Can one understand life or the meaning of it?

If you try to understand a flower, what will you understand? In your attempt to understand it, maybe you will pull it apart petal by petal. But you will understand nothing. Maybe you will know the chemistry of it. Maybe you will analyze everything and then you will conclude everything is proton, neutron, and electron. All that is fine, but you will not know anything about the flower.





~ Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev


how does this speak to you?

Can one understand life or the meaning of it?
Understanding the life means being the life,not analysing the


life.To understand a flower first you must disappear as the ego.If ego is there it does not understand the flower,it just categorises according to name and form.
Reply:Seeing beauty in a flower could awaken humans, however briefly, to the beauty that is an essential part of their own innermost being, their true nature. The first recognition of beauty was one of the most significant events in the evolution of human consciousness. The feeling of joy and love are intrinsically connected to that recognition. Flowers would become for us an expression in form of that which is most high, most sacred, and ultimately formless within ourselves. Flowers would become like messengers from another realm. They not only had a scent that was delicate and pleasing to humans, but also brought a fragrance from the realm of spirit. Using the word " enlightenment"





Most humans see only the outer forms, unaware of the inner essence, just as they are unaware of their own essence and identify only with their own physical and psychological form.





In the case of a flower, a crystal, precious stone, or bird, however, even someone with little or no Presence can occasionally sense that there is more there than the mere physical existence of the form, without knowing that this is the reason why he or she is drawn toward it. Feels an affinity with it.





Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev: An Indian Yogi and Mystic. The Founder of Isha Foundation.
Reply:As you point out, dissection merely reveals the parts...but it does not reveal the essence of something. To experience that essence, one must be "with" it...living it, breathing it, merged with it. This applies equally to people, things, and situations. Too easily the mind takes over and steers us away from full emergence with what is, by directing us to a limited "take" on it. To be "alive" is to enter into the streaming Life Force as it presents Itself...being one with It moment by moment. An analogy is the reading of a beautiful novel, well written, with language that evokes wonderful images. If one were to try to define the writer's motivation, word selection, organization, etc., one would fall away from the moving experience itself and be left with the nuts and bolts of scaffolding and structure only. The parts do not replicate the whole, for they divert and deconstruct the magnificence of the flowing entirety of the original experience. Only by immersing onself in the experience itself can the essence be known.





i am Sirius
Reply:Life is a dream scape formed in the imagination of Mind, and has neither complexity of function nor meaning until mind attempts to understand or to assign meaning.





How far away is the farthest star? It is the same as asking, how large is your telescope?





We can know everything, and still we would know nothing, as the grass maliciously grows beneath our feet, and we can never know why.
Reply:"Maybe" is a +/- spinor; if one is One Mind Soul-individuated, and able to regard [human] "life" with Grace, one under-stands a la Plato, Plotinus, and Saint Thomas More.





"The Path of the Higher Self," Mark Prophet, gives adequate directions and instructions as to Realization, and hence "understanding life."
Reply:We cannot understand the essence of things; we can only understand the signs and meanings, and from there we reach into deeper mysteries.


Life is an incessant discovery the mysteries in the creation of the One True God.


And this can be done only through the Revelation of the successive Messengers of God.





GU-UN
Reply:Understanding need not always mean application of thoughts, methods, science and so on.Wordless, thoughtless, body-less understanding by pure, reflexive and instantaneous experiencing can fetch understanding for us which we may not be able to put it in words for us or others, but the being has absorbed and starts reflecting in behaviour. So, why the hell we want only one prescription( science, thoughts ) of understanding!
Reply:No.


I get a headache when I try


to think that deep.


If I think too long on it...


then I am wasting moments of my life.


And that sure as heck would suck.


I hate wasting moments of my life.


I plan to get all my


questions answered when


I get to those pearly gates!





Peace!
Reply:Yes, it won't be known by analysis or by mental speculation. It won't even be known by austerity alone. It can be known by loving service to God.


Bhagavad Gita says,.."To those who are constantly devoted and worship Me with love, I give the understanding by which they can come to Me."
Reply:Who gives life to Lotus leaf/flower floating in a lake?


Lotus leaf / flower will get dried unless it RETURNS to the lake- waters.


So is our LIFE. RETURN to the SOURCE and become immortal.
Reply:There is a knowing beyond intellect that is not mine or yours or anyones. It is where understanding and meaning need no permissions, or analysis but which playfully mocks the towers of wisdom we build with our intellectuality.
Reply:If you have to ask this question, you are abusing the gift of life. You are question it instead of doing it.
Reply:Hari hari Baba! This human life is meant for understanding the truth and no other purpose.
Reply:Most persons do not even suspect the existence of God and naturally they are not very keen about God. There are others who, through the influence of tradition, belong to some faith or another and catch the belief in the existence of God from their surroundings. Their faith is just strong enough to keep them bound to certain rituals, ceremonies or beliefs and rarely possesses that vitality which is necessary to bring about a radical change in one’s entire attitude towards life. There are still others who are philosophically minded and have an inclination to believe in the existence of God either because of their own speculations or because of the assertions of others. For them, God is at best an hypothesis or an intellectual idea. Such lukewarm belief in itself can never be sufficient incentive for launching upon a serious search for God. Such persons do not know of God from personal knowledge, and for them God is not an object of intense desire or endeavor.





This is a synopsis of a book entitled "God Speaks." The book was written in 1955 by Meher Baba and explains the meaning of life.





Life is a journey that God is traveling.





The first phase of God's journey is evolution. It is initiated from a totally unconscious God as if an infinite Ocean of Knowledge, Power and Bliss were in a state likened to deep sleep. This unconscious God speaks the First Word "Who am I?". This question disrupts the limitless, undivided, absolute vacuum, and its reverberations create individualized souls, compared to drops or bubbles within the Ocean. By speaking the First Word, God establishes the process of Creation, in which he assumes evolving forms to gain increasing consciousness.





Individuality is the vehicle of this quest. Evolution marks a series of temporary answers to "Who am I?" The soul traverses a multitude of forms, beginning with simples gases and proceeding slowly through inanimate stone and mineral forms. These early evolutionary stages obviously have only the most rudimentary consciousness and cannot provide a satisfactory answer to God's original question.





The original query thus provides a continuing momentum for the drop soul to develop new forms each with greater consciousness, including the many plant and animal beings. Every evolutionary kingdom reveals new dimensions of consciousness and experience. Each also offers opportunities to gain different kinds of awareness. For example, when the soul identifies itself with varied species of fish, it experiences the world as a creature living in water conversely, as a bird, it enriches its consciousness by flying through air.





When the drop soul finally evolves to human form, consciousness is fully developed, but an individual is still not aware of the potential of his or her consciousness.





So the original "Who am I?" imperative persists and inaugurates the second phase: reincarnation. Since consciousness is fully developed, there is no longer a need for evolving new forms. The individual's experience, gathered in early stages of evolution, is now humanized and expressed in countless lifetimes. The impulses gained in sub-human forms can play themselves out in the broader context of intelligence, emotions, choices, diverse setting and interactions with people.





But obviously no single lifetime can bear the burden of "humanizing" the entire evolutionary inheritance randomly or simultaneously. There must be a method for re-experiencing the pre-human legacy in manageable segments. The soul thus experiences alternately a series of opposites, organized according to themes. Accordingly, in different lives, the soul becomes male and female, rich and poor, vigorous and weak, beautiful and ugly. Through exploring the potential of these many opposites, one eventually exhausts all possible human identities and, therefore, has fully learned the entire range of human experience.





Here begins the third phase: involution, the process by which the soul returns to the full awareness of the Divine Force, which created him. As Meher Baba puts it, "When the consciousness of the soul is ripe for disentanglement from the gross world (the everyday world of matter and forms), it enters the spiritual path and turns inward."





Like evolution, involution has certain states and stages, consisting of "planes" and "realms." But individuality continues along this spiritual path, and there are as many ways to God as there are souls.





Each new plane denotes a state of being that differs from the states that proceeded it. The first three planes are within the subtle world or domain of energy, "pran." There follows the fourth plane, the threshold of the mental world, where misuse of great power for personal desire can lead to disintegration of consciousness.





The fifth and sixth planes represent true sainthood, which is understood to be increasing intimacy with God as the Beloved. On the sixth plane, the mind itself becomes the inner eye that sees God everywhere and in everything. "The loving of God and the longing for His union," says Meher Baba "is fully demonstrated in the sixth plane of consciousness."





The seventh plane marks true and lasting freedom. Impressions go. Duality goes. The drops burst and again become the Ocean. God answers his question of "Who am I?" with "I am God." The Infinite has returned to the original starting point. He now knows, however, with full consciousness and full awareness that he was, is and always will be infinite with infinite Knowledge, Power and Bliss. And he realizes that the entire journey has been an illusory dream, the purpose of which is the full awakening of his soul.
Reply:The philosophical question "What is the meaning of life?" means different things to different people. The vagueness of the query is inherent in the word "meaning", which opens the question to many interpretations, such as: "What is the origin of life?", "What is the nature of life (and of the universe in which we live)?", "What is the significance of life?", "What is valuable in life?", and "What is the purpose of, or in, (one's) life?". These questions have resulted in a wide range of competing answers and arguments, from scientific theories, to philosophical, theological, and spiritual explanations.





These questions are separate from the scientific issue of the boundary between things with life and inanimate objects.


Popular beliefs


"What is the meaning of life?" is a question many people ask themselves at some point during their lives, most in the context "What is the purpose of life?" Here are some of the many potential answers to this perplexing question. The responses are shown to overlap in many ways but may be grouped into the following categories:





Survival and temporal success


...to live every day like it is your last and to do your best at everything that comes before you


...to be always satisfied


...to live, go to school, work, and die


...to participate in natural human evolution, or to contribute to the gene pool of the human race


...to advance technological evolution, or to actively develop the future of intelligent life


...to compete or co-operate with others


...to destroy others who harm you, or to practice nonviolence and nonresistance


...to gain and exercise power


...to leave a legacy, such as a work of art or a book


...to eat


...to prepare for death


...to spend life in the pursuit of happiness, maybe not to obtain it, but to pursue it relentlessly.


...to produce offspring through sexual reproduction (alike to participating in evolution)


...to protect and preserve one's kin, clan, or tribe (akin to participating in evolution)


...to seek freedom, either physically, mentally or financially


...to observe the ultimate fate of humanity to the furthest possible extent


...to seek happiness and flourish, experience pleasure or celebrate


...to survive, including the pursuit of immortality through scientific means


...to attempt to have many sexual conquests (as in Arthur Schopenhauer's will to procreate)


...to find and take over all free space in this "game" called life


...to seek and find beauty


...to kill or be killed


...No point. Since having a point is a condition of living human consciousness. Animals do not need a point to live or exist. It is more of an affliction of consciousness that there are such things as points, a negative side to evolutionary development for lack of better words.





Wisdom and knowledge


...to master and know everything


...to be without questions, or to keep asking questions


...to expand one's perception of the world


...to explore, to expand beyond our frontiers


...to learn from one's own and others' mistakes


...to seek truth, knowledge, understanding, or wisdom


...to understand and be mindful of creation or the cosmos


...to lead the world towards a desired situation


...to satisfy the natural curiosity felt by humans about life





Ethical


...to express compassion


...to follow the "Golden Rule"


...to give and receive love


...to work for justice and freedom


...to live in peace with yourself and each other, and in harmony with our natural environment


...to protect humanity, or more generally the environment


...to serve others, or do good deeds





Religious and spiritual


...to find perfect love and a complete expression of one's humanness in a relationship with God


...to achieve a supernatural connection within the natural context


...to achieve enlightenment and inner peace


...to become like God, or divine


...to glorify God


...to experience personal justice (i.e. to be rewarded for goodness)


...to experience existence from an infinite number of perspectives in order to expand the consciousness of all there is (i.e. to seek objectivity)


...to be a filter of creation between heaven and hell


...to produce useful structure in the universe over and above consumption (see net creativity)


...to reach Heaven in the afterlife


...to seek and acquire virtue, to live a virtuous life


...to turn fear into joy at a constant rate achieving on literal and metaphorical levels: immortality, enlightenment, and atonement


...to understand and follow the "Word of God"


...to discover who you are


...to resolve all problems that one faces, or to ignore them and attempt to fully continue life without them, or to detach oneself from all problems faced





Philosophical


...to give life meaning


...to participate in the chain of events which has led from the creation of the universe until its possible end (either freely chosen or determined, this is a subject widely debated amongst philosophers)


...to know the meaning of life


...to achieve self-actualisation


...all possible meanings have some validity


...life in itself has no meaning, for its purpose is an opportunity to create that meaning, therefore:


...to die


...to simply live until one dies (there is no universal or celestial purpose)


...nature taking its course (the wheel of time keeps on turning)


...whatever you see you see, as in "projection makes perception"


...there is no purpose or meaning whatsoever


...life may actually not exist, or may be illusory )


...to contemplate "the meaning of the end of life"





Other


...to contribute to collective meaning ("we" or "us") without having individual meaning ("I" or "me")


...to find a purpose, a "reason" for living that hopefully raises the quality of one's experience of life, or even life in general


...to participate in the inevitable increase in entropy of the universe


...to make conformists' lives miserable


...to make life as difficult as possible for others (i.e. to compete)-

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