THE PURPOSE OF LIFE
What is the purpose of life? To answer this question, it would imply another question within the question that life could be purposeless. Yet we try to find purpose in purposelessness. The nothingness of life becomes something.
Who makes life into something? We do, we, with our mental meanderings that add importance to living and life and existence. There lies the purpose of purposelessness. For without purpose, you cannot exist, and yet existence by its own self, on its beingness, does not have any pretence for any purpose at all.
Purpose is added on to all things we do by ourselves, and then we get messed up by trying to find too much purpose in it. It is our little thoughts and thinking that makes a purpose out of nothing.
The greatest purpose, according to one’s imaginings or imagination, is to reach the goal. But then also consider one thing, where is there that one has to reach? Because you have reached there – you are there – you are the totality of all existence.
If you would say, “I have to realise that I am all existence,” then purpose disappears. Then there is no purpose at all to life because you are it all. But when you find the shortcoming within yourself to say, “I have a goal to reach,” then you indulge in the factor of purpose, and the factor of purpose is factoring purposelessness into purpose.
So, we are chasing rainbows, are we not? And yet the rainbow is there, so beautiful, with all its seven colours that begins nowhere and ends nowhere. However seemingly or within your thoughts you think there is a golden pot there, where there is no golden pot at all for the rainbow is only seen through the prism of your mind, for it does not exist. So, those that think that life is purposeful are chasing rainbows.
Yet, behind it all, there is that white light, and through the prism of that light, we see all the varied colours of which life is constituted.
So, where do we go? From purposelessness to purposefulness and then back again to purposelessness. That is the cycle. Yet, I do not think I would be able to exist if I cannot hold Sujay in my arms or mother there or my beloveds here. To hold them so close to my bosom and make them feel the beat which is beating within me, and at the same time merge in the beating of their hearts so there is that beautiful unity in which I would flow and flow and flow and express that divine love.
For as some of you would express your entirety in cooking a dish to feed yourself and your guru, who are you feeding really? You are feeding divinity. You are feeding no one else, no one else. So, you are the one that is the sustenance of the embodiment of divinity.
Though Lord, the sustainer may Thou be, but remember this, that I sustain Thee. So, where is the problem of the sustainer and sustenance? And then you melt away in that beauty, you float away, and you do not care where you are. For the entirety of all the oceans and the vast blue sky, the swaying grass, the trees, the flowers, are all sustaining you. Look at those trees out there. They are absorbing all the carbon dioxide, all the poisons you breathe out, and in that breathing, it is sacrificing itself by taking in the carbons and exuding from itself the oxygen that makes you live.
Where is the difference? There is no difference in anything. There is always a dependency from one to the other. For everything that seemingly has no meaning becomes meaningful to us because we are mixed up in meaninglessness and at the same time, meaningfulness.
EVERYTHING IS CONSCIOUS
Where is your attention? You have these do-gooders. What are they doing? Ego feeding. The true doer of good does not make himself apparent at all. He just does what is to be done even without being conscious of what he is doing. From the vast Jungian collective unconsciousness, we find conscious existence. Yet, Jung, I wish I could have him here now, he just talks a lot of bull. When everything is conscious, where is the place for collective unconsciousness? For we could never exist, the entire universe could never exist, without consciousness, because the very existence of oneself, or all that is around you, is composed of nothing else but consciousness. Everything is conscious.
Would you believe me when I tell you this, that even this arm that rests here on this chair is listening to me? It has consciousness. Perhaps it might not be able to imbibe the wine of my song as you would, for even with my words I will make you drunk—drunk, intoxicated, in the glory of that which is existence itself. But you live only in the reflection of true existence. You are only a reflection of that which Is. You are looking in the mirror, and do you know why you think things are wrong?
Because of the mirror image where your right side seems to be the left side in the mirror, and your left side seems to be the right side. Yet I have seen mirrors that make you seem topsy turvy. These are mirrors you must install in your hearts and realise that you are damn topsy turvy. Just to stand up straight, that is all. To know the beauty of the little child’s voice there. How beautiful. What a symphony it is. Just to merge away in the gurgle of the mother’s breast or in the cry of the babe.
The child does not cry because it is unhappy. The child cries because it is happy and recognises the happiness within. Yet it has to cry, that I have been brought into so-called unhappiness. Look at the conflict that exists within the boundaries of its own particular form of consciousness, limited though it be. Yet, that little baby is more conscious of divinity than what you are. Because there is that innocence, there is that purity, and forever I would pray, “Lord regress me back to my childhood,” so child-like I could be and just find that beauty. I do not need to think about it. I do not need to analyse it. I do not want to ask wherefore and why of my existence. In the beatitude of the child’s innocence, I would recognise within me my divinity.
That is what it is all about, mother, that is the secret of life. Everyone carries with him a baseball bat. For they have not learned how to conk their heads with that very same bat, they carry with themselves. Get conked. The beautiful stars are there. Yes. Get conked from your unconsciousness to true consciousness, wherein you could cognise that everything is divine. I do not know if you have noticed, but whenever I look at your faces, I just melt away in you. Where I do not feel my existence, but I just feel the existence of Thee.
Let me die to be alive in you. Therein I would find true consciousness within myself as well as within you. Then do you blame this boy for loving you so much? There is the height of your creative ability. There is the height of your love, which is forever creating and re-creating yourself. There is the power of my pen to write immortal poetry or my painting. Because I am lost -I am not there – I am merged in my brush and the paint that flows from it. I become unconscious of the colours that I mix.
What am I doing? I am just portraying myself, through these various mediums, to find one thing: and that one thing is me, and then a whole train of questions follow. Who is this me? Who am I? What am I? Where do I come from? To here do I go? In the final realisation, I will find, as you all would too, as I have found, that you have come from nowhere, you are going nowhere, you are eternal, immortal. The immortal self is conscious of the entire universe. It is just to climb the steps and go upstairs and see the vast panorama around you, and you get taken in by its beauty. You get taken in by its solitariness, in your solitude. That is where everything has to reach.
LIFE IS ILLUSORY AND YET NOT ILLUSORY
Life, at the same time, going over the question again, is illusory and yet not illusory. Illusions are created by ourselves. With illusion, there is disillusion. Dissolve, and there are no illusions. Dissolve within yourself and become disillusioned and moving away from illusion to reality which is forever and ever-existent within you and outside of you, for everything is true. Even the opposites merge at a certain time in its truthfulness – where all illusions cease. Where the lover and the beloved just merge into oneness, keeping me up till six in the morning in a divine mergence. Where even time is lost – space is lost. What is there but that loving embrace that takes you away, away from yourself?
There is the secret of non-existence in existence. They are the same. It is where you put your emphasis on. This chair exists for me, and at the same time, it does not exist. If I break it up into its molecular structure, this chair will not have form. But having created the structure, I do appreciate the form, and when I think deeper, I still realise and know the formlessness in form, the nameless in the name, the love in the beloved.
MAYA
For that is what you are, that is what I am, nameless with name, formless with form; and to find the beauty of the co-existence of the name with the nameless, and the form with the formless, that is the true Maya of existence. Maya does not only mean illusion. The true meaning of Maya is the attachment that one has to anything, for that matter. I am attached to my Sujay seeing his form and his beauty, radiating so vibrant. But then at the same time, I forget the form. I only imbibe within myself his vibrancy, and that is love. That love requires no form and no name if you reach the core of that pulsation. All things vibrant are pulsating all the time in name and form, which is its outer appearance.
What is Maya, and what is not Maya? What is an illusion, and what is not an illusion? To have a deep belief that nothing exists, all is Maya, does not make the world turn. Take everything to be Maya in its particular form of reality. Appreciate the maya-ick reality, and yet be above it all and say that this very existence, not created by me at all, but it has found its own existence, within itself, and I am a part of this Maya-ick world, and I am above it all.
SIMPLE SECRETS OF LIFE AND LOVING
Therefore, I seem to wonder why people suffer? Just a slight turn of the attention. Maya, I accept you as my beloved. True. But at the same time, I see within you as greater power, a greater force, a greater Maya that attracts me more than the outward Maya. Do I love you? Your outward form? No. It is the by-product of my love for you, of your inner form, the formless form, that exudes itself and formulates yourself into the outwardness of yourself that I could hold and cuddle and kiss and at the same time worship at your feet, for you are the form which represents the formless.
Firstly, I am in love with the formless. But to bring it down in tangible terms there is the creation of form which begins in my mind creating your form. You are not creating it by yourself. That is why people find someone so beautiful and another person so ugly. With me, it does not work that way. Everything is just beautiful. Look at my Vicki Lowe, there. So self-composed. So beautiful. Look at Balraj there, look at every one of you, so, so, divine, so beautiful. This boy cannot help it if I just merge away into you. I cannot help it. Because it is me, knowing the formless, to be able to merge into the formless, and try to keep you happy. My mind creates the form to make you realise that you are the form and the formless at the same time, as I am too.
SELF REALISATION
Do you see how much we have in common with each other? Here we combine the form with the formless, and each has its particular existence. But he is the man that recognises, that could discriminate, the form and the formlessness, the existence and the existencelessness. He is the man that has conquered all the universes.
He takes a step at a time. When he is in existence, he lives like existence, and when he is in non-existence, he becomes non-existent, too. That is self-realisation. For in everything, existence or not, there is so much joy to be found in its own particular self. Therefore I just cannot understand why some people are unhappy. There is no necessity for you, my beloved, to be unhappy at all. What necessity is there?
Dive in those beautiful, cooling waters of ecstasy and all else shall be added unto thee. That which others have called the Kingdom of Heaven I call it the kingdom of ecstasy. There everything is found; the minuteness of things of that which is minuteless.
Do you see the meaning of it all? Meaninglessness is a bit different from meaningfulness. In the first word you are taking with the less, you are taking out the fullness which is there. But it is only in the fullness, like a full moon, where you would see the shadows in the moon, those crevices, the mountains existing in the moon, and yet it is shimmering and shining bright. It would not do that if the mountains in the moon were not there, for they act as deflectors to give, to be able to give that shimmering light – to provide it with its character of beauty.
Therefore, the moon also needs its mountains and crevices, its hills and valleys and dales. It requires them too. So, why should you not need them also? You need them again. Enjoy them. Enjoy the joy of everything existent. It is all alive. Remember that it first lives in you to find its existence outside. For the seer sees his mental creations all around him all the time.
Two people can look at an object and they would never see the object in the same light. There will be some difference there because everyone’s perceptions differ according to one’s own personal patternings. All existence is within yourself subjected to your personal interpretation. It is you that is not really looking out. You are looking in and finding the reflection without. Out there. You are looking in, and when a clear reflection is not found, then what do you do? You sweep away the dirt of samskaras. You clean the mirror of your mind, and when you do that the entire existence assumes a different form.
HAPPINESS
Sujay would buy a new car which was brown, and yet his little daughter changed his mind to buy a white one. What was the difference between the brown car and the white car? It is the same model. It was just a question of appearance. That one is coloured brown, and the other is coloured white. One has a light brown upholstery; the other one has a blue one. But you are still going to sit in the same seat. One is just as comfortable as the other as it is the same make of car.
What I am trying to say is this, that through the form of appearance, we try to make ourselves happy, and that is not the basis of happiness. It is a conception of happiness and not happiness itself. Do you see that?
That which we regard to be happiness, are just but conceptions. What purpose does the car serve? It takes you from point A to point B. That is the purpose of the car and not the purpose of its appearance. Do you see the truth that lies therein? Yet you might buy the car for the sake of its appearance, and after three or four weeks of driving it, you will not notice the appearance anymore. It is like giving a child a bicycle, he will enjoy it for the first few weeks, and after that, it is just a bicycle. That is all.
And that is how it should be. Because you are not forming an attachment which is the true secret of life because all appearance is a reflection of your attachment to appearance and not to reality. That is Maya. That is Maya. That is the greatest illusion.
APPEARANCE IS MAYA
People talk of so many things about Maya. Appearance is Maya, nothing else. Appearance is the greatest illusion, like a piece of crystal. You put a pink flower behind the crystal and the crystal appears pink, a yellow one and it appears yellow, a blue something and the crystal appears blue. Yet, the crystal in itself is colourless. Maya or illusion comes about with the things you attach to it. Otherwise, it is just all clear. Pure in its purity, in its pristine purity. That is how it works.
Taking time is another illusion. How can you take time? How can you take space? Is that not also a form of self-deception or misconception of eternity? Where you are dividing it up in fifteen or twenty minutes. For existence, itself knows of no time, space and neither causation. For causation, time and space are created by your thought patternings. There is nothing there. The truth of existence is the void. Yet on the blankest screen of the void your projector, with the film in it, produces all the images, and you get sucked into the images which the projector of your mind projects onto a white screen and you get sucked into it. You cry with the imaginary non-existent characters, the heartbreaks and the togethernesses.
WE MAKE THE WORLD FUNCTION
It is we that is doing all this. We make the world function. We are the creators of this world, no one else, and we create it according to our understanding. Otherwise, the screen is blank. That is reality, the void that you merge into where there are no reflections or projections, nothing to make you feel attached feeling-wise or emotion-wise. You become devoid of feelings and emotions because they are superfluous, on the surface alone, superimposed upon the void of life.
Happy is the man that could say to himself, “I am nothing. From nothingness, I came to merge back again into nothingness.” That nothingness is the everythingness, the reality of life. For all your feelings, emotions, and thoughts, and the patternings and the samskaras and impressions, they are all created by the stupid little mind. I do not know why they gave such a high position to the mind to be up there. It should preferably be in one’s backside. It stinks! Do you see?
MERGING INTO DIVINITY
Nirvana, Self-realisation, merging into divinity, is to find again that void that is devoid of all the superimpositions of all the trappings that are constituting your world in its non-reality. That is your illusion. How much am I real to you? Tell me that. How much am I real to you? This body, this soft flesh, this beating heart, that smile, that gesture. Is that the reality you seek in me or in anyone else? They are the creation of your mind. That is how you see me through the colourations of your mind. But you do not see me in my true essence as well as you do not see anyone else. I am just using myself as an example.
HOW CAN DIVINITY BE VERBALISED
What I see in others is beyond any verbal description; it is beyond verbalisation. For how can I verbalise all that which is so, so divine? How can I verbalise it? I would be insulting it to put it in verbal form. Verbalisation is also the colouration of the mind, and all the colours that the mind produces are illusionary. The colours are real, but the production of them is unreal, and how they delude you.
I remember in Canada, how Chetanji was so confused. There was a blue backdrop where I was sitting, and when it was photographed, it looked green. So, they were puzzling their little heads over it. How comes it turned green in the photograph? After a while, I let them go on, let them have their little fun, the boys must play with their toys. Then I said, “It’s so simple. The emanation of the gold light, which is there all the time, mixed with blue would produce the effect of green.” So simple. But we give the boys a run for their money. It is fun. Let the mind work – let it work. Let it think – until the mind can become thoughtful in thoughtlessness. Remember that! Functioning at its highest speed and not knowing of its function. Then only can you stand apart from it and watching it play.
ALL EXISTENCE BECOMES BEGINLESS AND ENDLESS
How beautiful it is to stand outside a children’s playground and watch the children playing, and you sitting on the bench there. How beautiful. Some laugh, some cry, some fall, hurting their shins and their knees, scrapes and bruises. Yet in spite of the scrapes and bruises, there is that joy in the twinkle of their eyes. They shine with that extra-terrestrial beauty of childlikeness. Wonderful. That is the beauty that has to be captured within yourself and not in your imaginings.
To know one’s true self is to know the entirety of this little universe where we live. For there are universes upon universes. There is not only one universe. When we use the word universe, we use it more figuratively by thinking it is the allness of manifestation or of creation. But they all work in cycles. There are universes and universes and universes. Therefore, all existence becomes beginless and endless. They are all there, all the time, functioning within themselves. Functioning by the primordial power that they possessed in the beginning, and when that power slows off, when the motion slows off, it goes back into Pralay until it regenerates and rejuvenates itself to become alive again.
Whatever is happening out, there is happening within you—same principles, same inevitable, immutable laws, forever in that which is known to be existence. The only thing we must know existence in its true value and not in our imaginary value of existence. When we go into our imaginary values, we are creating illusions.
That is what it is all about. How can I tell you all how much I love and love? I think the beauty of it is not able to tell you how much I love. There lies the beauty. The greatest things in life will always remain unsaid.
… Gururaj Ananda Yogi: Satsang US 1987 – 02