Part II: Pursuit of Happiness and Spirituality: Knowing yourself

Imagine for a moment an entity which is the only thing that exists, there is no existence outside of it since it is existence itself. It is conscious of its existence and being the only entity in existence it is only entity that is conscious.  Imagine further that this entity looks like a pool of liquid light in which waves gently rise and fall in blissful rhythmic fashion.

The entity, let’s creatively call it Entity 1, is in a state of bliss and wants to share this bliss with someone.  So, within one of these waves He imagines a few replicas of himself and says to them, “Let’s have a spot of fun guys, let’s play Hide and Seek.”   It all goes magically well, everyone instantly hides, and the seeker finds them instantly because, after all, each player is a replica of Entity 1 and thus is entirely aware of all that is.  It really isn’t that much fun and soon the wave subsides into the pool of light. The entity replicas within the wave experience the bliss of merging back into the pool, which essentially is their own reality or real Self.

“Hmmm,” Entity 1 thinks, “what if I made the game a little more interesting by making it harder for me to seek myself out.  The only way to make that happen would be for my replicas to forget who they are and learn about their true nature as part of the game itself.”  He thus conceptualized Maya,  his eternal co-conspirator who cast an intangible veil that hid the truth about Entity 1 from his replica selves. This state of existence was called state of simultaneous oneness and difference.

“And why should all my replicas be all aike, when I could have infinite varieties with different level of Self-awareness?  And let me project myself into space, time and infinite number of worlds where I spawn my replicas?   I know who each one is, and I would experience each world and each life through my own replicas. Why, I will be like a bird that watches as my replica goes about experiencing the world and once it finds itself I too will experience the bliss it experiences in merging back to myself.”

“Yeah, that’s what I will do”, Entity 1 says in a very Dave Allen fashion. 

And then He thinks some more, “Now, what if the objective of the game is not immediately clear and these replicas have to go through lifetimes to identify the objective of the game. And only then play the game out?  That would make it even more challenging to myself and the bliss of reaching the Goal would be even higher. Of course, I would leave enough number of clues in different worlds for people to know what a game really is and guess what, perhaps if sometimes the game goes haywire, I will get in the game and bring it back onto the track myself …”  

And He thought of many wondrous details like how the replicas earn merit or demerit points as they progress in the game and called it the Law of Karma, a series of foundational constants for each of the infinite universes, so on and so forth.

Finally, He created the most exquisite of all the concepts - Grace.  Grace was the mechanism that enabled any of the replicas to reach out directly to Entity 1 and for Him to directly reach back and bring that replica back to the state of bliss and luminosity. 

No sooner had He thought of all this than it was all already there.  Mighty universes took birth inside the waves as so many soap bubbles, matured and disappeared back into the waves.  These universes existed as imaginations whose only reason to exist was to provide the Replicas with experience and to help them find their way back to the bliss of self-realization.

Through these many universes the replicas lived out lives after lives, searching for happiness within the transience of material existence. For each this cycle would continue until having realized the futility of searching for meaning in the transient, they would set out on a path to eternal happiness. When an individual replica realized that all this was just a game of Hide and Seek and all one had to do be eternally happy was to seek out and realize ones true identity as being one with Entity 1, the game would actually begin.

Within planet Earth, Entity 1 has been known by many names Krishna, God, Brahman, Self, Atman [1] and many more.  The truth behind existence has best described as Tat Tvam Asi [2].  And the best way of realizing that truth has been revealed as Bhakti, which allowed a replica to invite Krishna’s grace, in a focused manner called Sadhana. 

And this Imaginary story, in fact is the True Theory of Everything, the True TOE.  Whoever has understood this story has understood everything there is.  Having known this there is nothing more to be known.  The realization of this truth, making it real, is Moksha.

Jai Sri Krishna.


[1]   Atman by Swami Sarvapriyananda
[2]  Mahavakya by Swami Saravpriyananda