This topic is based on comments in varous threads over the past couple of weeks:

The question is what is the meaning of life and death to you?

Here is my short answer (i will fill in more later):

I consider that any "meaning of life" is an artificial proposition. If there was real meaning to be predetermined in your life you would have had to have been consulted on your very creation. Now this is not something that happens, of course, so anything defined a posteriori is arbitrary. Life "just is". It is all part of a larger system, and trying to create some artificial "purpose" that is beyond the scope of your existance is pointless.

Now on the division of the parts of life, again abribrary: mind,body, soul. Well the body is real, but the mind and soul are creations of philosophy and nothing real at all.

Death is one of the great creations of life. It allows for a continual renewal and development of the system. When the body dies, it returns to "the earth". There are no souls, spirits, etc.

Death is the crown in the path of life. This path is formed by the hooves of the Horse of Death.

Hyper interesting answer, I would say too that life has no meaning except for the meaning I give it, Life is change growth evolvement, it happens whether I am aware or not, My mind is a tool my body a vehicle and from my spirit springs my beingness, which I ( personality which I construct) ) decide and choose what that will be. I'm as brilliant as a star as bright as the sun I'm the same stuff just expressing myself differently I think all things are concious being different only in levels of self awareness. I'm an energy system basically and from my experiences to date it appears as if the more I experince the more I want to experince, Life seems to seek more of itself, as me thru me. To me this is the nature of life meaning it feels natural. ( I also want to add that all energy is not aware its self aware .) pretty simple very basic yet intriguing and amazing and beyond words, this is how I experince life today unless it changes and my guess is it definitly will.


Death is nothing more that a change in perspective, without death this experince I call life could not be, I don't have much to say about death except when i ponder it I feel grateful so at the cellular level its home, whatever that means. Namaste sheri

Hyper Thanks for this question very insightful I hope we aren't to grim for the others.

Death is a release. A new beginning. The meaning of life in my opinion is to learn lessons, sometimes spiritually. Grow as much as possible with the time you have.

I guess I'm the master of nothing in particular

And as for death I have not died to know yet, most likely it is the end so I don't think i'll be complaining much about it.

l feel the same way as Yelekiah on this one.

Life is the Universe reflecting on itself, seeking its true nature. Death is moving on to the next point of view. To me, our bodies are cocoons. When we shed them we become different kind of energy being. What we call matter is an illusion, all is energy. Sometimes we return to this form, sometimes become another. I am looking forward to changing out my body. This body has too many electrical shorts.

Ultimately there is no such thing as meaning, there is only experience and creativity.

The purpose of the universe is experience. Ultimatley everything is God, and the univerese and its relative frame work were created so God could experience itself, and come to know itself. God cannot create something outside itself because God is all there is. Seperation is just an illusion, that serves the purpose of creating experience. Growth and accumulation of knowledge lead to more varied types of experiences.

With regards to life and death, ultimately everything is life. The universe and everything in it is in constant motion. Nothing is static at the fundamental level. With regards to human death, its just a transition from one form to another. There exist many dimensions and human conciousness is part of these unseen dimensions. So yes there is life after death. It just yields a different kind of experience.

I have to say for me this by far has been the most insightful topic great posts all, very profound. I hope it stays like this namaste Sheri

Interesting posts!
Your journey here is but a stepping stone in the development of consciousness.
I firmly believe that you incarnated in this realm to experience and grow spiritually.
You chose your parents, for they afforded you the opportunities and challenges to experience.
I also believe that you have several people whom you had made contract with to help each other out here.
We are all experiencing different challenges, overcoming numerous obstacles in our path that we have chosen to experience in this go round, which raises our consciousness..
We are here to experience individuality and to live life in the illusion of separation from the life force (GOd/energy) whatever....
Your life is not judged on sin, but on karma. What goes around, comes around.
WE are all here in the development of mankind, to raise the vibration, and to work through the mistakes of our parents and send a evolved message into the future.
After death, the electromagnetic field that surrounds your body dissipates, and your soul is then rejoined into the christ consciousness, where your actions here are judged by you alone in a loving way to aid you in your understanding of furthering your spiritual development.
How you treated people here will be mirrored back to you so you gain understanding on how your actions affected another.
Some may return here to further their development or to experience different scenarios.
Somewhere on your path here you will meet your soulmate, and they may not be whom you expect. I had one friend meet his soulmate, whom was another man, and his path in this incarnation was one of living and experiencing life as a gay man. ( can hardly wait for the replies to this)
After your journey here is complete, you have choices on whether to return to learn a different lesson, or stay , depending on your own personal level of consciousness.

Discuss......

Seeing as I believe in reincarnation, life, everyone's life, has a prupose, and if you don't fulfill it, on death (or, sometime after) you'll have to return until you get it right. There are of course I would assume people who choose to return, but I'd say for the most part you just keep coming back until you've done what it is you're supposed to do.

Needless to say, I have no desire to return to Earth after this life, so, I'm trying to get it right.

Life is a miracle...Death is a mystery.

The End.

Don't foget about the pessimist in all of us.

Life is a mystery
Death is a miracle

The purpose of life is the acquistion of knowledge.

The last piece of information you recieve is.........death.

hahaha that works too i suppose!

Oh Hyper I love your question.

Well let us see.

Life is what you make of it. If you invest in sorrow and grief you will become sad. But if you invest in happiness and well being you will not die as soon.

People often die of broken hearts.

Death is just a time where life comes to a stand still then your soul goes to a Heaven. A place of rest and serenity.

In my opinion, the meaning of life is 'Experience'...
We base our life on significance... be it jobs, love, fame, family etc. All these things make us necessary. In reality there are so many of us, all unsure of why we exist but continuing TO exist and seeking some sort of satisfaction. Many of us waste our lives as materialists or worriers, concerned with the superficiallity of each and every day. Personally, I believe life is a short journey and at the end of it we may get a revelation... if not, we need to have experienced as much as we can... because there may not be another chance.

Go out,,, embrace this world... Look up and forward not down and backwards...

Tommorow could bring anything.....

Don't prepare.

life is like a cookie.

death is like an empty packet of cookies.



(I want cookies now...)

The following is a quote from Jane Roberts, Psychic Politics and I believe it describes the purpose of life quite well.

"What we need is a whole new myth of man and his beginnings, one that leapfrogs local gods and places God inside his creatures, within creation. We need a god as blessed or flawed as its creations, a whole new cosmology giving birth to a God that is male and female, Jew, Arab, American, Chinese, Indian; that is within each individual alike; that is not parochial and not man's alone; a god that is within stones and stars; a god-goddess big enough to be personified as a Buddha, Christ, Isis, Athena, Muhammed-animal god, insect god, tree god; each seen as a local symbol standing for an unexplainable reality that is too super-real to fit our definitions. We need a new myth, imaginative and creative enough to leap above our puny facts. What boldness, to create a new race of the gods, glorifying individuality, seeing each as a unique personification-not sterile righteous lords sending down condemnations and handing out impossible edicts, but gods saying "Life is good. That's why we're alive, and alive in you!" We need father, mother, grandfather, grandmother gods, niece and nephew gods, aunt and uncle gods- boisterous joyful divine families, mating among themselves and with us, singing of the beauty of the lovebed, appreciating the moments formed like solitary jewels from the vast necklace of infinity... The Book of the Gods- I'd like to write that, and The Book of the Universe, in which people-gods or god-people rise from nonphysical to physical life because they want to, because they dreamed in their solitary godhoods of green grasses and soft flesh and yearned to be born as men and women; flinging their godness into bodies joyfully, recklessly, come what may. And maybe, in between lives, they wander on the shores of inner rivers, planning their "future" lives with great excitement, creating them as a writer does his book, plotting crises and achievements, challenges and glories-then, once on earth again, changing the stories, making surprise endings, each character alive, remaking the plot; with each life forming a new dimension of actuality, providing greater knowledge of honor and love, and a new marriage of the soul with the seasons. For if the gods didn't love the evenings and the dawns, why would their creatures?" Jane Roberts, Psychic Politics

Venom Namasate Sheri

Life: The reason for living, or my reason for living, is to learn, to undertake as many varied experiences as I can and to make as many people as I can happy.


Death: the reason for death. Well, if you didn't die you may never understand how important living actually is.


What happens after that? Do spirits just sit around twiddling thier thumbs for a bit once they have learned everything, or done everything they had to do?

Ofcourse I type this with a smile on my face and a vision of Terry Pratchett's, Auditors in my head.

To date, no one has understood what life itself is, or consists of. All we seem to know it that it is either present, or not present (and sometimes not even that all that well). Some people believe that life was given by some supernatural being, and some believe that it came about naturally. All anyone can say for sure is that life "is" and exists. From my point of view, I tend to think that reincarnation may be. I don't know about "getting it right" though. From my perspective, it would be a whole lot nicer to live if people were better able to get along with each other. I can be either part of the problem or part of the solution (or for some, for sure, just going along with what someone else says, not wanting to think about it for themselves) and I prefer being part of the solution to living on this world. Life would be difficult enough without people going out of their way to make it even more so. Mother Earth is a harsh mistress, indeed.

The meaning of life. I feel my views are best described in the following passage.

Ecclesiastes 12:13 - "Now all has been heard; here is the conclusion of the matter: Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man."

Life is many things. It is a journey, a game, a puzzle, a mystery, a joyous experience, a trial. It has the potential to be what you make it to be. But when it comes down to it, the ultimate meaning is to follow God.

Regards, PA

Life and death are one and the same. When you die, you rot and the worms and stuff live from the food you offer. There's no afterlife, or probably you live as a part of the worms, don't know..

venom,

perhaps what we need most of all is to stop dreaming up myths.

Dude, you saved me a lot of typing! Agree with you!

What about an authentic life??, Why do you need to be told not to kill or lie why do you need to be told to treat all others with respect??? why would you advocate the fear of anything, least of all your self doesn't that sound a bit insane to you???? namaste sheri

Which of your extensive studies is this from PA????

Let's see Sheri (almost wrote Sherri, I'm kinda idiotic typing you know? ):
1) What do you mean by "authentic life": a life without being told what to do, with no religion?
2) Because for me religion is not a set of morals. We know that people throughout history have known that killing is bad, people with different religious backgrounds, or even no background at all. I follow a religion because I'm grateful to God that he created me and he gave me such a wonderful family, friends, everything. When I come to think about it, I'm a really lucky man. So, I follow God because of gratitude, not fear

Sheri, the real question for me is not why the religious need to be told not to do these things, but why do they feel that they have to be reminded on a weekly basis not to? I can only conclude that their attention spans are remarkably short. Then too, even with the weekly reminder, why do they still go out and do otherwise, all the while claiming that they are adherents of their faith? Truly an Unknown Mystery

I am convinced that the responses here represent an uncommon view of life and death. It should be remembered, I think, that a select group gather here and we enjoy thinking, sharing, disputing and learning. For that reason our perceptions are more acute and probing and we view life as a passing experience and death as an extension of all we were within a universe waiting to inform us.

Most people, however, exist. They pass from day to day and permit time to pass as if it had no meaning or value. For that reason I say "Thank God for people like you." You keep our existences defined and our futures filled with wonder.