What is the purpose of human life?

Start with something nobody has to take on faith. Every living being wants happiness and tries to avoid pain. An animal is content once it is fed, sheltered and safe; offer it more food than it needs and it leaves the rest. A human being behaves differently. Shrii Shrii Ánandamúrti, the founder of Ananda Marga, points to a pattern anyone can check: the person with a hundred wants a thousand, and the person with a thousand wants a million. Someone with influence in a district wants a province, then a nation, then the world.

Each gain is real, and each one leaves the same gap behind it. The pleasure of a sweet lasts while it is on the tongue. One success fades into the wish for the next. This is not a moral failing. It shows how big the longing is: whatever we reach for, we want without limit. Ananda Marga philosophy calls the ordinary, limited kind of happiness sukha, and the endless kind ánanda, bliss.

So the question is not whether we want happiness. All of us already do. The question is whether anything can give us as much of it as we want.

The reasoning from here is short. Everything in the world is finite: money, power, fame, even the whole planet. A finite thing cannot fill an infinite want, however much of it we gather. Gathering more only feeds the want. If the longing has no limit, only something without limit can satisfy it.

Is there such a thing? Ananda Marga philosophy answers that there is, and that there can be only one, since two infinities would limit each other. That one limitless entity is called Brahma, Supreme Consciousness, or Parama Puruśa. The second chapter of Ánanda Sútram sets out the steps in order: infinite happiness is ánanda; this ánanda is what is called Brahma; and once Brahma is attained, all thirst is quenched for good.

So in this philosophy the purpose of a human life is to realize the Infinite: to come so close to the Supreme that the small self merges in it, the way a drop of water merges in the ocean. Nothing short of that will answer a longing that has no end.

Dharma is often translated as “religion.” Its older meaning is plainer: the nature of a thing, the property that makes it what it is. The dharma of fire is to burn. A fire that does not burn is not fire.

What, then, is the dharma of a human being? Not eating, sleeping, fear and reproduction, since animals share all of these. What sets humans apart is a clearly reflected consciousness, and with it a longing that no finite thing can settle. Shrii Shrii Ánandamúrti concludes that this longing for the Infinite is human dharma. Ánanda Sútram says it in three words: Brhadeśańáprańidhánaḿ ca dharmah, “To long for and run after the Great is dharma.”

Two things follow. First, dharma in this sense is one for all humanity. It is not Hindu, Muslim or Christian, and nobody stands outside it. It is measured by love for the Supreme rather than by status or learning; Shrii Shrii Ánandamúrti goes so far as to say that a thief who loves the Supreme in the core of the heart is more truly human than a learned person who feels no such love.

Second, everyone is already following it, knowingly or not. People chase money and fame because they are chasing the Infinite in a finite form. Spiritual life starts when a person does the same thing knowingly. Before setting out after the Infinite, though, it is only reasonable to ask whether it exists. Elementary Philosophy raises exactly that point right after this conclusion, and it is the next question in this circle.

If the longing for the Infinite is human nature, what does a life look like when it follows that nature? Shrii Shrii Ánandamúrti calls this human dharma Bhágavata dharma, the dharma that concerns Parama Puruśa, and describes it as standing on four legs. Take one away and the whole thing limps. The names are Sanskrit; the meanings are plain.

None of the four is a rule imposed from outside. Each describes something people already do at their best: they want to learn and grow, they feel their work go well when it is in tune with something larger than themselves, they find joy in giving, and they long for a rest that lasts. Bhágavata dharma takes these and points them at their real object. Sevá also looks ahead to the last question of the circle, how a whole society reaches the goal.

A line that Shrii Shrii Ánandamúrti traces back to Shiva sums up the purpose in one short line: Átmamokśárthaḿ jagaddhitáya ca, “for one’s own liberation, and for the welfare of the world.” It names two aims and joins them with a single word, ca, “and.”

Why both? Shrii Shrii Ánandamúrti’s reasoning runs in both directions. Someone who works only for their own liberation, and lets the world go hungry, is selfish however spiritual they look; and selfishness, left alone, eats away the very breadth of mind that spiritual life needs. Someone who works only for the welfare of the world meets the opposite problem. Selfless service needs a mind that is wide and clear. Without inner work, a selfish motive slips in at a weak moment and spoils the service itself.

There is a simpler argument too. Each of us takes a great deal from the world: food, shelter, care, knowledge. A life that only takes runs up a debt, and service is how it is repaid. And because every being is an expression of the Supreme, serving them is itself a way of moving toward the goal. So the inner aim and the outer aim are not two careers competing for the same hours. They are one movement, seen from inside and from outside.

Ananda Marga philosophy is precise about the destination, and it names two kinds of freedom. The first, mukti, is merging with the Supreme as Cosmic Mind, the Infinite with all its qualities (Saguńa Brahma). It is a real freedom, but not the final one. A mind that has merged there can emerge again into the cycle of creation.

The final aim is mokśa, also called kaevalya mukti: establishment in the Supreme beyond all qualities (Nirguńa Brahma), where nothing can pull one back into bondage. For the merging itself, Elementary Philosophy uses a homely picture. A drop of water poured into a tumbler of water does not stay a drop. It becomes the water.

Nobody has to settle these distinctions before starting out. They matter for one reason: they show how far the longing really reaches. A better life will not satisfy it, and neither will a very high spiritual state. It is made to rest only in the Infinite itself.

Why begin with the purpose? Because a direction comes before a method. Shrii Shrii Ánandamúrti compares a life without a goal to a boat rowed hard with no destination: the labor is wasted, and the boat may be caught in a whirlpool. Every later question in this circle depends on this one. Whether the goal is real, what stands in the way, how a person moves toward it, how a whole society moves toward it together: each assumes we know where we are going.

The circle also ends here. The obstacles, the practices and the work for a just society all lead back to the same point: a happiness without end, reached by each person and shared by all. Seen from the end, the purpose was never far away. It was there all along, in every ordinary wish for something more.