Some journeys begin with a destination, while others begin with a question. For Mohit Mishra, the question was deceptively simple yet profound: “Who am I, really?” An India-born entrepreneur and technologist living in the Netherlands, Mishra spent years building systems that helped cities function more efficiently while privately confronting questions that no professional success could answer. His journey from computer science and civic mobility to Vedanta, Bhakti, meditation, and spiritual inquiry forms the foundation of his first book, I Am Water, Not the Wave, a spiritual memoir about identity, heartbreak, awareness, desire, and the search for a deeper sense of completeness.
Mishra’s professional background reflects a life deeply connected with technology and innovation. 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 that worked with cities and public agencies across India and Europe. His professional world involved digital infrastructure for buses, parking, and public transport, placing him at the intersection of technology, urban life, and practical problem solving. Yet behind this outwardly successful life existed another, quieter journey. While building solutions for the movement of people and cities, Mishra was wrestling with his own inner questions surrounding heartbreak, burnout, identity, and the limitations of achievement.
That contrast between the external world and the internal self becomes one of the most important dimensions of his writing. I Am Water, Not the Wave emerges from the recognition that human beings often define themselves through temporary identities. We become our professions, relationships, achievements, failures, ambitions, and personal stories. These identities can feel permanent because they shape the way we understand ourselves, but Mishra’s spiritual exploration asks what remains when these roles begin to disappear. The central metaphor of the book comes from a walk through a Dutch forest, where he encounters the idea that he is like a little wave in an ocean of waves, but at a deeper level, he is water rather than the wave. The wave represents the temporary story of the individual, while the water represents the unchanging awareness beneath those changing experiences.
For Mishra, this metaphor does not remain an abstract spiritual idea. It becomes a question that must be lived. A cancelled wedding becomes one of the major turning points in his journey, forcing him to confront a difficult question: who is he without the story he had created for himself? The experience opens the door to a deeper investigation of identity and attachment. Instead of presenting spirituality as an escape from difficult emotions, Mishra explores how heartbreak, uncertainty, desire, and disappointment can become opportunities for self inquiry. His journey suggests that sometimes the experiences that appear to break our carefully constructed lives can also reveal what lies beneath them.
A significant part of Mishra’s spiritual journey unfolds through encounters with what he calls “lanterns.” These people and places become sources of illumination, each revealing another aspect of the same search for Truth. A Dutch couple helps him look beyond his temporary identity and toward his deeper nature. A monk in Kerala brings ideas of karma, forgiveness, and scripture into the realm of lived experience. An octogenarian in Palo Alto transforms an ordinary dining table into what Mishra experiences as a divine altar, offering an insight into the underlying unity of different religions. His journey also takes him to an ashram in Rishikesh and eventually to a Himalayan camp centred around an Upanishad, where the ideas he has encountered gradually crystallise into a deeper understanding.
What makes Mishra’s spiritual perspective particularly interesting is his attempt to connect ancient wisdom with contemporary life. His exploration is rooted in Advaita Vedanta and Bhakti, yet it does not suggest that spiritual understanding requires withdrawing from ordinary responsibilities. Instead, he presents the search for the Self as something that can happen in the middle of a noisy, ambitious, technology-driven world. His own life becomes an example of this intersection. He is simultaneously an entrepreneur, technologist, husband-to-be who experienced heartbreak, seeker, student, and writer. Rather than separating these identities, his journey asks whether it is possible to live fully in the world without becoming trapped by the stories attached to these roles.
Mishra regularly studies Advaita Vedanta under teachers from Chinmaya Mission and has been influenced by contemporary spiritual masters as well as ordinary people he describes as “lanterns.” His understanding has developed through experiences across Europe, India, and the United States, giving his spiritual journey a distinctly cross-cultural dimension. Different places, teachers, traditions, and encounters gradually lead him toward what he sees as a shared Truth. His exploration suggests that while religious traditions may use different languages and practices, they can point toward the same fundamental reality.
At the heart of I Am Water, Not the Wave is also an examination of desire. The book ultimately arrives at the striking equation, “God + Desire = Man; Man – Desire = God.” For Mishra, true freedom is not simply getting everything one wants. It is reaching a point where completeness no longer depends upon getting something from the outside world. This idea gives his memoir a reflective conclusion and brings the journey back to its central question of identity. If the wave is constantly changing, perhaps freedom lies in recognising the water that was always present beneath it.
As his first book, I Am Water, Not the Wave represents more than a literary debut. It is an attempt to document a deeply personal pilgrimage from professional achievement toward inner understanding. Mohit Mishra’s journey demonstrates that spiritual questions do not necessarily arrive in quiet monasteries or distant mountains. They can emerge in offices, relationships, cities, moments of heartbreak, and ordinary walks through forests. His story invites readers to look beyond the roles they perform and the stories they repeatedly tell themselves. In doing so, Mishra offers a gentle yet profound reminder that perhaps we are not the broken stories we have spent years trying to repair. Perhaps, beneath every changing wave, something much deeper has been present all along.
