What is the Purpose of This World?

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His Divine Grace
A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami
Prabhupada
Founder-Acarya of the
Hare Krishna Movement

My question is What is the purpose of this world? Why has God created it? And if god has created it then everything happening is HIS wish. So why all this going on??? Why few people love god and have faith in him and why others give all kinds of logic's that they are born in this world and doing (karma for self) what has God made them for! Madhudvisa dasa (02-16-08)

"Please clarify my questions. I have faith in Krishna ji and want that the lord help me in keeping his name and faith in me for ever and I'll grow step by step towards Him."

Thank you very much for the nice question, "What is the purpose of this world? Why has God created it?" It is something that bewilders many people. The key to understanding the purpose of the world is that God, Krishna, has given us a limited amount of independence. He lets us act as we like. But at the same time we are responsible for our activities. So in actuality, although the hand of God is behind the creation of this world, it is actually created by us, not God.

This material world is created to give us, the souls who want to be happy independently from God, a place to live. Here in the material world our intelligence is covered by "maya," illusion, and we are trying to become the lord and master of the world. We are forgetful of the Supreme Personality of Godhead and instead of surrendering to Him and serving Him we are trying to get others to surrender to us and serve us. We want to be God. We want to be the master. But actually we can not be God, we are constitutionally very small and God, Krishna, is very great. This is eternally true. God is always God and we are always servants of God.

But because we want to be God, God has created this material world to allow us to "play God." So, covered by maya, we are thinking we are the Lord and master of this world. So this material world is created by God to enable us to fulfill our desire to "play God." So this world is created by OUR desire NOT God's desire.

God is not forcing us to think in a particular way. We have a little independence and if we choose to try and be happy separate from God there has to be somewhere for us to go. There is no question of being separate from God in the Kingdom of God, the Spiritual World, so Krishna, God has created this material kingdom so we can become the King here...

But we can not be happy separate from God. Our constitutional, natural position is to serve God. So even though there seems to be so many pleasurable things in the material world, none of them are truly satisfying. This is because we are spiritual by nature therefore no material pleasure can actually satisfy us.

So there is actually no real pleasure in this material world at all. The actual pleasure is in the spiritual world. Krishna confirms in the Bhagavad-gita (8.16) that this world is a place of misery where repeated birth and death are going on:

abrahma-bhuvanal lokah
punar avartino 'rjuna
mam upetya tu kaunteya
punar janma na vidyate

From the highest planet in the material world down to the lowest, all are places of misery wherein repeated birth and death take place. But one who attains to My abode, O son of Kunti, never takes birth again.

So this material world, created by God, Krishna, to enable us to fulfill our desire to be "happy" separate from God IS a place of misery. There is no happiness here. The happiness is in the spiritual world, the Kingdom of God, where everyone is engaged in their natural constitutional position as a servant of God.

The suffering and pain of this world should serve as a reminder to us that this material world is not a nice place, it is not our home. Our home is in the spiritual world, the Kingdom of God...

So a thoughtful person will see the sufferings of this world and ask the question: "Is there a way to end the suffering?" and such questions are the beginning of spiritual life and the beginning of actual human life. The Vedanta Sutra begins with ahato brahma jijnasa, "In the human form of life one should question about spirit [brahman]."

We have this human form of life and it is a very valuable facility for making spiritual advancement. We should see this material world for what it is, a place of suffering where we can not be happy, and use our time and energy here to reestablish our forgotten relationship with God, Krishna. That is the real purpose of life. It is completely pointless to try and make arrangements to live comfortably here in the material world. It is not possible to be comfortable here. We can see science, medicine and technology have advanced so much over the past 100 years, but we are no happier than the people were 100 years ago. In fact with so much stress, so many new diseases, so much pollution and so much violence in our society, we are probably more disturbed and unhappy than our ancestors were 100 years ago...

Even though the scientists, the doctors, the politicians, the economists, etc. have worked very hard to make this world a happy, comfortable place, every day it becomes a more uncomfortable, intolerable place...

We can not improve our "standard of life." We are all destined to suffer a certain amount and enjoy a certain amount because of our karma [reactions to the actions we have performed in this and pervious lives]. That karma is fixed and cannot be changed by any type of technological advancement. So the doctors and the scientists may eliminate one type of suffering but because we are destined to suffer due to our karma that suffering will appear in a different way...

So the Vedic way of life is "plain living and high thinking." We should live simply, so we can provide our body with the necessary food to maintain it and use our time and energy to develop Krishna consciousness so at the time of death we will think of Krishna and go back home, back to Godhead, the Kingdome of God, the spiritual world. Then we will be really happy.

yam yam vapi smaran bhavam
tyajaty ante kalevaram
tam tam evaiti kaunteya
sada tad-bhava-bhavitah

Whatever state of being one remembers when he quits his body, that state he will attain without fail.

The easiest way to make sure we remember Krishna at the time of death is to organize our life so we can remember Krishna all the time. And in this age the process particularly recommended for that is chanting the Hare Krishna maha mantra

Hare Krishna Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna Hare Hare
Hare Rama Hare Rama, Rama Rama Hare Hare

Thanks for the nice question. Please write if you have more questions.

Chant Hare Krishna and be happy!

Madhudvisa dasa

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