The Mystery of Life

Everyone is faced with a long layover at some point or another. One thing I enjoy doing at airports is to find a comfortable place to sit and observe people rushing around. Airports can feel like a microcosm of the human experience, and we can likely see people in every kind of mood going through every kind of situation there. We can see people day dreaming, indulging in competitions to leave others behind, glued to their mobiles and such.

It seems like man is engaged in an eternal quest – for that “something else” that he hopes will bring him happiness, complete and unending. As a result, he is running endlessly in a self-defeating, or pointless pursuit. But the moment a goal is achieved, the happiness quotient comes down and he starts looking for another goal to keep him busy.

Seldom does one realize or look to understand why this is so, and what can bring them everlasting happiness. Very few people understand the meaning of the play because they do not pause to think deeply about it. Some even fear not having a drama to play out, because they believe that life would be so empty, boring and dead. To the unenlightened, the drama of life, often seems chaotic and unjust. But, if you think about it, God did not make all people equally poor or millionaires. This seems intentional – if everyone were alike, this dream drama could not go on.

So what is the Reality to this Mystery?

By the law of cause and effect, action and reaction, we make of ourselves what we presently are and what we will be. It is when we take life too seriously that we suffer.

Here is something Paramhansa Yogananda tells us about life: “You were sent on earth to experience God’s cosmic show and then return to your abode in Him…I say, “Lord, this is Your show. So be it. But I do not care to be a part of it, except to do Your will. As quickly as I can, I shall do Your work and get out of this play of Yours; but I want to take others also away from this delusive drama of comedies and nightmares.”

He wants us to know that irrespective of the roles we are playing, we must do our best, knowing they are temporary portrayals and never forget that as a soul, we are made in the image of God.

He also says, it is an insult to one Self to be born, live, and die without knowing the answer to the mystery of why you were sent here as a human being in the first place. To forget God is to miss the whole point of existence. We must learn to feel God, and to enjoy Him.

We came from God and our ultimate destiny is to return to Him. To reach Him, we need to love Him like the miser loves money, like the drowning man loves air, like the lover who intensely loves the beloved. Paramhansa Yogananda says: God has taken a vow of silence, and only one thing can make Him break that silence: the pure LOVE of a devotee. The end and the means to the end is yoga, the timeless science of God-union, which helps us transcend duality and enter the inner pathway to God.