Though we may distract ourselves in many ways, we can never fully avoid life’s biggest questions. Especially in difficult times, we often find ourselves asking, “What is the purpose of all of this, and how do I fit into it?” Of course, there are stories and answers waiting from a variety of sources, but who really knows the truth? Below, Sadhguru suggests the real trouble is that we are not asking the right question:
Sadhguru: These questions, “What is the purpose of life?”, “Why did God put us here?”, keep coming up again and again. Perhaps, you want to find God and hang him! Fundamentally, what you are asking is: why creation? The same question keeps coming in so many different ways. When it comes to creation, you never ask why, because you are just a tiny speck in this creation. In the arrangements that you have made as a human being – in terms of family, your social structures, your financial securities, education, qualifications and positions that you have taken in society, I know you slowly started assuming that, in many ways, you are the center of the universe. But that is not the truth; you are just a tiny speck in the existence. Tomorrow morning, if you disappear, nobody will miss you.
So, this tiny speck asking the question: ‘Why creation,’ does not make sense because the question doesn’t come from the right context. This question comes up because somewhere the experience of life has not become blissful. If the experience of life had become blissful, you would not ask. Somewhere, the struggles, the pain of existing here, are there.
You might have created so many comforts, so much security, but still the inherent struggle of it, the inherent pain of it, the day-to-day tensions – you have to drag your feet and do many things, isn’t it? You fill yourself with enthusiasm; you find new reasons for yourself to do this and that. But somewhere inside there is something which constantly struggles in every human being unless he attains to certain inner grace. Till then, it struggles. Some people have become aware of it; most people are yet to even become aware of it. They just keep themselves busy, never to face the inner struggle.
The reason why people are keeping themselves so busy, keeping themselves so entangled with life is not because they have fallen in love with life. It is just to avoid the inner struggle. Many of them, if they don’t get married, if they don’t produce children, if they don’t start businesses and don’t get into all the mess that they are getting into on a day-to-day basis, they would be lost within themselves. Just to keep a certain semblance of sanity, they keep all this activity going. If they just sit quietly for two days in one place, they will become aware of the inner struggle that is there in every being trapped in this limited body. It is always there. Some become aware. Once they become aware, they start looking. That is when we say somebody is on the spiritual path, because he has become aware of the inner struggle. No matter what you do, something is struggling all the time. But others are still too busy. So the question comes up because there is an inner struggle. Maybe you are not hundred per cent aware of the struggle, but here and there it touches you.
So now, the more intelligent question for you would be: How do I get beyond this struggling state? If you ask how, I have a way. If you ask why, then I have to tell you a story. If you want I can tell you right now: one day, Shiva had nothing to do and he was playing marbles – nobody else, no company. And one marble fell this way and it became planet Earth. Another one shot up and it became the Sun; I can go on like this. Now you won’t believe this ridiculous story. But if I make the story more elaborate, and if the story is not told today, but a thousand years ago, you would believe it. You have a problem about this, isn’t it? You don’t believe anything that happens today, but you will believe it after a thousand years. It doesn’t matter what it is. So, if it was said, a thousand years ago…you would believe the story. But stories don’t liberate you. Stories just equip you to speak with some sense of authority at the next dinner party you are invited to. But it won’t liberate you in any way.
So when it comes to existence, don’t waste your life asking the question, ‘why?’ Because if you sit here for the rest of your life and go on thinking ‘why’, or consult every other man on this planet, all you will get is more and more fairy tales; you will not get a solution. If you are intelligent, you can see it right now. Different cultures will tell different stories; different religions will tell different stories; every individual can create his own story. Stories will not liberate you. But if you ask ‘how’, then we open up the path, we give you the method. Don’t ask why.
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