I had previously written about my Guru and about my slow and sure path to Realization. For almost 5 decades of my life, I thought I must do good Karma so that my next life will be filled with happiness. But then I realized that even Karma and next lives are simply parts of a dream. They are unreal. Although most of the world believes in Karma and accepts it, it is an illusion. I know you won’t believe this! After 5 decades, I realized that I was not I! I finally realized who I truly am.

The meaning of life and death–the fact that we don’t die and only the body dies – is also to realize the truth that we are the Soul and lives throughout and the mind is what goes through rebirths. The body cannot be reborn after death. It is reborn every day. We sleep and we wake up – but we know this is not death. The body is reborn in a sense that we wake up after we sleep. We know it, we see it and we accept it, but we are not able to use our intellect to realize a simple fact that the mind is reborn after death, not the body. As for us, we are but a figment of the Divine Life Energy that fills the Cosmos with life—the soul.

Everything that we see and sense in the Universe is just an illusion. “Everything is a drama. It’s the Leela of the Lord.” – Dada often says this. Whether amidst a joyous festival or while recovering from a serious illness on a hospital bed, Dada has often mentioned to me.

“We must surrender. We must accept the Divine Will of the Lord. He is the Master. He knows best. We must not question. We must not expect. Rather we must accept. We must surrender and enjoy the wonder of the Lord. This is all part of His Leela – His show. We must enjoy the show!”

I bow down in gratitude to my Master, my Mentor, and my Guru – Dada J.P. Vaswani who has taught me to live with the realization that this world is not real. It’s just the Lord’s Cosmic Drama. “We are travelers”, he says. “We come and we go. Unfortunately, we start thinking that this world is ours and that everything is real. We start believing that this is my house, my car, my money, and my family, and we get attached to people and things and we suffer. Because of this, we misunderstand the Cosmic Drama to be real”.

We have learned about the 3 Peaks of Happiness previously, or you may choose to read the book. If we look around, different people have different goals. Some people just want to be rich, others are trying to be powerful, and still, others want contentment and fulfilment. If we look deeper, people pursue different things to ultimately get to destination happiness. 80% of the world is trying to climb the first peak of Achievement, while the rest are trying to move further towards the second peak of Fulfilment. The achiever may want to excel in sports, politics or business, amongst the various other traits that are mushrooming in the world today. The ones who are content and fulfilled are trying to stop running the rat race. For them, happiness doesn’t come from achieving more, but rather from desiring less. The former who are climbing the First peak of happiness depend on pleasure to give them happiness and the latter believe that peace is the foundation of happiness. 99% of humanity fall under these two categories. Does it mean that the remaining 1% doesn’t seek happiness? Of course not!

Everybody alive on Earth seeks happiness. The 1% whose happiness doesn’t depend on pleasure from achievement or peace from fulfilment seek happiness that comes from finding the true purpose of life. This tiny minority goes on a quest, on a search, but ultimately even they want happiness. It is not wrong to seek happiness but how much we know about happiness? Are the materialistic abundance gained over a lifetime going to make us happy? It time we thought about what true happiness is and what such a state of eternal bliss brings us to.

As long as we live in ignorance, we suffer. We experience joy and sorrow like a yo-yo. We live without knowing who we truly are. Because we think we are the body, mind, and ego, we experience, pain, suffering, and misery. On realization of the truth, we are liberated. The rewards of realization are everlasting joy, eternal peace, and tranquility unknown to most of humanity. Once we realize the truth, we blissfully live as an audience that enjoys a blockbuster comedy movie in the theatre called life. The only way to transcend this illusion is to realize the truth. The truth that we are the Soul, a part of the Divine. We shall not be distracted by the illusion of this Cosmos. The actions we commit are the actions of the Creator and we are mere instruments of His making. So I choose to do nothing else till my role in the Cosmic Drama is over. I surrender to the Cosmic Power. I realize that this is His show, and our purpose is to realize the truth that we are not this body, mind, and ego, but manifestations of the one Cosmic Energy that is everywhere. We must free ourselves from the illusion and become one with the
Cosmic Power. That is our Life Goal.