We are the survivors...

I have been acting pathetic from last few days. I do not know why. There has been so much thinking going on inside. I do not understand many things around me. Nobody else is bothering me. It’s me who is troubling me. Still with a clear head, I thought of analyzing the situation and probable causes of my internal outburst.

I had started reading “Yog Vashistha” few weeks ago so that I could find answers to questions about existence of human life. But it confused me even more. The book is immensely useful in learning how to keep the life balanced. Yog is all about that. It’s all about you and how to face every situation in life keeping your head cool and mind clean. I was just fine until then.

After that I happened to read “A Briefer History of Time” by Stephen Hawking. I really enjoyed reading that book. It made me think about several things like from where we (as in the universe) came and where we are going. I understand people who are putting so much thought in this, may not be alive to see what exactly happens in actuality when the end of the universe is close. Still they are giving their best to discover the answers. The book showed me glimpse of the infinite and enormous universe around us.

To understand what role we actually play in the gigantic game, imagine our galaxy. Our earth is the tiny part of it. Even tiny can be a big word to express it. There are millions and millions of such galaxies which form the universe. So the effect of existence of our Earth on the Universe is apparently nil.

Now imagine yourself. Out of the 6.5 billion people, a single person stands nowhere. Though s/he is a part of it, alone s/he is not even counted. When our earth does not serve any purpose of being a part of the Universe, how can an individual, have any purpose to survive at all? Is not it cruel? And still we continue to live on this planet.

Few questions are still unanswered. Why was this universe created in the first place? Are we really living in somebody else’s computer simulation? The thought is so scary. It means, everything that happens is either predestined according to whims of some ultra-intelligent species or happens randomly without any particular thought behind it. As of now we have been unsuccessful in proving that there can be "citizen universe" other than us.

So we can think that there was no thought or Big Mind behind the creation of the universe. This is the thought which has saddened me to my core. How am I supposed to live my life? Whatever I do, it will not have any effect on the surrounding because it did not have any purpose. Then why do we even exist? The very thought is so depressing. I guess, it reasons my mood swings of past few days. Really, it is evaporating my enthusiasm to live my life.

Recently, I happened to read another book. It’s "Zen Buddhism for Beginners". The book is nice. But it does not answer any of my questions. Every book on spirituality says that wisdom lies in every individual, then why do we have this craving to survive? Why do we run behind comfort and pleasure all the time? Sooner or later, we realize that the joy for which we sweated did not last long. Still the pursuit of pleasure does not come to any end.

I used to be neutral about belief in rebirth. Now I do not believe in it. How can anybody be so sure about rebirth? We can not have any recollections about our last life on this planet. I doubt whatever we can remember about our past birth by means of some spiritual processes, if at all can be trusted.

I guess it is a battle between understanding of spirituality and science within me. I always believed in spirituality. I still do. But now I can see it can not give satisfactory answers to many questions. It is not that science can answer all of the questions. But at least I can see that scientists are making some efforts to unveil the mysteries. I can not see spirituality doing any efforts in that direction.

Spirituality and science do not compliment each other in any ways. Spirituality can not give definite answers to many questions related to our existence. Spirituality answers in an abstract manner. The reasoning seems to be all intuitive. It should not shy away from its responsibility to answer these questions.

In the beginning, even Einstein’s theory of relativity was considered very intuitive and abstract. But later on, it was confirmed by many experiments and observations. Spirituality can not provide any proof in support of its statements. That is something driving me over the edge.

Suddenly Buddha is making all sense to me. He has said that life is all about pains. Certainly there are ways and means of overcoming this pain. When we realize that our existence does not matter, it certainly is a painful realization. Every feeling, every craving to gain happiness and joy in life results in pain. Maybe not immediately, but certainly after some time our efforts to experience joy do result in agony and frustration.

Now I can think that why spirituality never silenced the doubts about the purpose of our existence. The understanding was made that there is no specific mind behind creation of this universe. The people who laid the foundation stones of spirituality (and they belonged to our country) knew it all. They equally knew that revelation of this truth will result in the frustration and agony (which I am going through right now). In order to hide this eternal truth, they developed some abstract ideas about the Divine and attributed everything unexplainable to it.

Instead of making fuss about the truth, they chose to live life with happiness. Along with enjoying life, they wanted to develop a dispassionate attitude towards life. That is why the teaching about eternity came into picture. They wanted us to know that everything in the world is perishable so we should not hold on to anything if we want to reduce the pain and in turn increase the happiness in the life.

Each one of the teaching in every religion can be explained this way. The very thought behind every preaching is the same. We know that we can not survive forever and our survival is also not going to make any difference. So be brave, put on a smile and live the life. The earth and our survival is the best example to say that success and failure are relative terms. We can not brand ourselves as losers because we still do not know about any survivors in the universe other than us. So we are the best example of survivors.