THE
ADVENTURE OF LIFE
(A Wholistic view)
One
of the greatest searches of mankind that have occupied people, especially those
who seek insight into the world in which we live, is the search for the meaning
and purpose of existence.
I
think that most people, at one level or another, have sought an answer to this
question. Some find an answer from within their own personal philosophy of life.
Others draw upon one or another religion or existing philosophy to provide an
answer, and although they may be satisfied with the answers that they are given,
it is interesting that these answers are not all the same. This poses the question
as to which one is right, or whether so far, none are correct.
Let
us look at an approximate idea of some of the answers that have been furnished
as serious answers to the question. They fall roughly into the following groups.
Materialism:
There is no meaning to existence beyond the material
world of everyday life. If there is any meaning or purpose, it is simply to survive
as long and as well as possible along with those closest and dearest to us.
Western
Religions: We were created as the children
of God (cast as a patriarchal figure) and the meaning and purpose of our existence
is to serve Him and to obey His laws. If we comply with these dictates, we may
in the next life exist along with God and His hierarchy in a Heaven free of sin
and pain. If not we go to a world of suffering called Hell. Some believe that
if we have not offended seriously we may go to 'Purgatory' instead, where we go
through a process of being purged of our sins, (not always a very comfortable
experience, depending on the degree and level of the sinning ! ).
Hinduism:
The Supreme Power behind and within the universe
is named 'Brahman'. Brahman is considered to be the 'ground of all being and of
existence itself, which equates with what we call God. Thus, the most fundamental
'essence' of man is grounded within the being of God. Any idea of separateness
from this is but an illusion perceived by the mind. Within the process of birth
and rebirth under reincarnation, we live our lives firstly moving deeper and deeper
into the illusion of separation from God. Eventually, we tire of the movement
away from Oneness with God, and begin the process of
returning. We discover
in all of this cycle of existence, that true fulfilment is only achieved through
unity of the soul with God. This is the meaning and purpose of life, to find the
way back to this fundamental unity, having previously strayed far from it.
Buddhism:
According to Buddhism, human beings are subject
to an unbroken cycle of birth and rebirth (reincarnation). This is termed 'Samsara'.
Ultimately, all of life can be found to be based on suffering. The purpose of
life for the human being is to gain freedom from this cycle of birth and rebirth
by reaching Enlightenment (Nirvana). This is done by following Buddhist practise
in the form of the Noble Eightfold Path: Right Views, Right Intent, Right Speech,
Right Action, Right Livelihood, Right Effort, Right Mindfulness and Right Concentration.
Incorporated in this is the practise of Buddhist meditation. The above are based
upon Four Noble Truths: that all life is suffering; that the cause of suffering
is desire; that suffering will cease when desire ceases; and that the Noble Eightfold
path will lead to the cessation of desire. At the achievement of Enlightenment,
the existence of the separate self (ego) is transcended. This state of freedom
from craving, achievement of total peace, and existence in the blissful state
of Oneness of Being called Nirvana is thus accomplished.
Currently
Emerging Philosophies (connected to New Age thought):
God is consciousness, or perhaps better expressed
as 'Cosmic Consciousness'. Purpose and meaning for life are achieved by gaining
insight in the sphere of metaphysics, resulting in expansion of consciousness
and fulfilment for the individual.
Wholism
is in partial agreement with some aspects of these other religions and philosophies.
We consider them to be all part of God's 'Orchestra', and meeting the needs of
the different mentalities of people of the world, (people at different levels
of approach and insight into existence). But wholism includes another, and most
important aspect of the purpose of life. If we look objectively and accurately
at what all of life is doing, we will see that we are all deeply engaged in the
adventures and challenges of existence in the world.
Ask any ordinary person
who looks at life in a practical way and in one way or another they will say that
what they most like about living is the adventure and challenge of involvement
with it all.
We
now outline a comprehensive idea of the purpose and meaning of life from the Wholistic
view of existence.
Wholism:
There exists (often hidden or suppressed) within
every human being a pure soul-being. Its qualities are love, kindness and compassion,
and a sense of brotherhood/ sisterhood with others. This spiritual soul-being
is a gift from a loving God of a spark of its own beingness. Ultimately, the purpose
and meaning of life is to achieve full unity with the soul-being, and thus a blissful
state of Oneness and Unity with God, and all of existence. However, that, though
it is the eventual goal and purpose, is not the immediate purpose of life as human
beings.
We
have come into existence to seek adventure and to engage the challenges with which
life presents us. And so it is that we are God's adventurers. Through us, God
experiences His/Her/Its Creation. One of the qualities of God is total and pure
awareness. But the material world is based upon conditioned perceptions that are
at a lower level of awareness than the Pure and Total Awareness of God. Such God-Consciousness
is totally senior to that required to be able to be gripped by the perception
of the lower material world.
But
what is the point in God creating the universe if He/She/It does not experience
it? It requires the limitation of consciousness via conditioned awareness (which
leads to states of impurity), to experience the 'virtual reality' of the physical
world. Though this is not compatible with the Total Pure Consciousness of God,
at the same time, there is nothing that God cannot overcome, and so we are created
so that God can experience the created universe through human consciousness.
Therefore in giving existence to us, we are not only given our soul-being, but
we are given also a mind and an ego that are based on the perception of being
separate from everything else. This is necessary if we are to be able to experience
adventure and challenge.
But it is impossible to have adventure without
the possibility of misadventure. THIS IS THE FUNDAMENTAL SOURCE OF ANY AND
ALL OF THE SUFFERING OF LIFE IN THIS WORLD. If we want to have the great gift
of adventuring in the material world, it's impossible without the existence of
suffering ! We have to have the existence of that if we want to have this adventure
which we call life.
And so it is that we have to admit that suffering, though
most unpleasant is necessary to the gift of being able to have adventure, and
therefore, the existence of suffering is also a gift, but there is more to be
said on this shortly. First of all, though, we need to look at another basic principle
that is necessary for existence in our conditioned human consciousness if we are
to be able to experience life on this material plane.
DUALITY
One of the 'programs' of conditioned awareness that are installed within the mind
and the ego, are the 'Dualities' (awareness of the opposites of the world).
Some examples follow:
To
create and experience the perception of space, time, and dimension, the awareness
of the following concepts and perceptions are given us:
Up | ----------------- |
Down |
Right
| ----------------- |
Left |
Ahead | ----------------- |
Behind |
Past | ----------------- |
Future |
Some
of the other dualities necessary to 'awareness conditioning' so that we may experience
and live within the 'virtual reality' of the material plane are as follows, (this
is only a short sample list to illustrate the principle, and is far from a complete
list).
Love | ----------------- |
Fear |
Awareness | ----------------- |
Ignorance |
Good
| ----------------- |
Evil |
Right | ----------------- |
Wrong |
Winning | ----------------- |
Losing |
Hard | ----------------- |
Soft |
Pain | ----------------- |
Pleasure |
Affinity | ----------------- |
Antipathy |
Abundance | ----------------- |
Scarcity |
Difficulty | ----------------- |
Easiness |
Purpose | ----------------- |
Aimlessness |
Focussed
attention | ----------------- |
Dispersed
attention |
Plus
all the other many perceptual, conceptual, and experiential conditionings and
'circuits' of consciousness that are required in order to experience this form
of virtual reality that is both life and adventure in the 'physical world'.
Now
it's time to return to the relationship of adventure to suffering.
The
Adventure,
And How To Regulate How Much Suffering
We Have To Experience.
This
is an especially important subject for today's world. Humanity today, has lost
awareness of these fundamental matters, so necessary for maintaining happy and
fulfilled lives. We have reached a stage now where one of our greatest advantages,
the power that scientific knowledge has given us, could become a threat to our
very survival. I think that most of us are by now becoming concerned about whether
mankind has the wisdom to ethically and morally apply all of the powers endowed
to us by science. We can see that the environment of the planet is being polluted,
even perhaps, undermined. If these fears are correct, we may make our planet uninhabitable.
Even if we can avoid this, what sort of a world will we have to live in?
We
are now capable of tampering with the building blocks of life itself through genetic
engineering. Yet not all of the ethical rules to prevent the opening of a Pandora's
Box of disasters on this front have been thrashed out and agreed upon. Even if
they become established in time, what is to stop individuals from breaching the
rules? We humans seem to love stepping over the boundaries, but in this area of
genetic engineering, it could be disastrous. We have the ability now to start
working towards messing with things such as crossing animals with humans for purposes
that could in the future create an underclass of slave type hybrids or chimeras.
Though we may pass laws to prevent it, you can be sure those laws will be broken.
What dreadful outcome could be produced upon the Earth?
This
means that right at this time in our history, we need to find and create a greater
wisdom and sense of ethics and morality than mankind currently demonstrates. This
can only be done by applying a deeper understanding to the education of, and the
uplifting of the ethical awareness of humanity. If such a project is not engaged
on really urgently, I believe that the sufferings of mankind will progressively
increase. This is just the area that is the domain of Wholistic knowledge and
insight. We understand that the answer to this problem is to educate people in
how to find greater contact with, and be in tune with their inner soul-being.
This would open us to the love/wisdom centre of our fundamental being, from which,
over the ages, we have strayed. The principle involved here is that THE
MORE THAT WE LIVE IN ALIGNMENT WITH SOUL-BEING, THE LESS THE SUFFERING.
When the suffering is on a world scale, this principle is only effective if the
majority can be brought to be involved.
Now
this is exactly where a deeper understanding of suffering comes in. Mankind seems
disillusioned with a God whom they see as creating a world of suffering. The clergy
do not seem to be able to explain it properly in a way that people can understand
and accept. And so the subject of the spiritual soul, being that it associated
closely with things to do with God, has become unpopular. Anything to do with
the 'soul' is about as fashionable and popular, as is a pork chop to a Jewish
person in today's world. Science tries to discount the notion of a God, or a soul.
This is quite understandable because of some of the past behaviour of the Church.
But
it is now fashionable among scientists to put down other types of knowledge, wisdom,
and understanding, other than their own as 'unscientific.' What about good old
common-sense? What about the wise people, and sages of past times? Are they to
be discounted and insulted as having been unscientific?
I am certainly not
against science, but it is time for scientists to start curbing this kind of arrogance,
similar to that of some sections of the Church of past times. There are other
valid forms of knowledge than those that only have knowledge on the level of the
physical plane ! I'm very sorry, but if we are going to rely on scientists to
provide the wisdom needed for bringing mankind out of this problem, it's just
not going to happen in time !
What
is urgently needed is to find and engage support from philanthropists who already
sense the problem, and are willing to finance the project to turn things around.
We
have covered a lot of ground here, but perhaps you can see that there are many
levels of adventure that can be engaged upon by humanity as a whole. Which level
we are going to choose to work for is the question now. Many, many people are
going to be needed to give time and support to the project we have been discussing,
and many, many existing organisations and groups will need to go into alliance
to work to achieve this very Wholistic project.
Note: Permission to reproduce the above is freely
given, provided that acknowledgement of origin is shown, and contact details are
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