We spend all our lives in seeking what’s only temporary in nature. And in this temporariness we want permanence.
Is it even possible? Is it even practical? Is it even logical?
What is temporary by nature, how can that ever become permanent. And yet we delude our minds into assuming exactly that – that our temporary things are going to last forever.
And then we keep seeking one temporary thing after another, and keep on doing this, till the end of our lives.
Our life itself reaches near the end, and yet we only seek some temporary thing even at those end moments, even at our last breath.
Such stupidity.
Take a look at all your own desires and wants today. What do you really want from life? If you are young, you likely want a high-paying job, a beautiful partner, to travel all over the world, and perhaps to become famous or popular.
If you are at an advanced stage in your life, you still want all these things, but with more stability, or now you want many of these things for your own children perhaps, if you feel you are too old now for such things.
And when you get really old and have seen it all, you still want these things – maybe not as desperately, but the want is still there. And some wants get changed after time. Now you also want others to take good care of you, to love you, to fulfill all your desires, to give you respect, to listen to you, to spend time with you. You don’t like it when everyone ignores you and avoids you.
And then when death approaches, when you only have few moments left, when you only have few breaths left, what do you want? You still want to live; you don’t want to let go this body; you are afraid of what’s going to happen next; you still want to cling to your family and possessions; you do not want to let go your identity of who you are.
And thus, even with your last breath, some desire continues to exist in you, which only leads to some next birth. And then this same cycle continues, birth after birth after birth.
What’s even the point of chasing the same things day after day after day, and then life after life after life.
If we could see all this from a third person point-of-view, we would see what big fools we are; we would see that we are never satisfied; we are never at peace; we chase one thing, we get it, and then we chase some other thing, and this goes on forever.
The sad thing is that many people in this world will never understand how futile their chase is, how meaningless their goals and dreams are.
And then there are also those who can’t find any meaningful goal in their life, so they keep drowning themselves in all sorts of pleasures, and they think that’s what life is all about – enjoying it to the fullest. If they could only see that they, too, will only suffer at the end, that there will be no enjoyment but only pain at the end, maybe they would try to live a more purposeful life.
Anyway, no matter what you seek, no matter what you want to become, no matter what all you want to possess, everything is temporary in nature.
Even if you were granted immortality, you would see that everything is temporary in nature. This whole world is different from how it was a million years ago. All planets, stars, galaxies, and every thing in this universe is temporary in nature. Everything in this universe, along with its creation, is also bound for its destruction some day.
If you could see even the planets and galaxies getting created and destroyed all the time, you would see that they too are as temporary as any other thing in this universe. The only reason they seem to be somewhat of permanent nature to us is, we have a narrow-minded view towards every thing. We can only see every thing and relate with every thing, with our own human life span.
So, while flowers and insects, which are born and die within a day, may seem to us to have such a short life span, whereas a thousand years to us feels like such a huge amount of time, that we can barely even understand things and time-duration beyond that.
If you could realize that there are stars and galaxies with billions of years of life span, you would see how irrelevant a thousand years of humanity are in comparison with that.
So, the first thing you need to understand is the temporariness of everything. Because only when you realize and become fully aware of the temporariness of everything, can you see how futile it is to chase them. And only then do you begin to ask yourself if there is anything permanent at all, and then you start your search for it.
So understand this simple thing fully first: Your job is temporary; your life partner is temporary; you yourself are temporary; all those places you like are temporary; the food you eat, the conversations you indulge in, the pleasure you get from listening to music or watching movies or reading books – everything is temporary. Everything is fragile in nature. And everything is an illusion which exists only because of your attachment to your body and your ego.
So when everything that you do within your day is temporary, all the people that you see are temporary, everything in this world around you is temporary, then what is permanent? What is timeless?
For something to be timeless, for something to be permanent, it has to exist before anything else existed, and it must continue to exist after everything else is destroyed.
So what you can see, what you can hear, what you can smell, what you can taste, what you can feel, and even what you can think of, can’t be that permanent and timeless thing. It’s beyond the capability, beyond the reach of all your senses, irrespective of how many senses you could have.
What’s timeless is beyond everything. It is detached from everything. It continues to exist irrespective of what other things exist, or not exist, around it.
And that timeless thing is nothing but the purest form of consciousness. This pure consciousness is same as our consciousness, and same as the consciousness in animals or plants or any object. The only difference is that this pure consciousness, this ultimate form of consciousness, this eternal form of consciousness, is completely free of any desires.
It’s completely free of any attachments. It’s completely free of any rights or wrongs. It’s completely free of any Gods or Demons. It’s completely free of any creation or destruction. It’s completely free of anything and everything.
It just exists, that’s all. It can’t be felt or thought, or even be explained to anyone else. It can only be experienced. And it’s experiencing this ultimate form of consciousness, this timeless form of consciousness, which should be the goal of every human, instead of whatever goal it is right now.
When your impure consciousness becomes free of every little desire, becomes free of every little thought, becomes free of every little attachment, that is when this pure consciousness can be experienced within you.
To become one with that timeless consciousness, you yourself have to bring a change in how you think and act every day. You yourself have to become timeless in nature.
So what have you got to do with the wants and desires of your temporary body, and of the temporary mind and heart within. They mean nothing to you. Everything else means nothing to you. The only thing that is meaningful in this world is that purest form of consciousness, which you should try to experience within this lifetime.
Every prayer in this world ultimately leads to that timeless consciousness. Every meditation and spiritual practice ultimately leads to that purest form of consciousness. Every Guru and God ultimately leads to that highest form of consciousness, beyond which there is nothing else.
So, let go all the desires of your heart; let go all the thoughts from your mind; let go every feeling that you have experienced so far, and which you yet want to experience; let go all the illusions of this world around you, which exist only for a moment in the grand scheme of things.
Let go all the love, and let go all the hatred. Let go all the success, and let go all the failures. Let go all the beauty, and let go all the ugliness. Let go all the joys, and let go all the sufferings. Let go all the peace, and let go all the chaos. Let go all that’s done, and let go all that’s left undone. Let go all that’s living, and let go all that’s non-living.
And ultimately, let go even what is time-bound, and let go what is timeless. Because it’s only then that you can become one with the timeless, when even that last thread that tells you the difference between time-bound and timeless is cut off, so that only the oneness remains. Only the eternal remains. Only the permanent remains. Only what is truly timeless remains.
This is where it all comes from, and this is where it all leads.