My yearning for truth started even before I realised that truth meant something more than ‘not telling lies.’ I was discontented about routine life from an early age. Ever since my childhood I lived in a state of recoil from things small and petty, hating superficiality and insensitivity. I did not want to live without awareness, and senselessly keep repeating mistakes. Life is too short to not learn one’s lesson in the first go. I tried to find some universal truth behind each event and experience . Even as a child, I did not study just to pass exams, but to get to the bottom of things – be it the origin of a word, or the origin of the world. Passing exams, even scoring top rank, were but side-effects of this passion.

By the time I was 19, I was painfully confronted with the hollowness of life. I got admission to one of India’s top medical schools, and my life appeared all set. I would go through college, pass out with flying colours, inherit my father’s roaring eye-surgery practice, get married, raise a family, get rich, grow old, and die. Was this the end?

Suddenly, life lost its challenge and its meaning.

Are we born merely to procreate and mindlessly repeat a cycle, generation after generation?

Fear of the secure ‘known’ gripped me. I felt that my life was secure and the life-script all too routine. Superficial and minor twists and turns in the plot make this predictable and meaningless script appear like a ‘personal’ story for each individual. I revolted, for the script was so revolting! The life we are living is a sheer insult to the intelligence that has evolved us. I was sure that that intelligence did not bring forth creatures like us merely for running a rat-race and senselessly struggling to survive in order for the next generation to repeat that cycle. I wanted to find out the true reason for that intelligence to bring forth the cosmos and evolve creatures like us.

I was bewildered, and desperately sought some philosophy, some course of action, which could lead me to the Truth. It was an intense and urgent search, for I did not want to waste my whole life seeking the meaning of life. But, at the same time, I could not waste my life by leading the un-examined life.

I was awakened, but still in the dark. Where was the answer? Whom could I ask? People around me were living as if nothing is amiss. Why were they deliberately and fearfully turning a blind eye to uncomfortable facts? Why were they living a sham life with their eyes wide shut? Why were religions and gurus spewing out comforting untruths? Everyone seemed happy living the lie. No one seemed to miss the truth, let alone seek it.

This straining to relax, with gnawing satisfactions and empty fulfilments –

This barren busyness, producing frivolous creations of mundane excellence –

This disgusting divinity, with pimping priests prostituting devilish gods –

This senseless merriment, masking a numbness within –

This hunger for more, the cry of ‘encore’ –

The restless peace, the stuporous life –

Amongst the living dead –

Why am I?

The more sensitive, aware and intelligent one is, the more momentous is the moment of awakening, when all veils covering the hypocrisy and cowardice of society become transparent. I feel that this moment of initial awakening to the falsehood of routine life is as ‘earth-shaking’ as the moment of final awakening to the Ultimate Truth, when this shaking abruptly stops, and one experiences the restful peace of Enlightenment. I now realize that I had the four qualities needed to trigger awakening, and these later helped to trigger enlightenment as well.

A true seeker, who has ego and self-respect, who values his life, who is courageous enough to go against the tide, who is honest enough not to accept any false answers, who is fully awakened, cannot fall back to sleep again, and will not stop till the goal is reached. Once the truth of the falsehood is recognized, once one realizes that one belongs to a society that is deceiving itself and hiding facts, one embarks alone on the quest for the Truth. And if one is honest enough, and values one’s life, one doesn’t clutch any false crutches for support during this journey in a pathless land – a journey that needs one to be vigilant and aware, for it is full of traps, pitfalls and mis-directions.

To know what happened after awakening to falsehood, and how to shun the pitfalls of Untruth, read on…