Meaning of Life

RICHARD: I must acknowledge how I just sat here, simply looking at your query, as the implications and ramifications of the full extent of your ignoration became obvious.

For what is the point of responding to someone – someone who first wrote to me over six years ago – who has all that while ignored the very raison d’être for The Actual Freedom Trust’s web site?

To explain: the question of the meaning of life has been the greatest quest of all time, for philosophers and metaphysicians alike, and even artists (such as Mr. Paul Gauguin for instance) have pondered that hoary puzzle: D’où venons-nous ? Que sommes-nous ? Où allons-nous ? (Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going?).

But what it took was a naïve boy from the farm to discover the answer to that most basic question of the millenniums: does life have significance (aka meaning) or is it all just a chance, random event in an empty (meaningless) universe?

The theologians, on the one hand, maintained that their god gave life meaning (purpose) – albeit enigmatically and from behind a veil – and the existentialists, on the other hand, argued that humans had to give life meaning (reason) else the only true option be suicide.

Yet all the while the actual meaning of life is already always out in the open, plain to view for those with the eyes to see, as it has never been hidden and never will be. I have written of this on umpteen occasions, of course, and here is one instance:

• [Richard]: ‘Where there are no affections/ no identity this actual world is experienced directly: what one is, as a flesh and blood body only, is this physical universe experiencing itself apperceptively … as such it is stunningly aware of its own infinitude/ absoluteness.

And this is truly wonderful’. (Richard, The Actual Freedom Trust Mailing List, No. 110a, 25 May 2006).

Here is another version:

• [Richard]: ‘(…) life is neither a random, chance event in an otherwise empty and meaningless universe (the materialist experience) nor the deliberate, determined expression of a malicious/ loving and sorrowful/ compassionate divinity (the spiritualist experience). Rather it is due to the inevitable emergence of its intrinsic character that this physical universe is spontaneously personifying itself as a sensate, reflective and apperceptively aware human being: as such the universe is stunningly conscious of its own infinitude’. (Richard, Actual Freedom Mailing List at Large, 10 Apr 2001)

Lastly, and relating to the wording of your query (‘the purpose of life’), the following is quite explicatory:

• [Co-Respondent]: ‘Richard, you have written somewhere that life is neither purposeful nor purposeless. Could you explain that?

• [Richard]: ‘Yes … that is a spiritualist/ materialist dichotomy which has no existence in actuality.

The very notion of purpose presupposes a purposer – ‘a person who purposes something; esp. a person who has a particular object or intention’ (Oxford Dictionary) and the entire purposeful/ purposeless debate betwixt spiritualists and materialists revolves around spiritualists contending that their god/ goddess (an immaterial creative being, force, or energy, by whatever name) has a purpose for creating/ manifesting the universe and that life without such a timeless and spaceless and formless entity in it means that everything is purposeless … which, according to the Oxford Dictionary, means ‘done or made without purpose or design; having no purpose, plan, or aim’.

The direct experience of infinitude – ‘a boundless expanse; an unlimited time’ (Oxford Dictionary) – here in this actual world renders both notions null and void … it is a spiritualist/ materialist dichotomy which has no existence in actuality.

• [Co-Respondent]: ‘I can clearly and vividly remember a few PCE’s and I also remember thinking during those PCE’s that this (that) was the only moment I could experience being alive and that there wasn’t any inherent meaning in life.

• [Richard]: ‘What the phrase ‘meaning in life’ more generally refers to – rather than being equated with purposeful/ purposeless – when asking whether there is any is significance … as in whether life has any significance or whether it of no consequence.

Needless is it to add that life is bursting with significance in actuality?

• [Co-Respondent]: ‘Meaning is to be found in experiencing each moment to its fullest and clearly experiencing the perfection inherent to the universe.

• [Richard]: ‘Here in this actual world, where it is never not this moment (time has no duration in actuality), life is intrinsically meaningful due to that very perfection’.

PETER: If ‘I’ seek meaning for ‘my’ life then narcissism can be the only result – and the long history of the famed spiritual search attests to this fact. If ‘I’ simply reject the traditional meanings of life then meaninglessness aka nihilism can be the only result and this seems to be where U.G. Krishnamurti has ended up.

The meaning to life is not to be found in the feeling-fed continuity ‘I’ call ‘my life’, for a PCE confirms that the meaning of life is to be found only when ‘I’ exit the stage as it were.