“One life, one shot,make it count.”That’s the motto of our age, I thought, as I contemplated the slogan plastered across the back of a tour bus from my apartment window. “Live a life you will remember…” the Swedish DJ Avicii’s song lyric echoes the same message. But is that enough? Is it even the real goal?
I bring this question up now because I have been very sad to follow the death of DJ Avicii, the talented musician who appeared to have it all, but who committed suicide in April 2018 at only twenty-eight.
How deceptive the external appearance of another person’s life can be.He was physically attractive, had model girlfriends,made millions of dollars, and was famed for all his musical and performance talent. He lived in a glamorous mansion constructed of glass, complete with an infinity-edge pool, and overlooking the glittering lights of that most famous city Los Angeles.What more could you want or need to be happy?
Perhaps the more ironic point was that Avicii’s music was renowned for making people happy, with its optimistic hooks, euphoric drops, and captivating messages.Many comments on his music videos on YouTube after his death expressed this sentiment: “I used to listen to your music to make me happy, but when I listen to it now I just feel depressed . . . since you have taken your life.”Avicii’s tragic death shows something is wrong with our current conceptions of what brings happiness and success.
Not that he appeared to be so invested in the fantasy of material happiness himself.
His transparency and his honesty about his struggles with a so-called enviable life attracted me to his story.He was open about his battle with alcohol, stress, and anxiety.Drinking would give him the confidence and courage he needed to perform before sometimes hundreds of thousands of fans in mammoth arenas with explosive light shows and special effects. Ironically,many said it was Avicii’s music that initiated mainstream appeal for electronic dance music and this meant they could pack out huge arenas with tons of fans. But eventually, crippled by anxiety about doing shows, he could not continue and finally retired from touring in 2016 at age twenty-six.
Avicii revealed openly what so many are afraid to admit—our attempts at happiness often leave us frustrated and empty.He commented in an interview with Rolling Stone in 2017: “The one thing that kept me from stopping [touring as a DJ] was that I felt weird—why . . . can’t I enjoy this like all the other DJs? But I’m starting to realize that a lot of the DJs who look excited at every show have the same thoughts.”And in True Stories, a gritty documentary about his touring days, he describes, “At first you get a kick out of it, like jumping out of a plane.”But then what? Yep, you can adapt to material happiness even when it comes on the mega scale.
Ever felt “I don’t belong here?”
Why is having it all not enough? Avicii’s understanding that material success does not equal happiness,mirrors the conclusions of yoga philosophy. Simply put, we are meant for a much higher purpose: our own enlightenment.Not for attaining external,material goals. These can’t satisfy the inner self, which instead needs nonmaterial sources of pleasure to be fulfilled. Like a fish out of water, nothing else suffices—all the luxuries that money can buy, all the attention and worship we can give it, can’t make the fish comfortable. Only when thrown back into its natural ocean habitat is the fish satisfied. In the same way, only in an environment of nonmaterial sources of pleasure can the deep self be peaceful and happy.
Following Avicii’s death, his family released this memorial statement (published in Rolling Stone, 26 April 2018):
Our beloved Tim was a seeker, a fragile artistic soul searching for answers to existential questions.An over-achieving perfectionist who traveled and worked hard at a pace that led to extreme stress.When he stopped touring, he wanted to find a balance in life to be happy and be able to do what he loved most—music.He really struggled with thoughts about Meaning, Life,Happiness. He could not go on any longer. He wanted to find peace. Tim was not made for the business machine he found himself in; he was a sensitive guy who loved his fans but shunned the spotlight. Tim, you will forever be loved and sadly missed. The person you were and your music will keep your memory alive.
I would hope that we all search for answers to existential questions, and—with all due respect to Avicii’s family at a devastating time—that it isn’t just the “fragile artistic soul”who grapples with “thoughts about Meaning, Life, and Happiness.”
Shouldn’t we all wonder why life is so difficult, so meaningless, and so empty, despite the materialistic propaganda? Some of us can’t take the senseless grind, and some just soldier on thinking they can take it until a crisis happens, or until they finally have to face the impending doom at natural death’s door. I myself couldn’t take it.My friends even told me that I was one of those “fragile ones” and that they were stronger for fighting through the pain, taking hit after hit. But if a house is on fire or a ship is going down, I feel it’s time to get out,my friends. I bolted at twenty-one.
I could finally escape because I was fortunate enough to discover the portal to make that exit: genuine spiritual knowledge.Without this, suicide can seem like the best solution. Stop the world; I want to get off. I’m sick from the ride. But what if there is a totally different way to ride life that doesn’t make you sick but makes you well? What if our present ride is not ultimately the real ride, and we are supposed to be doing something else, somewhere else? Who told us that the hunt for this brand of temporary and ultimately disappointing happiness is all there is to life and that there is no higher reality?
Beyond the daily grind
The perspective of the bhakti-yoga science affirms and applauds Avicii’s searching and his concerns.The wisdom advises, “Athato brahma jijnasa”: Having attained this rare human form, as a spiritual being now is the time to inquire about the truth—who are you really beyond this temporary body,mind, and life, and what greater total reality are you part of ? The big questions. And how can we find the answers to such big questions?
The famous bhakti texts, starting with Bhagavad Gita, are designed to nourish the seeker.These texts invite you into the reality beyond what life seems to be about.
And,Why would that knowledge apply to all of us? you might ask. Aren’t we supposed to create our own meaning and happiness in life?
The bhakti-yoga science, (and the whole of the yoga tradition) explains that a higher cosmic intelligence already knows us and knows how we work—how everything works. We are not independent random occurrences of personality; we are all composed and directed by the laws of nature coming from that intelligence that governs everything in reality. Dig down deep enough and we all have the same basic existential issues and roots as each other.
Isn’t it time to find out the meaning of our lives and our real purpose, beyond material goals like wealth, beauty, popularity, and status? Because these don’t cut it—their flavour is fleeting. So many of us know this, or find out pretty quick, but just don’t know what to do instead. Some choose for now to keep fighting the fight, thinking they just haven’t tried hard enough.
Conscious awareness does not end
The yoga wisdom reminds us again and again that pursuit of material success gives only temporary and inferior pleasure and that human life is really meant for pursuing our enlightenment, and then helping others do the same.That’s where real happiness lives.We don’t want another precious person to waste his or her valuable life without some genuine nonmaterial knowledge and experience to guide the search for purpose. I feel sad that Avicii had not yet uncovered such knowledge to solace his soul, as he rightfully ached for real meaning and happiness.
RIP everyone writes—but how will a tortured soul rest in peace? Unfortunately, suicide offers no end to our conscious awareness.As consciousness, we continue to live in a different body and environment according to our karma, or past action. Instead, we need to know the true art of peacefulness.We are a part of the whole, but what or who is the whole? And what is our relationship with that supreme whole? Underneath inevitable mental and physical difficulties, that relationship is what we are missing—that lack of connection and purpose leaves the gap that becomes anxiety, stress, loneliness, substance dependence, and lack of meaning. A sense of cosmic dislocation.
My hope is that one day, one lifetime, as soon as possible, after finding comprehensive spiritual knowledge and dynamic spiritual experience,Avicii (and all of us) can truly rest in peace. Since the real self continues beyond the death of this particular body, that is still entirely possible for Avicii.
One who is not connected with the Supreme [in Krishna consciousness] can have neither transcendental intelligence nor a steady mind, without which there is no possibility of peace. And how can there be any happiness without peace? (Bhagavad Gita 2.66)
