What Our Goal Should Be?
The aims and objects of life conceived in terms of worldly ends are almost meaningless. We forget that pains and miseries are only the symptoms of a disease but the disease lies elsewhere. To practise devotion to please God in order to secure worldly comforts or gains is but a mockery. The problem before us is not mere deliverance from pain and misery but freedom from bondage, which is the ultimate cause of pain and misery. Freedom from bondage is liberation. It is different from salvation which is not the end of the process of rebirth. Salvation is only a temporary pause in the rotation. It is the suspension of the process of birth and death only for a certain fixed period after which we again assume the material form. The endless circle of rebirth ends only when we have secured liberation. It is the end of our pains and miseries. Anything short of liberation cannot be taken as the goal of life although there remains still a lot beyond it.
Now I come to the point what the real goal of life should be. It is generally admitted that the goal must be the highest, otherwise progress up to the final limit is doubtful. For this, it is necessary to have a clear idea of the highest possible limit of human approach. The final point of approach is where every kind of force, power, activity or even stimulus disappears and a man enters a state of complete negation, nothingness or zero. That is the highest point of approach or the final goal of life.
Many people say, "Sir, how can I fix a goal when it is an abstraction?
How do I know what is the goal? Unless I know what is the goal, how can
I fix the goal?" The importance of the goal, the idea that it is an abstraction,
need not deter us; because even in such a mundane thing as love, nobody
knows what love is, until they have been able to participate in love, see
what it is all about, see its frustrations, see its magnificence, see its
bliss, and then finally decide whether it is worth it. But philosophy assures
us, theories of God assure us, that THERE, there can be no frustrations,
there can be no disappointments, because that is the Poornathva .
In THAT is everything. And this is transcendence.
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