Lost Soul (Lupta Aatman)

Hello every one.

At the outset, I would like to wish every one a great New Year. While I am at it, why not I wish every one a bright future and happy life.

Now that I took care o f the formalities, let me dive right in to my meaningless musing.

At first I wanted to write about happenings around me, my thoughts about world peace, my plans for life. Then I thought better of it and felt who will be interested in it (not that I think any one would be more interested in this rambling any way).

I started wondering why I wanted to write, or for that matter why I do things I do. In general, why people do what they do? After long introspection I concluded that this is only a tip of the ice berg and is just a corollary to the fundamental question - what is the purpose of life?

I heard some one say that God created life form. Why on earth (or any planet) did He/She do it?

Assume for a second that I am a teacher. What is my purpose? Is it to educate people? Then what? Once my pupil learn what ever there is to learn, what should they do with that knowledge?

Assume this person becomes a greatest scientist (you can assume this person to be a teacher, but then we enter an infinite loop right here as the story goes back to beginning of the previous paragraph). What is this person’s objective? What is the purpose of the greatest of the greatest inventions of this person? You may say, better environment in this world, so that future generations can live happily. But what is happiness? A saint is extremely happy living in the forest and meditating. He/She doesn't need greatest of greatest inventions/discoveries to live happily. If that is not true, then our great grand parents should have been considerably less happy compared to our generation. As an extension, each successive generation must be happier compared to the previous one. But, I see that it is not true (you would agree if you just try talking to the youth of today looking for employment or if you talk to one of the millions of people whose investments are eroding/eroded courtesy world economy). Then the great scientists productivity is of no avail and I worked hard in educating this person for nothing. Right?

There must be something wrong with my logic, as I see more and more people working harder and harder. Are we all working harder and harder towards achieving nothing? Before hard working high achievers throw bricks at me, let me correct my statement. We are definitely achieving something, but for what?

It is a universal truth that every one dies. So, all these hard working achievers are achieving things and dying, leaving their legacy to future generations. These generations also eventually die. No one convincingly explained where we all go after death – Heaven? Hell? Reincarnation? Nirvana? God only knows (if you believe such a person exists).

Come to think of it, it is very interesting concept. We tend to say “God only knows” when we don’t know about something. Little do we realize that we know nothing about God.

Now, getting back to my main musing (believe me, I will write about God sooner or later; for now let us concentrate on task at hand), if every one is dying and going to some unknown destination, what is the purpose of this hard work? Aren’t we all robots with no purpose?

Now that you are sufficiently bored with this topic and I am feeling sleepy, let me stop here. I’ll be back.