Why?

If we reflect on our own lives, and consider the people we meet in our daily lives, including our family, friends, acquaintances, work associates, and chance those we meet ‘along the way’ we likely will find that very little time, thought or consideration, if any, is given to the pursuit of the answer to the question “why?”. We think about all the little details of our lives, the food we eat, the enjoyment we have, the next activity we are to undertake, our education, our participation in sports or other hobbies, our desires, our need to work and acquire money, buy things, develop a family and explore relationships, not to speak of the time we spend in dissipation or pure amusement. Few people we meet at any time who seriously consider why they are alive, and what they are supposed to do with the life they lead. There are many who will respond with a purely mechanical, process-oriented answer that they were born out of their parents’ act of procreation, and they don’t really have any purpose. They will live their lives as best they can, and when they die, it is over. There are others who accept the teachings of one religion or another, without deeper reflection, that they are here for some kind of test or trial, and if they pass they will proceed to heaven when they die, and if not, then they must ‘burn in hell’. Some believe that the world is a big game of “might makes right” and they try to control, bully, cheat, do anything at all to ‘succeed’ in the game they have accepted as their purpose. Still others have the belief that the entire life is some kind of unreality and must simply be abandoned as quickly as possible. But after all of this, very little real examination or reflection actually takes place to see if there is some deeper sense or purpose to one’s life and existence, and if there is some meaning to it all.

There are of course individuals who, one way or another, experience another reality, who understand through that experience that life has a purpose and that the individual life is meant to express that purpose in an ever greater and more perfect manner. Some experience this through what is known as a ‘near death experience’. When they return they are somehow changed, they see things from a different perspective, they return with a new insight to their lives. Others have a glimpse through a peak experience, sometimes an out of body experience, sometimes what is known as a spiritual experience. However it comes about, these individuals undertake acts such as a vision quest, a pilgrimage, a deep inner reflection and examination, or wind up seeking out and finding a teacher who has had a similar experience and who can help guide them to a new level of understanding. These few individuals actually ask the question ‘why?” and dedicate their efforts to finding an answer.

The Mother observes: “Well, to find out what one truly is, to find out why one is on earth, what is the purpose of physical existence, of this presence on earth, of this formation, this existence… the vast majority of people live without asking themselves this even once! Only a small elite ask themselves this question with interest, and fewer still start working to get the answer. For, unless one is fortunate enough to come across someone who knows it, it is not such an easy thing to find. Suppose, for instance, that there had never come to your hands a book of Sri Aurobindo’s or of any of the writers or philosophers or sages who have dedicated their lives to this quest; if you were in the ordinary world, as millions of people are in the ordinary world, who have never heard of anything, except at times — and not always nowadays, even quite rarely — of some gods and a certain form of religion which is more a habit than a faith and, which, besides, rarely tells you why you are on earth…. Then, one doesn’t even think of thinking about it. One lives from day to day the events of each day. When one is very young, one thinks of playing, eating, and a little later of learning, and after that one thinks of all the circumstances of life. But to put this problem to oneself, to confront this problem and ask oneself: ‘But after all, why am I here?’ How many do that? There are people to whom this idea comes only when they are facing a catastrophe. When they see someone whom they love die or when they find themselves in particularly painful and difficult circumstances, they turn back upon themselves, if they are sufficiently intelligent, and ask themselves: ‘But really, what is this tragedy we are living, and what’s the use of it and what is its purpose?’ And only at that moment does one begin the search to know.”

Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, Growing Within: The Psychology of Inner Development, Chapter I Emergence from Unconsciousness, pp. 10-11

Do We Know What We Seek in Our Lives?

We feel like something is missing in our lives. It could be something material, it could be just a pang of hunger or thirst. It could be a sense of emotional emptiness, unattached to a specific object. We may feel like we need to find out something, do something, know something, respond to something, although we are not quite sure exactly what it is. This sense of emptiness occurs to everyone at various times of life. In some cases, where it is attached to a specific desire we can identify what it is we seek. But in many cases, it is vague, amorphous, undefined.

As we grow in awareness, we may begin to have a feeling of aspiration toward something greater, something beyond us. Some seek a relationship with an external God or Savior. Some aspire to enlightenment, salvation, freedom from the bondage of Nature, or other forms that such an aspiration may take. This is a sign that we are readying ourselves to go beyond the body-life-mind complex and the attachment to the fruits of the external life. Even here, however, we are not always clear or certain about the specifics of our seeking, and as we grow, the nature of that seeking may change.

Sri Aurobindo writes: “Man seeks at first blindly and does not even know that he is seeking his divine self; for he starts from the obscurity of material Nature and even when he begins to see, he is long blinded by the light that is increasing in him.”

A disciple asks: “How is it that one seeks something and yet does not know that one is seeking?”

The Mother responds: “There are so many things you think, feel, want, even do, without knowing it. Are you fully conscious of yourself and of all that goes on in you? — Not at all! If, for example, suddenly, without your expecting it, at a certain moment I ask you: ‘What are you thinking about?’ your reply, ninety-nine times out of a hundred will be: ‘I don’t know.’ And ‘What do you feel?’ — ‘I don’t know.’ It is only to those who are used to observing themselves, watching how they live, who are concentrated upon this need to know what is going on in them, that one can ask a precise question like this, and only they can immediately reply. In some instances in life, yes, one is absorbed in what one feels, thinks, wants, and then one can say, ‘Yes, I want that, I am thinking of that, I experience that’, but these are only moments of existence, not the whole time. … Haven’t you noticed that? No?”

Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, Growing Within: The Psychology of Inner Development, Chapter I Emergence from Unconsciousness, pp. 9-10