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, with mental meanderings that add importance to living, life, and existence. There lies the purpose of purposelessness. Without purpose, you cannot exist, yet existence by itself, on its being, does not have any pretence for any purpose.
Purpose is added to everything we do by ourselves, and then we get messed up by trying to find too much purpose in it. Our little thoughts and thoughts make a purpose out of nothing.
According to one’s imaginings or imagination, the most significant purpose is to reach the goal. But then also consider one thing: where is there that one has to go? 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 to life because you are it all. But when you find the shortcoming within yourself to say, “I have a goal to reach,” you indulge in the factor of purpose, which is factoring purposelessness into purpose.
So, we are chasing rainbows, are we not? And yet the rainbow is so beautiful, with all its seven colours that begin nowhere and end 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 who 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.
Where do we go? From purposelessness to purposefulness and then back again to purposelessness. That is the cycle. Yet, I do not think I could exist if I could not hold Sujay in my arms, mother, or my beloveds here. To keep 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.
As some of you would express your entirety when cooking a dish to feed yourself and your guru, who are you feeding? 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, float away, and do not care where you are. For the entirety of all the oceans and the vast blue sky, the swaying grass, the trees, and the flowers are all sustaining you. Look at those trees out there. They absorb all the carbon dioxide and all the poisons you breathe out. In that breathing, it is sacrificing themselves by taking in the carbons and exuding from themselves 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. 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 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 talks a lot about bulls. 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 around you, is composed of nothing else but consciousness. Everything is conscious.
When I tell you this, would you believe 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 actual 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, your right side seems to be the left side in the mirror, and your left side seems to be the right. 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. 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. To merge away in the gurgle of the mother’s breast or in the babe’s cry.
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 within the boundaries of its particular form of consciousness, limited though it be. Yet, that 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 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 a baseball bat with him, for they have not learned how to conk their heads with that very same bat they carry. Get conked. The beautiful stars are there. Yes. Get conked from your unconsciousness to true consciousness, wherein you can cognise that everything is divine. I do not know if you have noticed, but I melt away in you whenever I look at your faces. Where I do not feel my existence, but I think the existence of Thee.
Let me die to be alive in you. Therein, I would find true consciousness within myself and 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? Through these various mediums, I am just portraying myself to find one thing: me, and then a whole train of questions follows. Who is this me? Who am I? What am I? Where do I come from? To where 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 to climb the steps, 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, become disillusioned, and move away from illusion to reality, which is forever and ever-existent within and outside of you, for everything is true. Even the opposites merge at a particular time in its truthfulness – where all illusions cease. The lover and the beloved 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 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. This chair will not have form if I break it up into its molecular structure. 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 namelessness 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 unnamed, 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 beauty radiating so vibrant. But then, at the same time, I forgot the form. I only imbibe within myself his vibrancy, and that is love. That love requires no form or 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, has found its 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. It is just a slight turn of attention. Maya, I accept you as my beloved. True. But at the same time, I see within you as a greater power, a greater force, a more fantastic 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 making 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 gorgeous. 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 merge away into you. I cannot help it. 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, each having a particular existence. But he is the man that recognises and could discriminate, the form and the formlessness, the existence and the existencelessness. He is the man who has conquered all the universes.
He takes a step at a time. When he is in existence, he lives like existence; when he is in non-existence, he becomes non-existent, too. That is self-realisation. In everything, fact or not, there is so much joy in its particular self. Therefore, I 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 fullness, like a full moon, where you would see the shadows in the moon, those crevices, and the mountains existing in the moon, 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, crevices, hills, valleys, and dales. It requires them, too. So, why should you not need them also? It would be best if you had them again. Enjoy them. Enjoy the joy of everything existing. It is all alive. Remember that it first lives in you to find its existence outside, for the seer always sees his mental creations around him.
Two people can look at an object, but they would never see the object in the same light. There will be some differences because everyone’s perceptions differ according to one’s patterns. All existence is within yourself and is subjected to your interpretation. It is you that is not 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 brown car, 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. 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.
I am trying to say that we try to make ourselves happy through appearance, which is not the basis of happiness. It is a conception of happiness, not happiness itself. Do you see that?
The things we regard as happiness are just conceptions. What purpose does the car serve? It takes you from point A to point B. That is the purpose of the vehicle and not the purpose of its appearance. Do you see the truth that lies therein? Yet you might buy the car for 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. You are not forming an attachment, which is the true secret of life because all appearance reflects your attachment to appearance and not to reality. That is Maya. That is Maya. That is the most incredible illusion.
APPEARANCE IS MAYA
People talk of so many things about Maya. Appearance is Maya, nothing else. Appearance is the most incredible 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 patterns. 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 who are 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 who 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. All your feelings, emotions, thoughts, and the patterns of the samskaras and impressions 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 devoid of all the superimpositions of all the trappings that constitute 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 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, and 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 their production is unreal, and how they delude you.
I remember how Chetanji was so confused in Canada. 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 come 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 is so simple. The emanation of the gold light, which is always 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! It functions at its highest speed without knowing its function. Only then can you stand apart from it and watch it play.
ALL EXISTENCE BECOMES BEGINLESS AND ENDLESS
It is beautiful to stand outside a children’s playground and watch the children playing while you are sitting on the bench there. How beautiful. Some laugh, some cry, and some fall, hurting their shins and knees, scraping and bruising. Yet, despite the scrapes and bruises, there is joy in the twinkle of their eyes. They shine with that extraterrestrial 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 see the entirety of our little universe, for there are universes upon universes. There is not only one universe. When we use the word universe, we use it more figuratively, thinking it is the allness of manifestation or 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. Function by the primordial power 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 what is known to be existence. We must only know existence in its actual 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? Its beauty is not enough to tell you how much I love it. There lies the beauty. The most incredible things in life will always remain unsaid.
… Gururaj Ananda Yogi: Satsang US 1987 – 02
