Life Is An Eternal Celebration🔗

Life is an eternal celebration! Once we understand each and every word of this statement, then only will we be able to understand the whole subject.

Life! What is really the meaning of life? Eastern mystics always say, 'Life has some goal.' Western philosophers always contradict this. They say life has no goal. In the east, almost all mystics, from Buddha to Krishna, Mahavir to Nagarjuna, Shankara, Kabir to Tulsidas, all the saints, all the seers always emphasized that life has some goal. In the West, almost all philosophers who have analyzed the intellect, who have studied logic, said, 'Life has no goal.'

Somebody once asked me, 'Master, does life really have a goal? What is the truth?' I answered saying, life has no goal, but it has purpose! Goal is one thing, purpose is another. We need to understand the word 'purpose'. Goal means, we travel to reach something. Life becomes a road on which we travel in order to achieve something. Purpose means the very road is the purpose! It is not that we traverse through life to attain something. The very life is that 'something'. It is not a way; it is a goal in itself.

A small story:

A few friends were sitting and chatting over a cup of coffee. The first man says, 'I know a man who has spent every single one of his evenings at home for the last 30 years since he got married.' The other man replies, 'Oh! This is what I call love, real love for your wife.' The third man says, 'You call that love? The doctor calls it paralysis!'

Most of the time, our lives are nothing but a paralysis. We don't make our decisions with our consciousness. Decisions happen without our consciousness - as if we are in paralysis and can't exercise our consciousness. If they happen by our conscious choice, because of LIFE IS AN ETERNAL CELEBRATION our conscious decision, only then is it life. It is life only when we decide to live it. Until the moment we decide to live, it can never be called 'life'.

There is an aphorism in the Upanishads which says, 'A man who decides to live is not affected by any of the karmas (unfulfilled actions).'

We need to understand what karma is; then we will be able to understand this one line. Karma means the conscious choices which we make. Conscious choices, which we continually make is what comprise karma. Our lives are nothing but the totality of our conscious choices, which we continuously make. Whether we want to or not, directly or indirectly we are choosing every time. Someone else does not choose for us. It is we who choose. It is continuously our choice, our decision. We may think somebody else decides. But it is always us who decides.

With a small example we can understand this basic truth. If somebody criticizes us, we choose to get offended. If somebody praises us, we choose to be flattered. Because this may be a habitual pattern for us, we may choose it unconsciously and so we don't even realize that we choose it. But nobody else ever chooses for us. It is always our choice. Because it has become our habit, we forget that we are choosing. Every time somebody criticizes us, we choose to be upset. Every time somebody praises us, we choose to be flattered. It is nobody else's choice but our own. We can decide either way. Sometimes when somebody criticizes us, we can choose to not get offended; we can choose to remain calm, relaxed, collected.

Continuous choices, our choices, are what is called 'life'. All our choices every minute, put together, decide our life. If we don't make decisions, if we let incidents decide the direction of our lives, then this becomes 'paralysis'. Our lives are, as of now, nothing but a series of paralyzed situations. It is only when we decide to live our lives without any interruption, without any guidance or outer forces, without any outer situations or decisions being forced on us, we decide to really live. As long as we don't understand life is our choice, our living is paralyzed.

Let us say that you get a new car, a Mercedes Benz; you get into the car and start the vehicle. You are driving around for a while. After going around the block, when you come back to your portico and your garage, you need to stop the car. Until that point you knew everything: how to start, how to operate the car, how to turn right, and left, but now you don't know how to stop. If you don't know how to stop, you will not be driving the car; the car will be driving you! In the same way, you are not living, life is living you. If you don't know how to stop the car, you are just paralyzed.

Put simply, matter is living the energy, not energy living the matter. There are two things in us: our being – energy, and our outer life – matter. If we consciously decide, if our energy decides to live without being affected by outer situations, without being touched by outer things, we start really living; our consciousness shines. Otherwise, matter lives through us; we do not live through matter. Life can be about living or it can be about paralysis. It can be either.

Understand this small thing: normally, if matter lives our life, our importance grows if matter grows. Our importance is nothing but our wealth. If we have more cars, more bungalows, greater bank balance, we get more importance. Our value increases with matter, with the things we possess. As I said earlier, our being is energy. So in this mode of life, energy gains value through matter.

If you visit the Ramana ashram in Tiruvannamalai in South Bharat, you can find small, old coconut shells, a piece of furniture, a small staff, being worshipped by thousands of people. That small staff, the old coconut shell, the small piece of furniture, all these have been touched by Bhagwan Ramana Maharishi, an enlightened person. So they are worshipped.

This is the second thing we need to understand. In Bhagwan's case, though the matter may seem small and of no apparent value, merely because it has been touched by his enlightened energy, the value of this matter has been greatly increased! In the ordinary material world, matter adds value to us. But in the case of these enlightened beings, having lived consciously, they add value to matter!