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Nobody knows – and there is no way to know it, and there is no need to know it. This constant questioning – why am I here? Why am I doing this? This constant hankering for the why is a disease of the mind. No answer is going to satisfy you because the why can be asked again. If I say something – you are here because of this – the why will be pushed back a little, that’s all. You will again ask: Why? The why is never-ending.

Once you understand it, you drop it. The why is ridiculous. Rather than asking why you are here, it is better to use the opportunity, it is better to flower, it is better to exist authentically. And the beauty of it is that once you start existing authentically, truly, once you stop all nonsense thinking and you start delighting in life, once you are no longer a philosopher, the why is answered. But it is not answered by anyone from the outside, it is answered by your own life energy.

The answer is possible, but it is not going to come as an answer; it is going to come as a lived experience. The answer is going to be existential, not intellectual. The question is intellectual. Drop it! Rather, be! Otherwise, you can go on asking. For centuries man has asked millions of questions; not a single question has been solved by speculation, thinking, logic, reason. Not even a single question is solved. On the contrary, whenever people have tried to answer a question, the answer has created a thousand and one more questions.

Who created the world? That has been answered: God created the world. And then immediately the question arises: Who created God? Or: Why did he create the world? When did he create the world? And why did he create such a world – so miserable, so hell-like? The one who was answering you that God created the world must have thought that your question would drop; but out of one answer, a thousand and one questions arise. The mind is a question-creating mechanism.

So the first thing to understand is: drop questioning why. Immediately you become religious. Continue with the why, you remain philosophical. Continue questioning, and you remain in the head. Drop questioning. Suddenly the energy moves in a new dimension: the dimension of the heart. The heart has no questions, and in that the answer hides. It will appear paradoxical, but still I would like to say to you that when your questioning stops, the answer comes. But if you go on questioning, the answer will become more and more elusive.

Why are you here? Who can answer it? If it can be answered, you will no longer be a man, you will become a mechanism. This mike is here and there is a reason for it; it can be answered. The car is there in the porch: the why can be answered. If your why also can be answered, you become a mechanism like a mike or a car – you become a utility, a commodity. But you are a man, not a machine.

Being man means freedom. Why is there freedom? You can raise the question, but the question is foolish. The why about man cannot be answered. And if the why about man cannot be answered, how can it be answered when you ask it of the ultimate, of God? Even about man, the why cannot be answered – about God it is also almost impossible even to raise the question rightly.

My effort is not to answer your questions, but to make you aware that out of a hundred questions, ninety-nine are simply foolish. Drop them! Once you have dropped the foolish questions – they look very philosophical – the one real question remains. And that question is no longer concerned about irrelevant, nonessential things. That one question is concerned about existence, about you, your being. Not why you are here, not about the purpose of your being here, but about your being here – who you are: Who am I?

This can be known, because for it there is no need to go to anybody else; you can go inside. To answer it, there is no need to look in the scriptures – you can look inward. To answer it, you just have to close your eyes and go into inner silence. You can feel yourself – who you are. You can taste the flavor – who you are. You can smell it, you can touch it. This is existential questioning. But why you are here, I don’t know. And there is no need to know.

The second thing to be understood: whenever you ask such questions, they are indicative of certain states of mind. For example, whenever you are miserable, you ask why. Whenever you are blissful, you never ask why. If you are suffering, you ask: Why am I suffering? But if you are dancing blissfully, at ease, deep in contentment, do you ask: Why am I blissful? The why would then look ridiculous.

We ask why about something which is not acceptable to us. We ask why about suffering, misery, hell. We never ask why about love, happiness, blissfulness, ecstasy. So the why is simply an indication that you must be miserable. So rather than asking why you are here, ask why you are miserable. Then something can be done because misery can be changed.

Buddha used to say to his disciples: “Don’t ask metaphysical questions; ask existential questions. Don’t ask who created the world; don’t ask why he created the world. These questions simply show that you are living in misery. Ask why you are miserable, then the question is alive and something can be done about it. Something which will change your misery, which will transform the energy that is involved in misery, will release it from the misery. And the same energy can become a flowering of your being.”

You are here – who are you? You cannot ask me that question. A real question has to be faced by yourself. How can I answer your question, who you are? If you cannot answer, then how can I answer your question, who you are? Whatsoever I say will be from the outside – and you are there, deep, very deep within yourself. You have to go deep, you have to fall into your own abyss, into that inner space where only you are and nobody else; not even a thought passes by.

Only in that space will you have the answer – not a verbal answer, not that somebody will say from within you that you are a soul, or you are God. Nobody will say anything, because there is nobody – pure silence. But that silence is the answer. In that silence, you feel, you know. There is no need to give you any information. No words are needed. You have touched your rock bottom, your innermost core.

It happened that a small boy was initiating his younger brother about school. The first grader said to his four-year-old brother: “The smart thing for you to do is not to learn to spell your first word. The minute you learn to spell 'cat' you are trapped. From then on the words get longer and longer and longer.”

If you are here, you have spelled the word 'cat'. This question is asked by one of my sannyasins, Yoga Pratima. You have spelled the word 'cat' already. Now the words will become longer and longer and longer – you are trapped! So rather than asking why you are here, use this opportunity. Allow me and allow yourself – toward a transformation of your being. Allow me to enter you! Don’t ask stupid questions. Open your doors.

Rather than answering you, I can help you toward an inner transformation where all questions disappear – and the answer appears. But that is experiential. You will know it, but you will not be able to tell others. You will know it, your whole being will show it; your eyes will say something about it – there will be a glow around you. People who have eyes to see will be able to see that you know it. But you will not be able to say who you are. No word can express that – it is so tremendously vast. You can have it, but you cannot express it.

So what do you want? Should I give you a verbal answer why you are here? Can’t you see that whatsoever I say will be irrelevant? I can say: Because in your past lives you have earned many good karmas, you have been very virtuous – that’s why you are here. Is that going to help? That will make you even more egoistic. That will create a barrier between me and you. Rather than being open, you will become more closed.

What do you want? Do you want me to say that I have called you as among a chosen few? You have not come, but you have been called? You would like such answers, but they are meaningless and harmful because once you start feeling that you are of the chosen few you will miss me, because these are all tricks of the ego. It goes on playing so many games.

Don’t ask for answers. Ask for the answer. Then I can show you the way, I can lead you toward the temple. Once inside the temple, you will know. And there is no other way to know it. Knowing from somebody else can never really be knowledge. It remains, at the most, information. Knowing from somebody else is never intimate. It remains just on the periphery. It never penetrates to your innermost core, it never hits home.

Philosophy and religion differ in this. Philosophy goes on thinking in terms of questions and answers, reasoning, syllogism, logic – it is thinking. Religion is not thinking at all. It is more practical – as practical as science, as pragmatic as science. The method of religion is not speculation; the method of religion is experience.

Meditate more, and in the interludes, in the gaps, in the intervals when one thought has gone and another has not come in, you will have the first glimpses of satori, samadhi. This word interlude is very beautiful. It comes from two Latin words: inter and ludus. Ludus means games, play, and inter means between. Interlude means between the games. You are playing the game of a husband or a wife; then you play the game of a father or a mother. Then you go to the office and you play the game of being a banker, a businessman – a thousand and one games you play, twenty-four hours a day.

Between two games – interludes. Go into yourself. For a few moments every day, whenever you can get an opportunity, drop all games, just be yourself – not a father, nor a mother, nor a son, nor a banker, nor a servant: nobody. These are all games. Find the interludes. Between two games, relax in, sink in, drown into your own being – and there is the answer.

I can show you how to drown in interludes, but I cannot give you the answer. The answer will come to you. It is true only when it comes to you. Truth has to be one’s own – only then is it truth, only then does it liberate. My truth will become a theory to you; it will not be a truth at all. My truth can blind you, but cannot make your eyes more perceptive. My truth can surround you as a security, but it will be borrowed – and truth cannot be borrowed.