Purpose Of Life

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The life of man is an indication of what is beyond him and what

determines the course of his thoughts, feelings and actions. The

wider life is invisible, and the visible is a shadow cast by the

invisible which is the real. The shadow gives an idea of the

substance, and one can pursue the path to the true substance by the

perception of the shadow. Human existence, by the fact of its

limitations, wants and various forms of restlessness, discontent and

sorrow, points to a higher desired end, incomprehensible though the

nature of this end be.

 

As life on this earth is characterised by incessant change, and

nothing here seems to have the character of reality, nothing here can

satisfy man completely. The Bhagavad Gita has referred to this world

as anityam, asukham, duhkhalayam, ashashvatam- " Impermanent, unhappy,

the abode of sorrow, transient " . The sages of yore declared with

immediate realisation that " Truth is One " and that the goal of human

life is the realisation and the experience of this Truth.

 

The universe is inconstant, and it is only a field of experience

provided to the individuals so that they may evolve towards the

experience of the Highest Truth. It is the glory of the people of

Bharatavarsha (India) that to them the visible universe is not real

and the invisible Eternal alone is real. They have no faith in what

they perceive with the senses. They have faith only in that which is

the ground of all experience, beyond the senses, beyond even the

individual mind.

 

Earnest seekers used to seek shelter under great sages who purified

the holy region of the Himalayas with their mighty presence, and

lived the austere life of Yogis in order to attain freedom from the

trammels of earth-bound life and rest in the beatitude of the

Absolute, Brahman. This they considered the true life, and thus the

way of fulfilling the law of the Eternal.

 

The great law-giver Manu, after describing the various tenets of

Dharma, finally asserts: " Of all these Dharmas, the Knowledge of the

Self is the highest; it is verily the foremost of all sciences; for,

by it, one attains immortality. " The pursuit of Dharma, Artha and

Kama has its meaning in the attainment of Moksha which is the

greatest of all the Purusharthas (end of human life). Dharma is the

ethical and moral value of life; Artha is its material value; and

Kama is its vital value; but Moksha is the infinite value of

existence which covers all the others and is itself far greater than

all these. Others exist as aids or preparations for Moksha. Without

Moksha, they have no value and convey no meaning. Their value is

conditioned by the law of the Infinite, which is the same as Moksha.

 

The Vedas and the Upanishads are the exhalations of the Divine Being,

and they give an exhaustive commentary on spiritual life. They are

expositions of the significance and the import of human life and of

the method of the transmutation of the mortal appearance into the

Immortal Essence. The instance of the great Nachiketas and the story

of his adventurous search for Truth narrated in the thrilling

Kathopanishad serve as exemplars to all men capable of thought and

reflection.

 

Nothing of the world of sensibility can be of real value-this is what

Nachiketas taught through his memorable act of renunciation. Not even

the longest life and the immense wealth offered to him could tempt

him. He persevered in his quest for the Highest, and in the end

achieved the Highest. Nothing short of it could satisfy him. Such are

the true heroes. A real hero is not he who stands against bullets or

risks his life in hazardous attempts, fights battles, dives into

oceans and climbs high cliffs, but he who subdues his senses and

overcomes his mind, recognises the supreme unity of life and casts

aside dualities and desires. To achieve this is the duty of man; this

is the immortal message of the sages of the Upanishads.

 

The tangle of sense-experience in which man is caught is most vexing,

and hard it is to free oneself from it. Man is deluded by the notion

of the reality of the so-called external relations of things and thus

he comes to grief. The Mahabharata says that the contact of beings in

this universe is like the contact of logs of wood in a flowing river,

temporary. Yet the attachment to sense-percepts is so strong that

phantoms are mistaken for facts, the impure is mistaken for the pure,

the painful for the pleasant, and the not-self for the Self.

 

The message of the ancient sages is that the life one lives in the

sense-world is deceptive, for it hides the Existence underlying all

things and makes one feel that the particular presentation of forms

before the senses alone is real. " Children run after external

pleasures and fall into the net of wide-spread death. The heroes,

however, knowing the Immortal, seek not the Eternal among things

unstable here, " says the Upanishad. The call of the ancient sages to

man is: " O son of the Immortal! Know yourself as the Infinite! become

the All. This is the supreme blessing. This is the supreme bliss. "

This is the undying message to man.

 

The sages have again and again stressed: " If one knows It (i.e., the

Immortal Being) here, then there is the true end of all aspirations!

If one does not know It here, great is the loss for him. "

(Kenopanishad). And sage Yajnavalkya says that all great deeds done

in this world, without the knowledge of the One Imperishable Being,

are not worth anything. Humanitarian services; fasts and charity;

one's political, national, social and individual life; should all be

based on the feeling of universal brotherhood which is the eternal

expression of the Reality of universal Selfhood.

 

Humanity can hope for peace when this condition, discovered and laid

down by the Rishis, viz., abiding by the law of the Divine is

fulfilled. Peace can be had only to the extent that the system of the

Divine is adhered to in life. And this peace is inversely

proportional to the love of body, individuality and its relations in

the world, in which humanity is generally steeped. An 'awakening' of

a higher consciousness is necessary so that disorder and discontent

may be abolished.

 

Education of humanity in the right direction is the precondition of

world peace. Materialism, atheism, scepticism and agnosticism which

are rampant in these days and which have robbed man of his reverence

for the Supreme Absolute are mainly responsible for the increasing

selfishness, craving, confusion, violence and agitation of mind that

are seething in the world. Man should learn that behind the

appearance of materiality, discreteness, externality, doubt and

impermanence, there is the reality of spirituality, unity and

infinity.

 

Without the recognition of this reality, life loses life and becomes

an emptiness, devoid of meaning and purpose, dead, as it were. To

live in the divine is to die to the narrowness of the sense world;

and to be confined to the latter is to 'destroy oneself' (in the

words of the Isavasyopanishad). The present trend of life has to be

overhauled, and a reorientation in it brought about in the light of

morality, ethics and spirituality. The change that is required is not

merely in the outward form but in the very perspective and the inner

constitution of the system of living.

 

This can be done when man's ideals are based on the truths of the

spirituality of Oneness, lifted above blind beliefs, differences and

materiality. When this is achieved, man would have fulfilled his

great duty here. For the man scorched in the waterless desert of

worldliness, the only hope is in the cool waters of the Ganga of

wisdom, flowing from the Himalayan heights of the sages of the

Upanishads. Drink from this perennial fount, and refresh yourself.

 

(Source: Essence of Yoga by Sri Swami Sivananda)