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Admiral R. Tahiliani was Chief of Navy and the governor of Sikkim. He currently heads the India chapter of Transparency International

What does spirituality mean to you?
It is about an ethical approach to life and my personal conduct as a human being. It is also about the conviction that there is a fundamental unity, as described in the Hindu philosophy of advaita vedanta: there is one awareness and we are all life's offshoots, we are all part of that awareness. We are not separate.

Did you always feel that way?
My mother used to believe in Guru Granth Sahib --- as many Sindhis, she believed in Sikhism without the outward appearances of it. So from my very early childhood I grew up in an environment of believers and had implicit fate.
But when you are young, you are not very conscious of what you believe in. You know there is an entity called God but who or what is God, you do not know too much. That is something you evolve in yourself, over time. So back then, my faith was almost like a dogma while over the years, it ripened into something much deeper. It became much more real, affecting my life in the deepest ways.
When I joined the Navy, it was quite fashionable to question everything and be a Marxist, claiming there is no God and all this is nonsense. But it was never the case for me, even though I did have questions. I first turned to J. Krishnamurti for answers. Later on I discovered Bhagwan Ramana Maharshi and became a follower of his.

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