!!!<>universal<><> knowledge<>!!!

[wantsumrice]

Sigh...the question that man has always asked itself over and over and over again, "What is the meaning of life?".  Personally i agree with you in that life has some deeper meaning, which in simplest terms i would say is to learn.  It is to basically experience everything possible in the universe and learn about everything possible in the universe.

Physics or any other sciences will have one hell of a time trying to prove what the meaning of life is, and pretty much any theory that is said, is just speculation.  I also believe that life has a much deeper meaning than just experiencing and learning, so deep that our human minds cannot fathom.  

It's a wicked cool topic, i agree, but it's been discussed ad nauseam that my answer must seem so overused and cliche.  

Well, we will eventually know the meaning of life sometime...

~ivan

[spiral]

Why does existence exist?
I read this post 30minutes ago and only now am I coming back from the zen like state of blankness that it put me in..

As I am only a small part of the whole, I can only speculate, but existence sounds like a whole lot more fun than non-existance. If the opportunity presented itself, it seems like the obvious path to take.

But then, who's to say that existence hasn't always been here? Eternity is a hard thing to contemplate but then so is nothingness.
'How does it exist?'.. that is a more baffling question for me.

The reason that existance continues to exist seems obvious to me; to survive, advance, expand, perfect and create again. So long as all of those things are possible, existance is not pointless. As far as I can see this philosophy works on all levels of consciousness.

Can I just explain that my point of view is somewhat pantheist, that is, I do not separate god from existance, I see them as one and the same.

spiral

[wisp]

Mustard,
It is mind boggling isn't it. Other than your "Who created the creator" question, I have pondered the same things.

Let God be God. I believe the answers will come. Not in our time frame, but in God's. This is a very traditional answer, I know.[]

I was in an office one day. The best I could see, there were only two young people working there at the time.I watched the interacting going on between them. They must have been left on their own for a short while to run the place. The two of them were having a blast. They were two happy people. I could pick up the vibes from them. They were helping each other out mentally. What one didn't know, the other did. They worked like a clock in perfect synch. A remarkable thing, but hard to explain here. The two young people were experiencing joy and friendship in a challenging situation. The atmosphere was delightful to see, hear, and feel. I could almost hear inner laughter in each of them. It was a humorous experience for me too. I left there feeling uplifted and a bit more in tune with the universe. I got the impression after leaving there that part of the interaction involved timing of of sorts(synchrony involving more than one). I was so impressed I wrote down some thoughts about it. It was like a fluctuating of memory and forgetting, recognizing and denial. The two were working in perfect form and timing. This is something not seen too often to me. I guess another word could be harmony, working in harmony. A magical experience. The grand plan may be about this sort of thing, letting go, and having some fun. At a later time, this moment will be recalled, there will be more laughter and joy. The things we take for granted may be our most precious memories, innocence.

May be, we can only experience some things in the material state, and even have fun with it at a later date. []

[kiauma]

We are the universe experiencing itself.  

For instance, as Alan Watts wrote many years ago, if we try to catch a rainbow it always appears to recede.  This is because a rainbow is manifested under certain conditions involving the angle of light and location of water in relation to an observer.  In other words, a rainbow does not exist without someone to observe it.  That is just an obvious example.

This also circularly means our life has the meaning we give it.

As to why God (whatever that is) set it up, I do not know, though I'm sure He must get some real divine job satisfaction out of granting everyone and everything existance, to do as it will, within the larger interaction.

As Wisp pointed out, it can sometimes be a beautiful experience.  

Great post Wisp.

[mustard]

My answer to my  puzzle:
Don't ask questions that you can't answer, my fellow readers, because
you'll just get stuck in one place while the world keeps spinning.
Live to the fullest in order to experience everything
that life in our generation has to offer.

We gave and continue to give ourselves the purpose to live our lives  everyday, life is too complicated to be perfect(for one soul to have the universal knowledge), and too easy to let it by and simply see it as just living through another day while waiting for the next one to come.   Why ask for our existance?

If you(the young) had two paths to choose during a life threatning injury, disease, cancer... , one leads to universal knowledge that you can only aquire by passing on to the next world, and one leads
to a recovery that will allow you to live, I know I would choose
to live and stay among the people,friends,family... I love, or I would feel really lonely in the afterworld, then there comes the real queston why do we die?  
So don't worry about, it sepecially at a young age, be happy that you do exist and that you have a conscience instead of being nothing.
As for our creator be happy that he created us.There is no such thing
as a creator creating a creator(IT WOULD NEVER END).There has to be one in charge, or we wouldn't be so perfectly made for this imperfect world.
But then again, if you had a chance to know why do we exist,
would you want to know?

[Logic]

stop renaming this article, its confusing me lol.

[mustard]

ok[]

[Zan]

I 'm probably gonna say things that already have been said but since it is never bad to have a slightly different angle on something I 'm going to say them anyway.

Why do we live?
To live .. or in other words to learn like they said before me. There is no sense to life other than life itself.

Why do we exist?
I don't think we have another choice. Everything exists and there is nothing that doesn't exist. That is there is nothing that doesn't exist and we can grasp because if we even think about it it exists at the least in our minds and very likely also somewhere outside our minds. We can choose to exist in another form but I don't believe we can 'not exist'. I also don't believe in an absolute beginning or end. IMO there was always something, always changing. We can put a beginning and an end or a period of transition but that depends on your perspective. Take death for example: One person believes there is no afterlife, when you die it is over so for him death would be the end and birth the beginning. Someone else believes in reïncarnation which means that for that person death or birth are neither the end or beginning. Take even another person with more or less the same views as the first one. This person doesn't see death as an end because even though you stop to exist as a human being you continue to exist as dust, food for scavengers, energy emitted in the form of heat as your body cools down, ...

[mustard]

Thank you all for reading and giving me your taughts on life![]
Just another view
of reincarnation:
Prophets and people who deserve to stay in the afterworld are allowed
to make it their new home. Those who have lived their lives
miserably are allowed to be reincarnated. They wait in lines to
enter a developing fetus, and their past life memories stay hidden
deep inside their mind, which would explain why some people dream
of being someone else and haveing familiar memories but knowing
that they never experienced them in their life. I think this
way because it would be crazy for souls to keep piling in the
afterworld, trillions and billions of souls coming and are yet to come, which would give me a reason to believe that there will be the end of the world, or else there would be countless,(countless,countless,countless.....) number of souls in the afterworld. Any more taughts on why do we exist?

[Links Shadow]

Oh just for the fun of it I will try to put a new question into the mix that I have never really seen discussed before.  We all know that things obviously exist and yet we have no answer to why it exists but what I have pondered for many hours is where do things exist?  Is it nothingness?  If it is something else then whatever it is exists somewhere.  And if you were to say that everything exists in nothingness then how could anything exist because there is nothing to create things from.  I personally think that answering where things exist is a crucial step into figuring out why things exist, but hey that is just my opinion.

I just thought this was an interesting angle on an old style of question.

[mustard]

Links Shadow hmmmmm, have you ever played "Zelda Orcarina of Time"?
Like any other game it's just a game with characters that we interact
with to complete its goals. You can say the person that created that game is its God "Shigeru Miyamoto". But we get our emotions involwed
with a game and then it becomes something deeper, but in reality, sadly we know it's all an illusion developed to entertain us.
The only key factor between an illusion and real is our interaction
with the real. Did God create an illusion to entertain himself?Please, (for those who read this last) I hope you read the whole post before replying, am
positive that you'll find it very mind boggling.

[Links Shadow]

quote:Originally posted by mustard

Links Shadow hmmmmm, have you ever played "Zelda Orcarina of Time"?

Yes, I have played every Zelda game as I am sure you have guessed that is where my nick comes from.

And yes I did read the whole thread before posting but you have to also understand my logic behind my question.  Think about the 5 "W's":  What, Who, When, Where, Why.

Let us analyze something simple like the text you are now reading using these 5 questions.

What:  What is it? The text you are reading.

Who:  Who wrote it? (I use this question because "Who is it?" really doesn't fit with this example.)  I wrote it.

When:  When is it? Whatever the time it is where you are reading it right now.

Where:  Where is it?  Where ever you are right now is were the text is.

Why:  Why is it?  Because you pulled it up off of a server.  But then why was it on the server?  Because I put it there.  But then why did I put it there?  To explain something.

As you can clearly see Why? is the most difficult question to answer because it undoubtedly leads to more questions.  So would it not stand to reason to get the questions with comparitively  simple answers out of the way in hopes of using those answers to solve the more difficult ones.  It is just like in math when finding the surface area of a 3-D parallelegram you find the area of the sides first as they are easier to be found and then use them to find the area of the whole which could not be found by other means with out great calculus which is complicated.  I hope you get the general idea of what I am trying to say.

[mustard]

Life is a quest in which you gain basics to get to get to another level, hoping to use the basics as tools to dicover and answer more
puzzles untill you'r satisfied with your knowledge.  Something that entered my mind when I read your reply. Links Shadow may the triforce be with you.[|)]

my poem about something....

We exist to survive and die.
Why do anything,
when you know,
nobody would care,
years from now.
Why buy anything,
when it's just gona get old and rusted,
after we die.
Why care for a classmate friend,
when you know,
you will seperate at the end.
Why care for a helpless animal in the snow,
when you know you'll let it go,
and hope it finds a happy home.
Why celebrate this and that.
when it's same all over when it's back,
next year.
Why appreciate what your eyes see,
when tomorrow,
it turns into a lost memory.

He didn't care for a soul,
he filled emptiness into his bowl.
He did nothing in his life.
He never said goodbye or hi,
not knowing this might be the day,
death comes by.
Please tell me your taughts on this poem,it took me a while to make it up, so I'll be glad if someone gives me a thumbs up.

[wisp]

Thanks kiauna. I like the rainbow example. Another example I think of is the use of the magnifying glass. []

I think people die for several reasons. Some of these being tired, disappointment, hurt, pain, giving up, just to name a few. The cause of death in the physical leaves a message as well. For instance, I suspect one of my grandmothers died of the prolonged inability to express a side of herself. It resulted in blockage, and may have led to bitterness. I don't like using man-made names to illness or disease. My other grandmother died of natural causes as well. The cause of her death is still a mystery.She may have just been tired (very old), but I think lack of communication played a part. I look at what family members die of in the physical. These things tell me of things I may have to be cautious about repeating. By this I don't mean by way of fear, by way of making what went wrong, right.

Death can be seen in many ways. How do we know if a person we think has died, has really died? In this person's reality, he/she may be have just moved on to another place. It seems to be popular opinion to accept death. Sure, I accept death. I see death as an equal interwoven part of our make-up. Unfortunately, society likes to push fear of death (and illness) by using all sorts of tactics. I don't buy it. We have the power to control our own physical life.

[oreo_renegade]

Why ask?


Do you feel like a life without a 'reason' isnt worth living?


There is no need to "accomplish something" in life, as many people are taught to believe.




Life is meant to be Lived. That is all. There is no test at the end to see how 'well' you lived.


Live.

[Zan]

A life without any reason isn't worth living IMO. We do bring most meaning into life ourselves though.

quote:There is no need to "accomplish something" in life, as many people are taught to believe.

That is a matter of belief and whether it is true or not doesn't really matter. Having the belief that you will have to be judged for your actions after death is a very good method to make sure you don't step out of line and do the right thing. Unless we are talking about some sort of cult here who thinks the right thing to do is screw their leader and give him/her all your money.
Believing you don't have to pay for your actions is a good way to avoid your responcibilities. This way you are free to do what you want and not deal with the results later because you will be dead anyway.

I 'm sure there are more than just these two viewpoints but I still think that the idea of life having a meaning is the more useful of the two.

[mustard]

I most definitely believe that life does have a deeper meaning, cause
if you live without a purpose , and just go along with the rest of the society, I find that very boring, and unmotivating to do anything.

[oreo_renegade]

quote:Originally posted by Zan
I 'm sure there are more than just these two viewpoints but I still think that the idea of life having a meaning is the more useful of the two.

Exactly.  I'm not going for usefull at all

[beavis]

Oreo_renegade: Why ask? Do you feel like a life without a 'reason' isnt worth living? There is no need to "accomplish something" in life, as many people are taught to believe. Life is meant to be Lived. That is all. There is no test at the end to see how 'well' you lived.

Dont use a reason based on what others think, like to worship "god" and free yourself of "sin". There are better things to do.

One of the reasons I came to earth is to make artificial intelligence. Recently, I've had a little success with that, but I'll have to work on it more to make it as smart as I want it to be.

I wouldnt want to be here if there wasnt something specific I wanted to accomplish.

[mustard]

PUZZLE
So many reply>if you ask why does something(us,trees,spirits... exist), they reply, "Why does everything exist." WELL
Why do humans, planets.... exist? Do I want to know, sure, but how can I expect an answer from a question that asks the meaning of life?
Maybe from our creator, but then (who, how, what) created our creator,
and (who, how, what) created the creator's creator, when does it end?
My belief is it, it has to have a reason(purpose) why it was created,
or created us in the first place, or else it was pointless for creating us, if you don't need a point(why were we created) to live your life happily, then why care for believing in God?
If you think the question is pointless, do you think life is pointless, too?