Human Existence: What's It For?

We are often so caught up in the ‘small stuff’ that it is hard for us to take a step back and consider whether there really is a higher purpose to life. In interviews with astronauts who have spent time living on the International Space Station, they all speak of a common experience of peering down at our planet and being struck by the reality that we live on one massive globe suspended, in a great ocean of darkness called space, and yet this planet is only a small dot in a vast universe. Please Note: This track was recorded live and may contain background noises.

Transcript

Voice over.

What are People'summy Proilippines to Share with subscriber?

Human existence,

Is there a purpose?

One of our problems is in trying to ascertain these things is we're very much stuck in our head,

And our experience and exposure that we've had in life,

The culture,

The country,

The families,

Everything.

And we become very involved with a lot of stuff that's actually not really that important.

Not really that important.

And we tend to even become very much overwhelmed by this small stuff,

Because that's where our head is,

That's what's affecting or influencing us.

And so asking a question about what is the purpose of my existence,

What is the purpose of human existence,

Is kind of like,

Whoa,

If you are going to be really serious about it,

That's like a huge thing to ask.

I was watching this documentary on people that had spent quite a lot of time on the International Space Station.

And when you hear them speak,

They all have had a common experience,

Which for them is almost like a,

If we can put it that way,

A religious experience.

Here you are in this man-made contraption,

And it's not even that big.

It's kind of spread out,

But in terms of the actual area,

It's not that big.

And it is hurtling through space.

You know how long it takes to get around the Earth?

Takes 90 minutes.

90 minutes.

Just like from here to Christchurch in an airplane,

In that time they have circumambulated or circumnavigated,

However you want to put it,

The whole planet Earth.

And moving at such speed and looking out that window,

And especially when they get out,

They have to go on these spacewalks,

They get out of the space station,

And here they are suspended in the air.

They don't feel like they're moving.

They're moving at this amazing speed,

And you look around,

And you see that this planet that we're on is one tiny little body in an endless ocean of darkness.

One of the things that hits them really heavy is space,

Meaning that area in between all the planets.

It's vastness and it's darkness.

It's extraordinary.

And here you are alone,

Looking down at this huge planet,

Which actually seems quite small in the big scale of things,

Here you are looking down at this huge body,

And on a good day you can make out so many landforms,

You can see countries.

If it's in the evening,

You see the lights,

You can see the cities,

You can see the impact that people have had on this planet.

You do not see borders.

And so you begin to have this concept,

This feeling and idea of human beings as a species.

And while there may be a huge variety of body types,

Racial,

Ethnic extractions,

Different sizes and shapes,

Different ages,

And here you are contemplating on this,

Hurtling through space and it's like you're going over cities with 10 million,

15 million,

20 million people compared to where we live.

I mean,

You know,

The population of New Zealand is pretty dinky,

You know,

It's just like a little drop in the ocean of humanity.

And upon their return to Earth,

They have this profound,

I mean really profound appreciation for their life and the time that they have and the connections that they have and this bigger picture and all of them have this common experience.

It's like everybody gets so hung up on the small stuff,

The stuff that really doesn't matter.

It's really not going to make that much of a difference.

And we're completely hung up on it,

Like this is my life.

For you to have a real deep and profound appreciation for the purpose of existence and your own spiritual existence,

You need to have an experience like this also,

Where you are able to step back from the clutter and the noise and the emotions and the mental agitation and all the worries and all the things going on,

To be able to really ask this question,

What's it really for or more importantly,

Is there any purpose to it?

You know,

There are a number of,

Large number of people that would like you to believe that you don't actually exist.

It is just a bunch of chemical and electrical reactions within the brain,

This thing that is evolved inside your skull and that's creating a false idea that you exist,

But in reality you don't exist.

It's just going on in your,

This mind and the brain and at death it all just rots and goes back into matter and whatever you accomplished,

Whatever you did,

That was it,

That's your life.

The spiritual perspective is entirely different.

The spiritual perspective is that life does not start and end with the body.

In fact,

The body is never really alive in the truest sense.

That you are a different type of energy than this material energy.

You are a spiritual energy and one of the characteristics of your existence is that you manifest this thing called life.

The fact that you manifest life or something appears to be alive,

It is because there is a spiritual existence.

There is some particle of spiritual existence and it can be known or you can know it exists because of this symptom that manifests called life.

From that point of view,

The time between your birth and the death of your body does not constitute your life.

That's just a moment in time.

You are a spiritual being.

You are the one that brought life into that package known as the material body.

Because of your presence and existence within it,

Your body appeared to be alive.

Your mind appeared to be almost independent in its existence and all the things that are going on.

But this could only happen because you were there.

You,

You were there.

You are the one who brings life to the equation.

This time that you spend in this body between your birth and your death,

That is not life.

That is how you lived things out for a period of time.

But that was temporary.

With the death of that body,

As that body disintegrates,

So all of your activities,

Everything that you've engaged in also disintegrates.

It is not eternal,

But you are eternal.

In the yoga system,

There was one form of yoga.

It was known as sankhya,

Sankhya yoga,

Where they would really analytically,

I mean really take things apart to try and discover the clear nature of that which is spirit and how it is completely different from that which is material.

You know,

It's kind of like we haven't got up into the space station yet.

You get up into the space station and it's just like your mind is completely blown and you're looking down and it's like everything is different.

You return to earth and you are totally changed.

You cannot go back to living the way that you were living,

Seeing things the way that you had seen them before.

Everything is growing immensely and a lot of the things that we get hung up with,

They realize this is not important,

This is not really important.

There are more valuable things to be concerned with.

The spiritual equivalent of that is when a person begins to actually experiencing awakening of their true spiritual identity.

All life is equal.

Anything that is manifesting life contains the same spiritual spark,

The same being,

But those with non-human bodies,

The spiritual being is so covered you can barely make it out.

I mean,

You can't see a personality in a bee.

You can't.

If you are,

I used to be a beekeeper,

If you take care of bees,

It becomes amazing.

You see how there are divisions of labor,

There are different characteristics,

These guys are all really different,

But as you move up the evolutionary chain,

If we can put it that way,

And you start encountering living beings whose bodies provide more of a window to the soul,

You can begin to see the individual personalities in existence as life forms become more elevated.

The human form of life is so extraordinary because when you compare it to all other life forms,

It is easier to perceive the spiritual personality residing within the body.

We can become more easily aware of these realities.

The whole process of spiritual life and what makes human life so unique is it is an extraordinary opportunity to really plumb the depths,

As they say.

You know this term,

Plumbing the depths?

These in the old days when they didn't have sonar as the ships would approach shore,

Or even from some distance,

There'd always be guys on the front of the boat,

And they've got a long rope with knots tied on it a certain distance and a weight on the end,

And they're letting it drop to the bottom and counting,

So that they're telling the guys steering the ship and the captain what's the depth of the water.

This is called plumbing the depths,

To try and find where does this end?

What is it like under there?

What's the terrain like under the water where you can't see?

Spiritual life is very much about that experience.

We're plumbing the internal depths.

We are in search of our true spiritual identity,

And this is the unique,

The unique capacity that human life has.

You have the chance to learn who I am,

Who am I?

I can discover my true spiritual identity.

I can reconnect with the highest truth,

The supreme soul.

I can awaken my natural and this powerful tendency to love,

To love and to be loved.

This is the real purpose of human life.

Everything else is not so important.

It's not like we should give up.

No.

I don't know if any of you have ever read Bhagavad Gita.

It was a story of a very charismatic and powerful warrior prince who suddenly had a turn of he was known for his great courage and his skill in battle and he was about to enter into a battle to defeat that which was unrighteous in order to be able to relieve the burden of the suffering of the people in that part of the world.

But he had this sudden confusion,

You know,

That I shouldn't be doing this stuff.

Violence is always bad.

And then there was this amazing discourse where he learned that our life,

We have duty,

We have responsibility and it should be performed for a spiritual end.

In that way,

One can live in this world and not incur any karmic reaction.

But the higher purpose of our life is to discover how true spiritual identity and to exist and live in that reality.

Okay or not okay?

Am I saying love is everything?

Yes.

But just as,

You know,

There is what I would call a material experience of love that is very much colored by self-interest and things which is doesn't matter how good it gets,

It's never perfect,

It's never perfectly fulfilling and it doesn't last forever.

It is but a dim reflection of another amazing spiritual reality.

That thing that we crave more than anything is love,

To both love and to be loved.

And true spiritual awakening means to come to that experience.

And when one has that experience of spiritual love,

There is nothing that is more,

There is no higher fulfillment,

There is nothing else that attracts the heart or the mind of such a person that has had this experience.

So yes,

Love is everything but we're not talking about,

You know,

The material version of it,

We're talking about a transcendent spiritual experience.

Thank you very much.

Reviews

❤️

Pretty amazing subject. It kind of blew my mind