The Aim of Human Existence – 1.7. Swami Krishnananda.

 


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Wednesday, September 23,2020.

(Spoken at a Conference in Delhi on Sept. 20, 1980)

Part-1 of 4.

Post-1-7.

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1.

Philosophers have stumbled upon this difficulty and have gone to the extent of finding out if there is any qualitative superiority in our reason, in our intellects, in our ratiocinations, beyond what the senses give us as a quantity of information. We have failed utterly. We have found nothing; we see nothing. But there is a peculiar feature in our reason, or rationality; and our question which is refusing to be ignored finally, whatever be the difficulty in answering it. 

2.

The process of human history is nothing but the insistence of this question to receive an answer and the failure of humanity to provide an answer. If humanity had provided an answer to this insistent question, the world would have vanished altogether by this time. But no one has been able to provide an answer to this question, and the question refuses to be ignored. It is persisting in wanting an answer. So there is a tug of war going on in the form of human history or natural history – namely, the conflict between an insistence for an answer to the question, and the inability of the world to answer it.

3..

These sessions, The Divine Life Conference or whatever you may call it, are not leisure hours where you can listen to tales and stories from old men. Evidently, some serious questions in your minds have driven you here from different corners of the world, and I am sure you are seeking answers to these questions. You will not be able to receive these answers by merely moving about on the surface and hunting for Gurus, reading books, and jumping from place to place. Nothing of the kind will be a solution. You will find that you are not yet ready to receive this answer. 

4.

This is the reason why you are not able to find it, though the answer is pouring itself forth on your heads like a flood in the form of the meaning that is hidden behind the vicissitudes of nature. The transiency of things carries within it a meaning that is beyond the transiency of things. The ugly sight of nature’s activities secretly enshrines a beauty which can be visualised by an eye which is also your endowment, together with the physical eyes or fleshy eyes that you have, but which you have thrown aside and on which you have thrown dust and rubbish on account of a persistent habit of listening to the clamorous pressures of human society which has its own rules and regulations, falsely carrying the insignia of an answer to these questions.

To be continued ...

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