59 replies to this topic

[∂an]

The usual, cliched, philosophical question: "What is the meaning of life?" never really made any sense to me. It is like a computer asking what electricity means... doesn't really mean much, but it sure has a purpose.

So, it seems more pertinent to ask what is the purpose of life. For me, it seems the purpose of life can be summed it in one word: creativity.

Creativity refers to the phenomenon whereby a person creates something new (a product, solution, artwork, literary work, joke, etc.) that has some kind of value.

At a fundamental, biological level, as sexual organisms, our purpose is to reproduce. This involves creating a new individual that is novel in both is genetic makeup and epigenetic context (i.e. the environment that the child is brought up in).

On a materialistic level, one of our purposes can be said to be creating physical (including pseudo-physical things such as software) tools that extend our capabilities in 4D space and time.

At a more abstract level, we humans seem almost compelled to create art (of all kinds, poetry, painting, drawing, music, writing, gardens, computer code etc) simply for the gratuitous pleasure of it.

Life itself can be seen as an act of evolutionary creativity; each new generation, and each successive species in the tree of life are novel adaptations on previous forms.

The acknowledgement of creativity as a basic principle of life is useful as it provides a compass on what to do with our own lives - to absorb the creations/manifestations in the world around us, process them in our alchemical vessel that is the body and mind, and excrete our own unique creations.

This then begs the question, what it is the end state, or attractor, for this creativity? Was the universe created so that humans could be created, so that we could create electronic circuits that could create a new universe in another dimension?

Does this resonate with anyone? What do you believe the purpose of life to be? Does it even have a purpose?

[bogfrog]

Rings a bell for me.
I was considering something along those lines a while ago.

At the micro level we have family systems.
I see it sort of like a life torch being passed along, in our youth we explore, create, ponder, work, love within the bounds of our situation, then we may decide to have children, and from then on all of our energy is spent providing the best conditions for the child's development.
The child builds on all the collective knowledge of the parents and grows up to face far more complex circumstances than their parents did.

So one of our main purposes could be seen as the role of creating and supporting new life, by having children and helping these children to be confident, creative, intelligent, conscientious and imaginative adults.

Once the children grow up - the torch is passed down to them and the parent settles back into whatever lifestyle they choose.

The now grown-up child, takes on the role of the protagonist and faces the
problems, rules, roles and joys of their time-frame, until they too have children and pass the torch down to another generation.
The process is perpetually repeated, each generation progressing significantly further than the one before.

Then at the macro level, we have creation.

The creator (whom/whatever it may be) experiments with it's creative capacity through the process of creating the existance that we as humans experience. It attempts to assist our evolution to the point where we earn the right of self-governance.
In my eyes we are a divine experiment performed by a loving creator, who wishes to relieve itself of the responsibility of keeping divine law and order, by creating a suitable replacement.
It does so by creating all that exists as a preliminary requirement for our development towards empowerment.

The creator is the parent and we are the children.

Our parent wants to share with us all that they do, feel, think and know, so we may step into their role when we are ready to create a new reality for ourselves and our children to come.

[goneski]

There is no 'meaning'. Meaning comes from within, not without. Meaning is formed as a posteriori knowledge, as the result of conscious/sentient beings experiencing the world.
As such, there's a huge degree of subjectivity and no real answer.

So no, there's no such thing as *the* meaning of life. The best we can really hope for are meanings (plural) of life that are conducive to the propagation of life and the minimisation of suffering.
Even then though, depending on how nihilistic you are, you can claim that this is little more than a pointless value attempting to justify our short existence in a vast, old universe.

On a materialistic level, the only 'meaning' of life is pointless replication and evolution. However, evolution is a blind and algorithmic process with no foresight -- so I wouldn't really call this a 'meaning'.
There is no end state. Evolution is a blind, algorithmic process. Evolution only appears to have purpose or meaning insofar as natural selection's ability to refine the gene pool.

I believe that it's only through a materialistic view of the world, and the realisation of the inevitability of death, that we can truly come to self-realisation and become ourselves.. The mortality that
people face which often results in existential crises.

From a more abstract level -- well, I tend to hold quite reductionistic views relating to evolutionary psychology that reduce back to the previous materialistic view.

"Was the universe created so that humans could be created"

No -- why would the universe be created for humans? We can't even begin to speculate that. It's quite probable there exist other planets in the cosmos whereby a similar (or different, who knows) process of abiogenesis
took place giving way to life, and thus setting the path for evolution by natural selection. Animals / organisms would undergo extremely different selection pressures resulting in what we would refer to as aliens.
To say the universe was created *for* humans is extremely self-centered, in my opinion.

"You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life." ~ Albert Camus

""Meaning and morality of One's life come from within oneself. Healthy, strong individuals seek self expansion by experimenting and by living dangerously. Life consists of an infinite number of possibilities and the healthy person explores as many of them as posible. Religions that teach pity, self-contempt, humility, self-restraint and guilt are incorrect. The good life is ever changing, challenging, devoid of regret, intense, creative and risky." ~ Nietzsche

Edited by SYNeR, 05 June 2012 - 08:29 PM.

[pete34]

Hi

we come here to learn/evolve


Salome
Peter

[nabraxas]

Chairman: Item six on the agenda, the Meaning of Life. Now Harry, you’ve had some thoughts on this.



Harry: That’s right, yeah. I’ve had a team working on this over the past few weeks, and what we’ve come up with can be reduced to two fundamental concepts.

One, people are not wearing enough hats.

Two, matter is energy.

In the Universe there are many energy fields which we cannot normally perceive.

Some energies have a spiritual source which act upon a person’s soul.

However, this soul does not exist ab initio as orthodox Christianity teaches; it has to be brought into existence by a process of guided self-observation.

However, this is rarely achieved owing to man’s unique ability to be distracted from spiritual matters by everyday trivia.

[Pause.]

Max: What was that about hats?



****************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************

Lady Presenter: Well, that's the end of the film. Now, here's the meaning of life.

[She is handed a gold-wrapped booklet.]

Lady Presenter: Thank you, Brigitte.

[She clears her throat, then unwraps and examines the gilt booklet.]

Lady Presenter: Well, it's nothing very special.

Try to be nice to people, avoid eating fat, read a good book every now and then, get some walking in, and try and live together in peace and harmony with people of all creeds and nations.

[∂an]

In my eyes we are a divine experiment performed by a loving creator, who wishes to relieve itself of the responsibility of keeping divine law and order, by creating a suitable replacement.
It does so by creating all that exists as a preliminary requirement for our development towards empowerment.

The creator is the parent and we are the children.

Our parent wants to share with us all that they do, feel, think and know, so we may step into their role when we are ready to create a new reality for ourselves and our children to come.

That's an interesting idea bogfrog. When the creator is finally relieved of its responsibility, what do you think we will have become? It seems to me that if we are ever to transcend "god", we must first escape the individualised ego, and perhaps escape from physical matter as well.

This reminds me of the Gnostic position that humankind is an immortal "divine spark" trapped in a mortal physical body, and the goal of existence is to "gather the light" to transcend our imperfect existence in the world. A key difference however is that gnostics believe the creator to be a false God who trapped the light against its will, as opposed to your "loving creator". Either way, it does seem that we as humans are on a path of continual growth, empowerment and transcendence.

I would like to think that it is not necessary for each person to be a genetic parent to take part in this process of creativity. Ideally children would be brought up in a communal environment where they learn not only from their parents, but all people in the community. The parents play a unique role of course, as it is their genetic traits that have been passed on. Perhaps the previous generation is the parent, and the new generation the child?

There is no 'meaning'. Meaning comes from within, not without. Meaning is formed as a posteriori knowledge, as the result of conscious/sentient beings experiencing the world.

I guess I was trying to get away from the question of "What is the meaning of life?" by asking "What is the purpose of life?". As you say meaning is subjective and therefore difficult to define, whereas maybe the purpose of life is more objective and can be investigated through observation.

A scientist would not even ask the question "what is the purpose of life?" as this implies a sort of sentience to life collectively. Instead science seems more concerned with the question "what is the reason for life?", as this is the only question that can be asked within the framework of the scientific method (i.e. hypothesis testing). The problem is science only permits evidence that is physically measurable, which precludes the mental universe from making any contribution to our models of reality. As a result we are left with an extremely mechanistic view of reality. Alternatively the mental universe argues that reality is not as simple as it appears, and each individual is the centre of their reality.

[mutant]

life's 'purpose' is life

life's 'purpose' is given by the answers to the whys, wheres, whens etc : 42


analytically

the main purposes by which you get much more purposes are

1) Staying alive , surviving
2) breed, create more


in regards with what humans do, its all because we are still here and got big heads - maybe because those ancestors really did introduce some dung loving mushrooms in the diet at some point
.

who knows. but yeah, great art seems a bit like 'higher than life' - again, its because man is the animal that tells tales.


Clive Barker had one nice quote on man & tales.


oh! there it is! its interesting that I still loved it when I first noticed it, round 1997, as I was still a radical atheist back then.

“I am a man, and men are animals who tell stories. This is a gift from God, who spoke our species into being, but left the end of our story untold. That mystery is troubling to us. How could it be otherwise? Without the final part, we think, how are we to make sense of all that went before: which is to say, our lives?

So we make stories of our own, in fevered and envious imitation of our Maker, hoping that we'll tell, by chance, what God left untold. And finishing our tale, come to understand why we were born.”

[woof woof woof]

Life is Life! tralalalala!!!! hahahaha

To love is the purpose of life.

[IndianDreaming]

The question really depends on your definition of life.

I like to think about it like this:

- Energy flows from a higher potential to a lower potential
- Life needs energy to survive

Therefore: Life exists on any border, where a place of high energy and a place of low energy meet

Life = Energy converter
Purpose = To convert energy from one form to another

[∂an]

I guess I am trying to look objectively at life (in its entirety, all living organisms) and trying to work out what exactly its purpose in the universe is.
As I mentioned before, science would say lets look at the reason instead, and the reason is pure chance (i.e. fortuitous combination of water, amino acids and electrical discharge from lightning or whatever). It seems highly improbable that everything in our living universe is a result of pure chance. So instead of trying to look at how life could occur (i.e. a bottom-up approach) I want to look at what life is striving towards (i.e. a top-down approach), as this may give clues as to how it may have got started in the first place.

So I would say life is striving towards greater ability to manipulate the world around it; early life was very simple with no limbs or sensory organs, then more complex animals developed the 5 senses and limbs for locomotion and object manipulation, and culminating in humans that have all this plus technology that allows us to artificially expand the detail and range of wavelengths our senses can perceive and space-ships to propel us through the cosmos. Life seeks to free itself from limitations of its previous generational form.

If we consider that the static, lifeless universe "created" or provided the conditions for life to occur, then this above statement makes even more sense; animate life seeks to free itself from the limitations of the static lifeless universe (i.e. rocks, gas nebulas and black holes), as more creativity becomes possible in the animate form. This would imply that the static lifeless universe is in fact just another generation in the evolution of life, and that there is no break between inanimate and animate objects in the universe but it is all a continuum of the same phenomena. Does this then hint at the existence of consciousness in the universe as a whole? Or is it totally incorrect logic and I should stop thinking so much?

[∂an]

To love is the purpose of life.

Yeah I think your right!

[whitewind]

This is quite interestingly close to what Terence Mckenna theorised about novelty; only instead of the universal purpose being to increase novelty, you are suggesting that the universe exists to create.. creativity. I see novelty and creativity being two very similar ideas, and I like them both. Creativity is something less mathematical; something that is easier to Grok and to our primitive, primate minds, something much more valuable and interesting.

[IndianDreaming]

The purpose of my life lately seems to be cleaning, endlessly, to no avail...

[bogfrog]

That's an interesting idea bogfrog. When the creator is finally relieved of its responsibility, what do you think we will have become? It seems to me that if we are ever to transcend "god", we must first escape the individualised ego, and perhaps escape from physical matter as well.

yes i agree it will most likely be leaving behind this material experience..

This reminds me of the Gnostic position that humankind is an immortal "divine spark" trapped in a mortal physical body, and the goal of existence is to "gather the light" to transcend our imperfect existence in the world. A key difference however is that gnostics believe the creator to be a false God who trapped the light against its will, as opposed to your "loving creator". Either way, it does seem that we as humans are on a path of continual growth, empowerment and transcendence.

hmmm, Maori mythology talks of this devine spark also.
Apparently when Tane (the god the forest) created the human form, he breathed godliness into every child that was born onto earth.

I also came across a book called "The Urantia Book" which sounds quite similar to this Gnostic stuff. All the differnt spheres of existance and angellic beings etc. Its very interesting, but overwhelmingly intense with the amount of detail, i dont know if i could ever finish it if i read it everyday for the rest of my life... and even then i would not understand most of what is being discussed. http://en.wikipedia....he_Urantia_Book

I would like to think that it is not necessary for each person to be a genetic parent to take part in this process of creativity. Ideally children would be brought up in a communal environment where they learn not only from their parents, but all people in the community. The parents play a unique role of course, as it is their genetic traits that have been passed on. Perhaps the previous generation is the parent, and the new generation the child?

Very good! See, i think you are correct...as i am still obviously in the child gen, my ideas are incomplete and over-simplified and need to be developed by interactions with those who are more knowledgeable/experienced.

I began thinking along these lines in relation to my father and the incredible wisdom and insight he seems to posses... and also they way he seems to view me as the next step along the road of evolution from him.
All though he is far ahead of me in terms of intelligence and experience, the un-shakeable faith that he has in me to exceed his capacity really got me thinking.


and then there is this guy.. certainly worth a watch!
http://www.ted.com/t...nt_species.html

Edited by bogfrog, 08 June 2012 - 11:09 AM.

[CβL]

I believe there is no absolute purpose to life, and that you're best to just find something to call your purpose - lest you go crazy.

[Xenodimensional]

The omega point. The singularity. That is the logical endpoint. When every piece of information and consciousness has been assimilated into an unimaginably powerful computer that can recreate infinite variations of the preceeding universe to such a degree as to be indistinguishable from what we experience as reality. We may already be experiencing some form of augmented reality, some scientists/theorists/philosophers postulate that it would explain the gaps in our knowledge of the cosmos.

[mutant]

^^^^

or maybe the incomplete visions from the other world has enabled some psychonauts of bragging about capabilities of intergrading with the otherworld like a walk in the park, depending in their individual sensitivity and most important for any interpretation, sensibility.

truth is psychedelic experience has always been a more complex experience than this

psychedelic experience has more to do with what you do the next day, than what you felt during the experience

Edited by mutant, 13 June 2012 - 08:49 AM.

[pete34]

evolution


An Important Word

The yearning for certainty burns indelibly in every single human on Earth, especially the certainty of Being and the existence far beyond his terrestrial passing away, which man calls death. This certainty can become true for every single human being once he conquers his own ego. Truly, it is only the ego's haze that prevents envisioning the kingdom of true life, spiritualness, beyond the transformation of being and the passing on. That is because the ego, the "I", places too much emphasis on a person's own welfare until it becomes egoism with most humans. Doubts and uncertainties hang like dark storm clouds over each individual and, in fact, over all of mankind. Man on Earth is surprised by the thunder and flashes of lightning, brought on by egoism, materialism, and the remaining degrading things to which he has succumbed, making him their prisoner. To combat them must become a great priority for man.
Only when, through cognition of truth, the sun of love, which embodies the manifestation of the spirit of life, rises on the horizon of the human psyche to chase away the thunderclouds, is man permitted to recognize how close he really is to the certainty, and how unfounded his fear and anguish have been. Unfortunately, even now for many people only the death of their physical body signifies the beginning of true life and the gradual, renewed radiance of the inner Sohar. However, in the next incarnation the same situation may arise again through man's lack of knowledge in the previous life, if, at that time, he had not been arduously struggling and laboring for improvement. The gloom of absolute or partial darkness during an existence on Earth can only be terminated through a true inner palingenesis, at which time man shall see the light of the inner senses, when the activity of the spirit of life will no longer appear as the gloomy fate that man falsely had created for himself. Ultimately, when the Sohar has begun to shine within man, he will discern the invisible, the power of the spirit and its unlimited strength as the true force, while this visual effect begins to disappear again as a shadowy pattern, but lingers on as a continuous and stimulating recollection, to be effective and beneficial for further evolution. It still remains true of many Earth beings that their naked fear lurks behind all love and the desire for all loving oneness. Man fears everything: The end of love, the death of a loved one, separation and reunion, and above all, the change from this plane of existence to the beyond. Closely linked to these fears is the pain caused by bogus knowledge and bogus teachings, namely that all life will end forever in death, always living off other lives, which it destroys and supposedly must destroy to exist itself. A truly terrible thought. Yet, it is one of terrestrial origin only and emanates from the lack of understanding of true truth. It is correct insofar as every life lives off others. However, life does not murder other lives to be able to exist and to live itself. One life is integrated into another, one life helps the other, only to expire itself at a given time once its time and duty are completed. Life is neither the continuous sacrifice nor the becoming a sacrifice the Earth human falsely assumes and fortifies through correlated false doctrines. Rather, in truth, it is only a process of growing and passing away in a sense of continuously advancing evolution, and solely in the sense of the Creative rules, laws and commandments into which even Creation itself is integrated in every way. Therefore, for many great-times life is a process of rebirth and renewal in the cycle of passing away and growing again. Thus, expiring and death reach into the heart of life in the same way that life and growth extend deeply into the heart of death, whereby two realms merge into one, simultaneously complementing and conquering one another, to gradually bring about mutual comprehension. Life does not strive for vanquishing every single decline and death, but for overcoming decease and formation in general through evolution. Life works toward the progressive evolution of everything that has ever existed or now exists.
It works toward that which is immortal in the innermost of myriads of life forms, toward the final goal of all creations, and toward Creation and the universal consciousness. Simply stated, the real meaning of life in the material state is, in fact, the mastery over one's ego, which constantly wants to dominate, and the subsequent evolution in the wholeness of the consciousness and the spirit. Therefore, conquering oneself means that man must help his own, highest Being to victory, so he may recognize yet another still higher self, namely, the Creative self. Man will be awakened toward it through an even higher evolution. This is certainly one of the most difficult tasks of human life, yet, it is the most beautiful, most valuable, and productive, as beyond this task waits for man the greatest certainty of his all-great-time existence beyond all external and physical forms of being. Because the human life spirit within him is a fragment of the spiritual energy of Creation, it is important for him to recall the Creative root of his being, to unite through true spiritual introspection with all that within himself which is of the all-great-time. To be one with the spirit of life within himself, the part of Creation in him, means becoming absolutely free. Free from the fear of passing away, of death. To be one with a fragment of the Creative energy within also means recognition of the alter ego, the Creative self, beyond the external human ego. It is certainly the greatest experience, but for an inwardly still unprepared person also the most frightening one to encounter; to truly see and recognize oneself—one's own oldest ego, which reaches beyond all spheres and boundaries, floating past all senses into the all-great-time regions of Creation, which are beyond human comprehension. Whoever unites with a fragment of Creation within oneself, with the spirit itself, dissolves the frightening, yet truly innocuous enigma of passing on, indeed, of death. In so doing, one acknowledges death as only the other side of life, where it is nothing other than sleep, replacing daytime wakefulness in the physical realm. Man's lack of reason, his lack of knowledge, and his blindness make him believe that sleep is the darker side of life. As a result he has the same opinions concerning death. Certainly, various other factors are reflected in the fear of death, but it does not make sense to name them all. Only one more item remains to be explained. The mystery a human body can solve only partially when it is abandoning life, can be manifested clearly and truthfully by the fragment of Creation in humans; namely, the certainty of absolute human permanence in the all-great-time. The human being should direct his vision unwaveringly toward the tasks of his life on Earth, with the knowledge that the realm of coarse matter rules in this plane and the realm of fine matter in the beyond. Nevertheless, these two divided spheres of the here and the beyond are one single realm, existing in the same place, in the same time space, only in another dimension. It certainly may seem as though the sum of hardships and suffering on planet Earth is much greater than that of joy and happiness. To believe that this is indeed a fact is but one of man's fallacies. This belief has become a perilous notion, transmitted and implanted through false doctrines and confusion. Such notions are unnecessary, however, because hardships and suffering, as well as joy and happiness, always keep each other in balance. Man overrates hardships and suffering solely through his erroneous considerations, and registers and keeps them on permanent recall, while he forgets the joyous and happy events all too quickly, which then elude him. In these matters, man has not yet learned to find balance, to register the negative as well as positive in the same way, and to preserve them in his memory. The same would hold true for the opposite case, if man were to remember only the positive—beauty, joy, love, and pleasantness. Here again is no balance between the negative and the positive; one form takes the upper hand over the other, resulting in a state of non-assimilation or non-integration, which means that again one factor prevails over the other. In spite of this circumstance, man is capable of seeing and recognizing his determination as a human being, and he can change the situation and attain an island of Sohar and security from the occurrences of gloominess. The length of time required need not be a worry or concern, because until the highest goal becomes reality, millions and billions of years may have tumbled into the past. Millions and billions of years are accorded and offered to man, to smooth out the crumpled face he had caused his own home planet. Yet, he must be devoted at this time to the change offered to him for intervention in the evolutionary goal, to truly grasp the helping hand and proffered knowledge in truth, and to work toward this goal.
"Billy" Eduard Albert Meier

[botanika]

I think about sex a lot so possibly most of my life is just filler inbetween getting laid.

[self organising systems]

[Nemisty]

evolution


An Important Word

The yearning for certainty burns indelibly in every single human on Earth, especially the certainty of Being and the existence far beyond his terrestrial passing away, which man calls death. This certainty can become true for every single human being once he conquers his own ego. Truly, it is only the ego's haze that prevents envisioning the kingdom of true life, spiritualness, beyond the transformation of being and the passing on. That is because the ego, the "I", places too much emphasis on a person's own welfare until it becomes egoism with most humans. Doubts and uncertainties hang like dark storm clouds over each individual and, in fact, over all of mankind. Man on Earth is surprised by the thunder and flashes of lightning, brought on by egoism, materialism, and the remaining degrading things to which he has succumbed, making him their prisoner. To combat them must become a great priority for man.
Only when, through cognition of truth, the sun of love, which embodies the manifestation of the spirit of life, rises on the horizon of the human psyche to chase away the thunderclouds, is man permitted to recognize how close he really is to the certainty, and how unfounded his fear and anguish have been. Unfortunately, even now for many people only the death of their physical body signifies the beginning of true life and the gradual, renewed radiance of the inner Sohar. However, in the next incarnation the same situation may arise again through man's lack of knowledge in the previous life, if, at that time, he had not been arduously struggling and laboring for improvement. The gloom of absolute or partial darkness during an existence on Earth can only be terminated through a true inner palingenesis, at which time man shall see the light of the inner senses, when the activity of the spirit of life will no longer appear as the gloomy fate that man falsely had created for himself. Ultimately, when the Sohar has begun to shine within man, he will discern the invisible, the power of the spirit and its unlimited strength as the true force, while this visual effect begins to disappear again as a shadowy pattern, but lingers on as a continuous and stimulating recollection, to be effective and beneficial for further evolution. It still remains true of many Earth beings that their naked fear lurks behind all love and the desire for all loving oneness. Man fears everything: The end of love, the death of a loved one, separation and reunion, and above all, the change from this plane of existence to the beyond. Closely linked to these fears is the pain caused by bogus knowledge and bogus teachings, namely that all life will end forever in death, always living off other lives, which it destroys and supposedly must destroy to exist itself. A truly terrible thought. Yet, it is one of terrestrial origin only and emanates from the lack of understanding of true truth. It is correct insofar as every life lives off others. However, life does not murder other lives to be able to exist and to live itself. One life is integrated into another, one life helps the other, only to expire itself at a given time once its time and duty are completed. Life is neither the continuous sacrifice nor the becoming a sacrifice the Earth human falsely assumes and fortifies through correlated false doctrines. Rather, in truth, it is only a process of growing and passing away in a sense of continuously advancing evolution, and solely in the sense of the Creative rules, laws and commandments into which even Creation itself is integrated in every way. Therefore, for many great-times life is a process of rebirth and renewal in the cycle of passing away and growing again. Thus, expiring and death reach into the heart of life in the same way that life and growth extend deeply into the heart of death, whereby two realms merge into one, simultaneously complementing and conquering one another, to gradually bring about mutual comprehension. Life does not strive for vanquishing every single decline and death, but for overcoming decease and formation in general through evolution. Life works toward the progressive evolution of everything that has ever existed or now exists.
It works toward that which is immortal in the innermost of myriads of life forms, toward the final goal of all creations, and toward Creation and the universal consciousness. Simply stated, the real meaning of life in the material state is, in fact, the mastery over one's ego, which constantly wants to dominate, and the subsequent evolution in the wholeness of the consciousness and the spirit. Therefore, conquering oneself means that man must help his own, highest Being to victory, so he may recognize yet another still higher self, namely, the Creative self. Man will be awakened toward it through an even higher evolution. This is certainly one of the most difficult tasks of human life, yet, it is the most beautiful, most valuable, and productive, as beyond this task waits for man the greatest certainty of his all-great-time existence beyond all external and physical forms of being. Because the human life spirit within him is a fragment of the spiritual energy of Creation, it is important for him to recall the Creative root of his being, to unite through true spiritual introspection with all that within himself which is of the all-great-time. To be one with the spirit of life within himself, the part of Creation in him, means becoming absolutely free. Free from the fear of passing away, of death. To be one with a fragment of the Creative energy within also means recognition of the alter ego, the Creative self, beyond the external human ego. It is certainly the greatest experience, but for an inwardly still unprepared person also the most frightening one to encounter; to truly see and recognize oneself—one's own oldest ego, which reaches beyond all spheres and boundaries, floating past all senses into the all-great-time regions of Creation, which are beyond human comprehension. Whoever unites with a fragment of Creation within oneself, with the spirit itself, dissolves the frightening, yet truly innocuous enigma of passing on, indeed, of death. In so doing, one acknowledges death as only the other side of life, where it is nothing other than sleep, replacing daytime wakefulness in the physical realm. Man's lack of reason, his lack of knowledge, and his blindness make him believe that sleep is the darker side of life. As a result he has the same opinions concerning death. Certainly, various other factors are reflected in the fear of death, but it does not make sense to name them all. Only one more item remains to be explained. The mystery a human body can solve only partially when it is abandoning life, can be manifested clearly and truthfully by the fragment of Creation in humans; namely, the certainty of absolute human permanence in the all-great-time. The human being should direct his vision unwaveringly toward the tasks of his life on Earth, with the knowledge that the realm of coarse matter rules in this plane and the realm of fine matter in the beyond. Nevertheless, these two divided spheres of the here and the beyond are one single realm, existing in the same place, in the same time space, only in another dimension. It certainly may seem as though the sum of hardships and suffering on planet Earth is much greater than that of joy and happiness. To believe that this is indeed a fact is but one of man's fallacies. This belief has become a perilous notion, transmitted and implanted through false doctrines and confusion. Such notions are unnecessary, however, because hardships and suffering, as well as joy and happiness, always keep each other in balance. Man overrates hardships and suffering solely through his erroneous considerations, and registers and keeps them on permanent recall, while he forgets the joyous and happy events all too quickly, which then elude him. In these matters, man has not yet learned to find balance, to register the negative as well as positive in the same way, and to preserve them in his memory. The same would hold true for the opposite case, if man were to remember only the positive—beauty, joy, love, and pleasantness. Here again is no balance between the negative and the positive; one form takes the upper hand over the other, resulting in a state of non-assimilation or non-integration, which means that again one factor prevails over the other. In spite of this circumstance, man is capable of seeing and recognizing his determination as a human being, and he can change the situation and attain an island of Sohar and security from the occurrences of gloominess. The length of time required need not be a worry or concern, because until the highest goal becomes reality, millions and billions of years may have tumbled into the past. Millions and billions of years are accorded and offered to man, to smooth out the crumpled face he had caused his own home planet. Yet, he must be devoted at this time to the change offered to him for intervention in the evolutionary goal, to truly grasp the helping hand and proffered knowledge in truth, and to work toward this goal.
"Billy" Eduard Albert Meier

[∂an]

[url="http://i.imgur.com/2pRou.jpg"]http://i.imgur.com/2pRou.jpg[/url]

get money, f#$k b$%@ches, smoke trees...

make that

do something constructive with your life, make love, stay high

and i'm in agreeance.

[ThunderIdeal]

if there's such thing as 'the meaning of life' then how do you assume we are the one's to fulfill it? in some ways it's a fair assumption, in other ways its preposterous to make that leap.

to be honest i suspect that consciousness has some kind of fractal arrangement or tiers if you like. imagine the force responsible for all of this existence insofar as one can imagine it. okay, your attempt to conceive god in your mind was utterly dismal. maybe you're the equivalent of a pinky toe, or a hair follicle, of a being that makes your vision of god look like a monkey trying to get a sticky booger off of its finger.

the bad news would be that, even accounting for the fact that your mind is an iceberg with a staggering hidden bulk, even accounting for the fact that you're a scale replica of the whole, you are hopelessly out of your depth, too far out of your depth to know how far out of your depth you might be.

the good news would be that you're not out of the loop entirely. i'm not suggesting there's even a loop. if there isn't, somebody might get their shit together, somewhere in this crazy trip, eventually, and wisdom or knowledge will be won and it will disperse. it's kind of like having the chief of your tribe, sending and receiving dispatches, taking reports and giving orders to the tribesman. the chief doesn't waste his time explaining the details to the tribesman, if any of them displays the capacity to understand he takes them aside and coaches them, and shows them how he hovers over the jungle in a five dimensional helicopter, phasing in and out of time.


yeah, it's one twisted fucking jungle i reckon, and we won't always be spared from the overwhelming reality of it. "IF" you were unlimited by nature, the utmost potency (full stop) rolled into one formless, endless, boundlessI am, then how could you forget yourself? it's the old paradox i guess, can god create a rock so heavy that god can't lift it? well i think god can enter a self-labyrinth, a thing as dark and devious as any thread in gods mind.


so uh yeah, on average i think some trippers might develop their own impetus to follow the signs back towards godhood, detaching the snares and clearing their senses to try to attain selfhood. i'm not sure there's any emergency, any reason to force it. if you're rushing, then you're probably carrying baggage that is far too heavy for the journey.

[santiago]

O what a generically simple but complicated question that should keep many a lost soul interested on a random internet search for the life expectancy and search probabilities of this information. Many will say procreation ie having sex and kids, but if that is the standard then why are we trying to eradicate AIDS and certain viruses. Do they not have the right to multiply too? Is the point of life transitional phases of chemical being, mayby the transition from hydrogen to helium and whatever other periodic table elements we know of. Simply a star based molecular gravitational creational god force which enables a side stream of matter to enable itself whether it is organic or inorganic. Is life based on a faith on religion? If thats the case which one of the thousands of religions should i choose? Millions of people believed in Ra the sun god or chose the aztec way of human sacrifice. If you asked them the they would say Ra snd heart sacrifice cutting was the meaning of life so im not realy sold on santa claus and jesus as my own personal meaning of life.

Mayby the best answer is that there is no meaning to life. The meaning of life is simply to exist from nothing, to balance out the positive and negative forces of life, we are simply that undefined line between black and white, a shade of grey that is neither black or white or has no meaning or some meaning. Why look for a meaning of life, what point will it serve? It cannot change anything. Its like looking for a lost set of car keys in your kitchen drawer. You have looked the first time, pulled all the papers out and decided to search elsewhere. You still cannot find your car keys anywhere so in frustration you return to the kitchen drawer full well knowing they wont be there but driven by your simplistic urges to find logic where logic does not exist you serch that drawer again and again and slowly you become more and more frustrated, surely you say you have not cheched under the wood, so finally you tear the wood apart and only damage your drawer and damage yourself. you knowe there is nothing there.

once you finally realise the keys are lost and by simple analogy you are even more lost, you finally realise that there is nothing. but dont be sad, this is the moment you finally accept that the meaniong of life, whatever you stand for, whoever you are, what you do, what you eat and shit and breath means and is absolutely nothing, nobody cares nobody really knows or wants to know, your whole being is simply a manifestation inside your head, once you accept that life has no meaning, regardless of your own learned, biased and subliminal beliefs..you can fully accept the meaning of life. Stop looking the keys are not in the cupboard. The meaning of life is life has no meaning. Simple philosophy, mathematics and religion.

[ThunderIdeal]

"The meaning of life is simply to exist from nothing, to balance out the positive and negative forces of life, we are simply that undefined line between black and white, a shade of grey that is neither black or white or has no meaning or some meaning."

yeah i more or less agree with that. the void is the source. i reckon as utterly blank and empty as it is might be equal to how exhaustively thorough it's counterpart (existence) can be expressed. so the void is void, then it says, "let there be more bullshit than anyone will care to deal with, and put a real tangle on it. yeah. why not?"

that's where we come in. energy in motion. to me you asking what is the meaning of life is akin to asking what is the meaning of existence, maybe some beings are equipped to make a pretty good guess but not us. maybe what people mean is "am i doing it right?".

if your true self is similar to how i've describd god, can it even answer that question? there's nowhere novel for god to go. i think there could be many layers of meaning within this fabrication but they will disappear with it, when the void says "terribly sorry chaps, but there has been a mistake. you don't actually exist, nor did you ever. it was splendid fun though. until next time!"