I Am Water, Not The Wave (Paperback)

About the Book

I Am Water, Not the Wave is a spiritual memoir about a young Indian expat and technologist in the Netherlands whose life breaks open and who slowly discovers that he was never the broken story in the first place. The central image comes from a walk in a Dutch forest: "As a little wave in an ocean of waves, know that you are water, Mohit – not the wave."
The wave is our temporary identity – roles, successes, failures, the story of "me." The water is our true nature: the unchanging awareness in which all experiences appear and disappear.
The book traces how that single insight, first heard as a metaphor, becomes a living reality. A cancelled wedding forces the narrator to ask, "Who am I without the story I've been selling to myself?" From there, the journey moves through encounters with "lanterns": a Dutch couple who teach him to see his true nature; a monk in Kerala who turns karma, forgiveness and scriptures into a living mirror; an octogenarian in Palo Alto whose dining table becomes a divine altar revealing the oneness of all religions; an ashram at Rishikesh where the source of the light of the lanterns were lit; and finally a Himalayan camp on an Upanishad, where the highest thought crystallises.
The book shows how different traditions and religions point to the same Truth and how that Truth can be lived in ordinary life. It closes with the secret of true freedom: God + Desire = Man; Man – Desire = God. Freedom is not what we want. It is not needing to do anything to feel complete.

About the Author 

Mohit Mishra is an India-born entrepreneur living in the Netherlands. Educated in computer science and engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology (Banaras Hindu University) Varanasi, he went on to co-found a civic mobility company working with cities and public agencies in India and Europe. For years he lived in two worlds at once: building digital infrastructure for buses, parking and public transport by day, and quietly wrestling with heartbreak, burnout and the question "Who am I, really?" by night. That split eventually became unbearable, and the search for something more solid than success or failure pulled him into the living traditions of Vedanta, bhakti and meditation.
Mohit regularly studies Advaita Vedanta under teachers from Chinmaya Mission, and has been shaped by encounters with contemporary masters and household "lanterns" in Europe, India and the US. He practises a blend of Advaita Vedanta and Bhakti, rooted in everyday life rather than escape from it. I Am Water, Not the Wave is his first book, a pilgrimage into a single, quiet journey to the Self in the middle of a noisy world.