1. Meaning Of Life
Swami Satyarupanand
Major Retd. Pravin Singh
MBP Military School
2. Man Vs Animal
• Man is the highest among living being.
• Except man all other living beings are
controlled and guided by nature.
• They don’t have their choice.
• Sometimes it seems that other living beings
also have some choice, but they are very
limited within the gamut of their nature.
• Man has infinite choice to make or mar his
life.
3. Man
• Man is the only being who can control, conquer
and mould the nature, external and internal.
• Man has the unique capacity to look back into his
past and to take lessons to correct his present
and future.
• Man has the capacity to plan and realise his
future as well.
• Man is the only creature who can alter and
improve his own life in his present life itself
4. Choice that Man Has
• For all the living beings nature has fixed purpose
for their life.
• They have no choice in this respect.
• A dog has to live like a dog and die like a dog.
• If a man chooses to degrade himself he can
cultivate and imbibe canine qualities and live
like a dog.
• On the other hand if he chooses to become a
divine being and live like a living God he can do
that also.
5. Goal Setting
• Man can give meaning and value to his life.
• He can make use of nature external and
internal to help him achieve his goal.
• This choice is with man himself and he has to
decide what he wants out of himself.
• Once decided he himself has to execute the
plans and programs to achieve his desired
goals.
6. Bhagwad Gita
• “Let a man lift himself by
himself, let him not degrade
himself, for the self alone is
the friend of the self and the
self alone is the enemy of the
self.”
7. Man the Conscious being
• What is the quality that makes man
superior to other living beings?
• The uniqueness is the knowledge of his
own existence.
• Animal exist and man exists but an animal
does not have knowledge that it exists.
• But a man consciously knows that he
exists.
8. Struggle makes a man out of human being
• Being born as a human is something like
a raw material dug out from a mine.
• Raw material has to be processed to
make it useful and valuable.
• Likewise to make human life valuable and
useful it has to be processed through
various stages in this big factory known
as the world.
10. The Goal/Aim
• What is the end process of this process?
• What is that finished product that we want to
achieve through this process?
• Swami Vivekanand - “Each soul is potentially
divine. The goal is to manifest this divinity by
controlling nature external and internal. Do this
either by work or worship or psychic control or
philosophy by one or more or all of these and
be free.”
11. The Human Personality
• The human personality has two parts without and
within, external and internal.
• Our external personality which you see when you
stand in front of mirror.
• The external personality is just like a case in which
a valuable diamond is kept, which is million times
more valuable than case itself.
• But suppose if any person is allured by the beauty
of the case itself and doesn’t try to find its valuable
content……..what will we call him?
• Shall we not call him Man without Wisdom.
12. The Human Personality
• Likewise the human body is like casket in
which jewel of supreme value the Soul of the
man is residing.
• The aim of life is to penetrate this casket and
find out the jewel of Soul.
• The human soul is the external mine of
existence, knowledge and bliss. (
• A glimpse of soul makes our life a blessing to
ourselves and benediction to the society.
13. The Means
• The Law of Karma.
• Nothing can come into existence in this world
without any cause.
• Each one of us is a effect of infinite past.
• For good or evil he comes to work out his own
past deeds that makes the differentiation.
• Each one us is the maker of his own fate.
• This is law of Karma.
14. Law of Karma
• It is our past Karma which has made our life
what it is today.
• This naturally follows that what our life will be
in future depends upon our present Karma.
• Let us therefore be very cautious and careful
about our present Karma and know it for certain
what value we want to give to our future life.
• We must know for certain what meaning we
want to attribute to our life in future.
15. Livelihood is not the Goal of Life
• Because of present marketing and shop
keeping culture people think means of
livelihood or earning money is the Goal of Life.
• Most of them are of the opinion that to
become an engineer, a doctor, a business
executive, a lawyer or some high officer is the
aim of life.
• These vocations are means of earning money
and livelihood.
16. Livelihood is not the Goal of Life
• They can support life but cannot give meaning to
it.
• Although they can become very much useful if
once you decide to live for a higher cause.
• These vocations can make sufficient provision for
improving our standards of living.
• Raising the standards of life does not come within
the jurisdiction of the material means which raise
the standard of life.
• There are other things which raise the standard
of life and give meaning to it.
17. Identity gives Meaning to Life
• One of the major and perplexing problem of
our age is the problem of identity.
• Man has lost his identity and individuality.
• Our present system of education, the social
interaction, modern civilization, impact of
science and technology, inventions and
discoveries and the political chaos all the
world over has totally confused the modern
generation.
18. Identity Crisis (Wealth)
• Man has lost his individuality because in this state
of chaos and confusion he is trying to identify
himself with the things that are external and have
no values in themselves.
• Man identifies himself with wealth and
properties thinking that they will give him status
in society and satisfaction to himself.
• But a deep probe reveals that their role is only to
make human life a little more comfortable.
• The value which has been attached to wealth and
properties has been given to them by Man.
19. Identity Crisis (Wealth)
• Wealth unwisely flatten our ego and gives us a
false idea of personality and that too a super
personality.
• Wealth and property can never reach and touch
the real being of man.
• It is not the permanent base for building human
personality.
• Whenever such man looses his wealth, the whole
personality of man shakes, man looses all ground
under his feet and finds no place to stand and
ultimately lands in misery and sorrow.
20. Identity Crisis (Power & Position)
• There are people who identity
themselves with Power and Position,
wealth may not matter to them.
• Power or position are not everlasting.
• As soon as power and position is lost the
man who identified himself with it and
which has become core of his personality
crumbles to ground and lands into de-
individuality.
21. Identity Crisis (Professional Skills)
• There are person who identify themselves
with learning and professional skills.
• E.g. Scientists, doctors, lawyers, technocrats.
• When they reach the acme of their skill and
find there is nothing more to do and with time
their efficiency and skill is diminishing then
they loose their ground under their feet and
ultimately realizing that life is meaningless to
them.
22. Person without Personality
• The present techno scientific culture has made
man also a cog in the machine which is this
present society.
• It considers Man as one of the commodities.
• It gives value to a person so long he is useful
for the purpose of material gain.
• Is man simply a cog in the machine?
• The experience of each one of denies this fact
vehemently from within.
23. The Real Man
• The crux of the whole problem is What is
this something more which makes a
person a real man.
• If this problem could be solved we shall
reach to the very source of human
personality and we will find out the
original source, our life will be really
valuable and meaningful.
24. Desires
• If we probe deeply into our own
mind we shall find that apart from
thousand of desires the three desires
that are dominant are-
–The desire to Live
–The desire to Know
–The desire for happiness and bliss.
25. The Desire to Live
• No one of us wants to die and we have a
natural desire to live eternally.
• We can think of other people dying but rarely
we remember or think that we have to die.
• How is that many people commit suicide
then?
• They did not like the situation or circumstance
in which they were forced to live.
• In most cases the difficulties were imaginary.
26. The Desire for Knowledge
• Small baby puts everything in its mouth because at its
age tongue is the only means by which he
understands things more than other senses.
• Because other sense organs have not developed so
much.
• When the child grows it wants to tear toys and dissect
everything to know what is within.
• When the same baby learns to speak he asks
hundreds of questions to know everything which he
perceives.
• As a mature man he reads and writes and acquires
knowledge about world around him.
• Thirst for knowledge is ingrained in our very being.
27. Desire for Happiness or Bliss
• Everyone of us want to be happy and blissful.
• We want to enjoy the world.
• People take tours, perform arts like singing,
painting, drawing playing etc, people do
service for others because it gives them
happiness.
• Even a criminal get happiness from his wrong
ways of getting pleasure.
28. • There is something more than the GRAND TOTAL
of psycho-physical part of our personality that
makes a man a Real Man.
• Something called as self (Atman) the nature of
which is SAT-Chit-Anand.
• Our very being is existence, knowledge and bliss
eternal.
• The Real Man is deathless and therefore birth less
also.
• It is eternally existing and shall continue to exist
eternally.
• Because of our ignorance we have forgotten our
real nature and therefore we are sunk in misery.
29. Life Within and Life Without
• Our senses gives us the knowledge of outside
world only. Lifelong we accumulate knowledge
from without (outside) but it gives no
information about oneself.
• Everyone of us feel that we have a world
within as well.
• Feelings and experience like love, friendship,
sympathy, jealousy, anger etc are within us.
• No sense organ can perceive them and yet we
feel we have these feelings.
30. Life Within and Life Without
• How do we feel?
• It is through that we know and feel them.
• That’s why only instrument by which we can
know and feel the world is our mind.
• When we withdraw our senses from without
(outer world) and try to see the things within
through our mind we get acquainted with our
world within.
31. Life Within and Life Without
• But the personality without (outer world)
is no less important, it is through it we
know the world.
• This knowledge of world helps us know
our personality within.
• He is a really integrated man who knows
both side of his personality, within and
without.
32. Life Within and Life Without
• Half knowledge is ignorance, rather more
dangerous than ignorance.
• To lead a meaningful life we need to know
both side of our personality.
• If everything is within is systematic and well
adjusted the personality without will also be
systematic and adjustable to the world
without.
• This is the secret of meaningful life.
33. Building the Life Within
• Morality is applied spirituality.
• Spirituality is the bedrock of meaningful life,
but morality is the building block which builds
the edifice of meaningful life.
• A man can never reach the goal of spirituality
unless he travels through the path of morality.
• So for all practical purpose to give meaning to
our life we must be moral first.
• There is no substitute for morality.
34. Building the Life Within
• Man divorced from morality is an animal.
• By curbing the animal instinct a man
becomes a moral person.
• Those who do not care much of moral
life soon loose the human dignity and fall
into the realm of animal world.
• Therefore to build the life within we must
cultivate and practice moral virtues in
our life.
35. Building the Life Within -TRUTH
• First moral virtue to build a worthy character is
truth.
• Truth has two dimensions-
– Absolute Truth
– Relative Truth
• We should not and cannot insist in relative world
that my views are right, only my angle of vision is
true, rather we should be generous enough to
consider the views and angles of others and try to
find out the other dimensions of truth as well.
• This is very important to live peacefully and
harmoniously in this world of confusion and
chaos.
36. Building the Life Within -TRUTH
• This is very important to live peacefully
and harmoniously in this world of
confusion and chaos.
• Ultimately we have to reach to the
absolute truth which is non- dual and
one.
• The path to absolute truth is through the
steps of relative truth only e.g. reaching
from circumference to center.
37. Building the Life Within –NON-INJURY
• Non-injury and Love are obverse and reverse of
same coin.
• Unless we develop Love in our heart we cannot
develop non-injury.
• Hatred and selfishness are the characteristic of
injury.
• These two evil stop us form being moral and
immoral person can never be a man of character.
• For our own sake we must practice non injury
and nourish Love in our heart.
38. Building the Life Within –
GREEDLESSNESS
• A man consumed with greed shall succumb to
slightest temptation and compromise with
truth unhesitatingly.
• Greed and selfishness are wrap and woof of
immorality.
• Greed knows no satisfaction.
• Greedy person is restless active to achieve
more and more useless things knowing not
what for.
39. Building the Life Within –PURITY
• Purity is our very basic nature that’s why
everyone of us hates impurity.
• Purity is life transforming element of human
personality.
• Purity is not only the external cleanliness but
internal cleanliness also.
• Chastity, honesty and truth are essential
characteristics of purity.
• Practice of purity is essential to become a man of
character and a man of character can give
meaning to life.
40. PURITY IS POWER
• A pure man will always be fearless.
• Sincerity will be in his blood.
• Purity is the base of spiritual life and spirituality
gives worthwhile meaning to human life.
• No gold can purchase them, no flesh can tempt
them, no power can frighten them.
• Because they are pure to the marrow of their
bone.
• Purity is the real Power.
