What is the Ultimate Goal of life? Most people live a life like a yoyo. They experience both pleasure and pain. While good things happen, bad things also happen and they live a life that is a mix of joy and sorrow. The realized ones face miseries, tragedies, and misfortunes, but they realize apples can't grow on mango trees. They know whatever is unfolding is unfolding as per a Divine law, a Universal Law. Some call it Karma, some the Law of Action and Reaction and some the Law of Cause and Effect. While the realized ones live blissfully no matter what, not all of them who understand Karma are able to transcend Karma. Very few fortunate human beings realize the Truth and escape from this Universal Law. This is the Ultimate Goal of our life.
What is this goal and how can we achieve it? Normal human beings who understand Karma accept whatever happens gracefully. It is difcult for most to do so and thus we see humanity wailing and crying in moments of misfortune. But a good chunk of mankind today, understand this Universal Law. They don't need to be taught that apples can't grow on mango trees. They know that if bad things are happening, it is their own Karma. A very few try to escape from Karma. They are the ones who go on a quest to realize who is doing the Karma and who receives the reward of the Karma. In this quest to nd the Truth about the law, some very fortunate ones are graced upon with this Ultimate Realization.
Those who understand the law know that whatever you do comes back to you. They also understand that death is not the end, it is just a bend and that our account is not settled at death. How we are born, depends upon our own past actions. The law rewards the ME – the Mind and Ego, that is reborn in a new body. Somebody who dies, just cannot settle all good and bad dues before death. The closing balance of good and bad gets stored in corpus, a kind of warehouse of Karma and every time life ends, the balance gets added into that account.
It is just like having 5 credit cards and debit cards from a bank. Each card does transactions just as there are deposits in some of our accounts. Some credit cards may have large debit balances and some debit cards may have large amounts of our deposits as a credit balance. When we close our account with the bank, the bank will merge all our accounts, our credits and debits, our expenses and deposits and come to a nal net balance, so does the Law of Karma. The only difference is that it is not 5 simultaneous accounts but one account per life that gets added to our main account or corpus.
Each life, therefore, starts with an opening balance that we bring from our main account or corpus. If we have lot of positive or credit in our deposits, we can be born in luxurious circumstances. But if we have only negative balances, then our birth will be surrounded by suffering. While the corpus is the cause of the circumstance of our birth, it does not control our destiny. Our actions of the current life become responsible for what unfolds, despite our birth and our cumulative corpus. Whatever we do in this lifetime, good or bad, becomes our current account. If we do a lot of good, we go far beyond our opening balance and create tons of good Karma, sometimes, enough to clear our negative corpus that may be stored in our 'carried forward Karma account'.
The point seekers contemplate that, “How long will this cycle go on and on? Are we going to be reborn again and again to experience a bouquet of roses and thorns or is there a way to escape from Karma?”
As seekers study, they come to know that the body is only an instrument that experiences the Karma. The one who creates the Karma is ME – Mind and Ego. After death, the Mind and Ego is reborn in another body, but the Karma account doesn't stop. It is an ongoing, continuous account that causes the circumstances of our next birth. So, Karma actually belongs to ME – the mind and ego, and the body partly experiences good and bad between the period of its birth to death. The mind and ego continue to experience the positive and negative without death causing any difference. It is only a change of body. But the Karma continues.
In a sincere quest, some seekers contemplate that we are ME – mind and ego, not the body because the body dies. When they try to nd the mind, they realize that there is no mind. We see the reection of our eyes, nose, ears, face, and body in the mirror. If we want to see our heart, kidneys, and brain, we can see what lies inside the body through an X-ray or MRI. But has anybody seen the picture of the mind? Where is the mind, we cannot nd!
The Mind and Ego, ME is only a subtle existence. It is born out of ignorance, not knowing who we truly are. In reality, we are neither the body that dies nor the ME (Mind and Ego), that leaves at death. We are the Divine Soul. The Soul, or Spirit, Atman or Life Energy, that arrives at birth and departs at death. It is a power that gives us breath and keeps us alive. That is our real identity. Because we live in ignorance, some people identify themselves as the body. Those who understand Karma, identify themselves as ME – Mind and Ego. But those who realize the Ultimate Truth, realize they are neither the body nor the mind and ego, they are the life energy, the Atman or the Divine soul.
The moment we realize this ultimate Truth, we achieve the Ultimate Goal of life. At death, the physical body will die, and we the Divine Soul, who realize we are not the mind and ego, get liberated from the body-mind complex, to be united with the Divine. There is no further birth. All the Karma that belonged to ME, Mind and Ego, drops like a pebble in the ocean and we are freed from it. Because we live in ignorance, thinking we are the Ego, I, and this is ME – Mind and Body, and my actions are my actions, we create Karma. Because we create Karma, we have to be reborn to redeem our Karma. When we realize we are not the ME, then we don't create any Karma. We live as the Divine Soul and do whatever is the Divine will as an instrument of the Divine. We are not the doer of action. We have no desires and we create no good or bad Karma. As the Divine Soul, alive in a body-mind complex, we receive Divine commands and execute them.
One who lives transcending Karma, lives a life of Yoga, of union with the Divine. Whether one lives with devotion, meditation, education or action, all these are an offering to the Divine in complete surrender. There is no Ego that creates “my” actions. Just as the body will die at death, the ME – Mind and Ego will also die, liberating the Soul to unite with the Divine. This is the ultimate Realization of the Truth and the Ultimate Goal of humanity. Those who achieve this are liberated from the cycle of death and rebirth. They become one with the Divine and do not come back to live as a ME – Mind and Ego, in a body to experience joy and sorrow. They unite with the Divine and are transported to an abode of bliss, unknown to common man.
How does somebody who has realized the ultimate Truth live? A realized one accumulates no Karma. He renounces all actions as his own. He transcends ME – Mind and Ego and lives gracefully in the body-mind complex doing the Divine Will as long as the body is alive. Such a person is a liberated Soul, although alive. Nothing affects a realized one. He lives with a steady intellect, discriminating the myth from the Truth, renouncing pleasures of the body and mind, living with disciple and desire for Liberation and the Lord. Such a person lives in eternal peace and joy, being conscious of his true identity, realizing that he is the manifestation of the Divine. He is nothing but Divine Energy, appearing as ME – the Mind and Ego, imprisoned in a body. On overcoming the ignorance and realizing the Truth, he is liberated from all suffering, present and past, and lives a life of bliss, with nothing affecting him. Everything happening around him is a cosmic drama and he lives as an observer till he is nally liberated at death. The Realized one lives his life moment by moment, in peace and bliss. He does not swing into a past that is gone or a future not yet born. He is peaceful and blissful. This is the Ultimate Goal of life.
The Ultimate Goal of life has 3 steps. The rst step is Realization. If we want to achieve the Ultimate Goal of life, we must realize the Truth, the Truth about the Universal Law and how it unfolds on earth. Realization will make us transcend the ordinary suffering that mortals experience. Whatever happens will not affect us if we live as realized souls.
This takes us to the second step of the Ultimate Goal – Liberation. Realization of the Truth liberates us from all misery and sorrow. Although bad things seem to happen, we are unaffected by these things. We are able to transcend suffering post Realization and we are liberated from all kinds of misery and pain. The body may suffer, but we, the ones alive in the body, are liberated from suffering. The mind may worry and wander but Realization liberates us from stress and worry. Liberation also transcends the ego that seems to live in agony due to anger, hate, and revenge. Not everybody can reach this second step of the Ultimate Goal. While Realization itself is not for the ordinary, Liberation is a rare gift and it is difcult to nd people who have climbed this second step of the Ultimate Goal of life.
From this rare minority, who have both Realization and Liberation, some blessed ones experience the third and nal step of the Ultimate Goal. It is Unication with the Divine. Unless there is Realization of the Truth, which happens when we overcome all ignorance and unless we are liberated from all misery and sorrow as we live as the Divine Soul, not as the body or ME – the Mind and Ego, we can never experience Unication with the Divine. While Realization and Liberation happen during our lifetime, it is only at death that we can experience Unication. Realization liberates us from rebirth as we achieve the ultimate goal and we unite with the Divine.
