Then so many things happened. There was one man called Sivananda Saraswati in those days -- he was the evangelist of Hinduism.
Between the ages of fourteen and twenty- one (I am skipping many of the unnecessary events) I used to go there and meet him very often, and I did everything, all the austerities. I was so young, but I was determined to find out if there was any such thing as moksha, and I wanted that moksha for myself. I wanted to prove to myself and to everybody that there cannot be any hypocrisy in such people -- "These are all hypocrites" -- so I practiced yoga, I practiced meditation, studied everything. I experienced every kind of experience that the books talked about -- samadhi, super-samadhi, nirvikalpa samadhi, everything. Then I said to myself "Thought can create any experience you want -- bliss, beatitude, ecstasy, melting away into nothingness -- all those experiences. So, this can't be the thing, because I'm the same person, mechanically doing these things. Meditations have no value for me. This is not leading me anywhere."
