Yogi Ashwini

There are so many of us who get philosophical at times talking about life and its various facets; wondering what life is all about and why something happened when it happened. So many people come to me complaining about how life has cheated them and how they never got what they deserved; they tell me what they had to go through in life and how God has been unjust to them.

And when I tell them it is not God who has chosen the events of their lives, but they themselves are responsible, I see astonishment in their eyes. The general question that comes up then is, “Why would I choose something that is not good for me?”
To understand life and its events, we have to go back to the beginning of Creation. We all existed as part of the Para Brahma, the way salt exists in the ocean. When we were in ananda for a long period of time, we forgot that there could possibly exist another state which could well be the opposite of ananda. For us, the state that we were in was boring and we desired to experience something different. The first act was to separate ourselves from the source and realisation of the “self”.
The primary reason was the desire for a new experience, the want for something different. If one observes minutely, one realises that no one is satisfied with what they have in life. The one who has all the pleasures of the world at his beck and call as dissatisfied as the one who has nothing. This is the basic nature of human beings, for if it weren’t so life would not have come into existence and the modern day economist would not have been giving precedence over inventions.
Think carefully about what I am saying, observe each and everything around you. What’s happening all around you and with each one of us? Where are we all running? You’ll see that we’re running all the time to fulfil one desire or another.
Is there anyone here who wants nothing for himself/herself? I am yet to meet someone who is not running after an objects of desire, be it material, emotional or spiritual. The difference between a spiritual aspirant and a material seeker is that the spiritual aspirant will be seen doing things for the benefit of Creation, whereas the others do things solely for themselves.
If there were no desires, the soul would not have chosen to separate from the source and come into being. In this journey called life, every moment of a being, in any of the three states of consciousness, is just to satisfy one of the five senses, that’s it.
When the soul chose to go through a set of certain experiences, it took birth in the form it desired. The events of one’s life and lifetime came to be programmed on the basis of karma generated by the soul in its first incarnation. That is the law of karma. The events of one’s life — pleasant or unpleasant — are the choices the soul makes in order to fulfil the desires or experiences one wants to go through. And yet, majority of the people blame the Divine power for being unjust to them. The Divine power has no role to play in an individual’s life when he or she chooses a separate existence.
Like a parent looks after every need of a child and gives him the best according to his requirement, the moment the child starts taking his own decisions, he has to be responsible for the choices he makes. In the same way, when a soul chooses to go through the experiences it desires, the results are given on the basis of the karma generated.
This should make it easier for you to understand a little about life and its purpose.
The purpose of life is nothing other than experience. Period.
We spent our lifetime fulfilling the desires of the soul, and the lives to come are also going to be spent, or wasted, in doing the same thing, as there is no limit to the pleasures of the physical world. Look at everything around you; the world is busy innovating and acquiring more and more and what one has does not seem to be enough.
Every day, a new model of something appears in the market and the next few months/days/minutes (depending on the bank/karmic balance of the aspirant) are spent in fulfilling the desire to acquire the same. It is an ongoing process.
There is nothing wrong in indulging if you have the balance and the thought does not disturb you. After all, we are here for experience, right? What else is the purpose of life?
Vedic philosophy does not believe in suppression, as suppression is interpreted as violence. Violence or use of force of any kind is prohibited in yog, for it is believed that if you suppress any desire with force, it will not leave you and will bounce back with much greater force at a time when you are least prepared for it. So it becomes a vicious circle — neither can you indulge nor suppress.
For some people it is a distressing thought, paying back for pleasures lifetime after lifetime. It is here that the importance of a Guru and the relevance of yog comes in. For those who realise the purpose and want to complete the journey they have started, only the Guru can give the key to the path that can take them through this vast ocean of desires and stop them from getting lost in them. And this path is yog or tantra, and for both of these one needs a Guru, for they cannot be traversed without him.

— Yogi Ashwini is an authority on yoga, tantra and the Vedic sciences. He is the guiding light of Dhyan Foundation. He has recently written a book, Sanatan Kriya: 51 Miracles... And a Haunting.
Contact him at dhyan@dhyanfoundation.com