The Aim of Human Existence – Part 2/3 : Swami Krishnananda

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Wednesday,  05  Jul,  2023.  05:30.

Philosophy :

The Aim of Human Existence – Part 2/3 -1

(Spoken at a Conference in Delhi on Sept. 21, 1980)

Post-5.

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The Aim of Human Existence – Part 2/3 -1

We are still human beings, and we cannot be regarded as anything more than that. Whatever be the form that we give to our impulsions from within which rush forth in the name of the ideals of life, religion or spirituality, man cannot cease to be man. Whatever grows from man is also of the characteristics of man. The thoughts that arise from the mind of man cannot be other than what they are. A divine thought cannot arise from a human base.

Suffice it to say that we need not be too enthusiastic and be carried away with the idea that we are anywhere near God or spirituality or religion, in spite of the noises that people make in the name of God Himself – because God is not afraid of noises, and He may not be afraid of even our religions, much less of our spiritualities. He has managed to maintain His position secure and will not brook any shaking of His position by the thundering of our voices. This is the crux of the position I tried to pose before you so that it is perhaps wisdom on our part to realise our incapacities, if we are really incapacitated.

Wisdom is the acceptance of a position which is really there, and not the assumption of a different position altogether. Thus, if we plumb deeper into the positions that we found ourselves in as a conclusion of the analysis we conducted in the previous session, we seem to be nowhere near any satisfactory solution to our problems.


But I also sounded a note that there is something in us which would not accept a total defeat, in spite of the circumstances which will pour only rains of defeat, and nothing else, down on our heads. We have an enigmatic personality. Nothing can be more inexplicable than the personality of man. This is because both heaven and earth, paradise and hell, are blended together in this admixture called human personality. While the roars of hell are heard by us in the form of the life that we live here, there is also, at the same time, the perfume of heaven which is wafting its glory in an unsuspected and imperceptible manner, coming before us as the idea of perfection and infinitude.

Philosophical disquisitions often have the tendency to hold the opinion that the idea of God is, after all, an idea, and an idea need not be a reality. This is a very critical point which one has to face in deeper analysis of human situations. Can an idea be identified with existence, or does an idea merely remain an idea isolated from what we can regard as true existence? There is a peculiar mystery behind the very idea of perfection arising in our minds. The mystery is this, which we have to analyse further with a little bit of caution and subtlety of thought. The idea that the idea of God may be an idea is also an idea. So, we are not sure as to where we are standing.

I will explain to you how humorous this situation is by giving you an example which will make you laugh. There were two mountaineers. It appears they climbed to the top of the range of Alps in Switzerland, and somehow they lost themselves. They were on the peaks of a mountain, but they did not know where they were standing. They looked around, and everywhere there was ice and mountainous peaks. One of the mountaineers wanted to know the location in which they were standing. “On which particular spot on the range of these mountains are we standing?” His friend opened up a map, a geographical layout. He looked at the various points of space in the region of the Alps shown on the map. He looked at a point and said, "Friend, I have now found out where we are standing. Look at that mountain top over there. Do you see it? There we are standing." How can a man be standing at a place at a distance, to which he is pointing? This seems to be a very funny answer that he gave, which might have satisfied his friend. But while there is the satisfaction of having received an answer, there is a query which arises out of the very answer itself due to the peculiarity of the answer and the mystery that is hidden behind it.

*****

To be continued

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