Namaskar. Every person has a unique purpose for being here in this world. Your birth into the life that you have is not an accident. You have come for a purpose. You are here to experience something, to do something, to learn something.
This human life is rare. To acquire form in this world, human form, is a privilege because it is an opportunity, an opportunity to express the internal leanings, the internal Samskaras, the internal reactions of the mind within the physical world and to play out the drama of your existence. It is an opportunity to move from identity with physical existence to knowledge of the sublime and the subtle.
You have come with a purpose. Your life has meaning because you are here to do something, whether it be great and affects many people or very small and affects perhaps only you and you and another. It is a meaningful purpose that you have come for, to play out the reactions of your past experience and to grow and to learn and to become more connected to your divine source, this is the larger purpose of all human life. This is your Bhagavad Dharma, your deeper purpose.
But this individual purpose, this reason you have taken the particular form that you have in the particular time and place, that also is there—you have an individual Dharma, a personal Dharma to fulfill. And so a question to ask yourself: Are you fulfilling the purpose of your life, both the larger purpose, the spiritual purpose, of your life and your unique individual reason for coming here in this form at this time?
Are you in alignment with your purpose? When you get out of alignment with your purpose, then life becomes difficult. There is a gap, a growing gap, between you—who you are, the man or woman within—and the life that you lead. And that gap between your outer personality and what you do and your inner essence leads to suffering. Because you are not expressing the deep core of who you are.
When you are out of alignment, it causes pain and confusion. You feel as if you don’t know what you’re doing with your life, why you are here. You may even begin to feel hopeless, as if life is meaningless. That hopelessness is a sign that you are not attuning to your inner essence and expressing it in your life.
Each and every person finds their unique way of expressing their inner purpose. Like all the unique flowers in a garden, each of you is a unique expression of the divine. Each of you is a unique expression of consciousness, of Purusha, manifesting in form, with a unique color, a unique fragrance, a unique purpose of being, a unique beauty to express in the world.
So you have both your individual Dharma and your collective Dharma, your Bhagavad Dharma--your path from crudity to subtlety, from physicality to awareness of the divine consciousness, the universal form, the universal essence of all being. These Dharmas must be expressed for a vibrant human life.
And the same can be said for society. When society becomes out of alignment with its purpose, with seeing to the welfare of all of its members, when greed, self-centeredness, desires for power and control dominate the society and the essential nature of the society gets subverted from assisting all the living beings collectively to the power and control of a few, then Dharma is lost in a society. And when Dharma is lost, eventually balance is lost.
The society takes actions which are imbalanced. This has happened since very ancient times, in this world and in others. A question has been asked regarding ancient societies.
Those ancient societies that developed early on in the history of this planet’s evolution, and with the help of outside forces, those colonizing the planet at different points, these societies grew up as temporary colonies and experimented. And in those experiments they released forces that were unnatural to this world and that produced destructive elements. These were only temporary societies to begin with, and they did not last because they lost their sense of Dharma. They lost the welfare of living beings and gave way to the control and power of a few, and eventually, due to certain unnatural acts, ceased to be.
Worlds, like people, evolve. Planets, like people, grow and change. The vital force within the planet creates an energy. This planet, Gaia, has within it, in the core, a dense energy which produces microvita, small particles of life. And this life transforms what would be simply inanimate existence into animate existence. So you have a living planet.
And on that living planet, within that living planet, there is the longing towards the great, the pull of subtle consciousness upon the material world. And slowly that pull forms from the vital force, the life force of the planet, different forms of being. And as these forms evolve, consciousness awakens more and more. Intelligence grows and consciousness grows in magnitude. This is the nature of what is.
As consciousness grows in magnitude, forms evolve and change to allow for greater and greater awareness, greater and greater consciousness. And so Gaia ceases to be simply material objects—rock, stone, evolution of the material world—but begins to have conscious life forms, living, growing, aware. And that mental capacity of those life forms grows and grows until the human stage is reached and there is self-awareness.
And with that self-awareness living beings pursue Dharma. Or they lose themselves from the path of Dharma. For Dharma is the path towards awakening awareness, consciousness of the infinite unitary whole of being. It is the path towards wholeness.
Dharma requires right action, action in alignment with that movement towards wholeness. When a society loses Dharma, it becomes lost in its ways and suffering ensues for those within the society until that path of Dharma can be regained and balance restored in the society; then again the way is found towards the evolution, towards wholeness.
So in today’s world there is a great challenge; there is an evolutionary jump occurring between what has been the stage of consciousness and what will be the stage of consciousness. Mind grows in magnitude. The potential creativity of human beings begins to mirror the creativity of the divine in small ways. Human beings grow and develop, but their intentions are not as yet aligned.
And so a time of challenge is here for human beings to align themselves in harmony with nature, in harmony with this great movement of Gaia towards wholeness and oneness. This is the challenge that faces humanity today.
Each of you align yourselves to the degree that you can with that wholeness of being, with the movement towards the expansion of Gaia, the expansion of human development, to a society of increased awareness. This is the great path before you now. This is the great journey that you are a part of.
Following Dharma individually and collectively to the degree that you are able, this alignment with your personal Dharma as well as the collective Dharma brings you into harmony, brings you as a force for truth, love, and the evolution of consciousness in a time when humanity is in a great transition, a transition that it must make in order to survive.