Existential Crisis: What It Means and What to Do With It

Existential crisis. Sounds like something bad, but it may actually be the most important moment of your life. It depends on what you do with it.

What Is an Existential Crisis

It is when the fundamental questions become inescapable: What is the meaning of my life? Why am I here? Why does nothing truly satisfy? Who am I, after all?

These questions do not appear by accident. They appear when the person has realized -- consciously or not -- that the answers the world offers do not work.

The Real Meaning

In Vedanta, the existential crisis has a technical name: vairagya -- a disenchantment with the illusion that objects, relationships and achievements can provide permanent happiness.

This is not pessimism. It is realism. And it is the most important prerequisite for studying Vedanta. Without this perception, nobody takes a serious interest in self-knowledge.

What Most People Do

Most try to exit the crisis by returning to the same patterns: new career, new relationship, new city, new therapy. Sometimes it works temporarily. But if the crisis is genuine, it returns -- because the questions were not answered.

What Vedanta Proposes

Vedanta does not want you to exit the crisis. It wants you to go deep into it. The questions are right -- it is the answers that need to change.

The Vedic tradition says there are four human goals: security (artha), pleasure (kama), ethics (dharma) and freedom (moksa). The first three are legitimate but limited. Only moksa -- the knowledge of who you really are -- resolves things definitively.

The First Step

If you are in an existential crisis, congratulations. Seriously. You are ready to ask the right question. Now you need an adequate means of knowledge to find the answer.