Who Am I: The Eternal Quest of Human Existence

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Mystery behind God, nature and purpose of human existence, destiny and free will, death and immortality. actions and consequences, grief and happiness, heaven and hell, bondage and liberation, dharma and adharma. ignorance and enlightenment; Who Am I provides a lucid commentary on some of the most profound concepts with effortless ease.

These topics have a universal appeal to human mind and invoke curiosity at some point of time in life. The author has attempted to explain these subtle concepts using a scientific approach based on simple logic and reasoning.

Dr. Rajiv K. Tayal, an alumnus of IIT, Roorkee. signed off as an Advisor from the Department of Science & Technology (DST), Government of India. With a professional career spanning four decades, he worked as a practicing engineer in the industry as well as a science administrator in DST and its affiliated institutions. Despite his formal training and lifelong career as an R&D professional in engineering. Dr. Tayal has been an avid student of metaphysical aspects of life for the last two and a half decades, drawing inspiration from the Vedantic school of thought.

We all want to live, and we all want to be happy. In other words, we all want to live happily ever after. However, we realize the hard way that both "life" and "happiness" are elusive. Neither we can live forever, nor can we be consistently happy all the time. Death is imminent and happiness is transient, invariably followed by some kind of sorrow and grief. So, is the desire to live forever or be perpetually happy inconsistent with reality and thus illusional?

We want to live because "Existence" is our nature, and we want to be happy because "Bliss" is also our nature. The desire to live and be happy finds its basic origin in our intrinsic nature which itself is Existence-Consciousness-Bliss. However, we are ignorant of our own true identity and hence unable to experience its intrinsic nature as ever Existent and ever Blissful.

We live in identification with our relative existence as a perishable body, bound by the limitations of laws of nature. The intrinsic nature of ever Existence and infinite Bliss, therefore, expresses itself by way of craving for limited immortality at the level of body and fragments of happiness in the objects and people of the external manifested world. Both are impossible as they contradict the laws of nature that govern the life at the level of relative existence. Relative existence is marred with the notion of duality and impermanence which imply that body is subject to decay and happiness and sorrow are the two sides of the same coin; we cannot selectively choose one over the other.

The spiritual journey starts when we realize the futility of finding immortality and lasting peace and happiness at the level of relative existence, and at the same time refuse to accept mortality and sorrow to be the final reality and an inevitable part of our overall existence. That's when we start asking the question, "Who Am I", our real existence beyond the superficial layers of illusory name and form in an equally illusory world of objects and people. A quest thus begins to reveal and realize our true identity as immutable "Self", the ever Existent and ever Blissful Reality.

This book is largely motivated by the Vedantic philosophy, and I had been greatly influenced in my thinking by the lives and writings of several saints, sages, mystics, and thinkers of ancient as well as modern times. Some of the notable ones are Adi Shankaracharya, Swami Ramakrishna Paramahansa, Swami Vivekananda, Ramana Maharshi, Swami Chinmayananda, Nisargadatta Maharaj, and Ramesh Balsekar. I was also inspired by some of the teachings in Bible which closely resonate with the Vedantic thoughts in spirit and the writings of Western philosophers like Eckhart Tolle.

Several years ago, I had undergone three distance learning courses, started by Chinmaya International Foundation (CIF), Ernakulam (Kerala, India) on Advanced Vedanta, Bhagavad Gita, and Upanishads. I thoroughly enjoyed those well-structured courses and was perhaps the first person to complete each one of them, well ahead of completion deadlines. Those courses were extremely helpful in understanding the subtle Vedantic concepts and I am truly grateful to Acharyas and administrators of CIF for their compassionate effort in visualizing and conducting the courses.

Life at the level of worldly living is a stepping-stone to spirituality for most of us and many of the real-life experiences turn out to be cornerstones in pushing us into enquiry and developing insight into spiritual concepts. I am thankful to my family, friends, colleagues, and all those who have been a collaborator in supporting this journey.