The Purpose of Life

Aatma Shakti: As soon as you accept the form, you have the sense of lack, as if you are not united with all. When I look at the form field, whether it is me as a personality or body or whatever I see, it doesn’t come up to standard. The feeling of fullness doesn’t translate. Is that vaasana?

Swami-ji: You are aware of all these three—vaasana, kaamana, trishna—which happen only in that consciousness which is agyaan. Agyaan is translated as the sense of forgetfulness of one’s own true nature. Agyaan is when the Free Being, the very Self, the underlying reality manifested its power and began to call it other than itself. A spider manifests its thread. Before it is spread, the spider and thread are one and the same. After the spider has manifested the thread, it has vaasana: it is full of ignorance and thinks, "The thread is other than me," and that me has no knowledge that it is me. It is only a subjective phenomenon for the spider. Not having the knowledge that it is a subjective phenomenon, it says, "This is the world of forms." This happens to all human beings, to all consciousness beings, when they wake up, when their consciousness gets manifested.

The waking state is nothing but the Being Himself, but when he is awake he thinks that wakefulness is other than him. This is the sense which is called ignorance. This sense says that the objective world and all its paraphernalia, inclusive of all the states of consciousness, actions and thoughts, are the world forms. and they will stay permanently visible, and he treats himself to be dwelling in every object, calling itself me. That dwelling state of the power of knowing is called vaasana.

Vaasana underlies the mind and intellect. Kaamana says, "I would like to attain this object." Out of that vaasana, kaamana emerges, which you will translate as desire. Kaamana is that thing which you don’t have and you want to get. That much scarcity you feel. When you simply see a flower, it is not kaamana. But is a flower is not there and you want to produce it, sow the seed, and then grow the flower, that is kaamana.

Vaasana is when your real being got set in the world of forms, saying, "This is the beginning of my existence. This is me, the world. This is me, the body." When it is well set then, because of the consciousness, a desire will come out of the same field, as a wave will come out of fluid water. Fluidity permeates throughout water. Vaasana permeates throughout the world forms. Vaasana is that sense which has no knowledge of its ultimate reality, the source. Rather, it has the knowledge that the things are. It says that these things are, but it permeates them. Vaasana is a dwelling consciousness permeating all the forms, making all the forms, becoming the wide world and calling it the infinitely vast world.

Kaamana is when a human being wants to attain that which he doesn’t have. He makes efforts on the body level. When a man is not married, kaamana comes becomes he doesn’t have a wife. Out of vaasana, kaamana will come with a great gush and power of inspiration so that all your efforts will be put into that sense.

If you have one wife or one child you will want one more, then one more, then one more. That is called trishna. All businessmen are involved in trishna. Trishna creates a great fire in you—more now, more now. Many people have one wife. Then they get a second wife because the first one leaves. The second wife also leaves, thinking that it wasn’t right on, so a third, a fourth, maybe a fifth wife comes and he is not satisfied. That is trishna. Trishna is never fulfilled.

A good example is a the desire for a car. As a child one has a tricycle. Then he gets a motorcycle. Then he has a jeep, a car, and then a van. At the age of 50 he hopes to have a Mercedes. It is all trishna. What type of car will he want at 60? A Rolls Royce. Someone’s grandmother has a Rolls Royce. The car is still there, but grandmother is not there. Trishna leads one to annihilation. Trishna is equal to the water in the sandy tract [mirage] which deludes a person. He is never going to quench his thirst, but he believes he will be satisfied. Trishna never ends.

The purpose of human life is to get immersed in the source, the Godhead. For scientists it is called the original existence. Life is mind. Without mind there is no human life, it would just be a mobile cabbage. Human life is mind. Life is symbolic of praan. Life makes the consciousness dwell in it. Without life consciousness could not come. So mind is consciousness. Praan and consciousness are one and the same. If praan subsides, consciousness stops. If consciousness subsides, praan remains useless in terms of thinking and knowing. Praan and mind is human life. A tree has life but no mind. Animals have life, but they don’t have a thinking mind so they can't think of becoming a divine human being. A horse can think about being a faster runner, but it cannot think about transforming itself. Only a human being with his nervous system can think about realizing the Self. A human being is the manifestation of divinity but, due to vaasana, he doesn’t know who he is.

Vaasana is the first shakti [power] that makes the Self Himself forget. It is from the same Self, but the moment water manifests, the wave appears to be different. A bird appears to be different from the egg. Egg appears to be different from the hen, although they are the same. This apparent sense of duality is vaasana. From there desire comes, kaamana comes and trishna comes. If a person becomes the victim of trishna he will have to incarnate again and again in the wheel of birth and death, because he will never know his true nature.

Emancipation from vaasana, kaamana, trishna will come when one knows the Self. That can happen with the unfoldment of the Self Realized state, the name of which is nava-sargan. Without nava-sargan, man has his old mentality, traditional mentality, empirical mentality, profitable mentality, avoiding-loss mentality, growing-further mentality. That is all due to vaasana.

Aatma Shakti: Vaasana is not just the network of form, but the very fluidity in the water or the consciousness.

Swami-ji: In consciousness, vaasana is. Consciousness will not know if vaasana is not. Vaasana is in knowingness. As long as it is inside the knowingness, it is not the spider’s thread. The moment it manifests, it becomes consciousness. The conscious part of a human being is equated with the fluidity of the water. Water is there. Where did fluidity come from? It is part of the water. Where did consciousness come from? It is part of God, or part of Self. But when it is fluidity, it can make waves. Without that, it is frozen Self or stationary Self. But consciousness is not directly helpful. Many idiots or trees or little children or old folks are conscious. So consciousness is not enough to fulfil the purpose of God Himself who is seeking fulfillment; not a man. If your work is not fulfillment, then it is not yagya [sacrifice], not satsang, not following the path of the Self. You can do anything, but that consciousness will never get you released because it will never produce the Self Realized state.

Consciousness is found in vaasana. Vaasana turning into consciousness will have the sense of duality. You will deliver your daughter and call her other than yourself. You cannot say that she is you. To say that she is you, you have to do saadhana. Then it is not vaasana. Saadhana is totally opposite to vaasana. Transformation is opposite to all the works which are being done. Other works are traditional works. But the Self Realized state is nava-sargan, it is totally opposite. Saadhana eliminates vaasana. The moment knowledge appears, you will know that you never became other than yourself, not even prakriti, not ahankaar or the three gunas, but you are the original Self, and then you have attained Moksh, the liberated state.

As long as the desire remains to attain this bliss or that bliss, it is still karma Yog—it has not yet become kartavya [one’s duty to realize Self.] Kartavya karm is action for the sake of the attainment of the knowledge of the Self. You may have any profession or lifestyle, but kartavya karm should be introduced.

A human being is made of vaasana. In every single cell there is vaasana, In every hair, in every bone there is vaasana. That is the sense of duality, which you think is ego, some parasite, some forgetfulness, whereas the whole body is nothing but the product of vaasana, as light is nothing but the flame. Vaasana is not burned by expanding the darkness so that you can see, or putting more dust in your eyes so you can see, or adding more clouds to clear the sky.

Vaasana will go away when the sun comes, when light shines, and when darkness is not there. When the Self Realized state appears, vaasana is not there. It has never been. It is not that you have to work on it for ages. The moment you know that you have never been vaasana, you are released.

It is that simple.

We pour upadaysh [knowledge] on a piece of wood. If it doesn’t have an empty bowl [hollow place], it will not retain water. It is the same with the intellect that daily gets the water of upadaysh and cools off, but it cannot retain it. So, daily you have to dig. Dig means you have to know and repeat, "I have always been the clear sky." Don’t equate your characteristics with the cloud. Then you are realized.

But clouds appear to hover in the sky. People call that the mind. They insult the mind calling it foolish or a drunken monkey which has been bitten by a scorpion.

But God knows when the mind happened! How can you inspire a person to know that the mind was never there? It was all you. How can you inspire a person made of DNA to know that his legs were not there when his mother conceived him? Now he says he has legs, knees, toes. How can you change the human view that says he has legs or he has mind? Mind or legs are just the same. You cannot even measure the mind weighing one ounce. The nose weighs two ounces. You think that the mind is the most unique reality with human beings who are found dug in the graveyard—then there is no mind. How will you change this fashion?

You will never forget

When Self Realization takes place, treat it that is me. Every single day you have to pile it up, pile it up. The more the merrier. Your Self Realization will be in abundance. The nature of it will be that you will never forget. At this time you remember and learn. The moment forgetfulness comes, you forget. But then you are convinced of your forgetfulness and you are never convinced of your remembering. Guru’s job is to keep giving constant light so that the lamp shouldn’t say that it is extinguished. The wick, wax, candle, lamp, and oil or ghee are the same. When the lamp is lit, the lamp as a whole says that it is enlightened. In a split second, when some storm of forgetfulness comes, it is extinguished and then it says that it has never seen the light or that it needs to be enlightened. Your system is meant to unfold Pure Consciousness and when it will be opened, you will never forget.

You are pure Self. Always speak from that side. You also have a second rail. You are a train with two rails. On the relative field, you are a body. On the other rail, you are the Self. You cannot get out of that because the train will not run on one rail. You need both.

Whenever you say that you are this body, it is all perfect. Keep knowing that the other rail with which you are this relative existence is there, otherwise the train would have turned upside down. You have both. That is cosmic intelligence.

(After someone had said, "We have to journey back to the source.")

You cannot journey back to the source. We are hoping that to get back to the source is like driving a car from Manali back to Kullu. That is the relative mentally: it became crystallized and we cannot drop it. If you drop the idea that there is mirror and there is reflection, then whatever remains is you. That is not going back to the source. You are the source. You are body. You are talks. You are this and that. You are the world. Everything you are. To know that is possible, but to go back to the source is not possible.

People think if a thought comes they should send it back to the source. You cannot get it back to the source. The first mistake is that thought came. Thought never comes. Snake never comes. How did this coil [pointing to a microphone wire] appear to become a snake? Why did a snake appear to come? That is a human being. A human being never came on earth. The one who sees this, for him, God alone is. He may not use the word God, but that is the reality. You saw a child come out of his mother’s tummy and everyone calls him her son. To me it is different; he is not her son. It is my light. I am playing with my own light like a flower plays with its own fragrance.

You cannot go back to the source. You cannot return to your mother’s tummy. Ignorance cannot go back to the source. What do you have you do? Bring light. If there is darkness and all the people in Florida try to push the darkness towards New York, they can’t push it. Just light the lamp at your center and the whole Florida is lit. Enlightenment can happen but the system cannot go back. A doctor’s hope is that the human brain should not be there so that the hospitals will be closed and the doctors will be free. But the brain cannot go back. It has been made. The sun cannot go back. But the beauty of the human intelligence is that the spark which is lying dormant can be enlightened, the whole body can be filled with that, the body of the world can be filled with that, and then there are no more bodies.

Quotable:

Between you and me, there is one difference.

You forget once and it becomes a very big thing.

I remain forgetful and remember once and know. 'This is it.'