An excerpt from the book by Dr. Sanjay Grover: Eye for an I – a novel about seeking the meaning of life and finding it in the experience of enlightenment.

These are pages from the diary of Upasana’s mother, who is determined to end her life because she finds life to be meaningless. She has recorded her discussion with her driver, Vivek, who has recently experienced enlightenment. Upasana is reading the diary after her mother’s death.

March 17, 1996, Sunday: “Would mere foreplay satisfy, without the orgasm?” Vivek asked. This chap has started speaking a different tongue. He speaks with quiet authority. And he always has that blissful glow and a smile on his face -whether he is discussing death, or sex.

Vivek, her mother, and sex! This diary entry was exactly one month after Vivek had experienced ‘enlightenment’. Having full faith in Vivek, Upasana read on with a bemused smile, wondering what Vivek had to say about sex. She thought of Phil. Her mother had not mentioned him in her diaries for many years. What had happened to him and to the Earnest Enquirers? 

Yesterday I went to Chandigarh for a shopping spree. I wanted to pamper myself before I died. As I roamed in the market, with Vivek following me holding heavy shopping bags in both hands, he suddenly stopped at a shop window and laughed.

“What’s so funny?” I asked, and he pointed to a box of condoms with his chin. I felt embarrassed. It was a box of multi-coloured condoms named Nirvana. “Well, I’ve seen condoms named Kamasutra, Ecstasy, Moods, Feelings, and what not—but condoms named Nirvana! Blasphemous!” I exclaimed. 

“Oh, they’re most aptly named,” he chuckled as we moved towards the car park.

“How can Nirvana be an apt name for condoms?” I asked as we drove homewards.

“Well, in the final liberation of orgasm a man ‘shoots his load’. In the final liberation of nirvana one ‘drops the load’. At the peak moment, the feeling is the same—the self-forgetfulness, the ecstasy, the peace afterwards—and the extinction of all desire.”

He drove silently for a while, then said, “They’re both different forms of death. At the climax of sexual union, for a moment there is total loss of personality, total forgetfulness. It’s a small surrender, a little death—petit mort as the French say. Liberation of enlightenment is a permanent surrender, with the death of the ego, the end of all desires and the rebirth into a post-orgiastic peace of complete nothingness—the shunyata of nirvana.”

He fell silent and drove with caution. The volume of traffic between Chandigarh and Panchkula is very high in the evenings, and the Saturday evening rush was even more so. “How do you know what nirvana is?” I asked as we stopped at a traffic light. “How can you speak about it with such authority?”

“I’ve experienced the truth. I live the realisation, breathe it, sleep with it…”

“You say you’ve achieved it! At your age!”

“Yes!” he said simply, as he put the car into gear and drove on. “It’s not an achievement. The experience just happens,” Vivek said humbly. And this is the proper age—when the mind and heart are at their peak. Christ was thirty-three, Mohammed, Buddha, Mahavir all were near forty when they attained liberation. I feel that the early forties is the upper limit for experiencing enlightenment. I’ve just turned thirty-nine this week.”

“And since I’m forty-seven-and-a-half, should I presume that I have no chance now?” I asked.

“Well, once the prime is past, the chances are bleak,” he replied mercilessly.

“Then I’m going to call it quits…this year itself,” I said.

“But the death you are planning would be an escape. Now, I can die complete, fulfilled, without thirsting for even the next breath.”

“Well, is it so essential to attain liberation before one dies?” I asked, irritated. “Nirvana! Is that the goal of living?”

“I don’t know. I never sought nirvana. I experienced it without seeking,” he said, then added softly, “Seek not your own salvation, but the salvation of others.”

“Seek not your own orgasm, but the orgasm of the beloved,” I mimicked, and suddenly realised the import of his statement.

“Yes, only then would your own orgasm be wonderful,” he said with a chuckle.

“Orgasm! Is that the goal of loving?” I asked.

“Now tell me, would you be satisfied merely with the foreplay and the intercourse, without the orgasm?”

“Roused, but not doused? That would just leave me screwed,” I replied honestly.

“Well, that’s your state now—your life is a banal intercourse, a senseless titillation and stimulation of the senses which becomes painful if prolonged…and makes you feel you’ve lived too long. Your suicide would be like coitus interruptus,” he laughed.

“Well, I’m soon going to end this painful state,” I said bitterly. “But you claim to have experienced the truth. Why don’t you tell me about it?” I said, trying to examine whether he was truly enlightened as he claimed.

“I can’t,” he said and fell silent. I smirked.

Suddenly, as we approached a highway bar, he slowed down and asked, “Want a drink?” I was taken aback. I consider Vivek my friend, but I wouldn’t like to be seen drinking with an employee of the opposite sex, late in the evening, in a lonely highway bar. Moreover, I have never taken any drink except Cool Sip Juices. (And beer twice.)

He laughed. “I was just joking,” he said as he drove on. “Tell me, have you ever been intoxicated?”

“No!” I said. “And as far as I know, you also don’t drink.”

“I have no need to,” he said. “I now live in a state of permanent intoxication. But do you know how it feels to be intoxicated?”

“How can I—unless I’ve been intoxicated?”

“Well, if I tell you how it feels, would you feel intoxicated?”

“How can I be—until I’ve had my drink?”

“If I tell you what orgasm feels like, would you experience it?”

“Now don’t be silly…”

My smirk was wiped off my face. I suddenly realised that he was not being deceitful, nor hiding the Truth from me. He simply couldn’t share his experience of enlightenment.

“What use is wine if it doesn’t go to your head?” he said. “You’ve been to the brewery and the distillery, but you’ve not yet got intoxicated.”

“Brewery! And distillery!”

“We brew ideas and distil them in the Heady Bar, but we cannot get intoxicated till the heart gets drunk on the wine of love,” he exclaimed. Each one has to experience it personally, though the experience is the same for all, since it’s universal—for it is the experience of the same Universal Truth,” he explained.

“Each one who drinks, experiences intoxication! It’s the universal effect of alcohol,” I quipped. “But each one has to experience it himself.”

“Yes! All true experiences are universal, yet individual. You yourself have to merge into love to know what love is. The experience has existed forever, but no one can give it to another. You have to experience it yourself—and this ancient emotion will always appear to be a first love for each individual. Truth too is the same since time immemorial, but it has to be discovered anew by each one,” Vivek passionately said. “Indeed love, like truth, is as old as the universe but as young as the newborn. And only when you yourself experience true love can you identify with all the lovers of the world—with Dante and Beatrice, with Romeo and Juliet, with Heer and Ranjha, with Laila and Majnu…”

“With Don Juan…” I said and bit my tongue.

“Don Juan and who? Don Juan was forever alone. He had no beloved. No one loved him back. He did not merge with anyone,” Vivek said. “He remained forever a particle—a particular person, an individual ego, hopping from bed to bed, seeking his own gratification.”

Upasana was getting impatient to receive Vivek’s call. She was sure that he would call her the moment he received her message. The clock showed that it was not yet ten. She read on, recalling the grandeur of Vivek.

As usual, there was a traffic jam near the gate of the seven-terraced Yadavindra Gardens in Pinjore. We were not very far from home but I knew it would take close to half an hour in the traffic jam. I wish there were a road by-passing Pinjore and Kalka, leading directly to Parwanoo. Suddenly it started to pour and I knew it would now take almost an hour to reach home.

“The goal of all water is the ocean, after which there is no river, no seeker and no goal. The river seeks in order to give itself up,” Vivek said.

“So only when it loses itself, it finds,” I said.

“But the stream seeking and finding the ocean is not the end of the story,” Vivek said. “The cycle of water doesn’t begin with the glacier, nor end in the ocean. The frozen glacier was once water vapour, and vapour is what the ocean again becomes.”

“But water can turn into vapour even in the river,” I said. “Merging in the ocean is not essential. We can vaporise while still a seeking stream, can’t we? That’s what I’m going to do—die and merge into the mystery.”

“Your dying would not be vaporisation but merely an absorption in the thirsty desert sands.

The traffic was slowly creeping ahead, but my thoughts were racing. Vivek drove silently for a while, then said, “The heart of each water drop knows that it was once the vast, formless vapour. It remembers its misty origins and wants to go back to it. Madam, you have already set out on your adventure. Why don’t you complete it? The stream that once starts flowing can never go back, can never again become the glacier! It will require tremendous cooling down of spirits to freeze once again.”

“But I’m going to evaporate,” I said.

“Death is not evaporation—merely a cessation of flow. But, Madam, you have all the ingredients of success—intelligence, honesty, and the intensity to seek. Why admit defeat? As water vapour, I’m always by your side. I want to help you.”

“How can you help when you say you’re helpless in describing the truth?”

“As water vapour I can again become a shower and add strength to the stream. In any case, I have to condense and shower, whether the stream desires me or not. That is the very nature of vapour. The cloud has to burst, regardless of whether the desert rewards its effort with a flower or not.” His voice was full of compassion—and somewhat tinged with sadness.

Upasana realised that the flood of words that reached her in the form of letters from Vivek was a result of this showering. But this showering was not an effort; it was an unburdening—a spontaneous outpouring from engorged breasts. The word ‘effort’ must have been a slip of Vivek’s tongue, or an error in her mother’s recall at the time of writing the diary, she reasoned. She knew that Vivek was very wary and particular about his choice of words.

“Madam, your search is now my search. And the cycle will go on and on.”

“Is there then no end? No ultimate liberation?”

“Who wants it? It is the vapour’s free choice to bond again in the search, to merge with the joys and sorrows of life, ever aware of its true state, knowing fully well that it can vaporise and be liberated at any moment. This, Madam, is liberation! This is nirvana! This is bodhisattva! The freedom to be fettered—to be a willing slave, to spontaneously surrender.” His voice had the ring of a messiah. It sent shivers down my whole body.

“I can’t give you the sea of peace and bliss, only turbulence can I endow you with,” Upasana hummed. She knew that Vivek had been liberated but he had returned voluntarily to the drama on the stage of life—to join the world in all its activities, leading the ordinary life of work and enjoyment while remaining forever in the detached state of bliss and immortality.’

“I’m glad to be the rain, to join the seeking stream once again and give it the strength to reach for the sea. Now I know that I’m the ocean, I, the vapour, even when I am again the stream.”

“But why would the vapours take form and descend as rain, again to go through the torture of seeking the sea? What do you gain?” I asked, unable to understand his feelings.

“Of what use is vapour till it showers!” Vivek exclaimed. “Madam, the first emotion that fills the being on experiencing liberation, is gratitude. I’m grateful to all, for all. And this gratitude demands instant action. So, I descend as the nourishing rain, my peace flowing out as a soothing, sustaining deluge of words and acts of love. I know that all need me. I shower even over the desert that refuses to flower, for I know this rain of love never goes waste. And the showering never diminishes the vapour.”

He paused, negotiating the bumper-to-bumper traffic, then said, “Nirvana is not some indifferent state of unconcern. Detached, yet involved—that’s nirvana. Inaction in the midst of action—that’s nirvana. Eternal rest in the midst of restless activity—that’s nirvana.

Upasana felt strangely intoxicated by Vivek’s words and experienced a sense of deep calm. Her mother’s hankerings and exploits seemed trivial in contrast.

“In the Gita, Lord Krishan too says that experiencing our oneness with the formless Nirgun Brahma is the ultimate goal,” I said. Vivek does not quote any scriptures, but I had to take recourse to our holy book. Perhaps when one has no direct experience of the truth, one needs the crutches of scriptures and the Nirgun Brahma is perhaps what he meant by the analogy of the water vapour.

“Yes, the experience of Aham Brahmasmi—I am Brahma—that’s the ultimate,” Vivek said, quoting an Upanishad and I smiled. “But then Lord Krishna starts offering discounts, saying: ‘Since the formless Brahma is very difficult to realise, try to fix your mind on the qualities of Brahma. If this is too difficult, then fix your mind on some object within yourself. If even this is too difficult, then perform all your actions as an offering to God. And if even this is not possible, then act detachedly, not craving the fruits of action. And finally, if even this is too difficult, then put your faith in my grand form; worship me as your personal god, and I, Krishna, will lead you to the Ultimate.” Vivek paused, then said, “Truth cannot be bartered at a discount. I wonder why Krishna compromised?”

Upasana recalled Love2Love. It was written about a month after this diary entry and it also mentioned Aham Brahmasmi. But it also mentioned that people go over the brink and can commit suicide if an answer to the meaning of life is not found. Was this Vivek’s hint about his mother’s planned suicide? Her rapture for Vivek was mixed with an immense grief for her Ma. Though in a turmoil, she continued reading.

“You say you have experienced the formless truth, which, according to the Gita, is most difficult to attain. How did you get the strength to vaporise?” I asked.

“Love! Simply love,” he said, as a sublime radiance lit his face. “There is tremendous energy in love.”

Upasana reflected on Vivek’s words about the energy of the latent heat required to make a glacier melt and leap into a thundering waterfall—an inert being converted into a seeker of truth. But to leap into truth the seeker requires yet another burst of energy—the latent heat of vaporisation—to convert the ocean of water into vapour—to evaporate the ego and the individual, leaving a mystic behind.

Realizing that I understood the language of the scriptures, Vivek tried to explain his thoughts in those terms. “Madam, most people exist as the tamasic glacier, some as the exuberant, rajasic stream, and very few as the vast, placid, sattvic ocean. But I now exist beyond the three forms—as the formless, invisible vapours.”

“Yes, the Gita mentions tamasic, rajasic and sattvic, but don’t fully comprehend these terms,” I admitted.

“Well, tamas refers to inertia; rajas to dynamism; and sattva to a higher equilibrium, but the ultimate truth is beyond this equilibrium.”

“Would you be my guru,” I teased, as we neared the factory.

“Madam, no guru can know you better than you yourself—provided you are honest and sincere enough,” he said. “I wish to give you this experience of sat-chit-ananda but I cannot bring the sea to the stream. I can merely condense and shower and try to add intensity to the seeking stream, and I can provide the reassurance that there is an ocean in which to merge. And please realise that though the analogy of the stream and the sea sounds interesting, you must never forget that the stream has to flow through time and space, whereas there is no distance to be traversed, no time required, to merge with the truth. For you are the truth! We all are! You must realise that you are not apart from what you seek. You are a part of it—or rather, the whole of it! What you seek, seeks you! There is no path for there is no distance to be covered—either in time or in space. So, anyone claiming to show a path is himself misled—for a path can exist only where distance exists. You are the truth, the truth is you; tat-tvam-asi — that thou art. Everyone can find the Truth for oneself, for it is one’s real self!

“Wow!” Upasana exclaimed, as she kept down the diary. Her whole being was flooded with Vivek’s love. Through the window, she could see that the snow was nearly all gone. There was not a cloud in the clear, blue sky. She could intensely feel Vivek’s presence. He was there, in the invisible vapour. She could never take a breath again without breathing in Vivek—never look at water, rain, mist, or sea again without feeling his presence. His words permeated her thoughts, her vocabulary, her very being.

‘Vivek is a mystic—his language, the language of mysticism,’ she ruminated, then corrected herself as she was reminded of his admonition: “Mysticism is a misnomer. There is no ism in mysticism,” he had said. “Do we ever talk about love-ism and truth-ism? An ism is a doctrine or a system. How can an experience be an ism? There is just the mystic state. Like the state of being in love, the mystic state too needs to be experienced individually. And this state has to be experienced and kept alive from moment to moment. There is no guaranteed and permanent label of a ‘mystic’ or a ‘lover’ that a person can pin on himself. The mystic, by his ‘absence’ has to experience the divine presence every moment. The lover, by his ‘heart-throb’ has to keep the beloved alive in his heart at every moment. They are ever newborn—the mystic and his god, the lover and his beloved. All members of this family of the enlightened are reborn every moment.”

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