SUSTAINING AN EVERYDAY HUMAN LIFE

It is only possible to sustain a day-to-day human life and all its petty annoyances, frustrations, indignities and the like to say nothing of its sufferings, by means of a belief in the endlessness of one’s intrinsic nature. Even the suicide is convinced that he or she is going to something better, be it at the expense of the extinction of everything he or she currently considers as life. As soon as it becomes apparent to the intellect that the individual’s life is a succession of trivial and senseless events which have no purpose, no goal and no value, then enthusiasm for living, the vital force, whatever that may be, drains from the body and from the mind. The individual then embarks upon a search for the unchanging, the changeless in the trackless sea of pointless change. The beginning of this search is the origin of all the so-called ‘higher’ activities of the human race: their religion, their art, their science, their philosophy. This is why people prefer these activities to most others. The practitioners of these things no longer live unambiguously in the everyday world. They have in a very real sense died and their activities are greatly enhanced by this fact. They can only continue by means of a contemplation of what is incorruptible and eternal in themselves.