Does Life Have A Purpose?

Questioner:

Why do you maintain that Life has no purpose? If Life has no purpose, the individual life, even in pure being, can have no purpose either; because individual perfection can have a meaning only when there is a purpose in creation.

KRISHNAMURTI:

Life by which I mean, that life which is truth, in which there is no division, in which all things consummate, on which all things depend, in which all things exist that life has no purpose, because it is.

For that which is, there cannot be a purpose, because it is all inclusive. In that exist both time and space, and individual existence; but individual existence, in which totality is not yet realized, has a purpose. That purpose is the realization of this totality.

Individuality is not an end in itself because individuality is imperfection. It is burdened with incompleteness; and so the magnification of that individuality, to however great a degree, will still remain individuality. That which is imperfect cannot by magnification or multiplication be made perfect.

So the true purpose of individual existence is to realize this unity of things, this reality, in which there is no sense of object and subject, “you” and “I”, in which there are no reactions, but only the sense of pure being which is positive, dynamic. (When I use the word “positive”, I do not exclude the negative). This life is in all things in this table, as in the most highly cultured (hu)man.

But the individual in whom there is separation, in whom there is distinction of object and subject, in whom there is division, because of his limitation, his imperfection, must fulfill himself in perfection, in incorruptibility.

Therefore individual existence has a purpose, but life has no purpose.

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by J. Krishnamurti, from a gathering at Oomen, Holland, 1930