The Purpose of Life

I am reminded of an experience I once had which taught me a valuable lesson. This experience is highly illustrative of the present state of affairs. In 1972, I had occasion to travel to a place of architectural interest in Rajasthan accompanied by Mufti Mohd. Jamaluddin Qasmi and some others. The building we had come to see was situated on top of an uninhabited hillock. We climbed the road leading up to it in a jeep, and when we reached the top, we witnessed an unimaginably strange sight. A large building with a spacious hall, built there in this desolate place, possibly by some raja or other ruler some two hundred years ago was still intact, but there was no trace of human occupancy. On the contrary, there were hundreds of monkeys in and around the building. They scampered about, making shrill chattering, meaningless noises. There is something unique about the way of a monkey. It can occupy a place with impunity, and then run and jump about for no rhyme or reason. This being the state of affairs, we had to be content with seeing the building from the outside, and left without entering it. I thought that these ‘usurper’ monkeys occupying the building did not care who had built it or for what purpose it had been built. They were just leaping about, jumping up and down and creating a meaningless clamour. Remaining totally unaware of such questions, they were indulging in activities which were little short of criminal, and which were far from being the proper use of the building. Then I began to wonder whether this criminal use of such a beautiful building would go on, or would its builder eventually appear and punish the monkeys for such outrageous behaviour and then hand it over to those for whom it was built? Let us reflect upon this example. This building had been constructed for a specific purpose. So it should, strictly speaking, have been used for the purpose it was intended for. But instead, it had been infested with monkeys who, with gay abandon, had begun to indulge in wild, noisy, riotous behaviour. This example is analogous to the entire world of today. The present planet earth has become like that building, only on a far greater scale, the men and women who have spread all over the earth having behaved with extreme irresponsibility. They look at the earth with the sole intention of fulfilling their desires, totally oblivious of the reality of who has built this world and for what purpose. How has this come about? In present times when science has discovered and made known the facts of the life support system, disseminating them on the greatest possible scale, exactly at the same time another development has taken place, viz. the coming into existence of a new culture, called the culture of instant gratification. For a variety of reasons this has happened all over the world. Where enjoyment is constantly sought, an environment has been built up in which people have come to expect that everything that exists here is meant for man’s enjoyment. Thus, under the influence of the environment, rather than as a result of any rational thinking, the life support system has virtually assumed the position of an “enjoyment-support” system. And this has reduced human society to the animal level.