abides

The Purpose of Life

“It is in the finest reach of man’s consciousness that God abides or reveals himself most fully.”

The above sentence, written by the brilliant and renowned Indian scholar Krishna Chaitanya, expresses to me the most profoundly beautiful of thoughts. For after all is said and done, what’s it all about? Why did the creator make this awesome universe and wrap Itself within us mortals? Just for play? For ‘sport’ as some of the Sanskrit texts say?

Perhaps in the long run there is no possibility of ever permanently fixing, healing, and making right this world, as hard as we may try and breaking our hearts in the effort. We will always be caught in the flux of temporality as time washes over us, assailing our consciousness from storm to shore.

We cannot hope to resolve things here, especially in the Kali Yuga. We can only act in every given moment to the highest and greatest extent of our ability. That ‘momentary best’ will surely not be the result of being drowned in pop-consumer-culture, in media manipulation, or in piles of possessions that only bring a fleeting empty satisfaction.

Thus we are left to understand this: What truly matters is that we focus on the quality and consciousness of our actions rather than their results. In these sad and degenerate days, most are driven by consumption, by stupid greed, and the anger that destroys intelligence.

Urged on by our endless fears and insecurities, perhaps under the hazy spell of alcohol or drug induced compulsions, we commit acts we inevitably regret. We take actions that leave us scarred, unfulfilled, hopeless, and isolated from our fellow man. It’s called sin. The metaphysical meaning of sin is the state of being deluded by attachment.

Happy mystics often say that God is irresistible. Surely we can all hope to reconnect with what is less temporal, less vulnerable to Hamlet’s “slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.” We all carry the hope of finding and abiding in the ineluctable eternal, because we all sense its presence somewhere deep within each and every one of us, if only we could find the key.

I often try to imagine my consciousness back in the Satya Yuga, the Golden Age, when I knew that I was a particle of the Creator wrapped in the beginnings of a grand illusory adventure. The adventure is illusory only in the sense that it is temporal, subject to death and dissolution. There is nothing in the external world that will not decay, rot and ruin, and die in time. This world is an ephemeral, impermanent, fleeting adventure. It is not eternal, immutable and imperishable, like the God-within.

The illusion seems real enough when we are lost in it. Certainly the adventure is not illusory to the five senses when we run into that proverbial brick wall. Ouch! Our deluded attachment to the perceived apparent reality of the holographic illusion steadily grows, as our consciousness is ever moving through Time towards density from one cycle of time down into the next. Thus we perceive a kind of ‘solidification’ of matter (Rene Guenon). The veil we ourselves create thickens, and by the Kali Yuga, the Age of Conflict & Confusion, we have forgotten.

I like to imagine our consciousness in the golden Satya Yuga era. We are in that time filled with bliss consciousness. We do not need other beings to experience fulfillment. We spend our time in contemplation because that is where our Bliss is! We do not need anyone to flatter our still undeveloped ego. We know to go within and create the consciousness we have always known - our eternal Self that remains forever pure and untouched by what will envelope us in the coming yugas.

Because in that now lost golden frequency, we are closer to the vast ocean of Love that underlies this universe. The comfort and strength that comes from Bliss consciousness and real Knowledge allows us to be curious, to wonder what we might do if we are cut off from such Knowledge and our source of Bliss. What will we do? We are drawn into the hologram. Will the compulsions of the five senses overwhelm our memory? Can we remain calm and serene, intelligent and therefore, courageous.

Will the God that eternally abides within reveal Itself in the finest reach of our human consciousness, even in the darkest of days here in the confusion of the Kali Yuga. Surely the exploration of this secret sacred place, meaning, the finest reach of man’s consciousness, is the reason we all came into this universe. The purpose of Life is to immerse ourselves and revel in the great adventure of God veiling Itself within us all, and to one day awaken to smile those mysterious compassionate smiles of Krishna and Buddha and many others.

Quotation excerpted from:

The Betrayal of Krishna, Vicissitudes of a Great Myth

Krishna Chaitanya

Clarion Books, 1991, New Delhi

The Reign of Quantity

Rene Guenon

Originally published in French, 1945

Sophia Perennis, 2001, Ghent, NY

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