Drop the goal, enjoy the path!
(Swamiji's message to devotees for Guru Poornima at the ashram, Bangalore on 21 July '05)

Guru Poornima is the day when we offer our gratitude to all the Enlightened Masters who have lived on Planet Earth. Guru is one who dispels the darkness that is your ego and brings in light. Gu is darkness and ru means dispeller.

What is ego? According to the Upanishads, as long as you work with ego, you will think that life has got a purpose and run behind the purpose. When you realize the beauty of the purposelessness of life, you have dropped your ego. Guru is the one who makes you understand the purposelessness of life. Whatever you think as worthy now, are not the real worthy things. A man with ego searches with purposes and misses reality. He misses the beauty of Brahman or Existence.

Death clearly shows that whatever mind you lived with has no real existence. When you realize the purposelessness of life, a new Consciousness will start blossoming in you. The moment you experience that there is nothing to be achieved and that the diamonds you are protecting are not diamonds but mere stones, and that all your great things in life are mere toys, you will understand the purposelessness of life. You should understand that money is not the bliss represented by the thousand-petalled lotus.

The real purpose of life cannot be understood by ego. When the ego is dropped, you will understand the Divine purpose of life, the Leelas or the Divine play. You will then enjoy the whole drama! If you keep thinking that life has a purpose and wait to achieve something, you will miss life itself. Life itself is the path, not the goal. When you have a goal, you will run and when you run, your feet will not touch the ground and you will miss the beauty of Existence or nature. When you drop the goal, the emphasis will be on the path.

When you understand the purposelessness of life, you understand the meaning of living. Until then, you are just living dead. A person in coma lies in the hospital bed. A person who walks on the road is also in coma but walking, that’s all. Both of them live without the proper Consciousness. Guru is the one who makes you realize this Truth or state of yours. The meaning of 'living' is the meaning of life or Existence.

A scientist is a man who creates a formula to reproduce something that he has discovered in the outer world for others also to experience. A Master is a man who creates a formula to reproduce something that He experienced in the inner world for others to experience inside them. He creates a formula for others to experience the Bliss or the Eternal Truth that He experienced in His own Consciousness.

Sacrificing one’s life for the sake of the goal is not the way to live. If you live this way, only the payday will be sweet. Life has to be lived with satisfaction every moment. Else every time you achieve any goal, you will only repent that you have wasted life on something insignificant. Drop the goal and enjoy life. Also, add the flavour of meditation and service to your life. Meditate on this teaching again and again. The Truth will dawn on you and the Nithyananda (Eternal Bliss) state will flower in you - the state which is the very meaning of life.

My love and blessings to you to reach the state of Nithyananda or Eternal Bliss!