F.: So, how to navigate around the plethora of ego-driven beliefs about purpose and meaning? That task is complicated as some claim (a) that you definitely have a specific purpose; or as others claim (b) that there’s a celestially-assigned reason for your divinely-controlled presence; or as others claim (c) that you were a pre-existing soul and choose a purpose before “birth”…a choice that has nevertheless been hidden from you ever since; or as others claim (d) that a Divine Plan exists and you’re a cog in an extraterrestrial wheel; or (e) that there’s an intelligent design to what’s happening on the planet earth [the persons who believe in that concept providing the best evidence of that theory’s untrustworthiness]; or (f) that you have a purpose but it cannot be known until you understand all of the following:
(1) the origin of your soul, (2) the concept of making "before-birth" agreements and contracts that are sacred or holy (that word meaning "different" and thus a root of dualitistic thinking), (3) the language of symbols, (4) archetypes, (5) astrology, (6) the dozen or so ego-states that you are to adopt while the search continues for the one, special ego-state that you to assume, (7) the seven chakras, and (8) how to open each of those chakras in order to help in "the search for your purpose.”
What an arduous, extensive undertaking. And what an unusual game arranged by the gods or the forces of the universe, to provide a purpose beforehand but to hide it from you in a way that would require decades of accumulating more knowledge to uncover. That belief takes us to the original questioner who wondered why a universe would put him here with a purpose but not make clear to him what it is. How to navigate all the complicated, nonsensical, and contradictory formulas?
(1) the origin of your soul, (2) the concept of making "before-birth" agreements and contracts that are sacred or holy (that word meaning "different" and thus a root of dualitistic thinking), (3) the language of symbols, (4) archetypes, (5) astrology, (6) the dozen or so ego-states that you are to adopt while the search continues for the one, special ego-state that you to assume, (7) the seven chakras, and (8) how to open each of those chakras in order to help in "the search for your purpose.”
What an arduous, extensive undertaking. And what an unusual game arranged by the gods or the forces of the universe, to provide a purpose beforehand but to hide it from you in a way that would require decades of accumulating more knowledge to uncover. That belief takes us to the original questioner who wondered why a universe would put him here with a purpose but not make clear to him what it is. How to navigate all the complicated, nonsensical, and contradictory formulas?
Only by allowing to dissolve the ego that wants to believe that "you" are special, holy, sacred, or noble. Just as you are not shameful, guilty, ignoble, or an abomination, neither is any person special, holy, sacred, or noble. Realize that the "you" you refer too, that limited identification with a body, is "here" only because of an act of friction between two persons that resulted in a release of sperm. Realize that, rather than being that blessed, planned event that most egos want to believe they were, you were the fartherest thing from the mind of either parent at the time of orgasm. Realize that nothing else was involved in any magical plan to "make you" except a sperm cell and an egg. Realize that there is no truth in the relative existence, much less what some today are suggesting: that there is a courtroom in the sky with clerks who are recording and filing contracts with souls-on-ice that are waiting in mass in some soul storage facility, ready to enter into agreements that they will soon be forced to forget and then driven to labor intensively to recall (at the end of which they will assume a dozen or so ego-states but choose one that fulfills the obligations of their pre-birth contract). The fact that so many are giving credibility to such mystical concepts (and actually willing to try to do all the exercises and years of study that will supposedly reveal "purpose") only demonstrates what a huge number of magical-thinking persons are roaming about and who are willing to forfeit a pleasurable, AS IF existence and engage in years of analysis and study that make for overly-serious, tedious, and tiresome persons. How much fun do you think it will be for you, all that work? How much fun do you think it will be to be around you as you undertake all that? How much fun to be around will you be with the too-serious mindset that inspires all that doing? How impossible will all that make any goal to just be? Note the comparisons, though, to what religions ask of you, to what spiritual movements ask of you, and to what many philosophies ask of you. Only Advaita invites you to see the insanity of it all, cast it all aside, relax, take it easy, and enjoy the entertainment that AS IF living offers. See that no one can state any truth about anything in the relative realm, must less about anything in the celestial realm.
For every supposed truth anyone can offer you, someone can show you it is a lie. Suppose you are at a high rise construction site and you assert, “I can say absolutely that that is a steel beam being hoisted into the air by that crane.” A scientist can produce an electron microscope and show that what you take to be a beam is not that at all but is a swirling mass of subatomic particles. The same can be done with the crane, and the crane operator, and everything at the site. What appears to you is never what it is at all. It’s all a snake in a rope or a rope in a snake. [See 21 December 2005 glossary entry for more.] No Realized Advaitan will ever say, “Here’s the truth.” Anything that follows would be a lie. The Advaitan can suggest a manner in which you can move toward a blissful, entertaining existence and away from a dull, boring, monotonous existence: start questioning everything, see that any idea or belief ever dreamed up by any man of woman is nothing more than foolishness (regardless of any magical or mystical inspiration they might claim was the source of their concepts), and then be free of all the work that such rigid persons would try to inspire you to dedicate yourself to…forever.
For every supposed truth anyone can offer you, someone can show you it is a lie. Suppose you are at a high rise construction site and you assert, “I can say absolutely that that is a steel beam being hoisted into the air by that crane.” A scientist can produce an electron microscope and show that what you take to be a beam is not that at all but is a swirling mass of subatomic particles. The same can be done with the crane, and the crane operator, and everything at the site. What appears to you is never what it is at all. It’s all a snake in a rope or a rope in a snake. [See 21 December 2005 glossary entry for more.] No Realized Advaitan will ever say, “Here’s the truth.” Anything that follows would be a lie. The Advaitan can suggest a manner in which you can move toward a blissful, entertaining existence and away from a dull, boring, monotonous existence: start questioning everything, see that any idea or belief ever dreamed up by any man of woman is nothing more than foolishness (regardless of any magical or mystical inspiration they might claim was the source of their concepts), and then be free of all the work that such rigid persons would try to inspire you to dedicate yourself to…forever.
Only the Realized know that no Absolute can be defined in terms of a relative existence. The Absolute is all that is real and the relative is all unreal. “Purpose” and “meaning” are concepts generated by ego-states in the relative existence, and that means they are as unreal as all else in the relative. Discard all you think you know and then the only thing of value in the relative—the knowledge of the Truth that cannot be stated and the understanding of the functioning of the totality—can be Realized. Please enter into the silence of contemplation. [To be continued]
