He must have been a glutton. He must have understood only one language, and that is of taste. He must have been a food addict. He says that if we count real life, then real life means those moments in which we are enjoying, indulging. It may be food, it may be sex, or other gratifications. Many people are of that type. Their philosophy seems to be: Eat, drink, be merry – and there is nothing else in life.

There has been a great philosopher in India, Charvak. This was his message to his disciples: “Eat, drink, and be merry. And don’t bother about the other life, and the soul, and God. This is all nonsense. These are just theories invented by the priests to exploit you.” He was the first Marxist. Marx came three thousand years later; he was the first Marxist, communist.

But if life is just eating, drinking, indulging, then it cannot have any meaning. That’s why in the West a new problem has become very, very important, and the problem is: what is the meaning of life? All intelligent people are asking that in the West. Why? Nobody asks it in the East; but in the West the problem has become almost epidemic. It is no longer academic; everybody is asking what the meaning of life is. And they are asking at the wrong time – when they have enough to eat, enough to drink, and enough to be merry. Why are they asking this question?

In fact, when you have all that this world can give to you, then arises the question, “What is the meaning of it?” Yesterday you ate, today you are eating, tomorrow also you will eat – so what is the point? Eating and defecating: on the one hand you go on stuffing yourself, on the other hand you go on emptying yourself. Is this your whole life? And in between there is a little taste on the tongue….

It seems absurd. The effort seems to be too much, and the result seems to be nothing, almost nothing.

Man needs to have a meaning, but the meaning can come only from the higher. The meaning always comes from the beyond. Unless you feel related to something higher, you feel meaningless. Because Nietzsche said, “God is dead,” he opened the door for many ugly phenomena. For example, nazism, fascism, communism, became possible. Because once there is no God, that door is closed from where man has always felt meaning in his life.

Meaning arises when you feel that you are part of a divine plan and you feel that you are part of a divine flow. When you feel that you are part of a great whole, then you have meaning. A brick in itself has no meaning, but when it becomes part of a great palace, part of the Taj Mahal, it has meaning. It has contributed something to the beauty of the Taj Mahal; it is not futile, it is significant.