Suffering & Existance

Existential suffering, the suffering connected with our very existence, and liberation from that suffering. That is what is important.

Mukti cannot be attained merely through our own effort; another higher power has to give it to us.

We cannot identify any specific cause for existential suffering. Even the Buddha could not discover where this deep and disturbing suffering came from, how it arose, or why it existed.

There is always a feeling of emptiness, incompleteness and restlessness. A kind of unexplained discomfort remains within us. This reaches its maximum intensity around the age of twenty-three or twenty-four.

Our ancestors therefore introduced the institution of marriage as one way of addressing it. Marriage helped shift our mental state and bring about changes in our circumstances and surroundings.

Even after making efforts to find solutions through relationships, however, a certain dissatisfaction may remain. As a result, some people fall into depression, some turn to alcohol, some develop suicidal thoughts, and a very few turn towards spirituality.

And among those rare individuals, some ultimately move towards Mukti through spirituality.

The fundamental cause of this suffering is an escape from reality.

Because we are unable to find an answer to the question, “Why was this life given to me?”, we keep searching. We make discoveries, pursue different experiences, and look for fulfilment through various things. Yet the emptiness, restlessness and incompleteness continue to remain.

Some people transform this existential suffering into physical suffering, while others transform it into psychological suffering.

When a person is experiencing existential suffering, he or she is unable to see reality as it truly is.

In the coming times, as Artificial Intelligence and robots increasingly take over many aspects of human life, perhaps this will become even more apparent. We have already begun to see both suicidal tendencies and journeys towards Mukti emerging from these experiences.

The fundamental cause of this suffering is the sense of separation—the belief in a separate existence.

We can be liberated from this only when we realise that we are all deeply interconnected and are not truly separate from one another.

Only then will our identification with states such as “I,” “my,” “you,” “your,” “we,” and “ours” gradually begin to disappear.

And that is how, slowly and gradually, we move towards Mukti.

The Self and the Mind

When sensory coordination becomes faster, the sense of self is created.

Everyone who is born on this earth is engaged in a struggle for survival. That is the function of the self. That is the duty of the self. And that is what the self continues to do.

For its survival, the self even takes the help of the mind—the great gangster.

The biological self is the body.

The psychological self is the mind.

When these operate at tremendous speed, a false identification is created. That false identification is what is referred to as Anatma—the mistaken identification with what is not truly the Self. Like the blades of a fan rotating at full speed.

When the blades rotate extremely fast, we no longer see the individual blades clearly. We see them as one continuous form. In the same way, when the processes of the body, senses and mind operate at tremendous speed, we create a false sense of a separate, permanent self.

The self is also the reason why civilisation has grown to such an extent.

The self is necessary for growth—but only for a functional purpose.

We should use the self only for getting things done, for functioning in the world. Once its functional purpose is fulfilled, we should be able to set it aside.

We should never allow the self to become our master.

When sensory coordination is reduced, the activity of the self and the mind also slows down considerably.

That is when we begin to experience reality as it truly is.

We are capable of reaching that state.

And that is when Mukti becomes possible.

The fundamental cause of everything is this sense of separate existence.

The theelam should always remain below forty percent. That is the most important thing we need to pay attention to.