Meaning Of LifeSwami Satyarupanand

Major Retd. Pravin SinghMBP Military School

Man Vs Animal• Man is the highest among living being.• Except man all other living beings are controlled

and guided by nature.• They don’t have their choice.• Sometimes it seems that other living beings

also have some choice, but they are very limited within the gamut of their nature.

• Man has infinite choice to make or mar his life.

Man• Man is the only being who can control, conquer

and mould the nature, external and internal. • Man has the unique capacity to look back into

his past and to take lessons to correct his present and future.

• Man has the capacity to plan and realise his future as well.

• Man is the only creature who can alter and improve his own life in his present life itself

Choice that Man Has• For all the living beings nature has fixed purpose

for their life.• They have no choice in this respect.• A dog has to live like a dog and die like a dog.• If a man chooses to degrade himself he can

cultivate and imbibe canine qualities and live like a dog.

• On the other hand if he chooses to become a divine being and live like a living God he can do that also.

Goal Setting• Man can give meaning and value to his life.• He can make use of nature external and

internal to help him achieve his goal.• This choice is with man himself and he has to

decide what he wants out of himself.• Once decided he himself has to execute the

plans and programs to achieve his desired goals.

Bhagwad Gita• “Let a man lift himself by

himself, let him not degrade himself, for the self alone is the friend of the self and the self alone is the enemy of the self.”

Man the Conscious being• What is the quality that makes man

superior to other living beings?• The uniqueness is the knowledge of his

own existence.• Animal exist and man exists but an animal

does not have knowledge that it exists.• But a man consciously knows that he

exists.

Struggle makes a man out of human being

• Being born as a human is something like a raw material dug out from a mine.

• Raw material has to be processed to make it useful and valuable.

• Likewise to make human life valuable and useful it has to be processed through various stages in this big factory known as the world.

First Steps

The Goal/AimThe Human PersonalityThe Means

The Goal/Aim• What is the end process of this process?• What is that finished product that we want to

achieve through this process?• Swami Vivekanand - “Each soul is potentially

divine. The goal is to manifest this divinity by controlling nature external and internal. Do this either by work or worship or psychic control or philosophy by one or more or all of these and be free.”

The Human Personality• The human personality has two parts without and

within, external and internal.• Our external personality which you see when you

stand in front of mirror.• The external personality is just like a case in which a

valuable diamond is kept, which is million times more valuable than case itself.

• But suppose if any person is allured by the beauty of the case itself and doesn’t try to find its valuable content……..what will we call him?

• Shall we not call him Man without Wisdom.

The Human Personality

• Likewise the human body is like casket in which jewel of supreme value the Soul of the man is residing.

• The aim of life is to penetrate this casket and find out the jewel of Soul.

• The human soul is the external mine of existence, knowledge and bliss. (सत,चि�त, आनं�द।)

• A glimpse of soul makes our life a blessing to ourselves and benediction to the society.

The Means• The Law of Karma.• Nothing can come into existence in this world

without any cause.• Each one of us is a effect of infinite past.• For good or evil he comes to work out his own

past deeds that makes the differentiation.• Each one us is the maker of his own fate.• This is law of Karma.

Law of Karma• It is our past Karma which has made our life

what it is today.• This naturally follows that what our life will be

in future depends upon our present Karma.• Let us therefore be very cautious and careful

about our present Karma and know it for certain what value we want to give to our future life.

• We must know for certain what meaning we want to attribute to our life in future.

Livelihood is not the Goal of Life

• Because of present marketing and shop keeping culture people think means of livelihood or earning money is the Goal of Life.

• Most of them are of the opinion that to become an engineer, a doctor, a business executive, a lawyer or some high officer is the aim of life.

• These vocations are means of earning money and livelihood.

Livelihood is not the Goal of Life• They can support life but cannot give meaning to it.• Although they can become very much useful if

once you decide to live for a higher cause.• These vocations can make sufficient provision for

improving our standards of living.• Raising the standards of life does not come within

the jurisdiction of the material means which raise the standard of life.

• There are other things which raise the standard of life and give meaning to it.

Identity gives Meaning to Life• One of the major and perplexing problem of

our age is the problem of identity.• Man has lost his identity and individuality.• Our present system of education, the social

interaction, modern civilization, impact of science and technology, inventions and discoveries and the political chaos all the world over has totally confused the modern generation.

Identity Crisis (Wealth)• Man has lost his individuality because in this state

of chaos and confusion he is trying to identify himself with the things that are external and have no values in themselves.

• Man identifies himself with wealth and properties thinking that they will give him status in society and satisfaction to himself.

• But a deep probe reveals that their role is only to make human life a little more comfortable.

• The value which has been attached to wealth and properties has been given to them by Man.

Identity Crisis (Wealth)• Wealth unwisely flatten our ego and gives us a

false idea of personality and that too a super personality.

• Wealth and property can never reach and touch the real being of man.

• It is not the permanent base for building human personality.

• Whenever such man looses his wealth, the whole personality of man shakes, man looses all ground under his feet and finds no place to stand and ultimately lands in misery and sorrow.

Identity Crisis (Power & Position)• There are people who identity

themselves with Power and Position, wealth may not matter to them.

• Power or position are not everlasting.• As soon as power and position is lost the

man who identified himself with it and which has become core of his personality crumbles to ground and lands into de-individuality.

Identity Crisis (Professional Skills)

• There are person who identify themselves with learning and professional skills.

• E.g. Scientists, doctors, lawyers, technocrats.• When they reach the acme of their skill and

find there is nothing more to do and with time their efficiency and skill is diminishing then they loose their ground under their feet and ultimately realizing that life is meaningless to them.

Person without Personality• The present techno scientific culture has made

man also a cog in the machine which is this present society.

• It considers Man as one of the commodities.• It gives value to a person so long he is useful

for the purpose of material gain.• Is man simply a cog in the machine?• The experience of each one of denies this fact

vehemently from within.

The Real Man• The crux of the whole problem is What is

this something more which makes a person a real man.

• If this problem could be solved we shall reach to the very source of human personality and we will find out the original source, our life will be really valuable and meaningful.

Desires• If we probe deeply into our own

mind we shall find that apart from thousand of desires the three desires that are dominant are-–The desire to Live–The desire to Know–The desire for happiness and bliss.

The Desire to Live• No one of us wants to die and we have a

natural desire to live eternally.• We can think of other people dying but rarely

we remember or think that we have to die.• How is that many people commit suicide

then?• They did not like the situation or circumstance

in which they were forced to live.• In most cases the difficulties were imaginary.

The Desire for Knowledge• Small baby puts everything in its mouth because at its

age tongue is the only means by which he understands things more than other senses.

• Because other sense organs have not developed so much.

• When the child grows it wants to tear toys and dissect everything to know what is within.

• When the same baby learns to speak he asks hundreds of questions to know everything which he perceives.

• As a mature man he reads and writes and acquires knowledge about world around him.

• Thirst for knowledge is ingrained in our very being.

Desire for Happiness or Bliss

• Everyone of us want to be happy and blissful.• We want to enjoy the world. • People take tours, perform arts like singing,

painting, drawing playing etc, people do service for others because it gives them happiness.

• Even a criminal get happiness from his wrong ways of getting pleasure.

• There is something more than the GRAND TOTAL of psycho-physical part of our personality that makes a man a Real Man.

• Something called as self (Atman) the nature of which is SAT-Chit-Anand.

• Our very being is existence, knowledge and bliss eternal.

• The Real Man is deathless and therefore birth less also.

• It is eternally existing and shall continue to exist eternally.

• Because of our ignorance we have forgotten our real nature and therefore we are sunk in misery.

Life Within and Life Without• Our senses gives us the knowledge of outside

world only. Lifelong we accumulate knowledge from without (outside) but it gives no information about oneself.

• Everyone of us feel that we have a world within as well.

• Feelings and experience like love, friendship, sympathy, jealousy, anger etc are within us.

• No sense organ can perceive them and yet we feel we have these feelings.

Life Within and Life Without

• How do we feel?• It is through that we know and feel them.• That’s why only instrument by which we can

know and feel the world is our mind.• When we withdraw our senses from without

(outer world) and try to see the things within through our mind we get acquainted with our world within.

Life Within and Life Without

• But the personality without (outer world) is no less important, it is through it we know the world.

• This knowledge of world helps us know our personality within.

• He is a really integrated man who knows both side of his personality, within and without.

Life Within and Life Without

• Half knowledge is ignorance, rather more dangerous than ignorance.

• To lead a meaningful life we need to know both side of our personality.

• If everything is within is systematic and well adjusted the personality without will also be systematic and adjustable to the world without.

• This is the secret of meaningful life.

Building the Life Within

• Morality is applied spirituality.• Spirituality is the bedrock of meaningful life,

but morality is the building block which builds the edifice of meaningful life.

• A man can never reach the goal of spirituality unless he travels through the path of morality.

• So for all practical purpose to give meaning to our life we must be moral first.

• There is no substitute for morality.

Building the Life Within• Man divorced from morality is an animal. • By curbing the animal instinct a man

becomes a moral person.• Those who do not care much of moral

life soon loose the human dignity and fall into the realm of animal world.

• Therefore to build the life within we must cultivate and practice moral virtues in our life.

Building the Life Within -TRUTH• First moral virtue to build a worthy character is truth.• Truth has two dimensions-– Absolute Truth– Relative Truth

• We should not and cannot insist in relative world that my views are right, only my angle of vision is true, rather we should be generous enough to consider the views and angles of others and try to find out the other dimensions of truth as well.

• This is very important to live peacefully and harmoniously in this world of confusion and chaos.

Building the Life Within -TRUTH• This is very important to live peacefully

and harmoniously in this world of confusion and chaos.

• Ultimately we have to reach to the absolute truth which is non- dual and one.

• The path to absolute truth is through the steps of relative truth only e.g. reaching from circumference to center.

Building the Life Within –NON-INJURY

• Non-injury and Love are obverse and reverse of same coin.

• Unless we develop Love in our heart we cannot develop non-injury.

• Hatred and selfishness are the characteristic of injury.

• These two evil stop us form being moral and immoral person can never be a man of character.

• For our own sake we must practice non injury and nourish Love in our heart.

Building the Life Within –GREEDLESSNESS

• A man consumed with greed shall succumb to slightest temptation and compromise with truth unhesitatingly.

• Greed and selfishness are wrap and woof of immorality.

• Greed knows no satisfaction.• Greedy person is restless active to achieve

more and more useless things knowing not what for.

Building the Life Within –PURITY

• Purity is our very basic nature that’s why everyone of us hates impurity.

• Purity is life transforming element of human personality.

• Purity is not only the external cleanliness but internal cleanliness also.

• Chastity, honesty and truth are essential characteristics of purity.

• Practice of purity is essential to become a man of character and a man of character can give meaning to life.

PURITY IS POWER• A pure man will always be fearless.• Sincerity will be in his blood.• Purity is the base of spiritual life and spirituality

gives worthwhile meaning to human life.• No gold can purchase them, no flesh can tempt

them, no power can frighten them.• Because they are pure to the marrow of their

bone.• Purity is the real Power.

Thank You