By Ramesh K Dhiman : The divine halo on his cherubic face simply dazzle as you ogle at him in awe and admiration, his sparkling dreamy eyes instantly transport you into a world aglow with heavenly light. You watch him transfixed don’t feel like withdrawing your gaze off his visage as you get set to settle down and ask him questions, ranging from the mundane to metaphysics and to spirituality.
He is none other than Om Swami, a charismatic monk, who claimed to have seen a vision of Lord Shiva in his dreams when he was all of 8 years. “The Lord even touched me and whispered something into my ears for a while before vanishing”, he tells media persons answering queries at the Chandigarh Press Club in sector 27 here on Thursday, where he launched his book ‘If Truth Be Told – a monk’s memoir’, published by Harper Element. “This was my first divine experiment with truth, which ignited the eternal spark in me to delve deeper into the truth to retrieve the ultimate truth about human existence”, he avers.
“The book”, asserts the author “is a compendium of my life’s long journey into god-realisation, which follows self-realization, to see and discover for himself if God really existed in this material world. It unravels the forays into tracing the divine power, to enable him to tell the world in no unequivocal terms that God does exist and one can discover Him within, provided he/she negate all the worldly pleasures and possessions”
Born and brought up in Patiala district of Punjab, Om Swami left for Australia to pursue his Masters in Business Management in the 90s when he was 18 years, with a little financial support. However, his unflinching spirit to prove his mettle helped him leapfrog the hurdles coming his way. A brief stint in job and he succeeded in setting up his own software companies and became a multimillionaire at the age of barely 26 years.
This was not the end of his journey. At one point of time he realized that just to accumulate all that is perishable was not his life’s end and objective. But the inner pull of the divine made him to chase the dreams he had cherished. The self-realisation made him embark on a roller coaster journey into realizing the Almighty and the truth about Him. The lure of earning more and more material wealth failed to distract him from his consciously chosen path of righteousness. He decided to part with the major hurdle – power and pelf. He decided to transfer the entire business empire to his partners.
In the run up to the god-realization, the untiring Swami had to cross over the roadblocks that he took in his stride and moved on and on despite oddities. During this innovative journey he dabbled into astrology, tantra and other means of occult science to see a spark of that divine power. His tryst with truth brought him face to face with pseudo swamis, sadhus and saints. “But all means proved to be a wild goose chase as I was still groping in the dark.” Swami tells scribes.
Incredible as it may sound, this man who raised a multi-million dollar empire, decided to renounce this material world at just one stroke when he was 30 years of age. In his quest to find the God through a guru, he headed to Varanasi where he got initiated by a Naga Sant. Days rolled by. Unable to see a spark of that heavenly light, he protested like a defiant devout to vent his pent-up emotions “I would like to perish in meditation than going back as a defeated warrior. If You fail to show up this time around and tell me You are omnipresent, I shall go around the world and tell people that there is no God”. “The call of a bruised heart was heard on the 40the day of my intense meditation, I saw the celestial light caressing me into her divine embrace”
On being asked if the hard decision tugged his emotions deep down, he returns a crypt one liner “Not the least, for the simple reasons that one has to take hard decisions in life to achieve something that he/she aspires for. He says he had to face hunger, besides undergoing acute traumas, like passing sleepless chilly winter nights on the ashram floors. He had to go the hard way in appeasing the gurus those came my way in search of the divine”
He ends by saying that we all mortal souls keep aspiring for material possessions instead of be one with God to taste the real fruit of human existence. A majority of us keep groping in the dark and hold out that the sole objective of human life is to accumulate the material wealth and other worldly pleasures, knowing full well that nothing goes with us after death. Om Swami runs a ashram at Giripul, a sleepy village in Solan district of Himachal Pradesh.
I was blessed and fortunate to come in contact with Swamiji thru Speaking Tree. I was immediately impressed by simplicity and depth of his spiritual wisdom. I happened to meet some of his earliest devotees and was perplexed to hear about his extraordinary Sadhnas in most hostile environment.
My first meeting with Swamiji was out of world experience for me, wherein I just melted in front of his unimaginable compassion for one and all. That experience has already become one of my most memorable experience of this life.
The Memoir Book of Swamiji is spell binding and difficult to put down book, This book has potential to change the thinking and life of millions of people, like me.
A must read book for everyone. Book is available on Flipkart, Amazon and Uread websites.
Vipul