The True Purpose of Life

A house, a career, a marriage, children: is life meant for accumulating these achievements? Or is there, behind each of them, a deeper reason for being to our time on Earth? This article explores what The Path offers as the true purpose of life.

A woman, in the luxurious living room of her English cottage, looks out the window at her children playing in the garden and her husband mowing the lawn, seemingly wondering about the deeper meaning of life. — All this is fine, but don't forget that life has a deeper meaning beyond all that.

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The True Purpose of Life

What the Cycle of Incarnations Reveals

A house, a career, a marriage, children: is life meant for accumulating these achievements? Or is there, behind each of them, a deeper reason for being to our time on Earth? This article explores what The Path offers as the true purpose of life.

The Path's aim is to stop letting the mind scatter itself in thoughts and emotions; but toward what end? There is a reason for being behind our coming to this Earth. The same one for all living beings: through the cycle of incarnations, every being rises gradually from the simplest forms of life toward ever more evolved forms, up to human incarnation, where this reason for being finally becomes accessible to consciousness.

The reason for life is to allow the soul to return to its source in full consciousness and full freedom. Self-awareness and free will come through incarnation and samsara, so that the consciousness gained through incarnation refines itself life after life, through free choices made between ignorance, darkness, and knowledge, light. This deeper reason is what gives the path its meaning, but it is not, on its own, enough to carry the daily effort.

In Asian spiritual traditions, there is talk of Liberation from the chain of incarnations. But in the West, when you love life, you don't feel much urge to be freed from it! To aim for Liberation, and for it to be motivation enough, you would need to be Hindu, Buddhist, or Jain.

This isn't to say Liberation stops being the ultimate goal of the path; it simply doesn't speak much to the everyday experience of someone in the West. Don't forget that this life will have an end, and that its reason for being isn't simply to live it. If living were all there was to it, what would you need with being human, with this capacity for reflection, and this free will? Being an animal would be enough. An animal doesn't ask itself existential questions. It will start asking them once it's incarnated as a human; that is what's proper to being human.

You are a Human: one day, you arrive; another day, you leave. In between, there is a set span of time meant for accomplishing something specific: that is the purpose of existence. It isn't simply about having a house, for instance.

It's remarkable: some people's whole purpose becomes owning a house. They spend twenty or thirty years of their life paying it off, planning for their old age. How many elderly people end up spending their final days in nursing homes? So what becomes of all those years spent paying off the house? Leaving it to their children as an inheritance? But children are very often forced to sell it just to cover inheritance taxes!

Buying a house is a good thing, but it isn't the purpose of life. Nor is social status. How long does a career actually last? Once someone who spent a lifetime as a lawyer retires, what are they? A retired lawyer? Does that new status get engraved on the brass plate downstairs, by the street? That same energy, put toward Realization, could have kept bearing fruit long after professional retirement ends.

Is the purpose of life to marry, or not, and to have children? A child doesn't stay a child forever, so what, then, is the point of existence? To reproduce? But we don't reproduce ourselves; we're obeying instinct; a child is not another version of oneself.

There Is a Purpose to Life

There is a purpose to life, and not scattering oneself helps fulfill that purpose. In the Bhaktimàrga, the book of The Path, verse 99 states: "Incarnation is a departure, death a return." One can very well hold ordinary life goals, like the ones just listed; how could it be otherwise? But does that mean the deeper purpose deserves no attention at all?

Having spent a lifetime becoming familiar with the inner light, through meditation on the light, you will recognize it at the moment of death: this white light will appear to you, together with another light, a softer one tinged with pink, that of the pregnant woman's womb, announcing a new incarnation.

Knowing how to recognize the white light you will have grown familiar with throughout your life, you will know which one to move toward in order to be free. Existence is the training ground for this passage to the other side. You won't escape this moment, so you might as well prepare for it.

Along with consciousness comes free will. This fundamental freedom is what makes you human. Because of it, a Human being does not remain in a state of bliss at all times. If someone were forced to stay in bliss, would they truly be free? Freedom has a price, and that price is confusion: the confusion one sinks into every time one gives in to tamas or rajas, without ever moving toward sattva.

What matters is living in the present moment. There are methods for reaching this, and The Path is one of them. All the concepts you might build up about life do little or nothing to help you truly enjoy the present moment. To enjoy the present moment, you must be attentive to it. This is one of the aims of the sadhana of The Path, of its Yoga-Originel.

Once you have received the Revelation and you observe the sadhana, you notice, aware of the present moment, that you feel a deep, essential happiness. This becomes your main motivation: to feel well.

Your existence grows lighter and takes on its full dimension. You no longer put satisfying your desires first, but rather your own fulfillment. You sense that you are on the right path, doing what you came into this world to do, and that is a very great happiness.

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