all, and I loved building shivlings. A shivling is like the symbol of Shiva. So I used to build it with mud and it used to get washed away by rains. And then I said, “This is not good.” I wanted to make it permanent, so I got a hold of some cement which was in our storeroom and I built permanent shivlings all over my house. There were two or three on the roof, in the courtyard, everywhere. So I had a fascination with Shiva from a very young age. There was one shivling which I made that lasted around 20 years, I remember. My grandmother used to once in a while water it and put flowers on it.
Introduction to Spirituality & The Awakening of Longing
As I grew up, I went to college for my first year. That’s where I actually got into spirituality. My first introduction to spirituality was through Reiki. I was very much interested in healing modalities, so I started with Reiki, then it went to Pranic healing, and a couple of other healing modalities. That’s when I started going deeper into spirituality.
I got some books. The first book, I think many of you are familiar with, is Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda. I read the book, and it’s full of miracles, telepathy, people transporting from one place to another, having two bodies—kind of like a Marvel movie. You know, at that time I was very fascinated with all this supernatural stuff and mysticism. It was later I understood that this is just a distraction and means nothing, but at that time my mind was very impressionable.
During the second year, when I was reading, healing, and doing all these things, something peculiar happened to me. I haven’t talked about this—people have been hearing me for the last six years, and there are so many people who have been with me for a long time, but I haven’t talked about this part much. I had a picture of Shiva in my hostel room. I was looking at it and started crying for no rhyme or reason. That was the first time I felt that longing, that all-consuming obsession to find God. So that’s where the journey started.
The Obsessive Search & Devotional Saints
For the next few years after I had this experience, I progressively started longing for God. It wasn’t something which I manufactured; it wasn’t something where I said, “Oh, I need to find God, I need to cry for him, I need to have devotion for him, I need to long for him.” It was none of these. Something spontaneously happened in me.
It started becoming all-consuming, and it became so obsessive, like a madness. I used to cry for hours. There used to be times when I was crying half of the night. The thought was always, “When do I find this divinity?” Shiva was my chosen God, and the thought was, “When do I merge with him? When do I see him? When will he reveal himself to me?”
That went on. It was a very private thing that I couldn’t share with anyone. What would I share with my family—that I’m crying at night? It was a private passion. I couldn’t share it with friends, I couldn’t share it with anyone, but internally there was always that ache, that pain that I’m not whole, I’m not complete, and that I want to be face-to-face with God, that reality.
After spending countless nights where I used to cry myself to sleep, begging, pleading to God, praying, et cetera—I did all of that—I read about some of the devotional saints of India who went through this kind of passion, like Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, Meera, and some other saints. Then I started reading Ramakrishna. Ramakrishna was from this path of devotion, and he talks a lot about it. Somewhere he mentioned very clearly that when you feel your longing for God is so strong that you feel like you’re drowning in a river and you can’t breathe and you’re gasping for breath—if you’re gasping for God with that intensity, that truth will reveal itself to you.
I read that line and I said, “I’ve been there, not once, but many times.” I’ve been through that all-consuming fire where nothing mattered, where all there was was this pure longing. There was no motive. There were no demands—the demand was there, of course, that I want to understand this reality or seek it, but there was no other demand to it. I started thinking to myself that even after all these years of longing, wanting, praying, crying, and pleading, there’s no answer. There’s nothing. No one has responded back to me.
Questioning Belief & Moving to New Zealand
This was the time when I started reading a bit and was introduced to J. Krishnamurti, Nisargadatta, and Ramana Maharshi. I started reading them, but my basic drive to find enlightenment or reality started from this episode which just came on spontaneously. I had no control over it.
Then I got married and we went to New Zealand. In New Zealand, something started shifting. There was a shift in how I understood God or my relationship with God. I was also reading J. Krishnamurti, Ramana, and Nisargadatta at that time, which helped shape what I started thinking about.
One day in New Zealand, I was thinking, “I’ve been on this path now for 8 to 9 years, and I see no progress. I’m distressed, I’m suffering, I’m unhappy, I’m longing. Financially, I have no career.” Because when that madness takes over, you’re not thinking about your career, you’re not thinking about money. Look, I come from a very wealthy family—my dad and all were very wealthy—but I had no interest in money and I never pursued that path. But here I was in New Zealand, thinking to myself, “I’ve come to a foreign country, I have no savings, I don’t have a career, I’m distressed, and I generally haven’t been keeping very well physically for a long time.” I felt like nothing was working. Where were all the promises I was given about God making things better, about this God who wouldn’t come down?
As I said, my longing was very pure for many years. But this was the point when I started reconsidering things, because I’ve heard that if you pray to God, things get better, right? You’re praying to a supreme being, and my love was crazy—it was not an ordinary love. Then why this? Why haven’t things changed for the better? Why am I still suffering?
I started reading certain quotes from JK and Nisargadatta—teachers you love a lot—and I also read a lot of books from Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, and some other teachers as well. Slowly, the entire concept of God started getting dismantled in me, which was very scary on some level because that was the only love, purity, and sacredness I had known.
Experiences of Bliss and Letting Go of God
During this period—aside from the passion and longing—there was another aspect which started happening. I started experiencing states of bliss, intoxicating bliss. It used to come on its own; I had no control over when or how it would come. I remember once it happened while I was in class, and I had no control over this bliss. It was so intoxicating, like it was just bursting through my body. So I experienced those bliss states and those sacred states as well.
When I was in New Zealand, I remember this day so clearly: one day I got up and said, “I’m done with God.” J. Krishnamurti says that. Nisargadatta says that. When I thought about it, it was not a happy thought; it was a terrifying thought. I was like, “If you let go of God, what is left for me?”
Then another thought came from the ego: “Rajiv, if you land into any trouble or a crisis, whom will you turn to? Who will help you out? There is no one if you leave God.” It was very fearful and distressing, and I still remember trembling inside out. But I said, “No, I cannot believe in a God, an entity, a concept which is ruling over us, which is swayed by prayers, and which is running this whole world according to its own whims and fancies.”
Even though I was terrified that day, I said, “No, I’m going to just give up this concept. I do not believe in God anymore.” For the next two days, when I woke up, my heart used to pound and I was very scared. Part of me felt that I’d be punished for letting go of God. Part of me felt the grief of letting go of the love and sacredness which I had been wanting for such a long time. Part of me was scared: what next? I was walking into the unknown, at least for me—walking on the edge of the cliff, not knowing where I’d fall.
Within a week, it started settling down. After a week, I was working on my computer and I looked out of my window. I suddenly realized everything was the same. Nothing had changed. I could see the sky, I could see the clouds, the plants were growing as they were, the computer screen was in front of me as it was, and I was there as I was, with all my suffering and distress. Nothing had changed. The world had not come to an end, the sky had not fallen apart, no one had punished me, and I was fine. Everything was as it was.
Of course, that’s when I understood that the God I created in the mind was a concept. And if a concept ends, who cares? The world’s not going to change because you change your concept. But while I had let go of God, I had not let go of enlightenment. I stopped believing in a personalized entity up there who’s hearing my thoughts and prayers or whatnot; I had given up on that concept. But inwardly, I still believed that there is a higher reality because I had seen those states. I couldn’t reconcile it with being an atheist. There was something here—I’d experienced it. I’d experienced that wholeness, that bliss, those expanded states of awareness.
Before this, I had another experience which I’ve talked about on my website and in my talks, where I had an expansion of consciousness when I was in a hill station back in 2006, and I felt one with everything. So I’ve experienced those states; there is something here. And of course, I loved my teachers—I love Ramana, I love JK, I love Nisargadatta. So I started moving on to finding enlightenment and realization.
Chasing Enlightenment and Realizing Transference
The shift that happened started from strong devotion and a crazy, mad, obsessed, all-consuming love for God. Then that stopped, and I started looking for the final reality or enlightenment which these teachers talked about. I read endlessly and meditated for hours. That went on for a couple of years, and during that time I had a lot of other mystical experiences, which I mention once in a while, though I don’t talk too much about mystical experiences.
Then another shift happened around 2014. One day, this insight just flashed over me: move from one object to another without resolving it. That was like a shock to my system, to be honest. I was like, “Wait a minute, what is happening? Is the path just transference?” I realized that’s what I had done. Instead of God, I was now believing in a guru. Instead of being one with my chosen deity, I was now believing I’d get enlightened. I had just replaced the concepts.
That was the beginning of the dismantling of everything for me again—a very distressing period. Over the next two months, I dismantled and let go of everything. I went through a state of being an atheist, which I’ve talked about, and I said, “No, I can’t transfer concepts and say this is truth.” So I gave up chasing enlightenment. I gave up chasing any guru. I gave up my whole spiritual search; I just kept it in a box.
What came with that for the first time on my path was rage and grief. I was angry and frustrated. I thought, “What did I do with 15 years of my life—the best part of my life? I was just seeking God or enlightenment, which I don’t believe in anymore. What was I doing? I just wasted those 15 years.” With that comes grief. If you have wasted years of your life in relationships, business, or whatever, that grief, pain, frustration, and anger come in. That came for me and lasted for around one to two years. It was very heavy for me to process, hitting me again and again.
The one thing I couldn’t reconcile with being an atheist at that point was that I had seen it firsthand and experienced those states. I could not deny them on any level; those states were real. I had experienced them not once, but multiple times, and I couldn’t dismiss them neurologically as just a quirk of my mind. That bliss which I experienced used to haunt me. I wanted to get back to it because it was the most sacred and pristine state that I had been in throughout all these years.
Learning to Simply Be
Through all these years of dismantling, one fine day I started reading Nisargadatta and J. Krishnamurti again with a fresh mind. I asked myself, “What are they pointing at? What are they trying to tell me?”
What I could understand in a nutshell—which I talk about again and again to all of you—is that they are trying to tell me to just be. Accept “what is” for what it is right now with my pain, grief, frustration, anger, and the complex emotions of devotion, wanting God, not wanting God, being angry with God, and being angry with gurus. At one time, I was very angry: “What is all this? I have not gotten anything out of following you guys.”
How do I handle these complex emotions, and what do I do with them? That’s when I started just being with it. I understood that I had to resolve it on some level—I had to give it space and be with it. I started being very open with whatever came up: accepting it, being with it, giving it space, and just being, without even wanting enlightenment. That desire went out the window.
Right now, I’m not chasing anything anymore. I’m not chasing a future state, nor am I chasing something where I can be better, divine, or enlightened. I could then just be without all the conditioning and beliefs that had accumulated. That’s when the true transformation started happening for me—the final step, where I could just be, letting go of all conceptual knowledge of gods, gurus, and paths. Be here right now, so intensely, as JK calls it: completely, totally consumed by this moment.
Then all the states that I was chasing for all these years just came. I didn’t have to chase them anymore. I can feel that presence and sacredness now whenever I talk about it.
Teachings from Krishnamurti and Nisargadatta
It was later, once I went through all that, that I read JK and Nisargadatta again. You might have read them many times, and I kept a printout of their quotes and talks. They were very clear in breaking these concepts down. Maybe I didn’t understand it earlier, or I wasn’t keen, or maybe the message was lost because they produced so much work.
I’m going to read some quotes from Krishnamurti. As I said, this is a bit confronting today because many of you might not be religious, but spiritual—and spiritual means believing there’s someone up there whom you pray to, and you can keep those beliefs. I’m just talking about my journey as I came to where I am.
This is from Krishnamurti’s book The First and Last Freedom, and I’ve taken sections of this quote:
“Through lack of intelligence, we accept the idea of a super-intelligence, which we call God.”
He is very clear and doesn’t mince words here: “Through lack of intelligence.” He’s very particular with his words.
“Through lack of intelligence, we accept the idea of a super-intelligence, which we call God. But this God, the super-intelligence, is not going to give us a better life. What leads to a better life is intelligence.”
Later on in the same talk, he says:
“Your belief has no reality whatsoever. Reality is what you are, what you do, and your belief in God is merely an escape from your monotonous, stupid, and cruel life.”
Again, no mincing of words. I think most of you have read JK, but I don’t know if you read this quote or skimmed through it. He was very clear in it: “Your belief has no reality whatsoever. Your belief in God is merely an escape from your monotonous, stupid, and cruel life.”
Now I’ll go to another teacher we all love: Nisargadatta. I read him hundreds of times—the book I Am That was like the back of my hand. If you gave me a question, I could quote an answer. Here are some quotes from I Am That:
Questioner: “Well, God will look after me. I can leave everything to Him.”
Maharaj: “Even faith in God is only a stage on the way. Ultimately you abandon all, for you come to something so simple that there are no words to express it.”
Nisargadatta also went through that stage. He might have had a different journey, but he came to the same conclusion, saying very simply that faith in God is just a stage. Ultimately, you abandon all beliefs, all systems, all gods, all gurus—everything. You let go of all of it, abandon all, and come to something so simple that there are no words to express it.
Someone else asks him:
Questioner: “Is your home in God?”
Nisargadatta: “To love and worship a God is also ignorance. My home is beyond all notions, however sublime.”
Questioner: “But God is not a notion, it is the reality beyond existence.”
Nisargadatta: “You may use any word you like. Whatever you may think of, I am beyond it.”
When he says “I am beyond it,” he is not talking as a person or an “I.” He’s talking about the consciousness which I discovered, which is non-dual, impersonal, and all-encompassing. That consciousness is beyond all concepts of the sublime, God, or devotee.
In another exchange from I Am That:
Questioner: “Is not God the all-doer? Doesn’t God do everything?”
Nisargadatta: “Why do you bring in an outer doer? The world recreates itself out of itself. It’s an endless process. It is your ego that makes you think that there must be a doer. You create a God in your own image, however dismal the image. Through the film of your mind, you project a world and also a God to give it cause and purpose. It is all imagination. Step out of it.”
And the last line I will read from J. Krishnamurti:
“All gods are invented. God hasn’t created us. If he has, he must be rather a crummy God because he has made our life into such appalling misery, hate, and the rest of it. So we have made God after an image which is the opposite of what we are: kind, benevolent, all-knowing, protecting, comforter, and so on. Isn’t that religion?”
The Final Dissolution
These were some of the quotes that hit me and helped me during my transition.
During my entire search, I pushed myself to the limit. I pushed myself devotionally to the limit when I was practicing. I was meditating for 15 to 16 hours a day when I was searching for enlightenment. I pushed myself with endless books, reading, and contemplating. Since I am very rational and logical, I used to read J. Krishnamurti and try to match his words with Ramana Maharshi, Ramana with Adi Shankara, Shankara with the Upanishads, the Upanishads with the Buddha, and Theravada with other traditions. You try to reconcile all these different paths and religions, and I did that for many years. I pushed and I pushed.
Earlier, I was looking for an answer from God. Then I started looking for an answer from a guru, thinking they would save me. What I realized was that the teacher only opens a door. Nisargadatta opened the door for me; J. Krishnamurti opened the door. I don’t know if you’d call that saving, but they opened the door for me to understand and comprehend this truth. But the act of understanding had to be mine.
Again and again, they said—and JK was very clear—”No authority. Don’t follow any authority or any teaching.” Nisargadatta said it in a different way, but my mind was not ready to accept it. Again and again, I went to authorities, sought out gurus, and sought out teachers, thinking that somehow they could save me and give me enlightenment.
When I finally got rid of all systems, conditionings, and beliefs, and allowed myself the simple process of being—not doing, not researching, not contemplating, not reading, and not watching endless videos—just being here and now and remaining open to whatever came up internally or externally, that led to the final dissolution. The state that I once experienced in the mountains became my everyday reality. There was never any moving away from it. It was all over.