Questioner: What’s… what’s for me the purpose of life,
if you can give an insight on that?
Thank you.
Sadhguru: Isn't it fantastic that if there is no purpose,
you have nothing to fulfill,
you can just live?
Hmm?
No,
but you want a purpose
and not a simple purpose, you want a God-given purpose. (Laughter)
It's very dangerous.
People who think they have a God-given purpose
are doing the cruelest things on the planet.
Yes or no?
They are doing the most horrible things
and they’ve always been doing the most horrible things
because when you have a God-given purpose,
life here becomes less important than your purpose.
No,
life is important.
Life is important -
when I say life,
I am not talking about your family, your work, what you do, what you do not do, you party
I am not talking about that as life.
This is life, isn't it?
Life is within you or around you?
The… the ambiance of life
you’re mistaking the ambiance of life for life.
Your home, your family, your workspace, your party
this is all ambiance of life.
This is not life, isn't it?
Yes or no?
Participants: Yes.
Sadhguru: You’re mistaking the ambiance for the real thing.
No.
Life is important
because it's the only thing you know,
you don't know anything else.
Do you know something else?
Rest is all imagined stuff, isn't it?
The only thing is that this is beating and alive and that's all there is.
So, is this important?
It is of paramount importance.
Not you as a person, that’s not important,
but you as a piece of life
it’s very important
because that is the basis of everything.
When I say that is the basis of everything,
the universe exists for you only because you are, isn't it?
Yes or no?
The world exists for you only because you are,
otherwise it won't exist in your experience.
So, in every way this is important.
So, what is the purpose for this?
See, if you had a purpose and if you’ve fulfilled it,
after that what would you do?
After that, what would you do?
Bored, isn't it?
It is just that life is so intricate and so phenomenally intricate
that if you spend a 10,000 years looking at it carefully,
you still will not know it entirely.
If you spend a million years looking at it with absolute focus,
still you will not know it in its entirety.
That’s how it is.
There is...…Is there a meaning to it?
The greatest thing about life is that there is no meaning to it.
This is the greatest aspect of life that it has no meaning to it
and there is no need for it to have a meaning.
It is the pettiness of one’s mind that it’ll seek a meaning
because psychologically you will feel kind of unconnected with life
if you don’t have a purpose and a meaning.
People are constantly trying to create these false purposes.
Now, they were quite fine and happy.
Suddenly, they got married.
Now the purpose is the other person.
Then they have children.
Now they become miserable with each other.
Now the whole purpose that I go through all this misery is because the children.
Like this, it goes on.
These are things that you’re causing
and holding these as purposes of life
and is there a God-given purpose?
What if God does not know you exist?
No, I am just asking, by chance. (Laughter)
I am saying in this huge cosmos,
for which God is supposed to be the Creator
and the manager of these hundred billion galaxies,
in that this tiny little planet
and you
Suppose he doesn’t know that you exist, what to do?
Possible or no?
I am sorry, I am saying such sacrilegious things
but is it possible or no?
What if he doesn’t know that you exist?
What if he doesn’t have a plan for you? (Laughter)
Suppose, he doesn’t have a plan for
an individual plan for you,
don’t look for such things.
The thing is the creation is made in such a way that
Creation and Creator cannot be separated.
Here you are a piece of creation.
At the same time, the source of creation is throbbing within you.
If you pay little attention to this process of life,
you would not need any purpose.
It’ll keep you engaged for a million years if you want.
There is so much happening
so much means so much unbelievable things are happening right here.
If you pay enough attention,
a million years of existence, it’ll keep you busy or more.
Right now, the need for purpose has come
because you’re trapped in your psychological structure,
not in your life process.
Psychologically your
your psychological structure functions from the limited data that it has gathered.
Within that it rolls and right now,
your thought and emotion has become far more important than your life. Isn't it so?
Isn't it so?
So, because of this you’re seeking a purpose as an escape from the trap
that you have set for yourself.
It is a trap set by you.
You can easily come out of it.
If the trap was set for you by somebody else,
difficult to come out
because they’ll set the trap in such a way that you cannot come out, isn't it?
I am… I am talking about life not marriage,
that’s what I mean. (Laughter)
That’s what. (Laughs)
So this is a trap set by you.
This is easy to come out,
but that is the whole thing.
Why it is so difficult is
now you’re identified with the trap,
you like it.
You like it because it gives you a certain sense of
safety and security and protection and individual identity.
If you build a cocoon around yourself,
it gives you safety,
but it also imprisons you.
Walls of self-preservation are also walls of self-imprisonment.
When it protects you, you like it.
When it restricts you, you do not like it.
That is why we have doors.
We like the walls because it's protecting us,
but we have doors so that we can open it and get out when we want to.
It doesn’t matter how nice it is, we still want to go out, isn't it?
So that is how it is with every trap that you set.
It doesn’t matter how nice it is, you still want to go out.
So, the psychological wall that you’ve built,
which gives you some sense of identity,
which gives you some sense of being a person
an individual person and which gives you security
beginning to experience it like a trap;
somewhere you want to break it.
So, one way of not breaking it is to find a purpose.
Those who find a purpose in their life,
they become so conceited.
They will live within their own trap forever
thinking that they’re doing the most fantastic thing.
First thing you need is balance.
If you have balance, then you can climb.
If you don’t have balance, it's better you stay on the ground”, isn't it?
It's not safe for somebody who is not balanced to climb high.
It's best you stay close to the ground.
You should not climb.
So, first thing is to establish a balance,
then you loosen your psychological structure,
then it's a wonderful thing.
If you are loosening your psychological structure without balance,
which lot of people are doing today
see, why does somebody want to drink alcohol or take a drug
because it loosens your psychological structure and makes you feel liberated for a moment
but without the necessary balance
you have not worked for the balance, but you got freedom.
Freedom without balance is destruction, anarchy, isn't it?
So, first thing is to work for balance,
an enormous sense of balance
where even if you dismantle your psychological structure,
you can simply live here.
Dismantling your psychological structure is an important process
because that is your trap,
that is your security,
that is your stability
at the same time, that’s your trap
because the walls are set, you feel secured, but that’s also your trap.
If you dismantle your trap,
you also dismantle your security, isn't it?
You also dismantle your sense of purpose.
You also dismantle everything that matters to you.
So, that will need balance.
Without balance, if you dismantle you’ll go crazy.
But, don’t look for a purpose
because if you look for a purpose, you are seeking madness.
If you find one, you are sure mad.
Yes. (Laughter)
If you think you’ve found a purpose in life,
you still… you’re for sure gone crazy
because only the insane people have purpose
or people who have a purpose are insane in many ways.
These are things that you create in your mind
and believe it's true, isn't it?
Right now - ‘fighting for my country is my purpose’
right now if it's necessary, I’ll fight knowing fully well it's an unnecessary bloody fight.
Yes.
Then you’ll fight only to the extent it's necessary.
If you think this is your purpose,
you would want to destroy the whole world for what nonsense you believe in, isn't it?
If something is needed, we will do it
with… with absolute involvement.
There’s no other purpose.
The purpose of life is to live and to live totally.
To live totally does not mean party every night. (Laughter)
To live totally means
before you fall dead, every aspect of life has been explored
nothing has been left unexplored.
Yes?
Before you fall dead, even if you do not explore the cosmos,
at least this piece of life (Referring to oneself) you must know it in its entirety.
That much you must do to yourself, isn't it?
That’s living totally that you experience the whole of this,
all dimensions of what this is. (Gestures)
You did not live anything untouched.
You just do that.
That will take a long time.
That’s …good enough purpose for you. (Laughs)