MEANING OF LIFE

The association of life with death has outwitted everyone who has tried to give meaning to life. Death means nothingness and life in the backyard of death cannot be anything. It has never been defined anywhere, scientifically, if life is the life of birth, growth and death for an individual species or life is the life of the species in common, or life is the life through mutation and divisibility like bacteria, or if life is the age and biomass of a caterpillar or the age and biomass of a butterfly. What definition of life do we get when a mayfly lives for a day, a human for 70-85 years, a Greenland shark for 400 years, a glass sponge for 10,000 years and a hydra without death? Is life, further, as old as the life on this planet, for 3.7 billion years, since the birth of microbes, or over 5-million-year-old anthropes or about 3-lakh-year-old homo sapiens? What comprehension of life do we make, individually of our own, between our birth and death, while our living conditions, religions, faiths, practices, means of livelihood, lifestyles, etc. are different from one another? Whatever collective meaning, on the other hand, could we possibly give to human life, or any other life on this predatory planet, when deaths are more unnatural than natural and more by our own vagaries? 

We may mean life as to take birth, grow, reproduce and die. If this is the meaning, all life forms -- from microbes to mamals to humans -- are one and indivisible, although we find difference in growth for different organisms. Then, if the life of difference is seen between organisms, the life of an organism is how it is growing and living. But we find uniformity in how plants or birds or animals grow and live. But what uniformity do we find in humans who are distinct from the rest of the species on Earth? What meaning can be given to human life cut into pieces, as some live richly and some poorly, some healthily and some handicapped, some idolized and some demonized, some till old age and some short, some on booty, some exploited, some as Hindus and some as Muslims or Christians? If we give meanings to human life on the scale of differences of how humans live, we will not get to an end. Hence we find our life undefinable, incomprehensible and sans any apparent outline. 

The only and universal meaning of life is that life is mortal. That, birth is followed by death. That, death is inevitable. Even so, we notice death is evented more by diseases, hunger, malnutrition, wars, accidents, crimes and natural disasters than the biological occurance of death through natural senescence. As death comes any moment, we add another universal meaning of life that life is momentary. Yet, however desperately we give meanings to our life of differences for a few moments -- by being rich, not poor; healthy, not sick; a god, not a demon; a victor, not a victim; powerful, not humble; having pleasure, not pain; or living full, not short -- all artificial meanings perish into the total nothingness of death. As long as life is mortal and momentary, a thousand meanings of life are meaningless and each meaning that we give to life creates only further distortion, confusion and divides.

Now, apart from a plentitude of philosophical, theological, cultural and metaphysical view points, there is an ever-growing number of emerging and sinking definitions of life principally through socio-economic, scientific, political, demographic and environmental changes. Besides, different ideologies and experiences of living create different meanings. As a result, terrorists define life differently from pacifists, detactors from democrats, industrialists from communists, rationalists from traditionalists, saints from sadists, not to mention many other such mutual contrarians who have filled the earth and overshadowed the true meaning of life. Various purported meanings of life have bred various confronting livings. As a result, we all are caught in endless conflicts, competitions, struggles, wars, violences and crimes between the inevitable death and the ephemeral life and in that inescapable ephemeron we are stupidly struggling to create a meaning of life through our own artificial economic, political, social and administrative system, called government, which is more a gimmick than truth, more an adjustment than advancement, more a drudgery than vocation, and more a deprivation than fulfillment. 

Humans are only species on this planet to have got a special brain and by their brain, they are capable of comprehending the limitlessness of the universe and giving infinite meanings to what they see, hear, taste, smell and feel. They possess the mind's eye and have an  intuitive faculty, called sixth sense, through which they can feel metaphysical existence and give concrete meanings to the abstract and incomprehensible. But unfortunately, they are unable to give any definite meaning to their own life and existence. They desperately create plenteous meanings through their livings which further drag them into confusion and due to endless confusion, they remain attached to the ancient and unscientific ideas as the meaningful parts of life and find comfort in meaningless things like god, religion, fatalism, bigotry, prejudices and many other shams, paired with enjoyment of false pleasure, selfishness, self-aggrandizement, vainglory as well as things like thought of salvation, acts of atonement, etc. And, at last, each one dies meaningless. As long as we are mortal and exist like a spark, our life has no meaning.

The true and ultimate meaning of life is being immortal. A certain and permanent life can only create and perceive the genuineness of living. All equations of our present living will change and everything in the universe of discourse will become genuine and meaningful only when we become immortal. Popular books like Life and Energy by Isaac Asimov and The Secret of Life, Death and Immortality by Henry Fleetwood and other famous publications like The Big Bang and Relative Immortality: Seminal Essays on the Creation of the Universe and the Advent of Biological Immortality by Sebastian Sisti and The Scientific Conquest of Death: Essays on Infinite Lifespans by Immortality Institute strongly advocate human immortality.

Arguably, we never owe death our life; it is only our stupid submission. Acceptance of death is our pessimistic retreat from life. We accept death due to our sheer ignorance. The fact is we die because we live on the mortals--animals, birds and plants--which are all transforming energy. Our immortality is definite if we get energy directly from the universe, independent of these mortals. The universe is an energy manifestation and the whole energy of the universe is its indestructible spirit. Life which is a transformation of this spirit through the body can be conserved indestructibly by a scientific synergy between the body and energy.

Human beings are the supreme development of the cosmic science. They are the latest form of the life of the universe and not limited to the mundaneness what is experienced and observed but a continuous evolution toward their extraterrestrial existence and eternal permanence. They have evolved from early to ancient to medieval to modern and have revolutionized each transit by their knowledge of science, technology, arts and architecture. They have got an almighty brain and ability to evolve fast and transform themselves into an ethereal and immortal biology... And the fact of the present scientific revolution in bionic life, artificial intelligence, genetic science, etc. strongly directs toward human beings' turning an immortal organism in the coming future. If what Yuval Noah Harari terms it as 'homo deus' in his famous book, Homo Deus, is any indication, they are evolving to turn god each and become omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent. Only then, the present fake meanings of life will disappear. Life as well as the Creation will be complete, comprehensible and truly meaningful. 

N. P. Samal 

Asst. Professor, IGIPS, Bhubaneswar--15