"I knew when I was twelve,
I would not be living the life
of most people I have seen
till then, as there was
something seriously missing
in their lives despite
their happy looking faces".
Having decided not to live a life of mediocrity and ignorance, he chose to observe people as he experimented voluntarily in every possible sphere of life with a keen eye to discover the "missing factor". Cultivating acquaintances, satiating youthful urges, enhancing academic exercises, career building and orientation, drawing unsound conclusions upon reading Carl Jung, Nietzsche, Jacques Derrida, Kierkegaard, Confucius, Karl Marx, Jean-Paul Sartre et al, did not make him feel complete either. At the age of twenty five, he said to himself
"let me renounce
my worldly life,
if that's what it
takes me to find
the missing factor".
He wished to try the traditional method of renunciation prevalent in India for centuries together. He spent considerable time in following traditions unfamiliar to him, rules unacceptible to him and in the process exposed himself to the teachings of Buddhism and Hinduism. He received monk hood in Hindu(sanyas)tradition formally without slightest hope of knowing the "missing factor".
After his brief stints at various religious organizations, he felt truth should be much more simpler to comprehend than what he assumed and brought a halt to his aimless drift. He withdrew from all kinds of spiritual pursuit and at the age of thirty, decided to live without the "missing factor" and began a whole new life as corporate trainer with an emphasis on Outward Bound Activities such as hiking, camping in wilderness, rock climbing, primarily aimed at cajoling the bored and burnt out urban corporate executives. A unsuspecting slip after a year, during a rock climbing session hampered his adventure training with both his knee ligaments ruptured severely.
Even as he recovered and began to contemplate on innovation in his corporate training methods, he got involved in yet another unusual but rude accident which sent him spinning on the road as his motor cycle was hit by a speeding car. However instead of falling unconscious, he saw himself for the first time in such vivid clarity as the clumsy incident unfolded in front of his eyes. He could see every moment of the road rage to such finest and minute details. Though he dismissed the sudden clarity as "accidental" he could not but be aware of the remarkable clarity remained for the rest of the days to follow.
Spending few months totally immobile with fractures and bruises and back in a hospital all by himself, he was amused to notice the total absence of agitation, anguish, fear, insecurity, regret, passion, anger. He felt a void of the fluctuating emotions, as if something inside of him got snapped forever. He describes those days in the hospital bed as "blissfully in pain" and there was uninterrupted sense of compassion springing from some unknown part of him, without anyone in sight or any reason to point at. He found all the questions he had been nagging himself until then have vanished without a trace and there was such unmistakable calmness whelming him all over. As if he bumped head on with the "missing factor".
In his words
"I found me really
grounded in my Self, like
returning to sobriety
from meaningless state
of drunkenness, like the
calm after a violent storm,
there is nothing to achieve,
nowhere to go, nobody to
become, but truth is
I am as I am".
As he began to interact with people from the new found clarity and as people began to listen, he witnessed growing signs of an organization invariably built around him. As more people listened and associated, he could feel the trappings of a institutionalized spirituality brewing wherever he went. Eventually he dismantled the many trusts that sprung in various cities and made them as one singular functional medium to enable his thoughts reach common people. To quote Akshara,
"I have no mission
or even a vision in my
life, I am only interested
in the awareness of the moment.
I don't promise anything to you
because you come to me, except
pointing at the fullness of
reality now"
his signature sayings which he demonstrates in every word he speaks on platforms across the globe.
"If you chase a bunch of
ideas dished out by others
or by your own mind, then
you will miss the Truth"
which sums up his stand as a spiritual Guru. He eventually gave up his monk hood and renounced all forms of affiliations with rituals and religions. When the author of this write up questioned him rather audaciously - without a organization, a mission, a method, number of followers, social reformation projects, your teachings may appear very lifeless to many?
He promptly replied
"I am happy to be free
from the tentacles of an
organization and the million
promises and endless hopes
that tags along with it.
Though lifeless it may appear,
but in a blessed moment when
you tasted freedom from such
a living, even if a droplet,
you will know the sacredness
of such unlimited, boundless
existence that already you are".
But what exactly is the problem in a organized teaching of the truth?
He quipped,
"An organized teaching is a
logical fallacy and can be
a disservice to humanity as
they (seekers) will be pushed
in to deeper ignorance".