No other question has haunted me like this ever – What could possibly be the purpose of life? I am a spiritual person and at the same time a rationalist who doesn’t believe in “rules” of worshipping. I am not so religious though i pray everyday and i think religion is just a tool to move forward in understanding the purpose of life. You need a starting point somewhere to solve this puzzle and I think religion helps to give a head start.
Anyway, coming back to the question of what possibly could be the purpose of life: I have spoken to a number of people who are matured enough to understand this very basic question. As you can imagine, probably around 90% of humans wouldn’t even have had such a question in their entire life. Most of us are so into this tiny world that we cannot stop to look how big the universe is! But some say, the moment your mind starts asking this question, you are in the right path to learn the answer.
And so I asked… And a lot of them answered. But only the views varied from “No purpose at all” and “the purpose is to live it the way you want to!” to “to satisfy god and make him happy”. I think these answers were answered by logically thinking based on information what they all possessed. Most of the answers were logical because our brain works on logic. Unfortunately, the whole concept of spirituality is so beyond the grasp of logic and that makes it difficult to prove anything to be right or wrong. So how do we actually arrive at a conclusion for the purpose of life?
Why should there be a purpose?
Perhaps, the most interesting answer to this question is “why should there be a purpose to this life?” One of my friends asked me this question and i just did not have an answer. Logically speaking, i cannot rule out this option. But, I believe we are born with, what i call, a gut instinct. No matter what you hear, what you see and what you infer, you always ‘feel’ a certain thing to be either right or wrong. This feeling doesn’t really have any form of logic known to man. It originates within us, even though we are not entirely sure when and how it originated.
When i look around, i see a very detailed design involved in each and every creature and each and every object that surrounds us. We are naturally meant to perceive mountains to be beautiful and rivers to be soothing. It somehow feels that every bit was designed to perform a specific task. Why would so many things happen so very precisely for millions of years for no reason? If there is no reason behind anything, why do humans naturally look out for a reason behind every single thing? Since this doesn’t quite equate itself, i am forced to think … may be there is a purpose to this life!
Science and Spirituality:
Science tries to do a good job of plotting theories for all existing phenomenons. And that is pretty much what it can do at this point in time. We can’t create anything new that our mind cannot understand. We can build something in 3 dimensions but can we physically create something in 4 dimensions? We just cannot do that because our mind is not capable of understanding what it means. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.That said, science is very young and it grows older everyday. After many many thousands of years, science might be able to decode what the purpose of life is!
Emotion – the killer?
The rule of the world is ‘trade-off’. Every creature or thing in this world has a positive point and a negative point. The positive point is what science terms as survival of the fittest and the negative point is what keeps the creature from overpowering the entire system.Let us take the example of an octopus. Octopuses are extra ordinarily intelligent beings. They live in communities and have families. But their entire lifetime is just 3 years. Some scientists say that if they were to live longer, they might be the rulers of the world.
But given that did not happen, we humans, by far, enjoy being at the top of the food chain. Our positive point is that we can think and plan and execute. In short, our positive point is our intellect. So what is our negative point? Our negative point is emotions. If we didn’t have any emotions, we would not have had so many rules to govern ourselves and we would have been ruthless and even more powerful than what we are.
This brings us to another question. If i get rid of my negative point, can i become the master? If i get rid of my emotions, can i conquer the world. The probable answer to this question is once we get rid of emotions, we no longer have the desire to be the master of the world or to conquer it.
In a nutshell:
If you were to believe in evolution, then i would say the purpose of life was just an accident and we are just defining our future as we go along. So there isn’t a concept called a purpose of life at all.
But on the contrary, if you do not believe in evolution, like i do, then the whole purpose of life looks very very complicated. After a lot more thinking and a lot of reading and a lot of discussing, i came down to this theory:
There is more to this life than this world where we live in. There could be many many worlds – just like 500 years ago no one believed that there are many countries – and we are living in just one of them. Our body is just like a glass that can hold water. It serves as an excellent storage for the soul – some sort of energy. Every time the body dies, the energy is liberated back to the collection of energy from where it can get into another body in another world. By doing this the soul learns what it needs to learn.
One possible theory is that the soul gets stronger as it go through the hardships in this worldly life. The more it suffers, the more it learns, the stronger it gets. But, the next obvious question is why should it get stronger? Possibly there isn’t a single entity called god! May be god is the strongest soul that has actually gone through the toughest times and has the highest energy to handle the whole universe?
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This question is something that sticks to my heart and i would love to hear any comments you might have on this. So please feel free to write to me or post your comments in the box below!
Related posts:
Everyone in this world is born based on his earlier good or bad deeds summation. As an individual graduates after going through all the classes from prep to graduation, one should aim at reforming himself every birth he takes to finally reach completely pure form…….. GOD. A person only gives birth to a child but he comes with his own fate and writes his future – his parents and community around also can influence his future based on how he interprets and adopts. There is God and Demon within every individual and shows up depending upon the circumstances. For everything happening around us and for the behaviour of the individual there is always a reason – a pure person can easily identify the reason and will act matured – he will not blame anybody as he understands the root cause. The purpose of one’s life is to spread love, to help others, to carryout what God himself would love to do – we are the people through whom God is carrying out all the activities – that;s why when somebody helps us in dire needy situation, we say you came as God and helped me.
I absolutely agree. I also believe that there could be many more worlds and this could just be one of them. We are born here today somewhere else in our next life – only our karma will determine where that is! I revisited this article again today and added some more thoughts. You might want to have a read and let me know your comments – http://www.karthikrajg.com/2010/08/revisiting-the-purpose-question/
Cheers!
Karthik
hi karthik interpratation is the possible answer for the time being. but experince and wisdom can only give a correct answer but that can also be subject to change.the search of the answer will be going on.
Hi Karthik,
I am not sure how i landed on this webpage but i must tell you the topics are interetsing and i am sure many of us would have attempted to know whats beyond.
I would like to mention about five things that the mind is always preocccupied with:- Right decision,wrong decision,sleep, imagination and memory and most of our life we spend shuffling amongst them such as dreams of a better future or memories from past or did i do this right or wrong.
The mind continously tries to hook us with above mentioned thoughts and because the mind is logically stuck betweeen them it needs a purpose in life.
I too have been surrounded by them and i am learning to walk past and witness this activity when my mind gets on to it. Instead of reacting, take a seat back and see where it takes you. Also i belive the subconscious mind knows everything and if before going to sleep you ask for help,guidance, answer to a problem or solution- somehow its just comes around to us.
I guess we all just have to trust life to lead us. There is a quote that says “Nature is cruel teacher but it always balance’s its books” and i believe it sure always does.
Good luck
Regards
Pujha
Hi Puhja,
Many thanks for your comments. It is quite interesting to see how you clasified the mind. I tend to see the brain and mind seperately all the time because i feel that the mind is nothing but a harmonised collection of organs – something like a team. A team wouldn’t mean anything, though it does wonderful jobs at times.
What you said about sitting back and looking where it takes is a wonderful idea. I tend to do that many times, i believe it comes naturally after a while as we learn things are out of our control by trying harder and harder only to see that the results are in the opposite direction.
I hope you will read and comment on other relevant topics in this website that are of interest to you.
Cheers!
Karthik
thanks Karthik,
I agree with Hari as he has mentioned that a race is going on between science & spirituality to crack the facts faster.
Small Tweak – a soldier at country’s fence fired & kill the soldier at opposite fence with a purpose to safeguard the country. if he start thinking ‘ What he ( another soldier )has personally do wrong with me ? he must be having some family members behind him, i don’t have any personal issue with him so why should i kill him ? – the things will not go smoothly.Are only going smooth when a soldier is performing his role without a serious thought.
similar way if we seriously start thinking ‘ what is the purpose of my life ? we will deviate from the path. things are only going smooth when without having serious thought we are performing our roles & responsibilities.
your views please ?
thanks
Hi Deepak,
Yes, i agree we are all supposed to do what we are supposed to do…by knowing our purpose doesnt mean we should restrict ourselves from doing what we are doing, isn’t it?
I should say i wouldn’t agree so much on the race between science and spirituality on understanding life’s purpose. Science restricts itself in many ways and dismisses feelings and ideas which do not have reason. Science looks for causality.
I am going to write an article on this topic, but to give an outline of what i am thinking, just assume the response of a blind man when asked to explain the colour red. He cant explain because his brain has not got the relevant visual input to understand the colour red. Our brain is just a computing machine, which will analyse all sorts of possibilities based on input. If the input is wrong, so will the computed result.
I believe the answer to the purpose of life can only come from a much higher capability that our intellect. It probably has to be felt (and understood?? ) by us individually..
Hi,
i find it a very interesting discussion.
yes, i agree that most of the people in any manner raise this question within self – What is the purpose of life ?’ but as no body got the straight forward conclusion to this question. i think the purpose of any individual is to perform his roles & responsibilities towards the requirement of himself / family / society / nature. i assume every individual has one or more grievances towards life but he still continue to live his life because of the same reason what i have mentioned above i.e. has to perform his different roles to continue to cycle.
i accept this is not the exact answer to the discussion going on but just i have tried to give my views on the same.
Deepak Jain
Hi Deepak,
I appreciate your comment. This is unimaginably confusing topic to intellectually address. There is no one in this world who can decisively tell the meaning of life and its purpose. I have read many books on this topic and what they all point at is the person who searches for the answer will find it, but the answer will be just for him, because the answer cannot be reasoned out with our limited brain and intelligence. Of course, Karma exists and we are all here to do what we are here to do and there is no denial. And as Karma states, may be we all have to just look for an answer to this question without any expectation that we will get answered.
It’s actually easy to answer “why should there be a meaning to life”, since we are connected to other people. Whatever our actions will hurt or benefit our family or friends, even the future generations.
That is a good question! I have asked it myself many times – why should there be a meaning to this life? But, if there isn’t any meaning then why are we( ‘we’ as in all the things that exist in this world) naturally doing things – for example – feel happy? i bet most of us would want to feel happy and where is the feeling coming from?
Good provoking thoughts Karthik!!
Small tweak – I think there would be only 10% of humans who wouldn’t have had such a question. It is just that most of the folks do think about it, but it may be not as straight forward as what is the purpose of life!!
We all have questions – what is happening here?? What am I doing here? Is this what I’m supposed to do?? Did God send me to do this?? It could just be something related to a context and some miss the big picture…
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Fact is there is a long way to go.. Some believe Science will crack it and other believe spirituality will crack it much faster!!
Question which I ask myself – What is purpose of finding the purpose of life?? Why can’t you just let go, let it happen.. think simple to the same extent as you think bigger.. Laziness creeps in as you dont want dedicate your precious time as you never intend to become a Kalam or Einsteen
Keep writing!! Nice website!!
Thanks for your comments Hari. I absolutely agree that most of us would have questioned the purpose of doing something – but i am not sure if we all take that question to another level and question many of the foolish things we do ( jealousy for example). I see people run behind money, power and fame ( of course i am a participant in that race too) without even thinking that the final price means nothing. If only a majority of the population understands this and If we all were to live a life today with the standard of living similar to the 1950s there would probably be no poverty and more equality amongst all us.
And i should say, i like your question very much – “What is purpose of finding the purpose of life??” I have never had this question before, but probably that will be the next challenge to understand once you have the first question answered.