Toma is a reader of this blog who keeps asking unanswerable questions…to which I do my best to provide responses. Just the other day he wrote, “What is the purpose of life?” and I answered, “I’ll have to think about whether that even feels do-able.”
Frankly, I thought coming up with a reasonable response was unlikely to be do-able at all. But that was before Oliver Sacks learned he has terminal cancer.
Oliver Sacks is a professor of neurology and psychiatry at the New York University School of Medicine. He is best known to the public for his intellect, humor, and wide-ranging curiosity about how the mind works, which has led to his best-selling books featuring case studies of people with neurological disorders. The dozen or more titles include Musicophilia, Awakenings, Hallucinations, and The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat. Time magazine calls him “ one of the leading public intellectuals of the last half-century.”
In keeping with all of those attributes, Sacks learned of his terminal cancer and wrote a brief essay about his prognosis for the New York Times. He concludes:
…I have been increasingly conscious, for the last 10 years or so, of deaths among my contemporaries. My generation is on the way out, and each death I have felt as an abruption, a tearing away of part of myself. There will be no one like us when we are gone, but then there is no one like anyone else, ever. When people die, they cannot be replaced. They leave holes that cannot be filled, for it is the fate — the genetic and neural fate — of every human being to be a unique individual, to find his own path, to live his own life, to die his own death.
I cannot pretend I am without fear. But my predominant feeling is one of gratitude. I have loved and been loved; I have been given much and I have given something in return; I have read and traveled and thought and written. I have had an intercourse with the world, the special intercourse of writers and readers.
Above all, I have been a sentient being, a thinking animal, on this beautiful planet, and that in itself has been an enormous privilege and adventure.
And there, I think, is a worthwhile answer to the question of purpose. The purpose of our existence is being, in the same way the ancient name of the Hebrew God—YHWH, or Yahweh—has something to do with the verb “to be.” Because we are the creatures we are, for us being involves awareness, cognition, consciousness. We are aware that we are.
Perhaps evolutionary biologist Julian Huxley was right, back in 1957, writing, “As a result of a thousand million years of evolution, the universe is becoming conscious of itself, able to understand something of its past history and its possible future.” Is that truly our function, to be the consciousness of the universe? Or perhaps that is simply another example of human self-absorption and grandiosity. Other animals notice—some far better than we—the details of their physical environment. But the fact remains that we are the only creatures on this planet able to reason and communicate in ways that extend beyond our immediate environment and our physical lifetimes, able to speculate about how it all works and the “why” of our being here. And there is that word again: being.
Is this the ‘right’ answer to the question of the purpose of life—that our purpose is to be and to notice? Obviously, I have no way of knowing. In terms of satisfaction, though, it seems hard to do better than this from Oliver Sacks:
“Above all, I have been a sentient being, a thinking animal, on this beautiful planet, and that in itself has been an enormous privilege and adventure.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/19/opinion/oliver-sacks-on-learning-he-has-terminal-cancer.html
YOU, Nan Bush, are AMAZING! I am so fortunate to be the recipient of your words, your thoughts, your considered opinions and your work! They have meant, and continue to mean, so much to me. And this one too will reverberate and give me solace and cause for reflection way into my future.
THANK YOU!
Kathy
Kathy, thank you very much. 🙂
In my opinion, “What is the purpose of life?” is one of those questions that is ultimately beyond our comprehension, but this post is an excellent answer. Glimpses of the The Big Picture have been taken in by certain mystics, near-death experiencer’s and the like, but at the end of the day what all of us DO know is that we are here. So now what?
Don’t just sit there. Make the right decision, even if it’s wrong!
But few folks have the courage to do that. It takes a real appreciation for the gift of life to exercise true free will. If we pay attention, it quickly becomes obvious that there is an unfathomable creative process going on around and within us. We don’t control the Big Picture, yet we’re an inseparable part of it. How and how much we want to participate in this creative process is up to us as individuals.
Life is as precious as we make it, and in the process of making life precious, we can find “The Purpose of Everything”.
Of course, I have no data to prove it, so this is just my opinion based anecdotal evidence and personal experience. 🙂
Good answer Rabbitdawg! I wholeheartedly concur.
As to the purpose of life – we don’t know much, but I am convinced that there is a purpose – cosmically speaking – it’s all for something. Sadly I don’t know exactly what. I feel that maybe we’re not meant to know (in too much detail.)
As I say we don’t know much, but what we do know with absolute certainty, is that we have all been given a life to live, so let’s get on with it. Will we get it right? Who knows – but let’s just do it. I’m seeing fairly frequently from the nde that love is all important. I’m thinking maybe it has a mystical power of its own, regardless of its practical effects, i.e. it is never wasted. So maybe the purpose of life is to learn how to give and receive love. Sounds easy doesn’t it, yet I can’t seem to get the hang of it, but then, I haven’t finished living yet.
Judgement of others seems to be a big no-no, again, not so easy as it sounds.
The purpose of life? Well on an religiously anecdotal note, its to improve our souls by having free will to get us out of the harmonious rule and eventually find our way back.
Cosmically, the purpose of life is simply for the nature of existence to play out its theatrical production. All that occurs on Earth among living creatures, THAT’S the theatrical production.
On a more personal (?) note, the purpose of life is to ultimately become more loving. Yes love is vital. It may seem simple and benign to many, but if viewed from the perspective of someone who’s experienced the extreme opposite (fear) it becomes clear how vital it is.
All of you (NDE’rs and non NDE’rs alike), think about it:
If there was no point to your existence on this Earth, if you’re just some biological mass playing out some theatrical production created by the scientific cosmos, then you’d basically be at the mercy of an empty, pointless existence (<–best word I can think of for now).
Love involves the needing of another and the giving to another. Complete surrender to a loving protective other being, which involves ridding the ego. Some of my IANDS friends who've been touched by the Light describe it as one constant, intense orgasm. This orgasm in its absolute form is basically union with God. And the orgasm we experience during sexual intercourse is simply a microcosm, Earthly form of this union.
Because Love is a creative and unifying force, idea, that ultimately provides security, joy, and purpose. If there was no love to permeate you and your environment, that would be one scary, pointless existence!
NOW do you see the significance of love as a good portion of the purpose of life??
For what it’s worth, I agree.
Great discussions. I encountered a book by Rick Warren – Purpose Driven Life and it made a lot of sense to me…
Gilbert, Warren’s book has spoken to a lot of people. Thanks.
“Purpose” presupposes a valid need, a goal which needs to be reached. As all apart from god is illusion, and god is perfect/complete, i.e. can’t validate need, “purpose”, or “need” is illusion as well–All is, and always has been, and always will be, complete/absolute, i.e. nothingness
Nothing is sacred
Fairly sizable assumptions in there, seems to me. 🙂
I don’t know. The main purpose of all life seems to be survive, get what you need to survive, and reproduce. This is an on going thing.
In clinging to life, life has to destroy and consume other life. We eat chickens, chickens eat bugs. bugs eat other bugs, or bugs in mass, strip the environment, making life impossible for other forms of life.
The list goes on, in the air land and sea. I have speculated that perhaps as lower forms of life parish, they re incarnate into higher forms, and thus keep expanding in consciousness until they get to be us. (the lowest form of life? ha ha)
We in turn evolve to a point where we leave this Earth existence. To where? Forget about a cloud and a harp, give me a guitar.
Re production creates conflicts. Competition for the resources to survive creates conflicts. The worst part of the human condition is the insane drive to control and dominate with a total disregard for the consequences or the welfare of the other life around you.
From here, I agree with my buddy Hellboy. Love and expanding your ability to radiate its power into the other life around you, in spite of the calloused brutality of survival and the human condition, is where it’s at.
I’d like to share this: This spiritual man took the words outta my mouth! Listen to him.