How and why of life on Earth

The reason why people are keeping themselves so busy and entangled with life is not because they have fallen in love with life. It is just to avoid the inner struggle.
How and why of life on Earth

These questions, “What is the purpose of life? Why did God put us here?”, keep coming up again and again. Fundamentally, what you are asking is: why creation? 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 the society—you slowly started assuming that in many ways, you are the centre 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 does not 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 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 a 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. 

So the question comes up because there is an inner struggle. Maybe you are not hundred percent 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. But stories don’t liberate you. Stories just equip you to speak with some sense of authority in the next dinner party you are invited to. So when it comes to existence, don’t waste your life asking the question, “why,” ask “how.” Then we open up the path. We give you the method. Sadhguru is a yogi, mystic, a bestselling author and poet. He was conferred the Padma Vibhushan in 2017. Isha.sadhguru.org

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The New Indian Express
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