I’ve been asked to go over the purpose of life once more. It’s actually useful to do so from time to time because there’s no learning I can think of that’s more fruitful.
It contextualizes everything we do. It’s the broadest perspective we can take and puts everything, or almost everything, in focus.
In this restatement, I won’t offer the numerous quotes from enlightened masters that back up what I say here. (1) And for the source of my own knowledge of this purpose, I direct you to the vision I had on February 13, 1987 that showed these matters to me. (2)
After that vision, I remained in bliss for three days. But the vision itself was wordless and, for the next ten years (twenty years before I finished writing about it), I read nothing but the works of enlightened masters, searching for words to explain what I had seen in eight seconds on that day.
I now see why that vision was given because it served as the starting point for everything I’ve written since.
One could discuss the purpose of life from two vantage points: ours and God’s, if one could be so bold as to assert that one could possibly know God’s purpose in anything.
Let’s start with our vantage point.
The purpose of life for us is to know ourselves as God. That could be alternatively stated as knowing our true identity, knowing who we are, realizing our Self, etc.
Notice that knowing is the ultimate condition. It’s love that gives rise to that knowledge. In the vision experience, I saw that bliss, the great Comforter, does bring all things to remembrance. I had intuitive knowledge of all that the vision was showing me. (3)
In the experience of universal love last November, I saw that love brought unitive consciousness. (4) And more recently, I saw that love wiped away the existential conditions that so deeply bother us. (5)
That having been said, these experiences were transitory, as all are until Sahaja Samadhi or Ascension.
The fact that knowing is what gives rise to realization explains why discrimination is so important. We must discriminate between the Real and the unreal and then realize (not just know intellectually but realize in every cell of our bodies and even deeper) who we truly are.
We realize who we are in a moment of enlightenment. And not just a moment of realization such as spiritual awakening (when the kundalini reaches the fourth or heart chakra) but knowing at a level of realization that is way beyond the chakra system, way beyond even Sahaja, which is a permanent heart opening, but far beyond that level and far beyond even the dimensions that define the human experience.
We emanate from God as a spark of life, love, and intelligence. That spark is known to all the world’s religions as the Self, the soul, the Christ, the Atman, our original face, etc.
It is known as the firebrand plucked from the burning and the lamp always burning on the altar of the heart.
It is known as the pearl of great price, the prince of peace, and the savior. It has a thousand names.
We mount Jacob’s ladder of consciousness, step by step, until we know the Son or Atman, the Mother, Holy Spirit or Shakti, and then the Father or Brahman. And far beyond the Trinity.
Once we merge again with the Transcendental One, beyond all materiality, we’re again home. Whereas many sources call Ascension “full consciousness,” in fact full consciousness would be this final act of mergence with God.
That then describes the purpose of life for us.
The purpose of having created life forms, viewed from God’s perspective, as if that were possible, is, as D’Arcy once described it, God meeting God.
When we realize God in a moment of enlightenment, God meets God, and for that purpose was all of this, all of life, created.
God is everything that is, One without a second. If you or I filled all space and beyond, if we were all that is and all that is not, how would we possibly realize ourselves? We’d have no mirror, no other, or any other means of seeing ourselves.
Therefore for God to meet God, he created finger puppets (us) and then assigned them the task of Self-Realization, at which point, for a moment, God meets and knows Itself.
I use the image of “finger puppets”, because that image, which combines individuality and connectedness, best summarizes our relationship to God. Hindus might call that image “qualified non-dualism.” It is qualified until the final mergence, at which point it becomes purely non-dualistic.
All of this that we see and hear and touch is simply an illusion, smoke and mirrors, created to allow ourselves the conditions we need to separate out the Real from the illusion.
In recognition of this, we speak of life as being a lila or divine play, maya or illusion. Our task is to see the Reality that lies underneath, behind and beyond the play or illusion.
The spark of life that we are is an eternal being so therefore we are always, already immortal and eternal. What Jesus meant by “eternal life” was winning release from the need to be reborn again into material life, a condition that’ll be ours upon Ascension.
We may, upon “death,” shuck our outer, physical body, but at no point do we lose consciousness. Instead we simply step out of one body (the physical) and find ourselves in another (the astral), in the same way as we take off our coat when we come indoors.
Consciousness is continual; “death” does not cause a break in it, except for the suicide, who may find himself or herself in a temporary condition of semi-consciousness. (6)
So this then is the purpose of life – that we realize God by realizing our own true identity. This purpose is what makes answering the question “Who am I?” central to life.
And everything we do, everything we learn simply assists us to go one more step on this long, long journey from God to God, this journey of discovery of who we truly are. And who we truly are is, we discover, God.
Footnotes
(1) For that see the essays clustered under “The Purpose of Life” at https://goldenageofgaia.com/spiritual-essays/16244-2/.
For quotes from enlightened masters that describe God’s purpose, see particularly Ch. 4 When God Meets God.
(2) For a description of that vision, see “Ch. 13 Epilogue” at https://goldenageofgaia.com/spiritual-essays/16244-2/the-purpose-of-life-is-enlightenment/ch-13-epilogue/
(3) “Ch. 13 Epilogue,” ibid.
(4) See “Review of a Spiritual Experience” at https://goldenageofgaia.com/2013/11/09/review-of-a-spiritual-experience/. “Love Sweeps Separative Consciousness Away,” at https://goldenageofgaia.com/2013/11/10/love-sweeps-separative-consciousness-away/.
(5) See “The Answer for Me is Love” at https://goldenageofgaia.com/2014/04/18/the-answer-for-me-is-love/.
(6) See “The Destiny of a Suicide” at https://goldenageofgaia.com/2011/04/28/the-destiny-of-a-suicide/.