Questioner:
Why am I here exactly? Why am I alive?
Swami Premodaya:
You will absolutely—I guarantee you, no matter what, never know why you are here. No matter what! No matter if you live a thousand more lifetimes and reach the highest spiritual peak and know everything that’s possible to know—you will never know why.
It’s not the wrong question; the question is right; this question is everybody’s question. What I’m saying is, it can never be answered, because the question only exists for human beings, and it only exists for human beings from the aspect of the limited mind. It’s a mind question. That isn’t a criticism. Only the human mind asks, “Why?” Existence—any word you want to use: Existence, Truth, Reality, God, the Universe—whatever, insert the word that’s least offensive to you, or the most all-inclusive to you—the Universe doesn’t deal in “why.”
It doesn’t exist in existence. There is no dimension of “why.” That’s a human mind fabrication. Now, it’s very tricky, because it’s everybody’s fabrication. There’s no culture that doesn’t have it. There’s no place on the planet, no people on the planet, that don’t deal in “why.” But nothing else ever deals in “why.” No tree has ever asked, “Why?” No aspect of existence has ever asked “Why?” Has ever concerned itself with the question of “why.” No armadillo has ever turned to Ms. Armadillo and said, “Why, honey?” It just doesn’t exist.
So, I want to give you unsolicited advice: as completely as possible and quickly as possible and really as possible, to see through all whys and literally abandon them.
That is a circular path. “Why” only takes you to more questions of why, which have many vicissitudes. Well, “why” leads to “how,” and “how” leads to “when,” and “when” leads to “where”—but it’s all the same, going nowhere, because the universe won’t cooperate with your “why.” You can come up with an answer—you can actually fabricate or think that, “From the sky, a great answer has been given!” The mind is powerful. You can come up with something that will seem absolutely true and real, maybe even change your life, and it’ll be false. There is no “why” anywhere in existence.
I’m not saying facetiously the answer is “because;” I’m saying seriously the answer is “because.” It’s the only answer—there’s no “why.” There’s no answer to that, because the question is not relevant to anything that exists and not considered by any aspect of existence, other than the tiny little subsection called “the human mind,” which loves that question because it’s like fuel to a rocket. It keeps the mind going. You can ask that every minute of the day, every day of the year, every year of your life—and never run out of things to think about. So, “Why am I here?” Not possible to address, no matter what. If you become God, you will not have an answer to “Why am I here?”
…So this is very subtle, because it doesn’t mean that there’s no value to asking why and it doesn’t mean there’s no usefulness or purpose to considering the meaning of why.
I’m really being very specific; it means: Recognize that there’s no answer, no ultimate answer, to the question of “why?” It’s not the same as, “It’s a dumb question,” or, “The question has no meaning.” The question has meaning; it’s the right question, but at some point, you can’t go anywhere with it; what I’m suggesting is that you get to that point as quickly as possible, that that becomes a jumping-off point.
…“Why” is a very specific level. It really only means, “What is the meaning?” That is all it means. It doesn’t mean, “What is happening here?” If you apply it to a given situation in daily life, we are almost never asking, “What is the meaning?” We are really asking a more practical question. And that is the problem. We never look for meaning; we look for practicality. We look for practicality because we are lost.
…If we start questioning the meaning too much—which is the essence of the spiritual search—it gets painful, it gets difficult. Everything gets called into question; everything gets seen as “up for grabs.” Our most cherished notions, our most deeply held beliefs, our most dear and cherished ideas, suddenly are up for grabs; suddenly may not be what we thought they were.
This is scary stuff. The people that come to a meeting like this, usually, aren’t very uncomfortable with the question of ”why?” But if you think about the general world, there’s not a lot of encouragement; there’s not a lot of support to really ask, “Why?” To really delve into the meaning of whatever’s going on. The support is utilitarian; the support is, “Let’s look at ‘what.’ Let’s look at what the pattern is; let’s look at what the events are.” It’s a more materialistic mindset.
So I’m saying a very strange thing. I’m saying, at the same time and in the same breath, that there’s no answer to the question “why?” and that in that sense, it’s a purposeless question or a question that leads you nowhere specific, and I’m saying, at the very same time, it’s the only important question. Not in the specific sense, not in the sense of, “Why this?” or, “Why did he do that?” “Why did she do this?” It doesn’t matter—the world is much bigger than that; the universe is bigger than that.
It doesn’t matter why this happened on Tuesday, why that happened on Thursday, why this city decided this, why this country went over there. Ultimately, what does it matter? Ultimately, it’s all a wash, right? Just get far enough in your perspective, just fast forward ten thousand years—what does it matter? Just beam out to a billion planets and what does it matter?
That is the “what.” This is why we’re talking about this, because everybody has some degree of confusion. It’s impossible not to be confused about it. “Why” is mistaken for everything that isn’t “why,” and usually when that’s the case we’re thinking, “what?” but we are calling it “why.” We are telling ourselves that we are questioning the meaning, when all we are doing is looking for safety, looking for an answer that satisfies us, that we can hold on to, so that we aren’t swinging in the wind. What I’m saying is, you’re always swinging in the wind, you’ve always swung in the wind, and you’ll always swing in the wind. That’s where you are, and the more and the quicker you question whether that’s true or not—and if you find it to be true, accept it—the closer you are to what’s real, the closer you are to what’s true, the closer you are to what is beyond any understanding of “why.”
“Why?” is the most important question, because it’s the beginning of everything that matters. Until you seriously, with your whole heart and soul, ask, “Why?” there is no real spiritual search. It always begins with, “Why? Why am I here?” That is the only way it begins for anybody, but that’s also where it ends, because “why” can’t take you to where you want to go, “why” can’t give you the answer, “why” can only take you around in a circle.
All I am talking about is: I hope for each and every one of you, that circle does not last a lifetime. It does not need to, and the only way to start getting beyond it is to start to see what is really meant by ‘why’—what you are really asking when you, with all your heart, look up at the sky and say, “Why?”
You have to know what you are asking. You have to know what your real question is. And it is very deceptive. You can ask why and be asking something very different than what you think you’re asking. So you have to find out your real question.
If you really dig into that, with many people it will turn out to be “What? Help me understand what’s happening,” and that’s not the search for Truth; that’s the search for safety. That’s the search for, “Help me position myself the right way on this planet, in the material realm.” Now, I’m not against the material realm, but I am against people living there. It’s not a good place. It’s fraught with dangers; it’s beyond insecure, and when you swing in the material realm you bump your head a lot, so I’m suggesting you can swing somewhere else.
So I’m not saying you can’t know anything; I’m saying that what you can know is unfathomably tiny compared to what is absolutely unknowable. Unknowable doesn’t mean it isn’t there or you aren’t living in it—unknowable just means with this apparatus, there’s no way.
I’m saying you can plant both feet in the unknowableness and live there every minute of the day. For some of us music takes us closer; for some of us painting takes us closer; for some of us dance takes us closer; for some of us the sunset takes us closer.
You can be even closer than that—you can build your house there. You don’t have to go to the museum. If you build your house there, something happens, something changes. And that change is possible for everybody. Everybody can build their house there. You pass through the confusion; you pass through the horror; you pass through the fear; you pass through whatever it is that human experience and existence requires passing through, and then something unimaginable and unfathomable takes over, and it takes over in such a way that “why” is never a trap again.