The Way Out of the Existential Dread That Accompanies Lack of Knowing Oneself and One’s Purpose in Life

The development of existentialism as a philosophical viewpoint on human existence in the world took place primarily during the 19th and 20th centuries. it focused on the apparent lack of meaning in the universe and thus, human significance had to be developed from an individual standpoint of freedom rather than from participation in a larger universal purpose. One of the essential feelings or experiences in existentialism is the recognition that there is essentially no meaning to our existence, per se, and the development of what some of the existentialists called a sense of ‘nausea’ as a result of being thrown into an incomprehensible, absurd existence with no real purpose or guidance to follow to figure out how to live our lives. There arises a state of anxiety or what is called by many existentialists “existential angst”.

It may be fair to say that the ordinary human being, living an ordinary existence without any true sense of his own purpose or the meaning of existence, has at least a part of the experiences declared by the existentialists. The Mother describes this as kind of uncertainty or fog of the being, a feeling of unpleasantness. Her prescription to come out of this state of existential ‘angst’ is to learn, to become clear and to dedicate oneself to the larger purpose which one can discover if one does not get too tightly restricted by the artificial mental blinders that leads the individual with strong mental development into existentialism as a philosophy of living.

The Mother writes: “You must have a great deal of sincerity, a little courage and perseverance and then a sort of mental curiosity, you understand, curious, seeking to know, interested, wanting to learn. To love to learn: that, one must have in one’s nature. Not to be able to bear standing before something grey, all hazy, in which nothing is seen clearly and which gives you quite an unpleasant feeling, for you do not know where you begin and where you end, what is yours and what is not yours and what is settled and what is not settled — what is this pulp-like thing you call yourself in which things get intermingled and act upon one another without even your being aware of it? You ask yourself: ‘But why have I done this?’ You know nothing about it. ‘And why have I felt that?’ You don’t know that, either. And then, you are thrown into a world outside that is only fog and you are thrown into a world inside that is also for you another kind of fog, still more impenetrable, which you live, like a cork thrown upon the waters and the waves carry it away or cast it into the air, and it drops and rolls on. That is quite an unpleasant state. I do not know, but to me it appears unpleasant.”

“To see clearly, to see one’s way, where one is going, why one is going there, how one is to go there and what one is going to do and what is the kind of relation with others… But that is a problem so wonderfully interesting — it is interesting — and you can always discover things every minute! You can never have finished your work.”

“There is a time, there is a certain state of consciousness when you have the feeling that you are in that condition with all the weight of the world lying heavy upon you and besides you are going in blinkers and do not know where you are going, but there is something which is pushing you. And that is truly a very unpleasant condition. And there is another moment when one draws oneself up and is able to see what is there above, and one becomes it; then one looks at the world as though from the top of a very very high mountain and one sees all that is happening below; then one can choose one’s way and follow it. That is a more pleasant condition. This then is truly the truth, you are upon earth for that, surely. All individual beings and all the little concentrations of consciousness were created to do this work. It is the very reason for existence: to be able to become fully conscious of a certain sum of vibrations representing an individual being and put order therein and find one’s way and follow the way.”

Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, Looking from Within, Chapter 1, Looking at Life and Circumstances, pp. 11-12