Hello, good evening and welcome to 'The Meaning Of Life (The abbreviated but not too short version)'. The following material is part of a continuing sixteen part study in conjunction with Kings College Oxford and Potters French Fries of 532 Lybia Road, Wigan. Before we go any further, I think it's only fair to point out that the data disclosed henceforth is a bit on the heavy side. So to make life a bit easier on your braincells I, along with a fine committee of highly trained volunteers from the National Hypothermia Appreciation Society, have decided to incorporate the comic style of the former Monty Python team to lighten things up a bit. Unfortunately, space being limited as it is, there is no way of including all the sketches needed to complete such a masterpiece, so links have been provided instead. Of course, there really is no way of knowing when one would require items of comic relief to mitigate a coagulated mind, so I hope the problem has been solved, at least partially, by at least providing the opportunities to do so, and thereby protect the overworked, underpaid electro-conductive mechanisms which formulate our reasoning resources. And remember! insanity is just one small step from genius, or is that up-side-down? Thank you.

In The Beginning.. There Was Life...
First of all, let's try to pin down what life is before we go into what it all means. The study of life and it's implications has always been a subject of great importance to mankind. Scientists have now worked out the structure of all life consists of a series of arranged molecules known as DNA. These maps of life are passed down from one generation of life to the next in order to make sure every species remains individual and yet keeps the same identical characteristics which defines each unique breed. Over the years, the DNA may adapt to a particular need being faced by a group, providing a means to overcome the problem. This continual development and refinement is known as Evolution. Unlike the old Darwinian approach, which bases evolution on the 'survival of the fittest' principal, modern theosophy suggests the matter to be one of intellectual drive and transformation though conscious activity. So the groups with a conscious need to develop will do so quickly, and those without such drives will do so much more slowly.

So what give us consciousness and the ability to be as individual as we obviously are? The common belief is that we have a spiritual and immortal part known as the soul. Many would say this is a gift from the Heavens or from gods, while other spiritually minded people could swear it is actually derived from a collective spirit energy which is in fact everywhere and all around us. The soul is like a completely individual micro computer pre-programmed with the basic functions of life, and is the element which makes you YOU. So perhaps this soul came from out of nowhere, out of nothingness; in which case you are a completely new inception. Perhaps you came here of your own free choice, or some cosmic force beyond your control has caused your sudden crash landing on this planet. Maybe you previously existed somewhere in another body (in another realm or in this one), and are in fact on a continual journey from one living experience to the next. Those of Christian, Judaism or Islamic faith may conclude that life is based on a single duration of existence, and if reincarnation exists at all, we could only emerge from two possible realms - Heaven (the spirit world/paradise) or Hell. Buddhists however consider existence to be revolving and abides in six realms, and so it is entirely possible for your life-force to have existed previously within an animal, a human, a ghost, an anti-god (or titan), as a god or as a demon in the Hell realm. They may also implore that the manner of your next inception is totally dependent on the thoughts and deeds (Karma) performed in the last inception, and that the entire episode of reincarnational growth is only considered finished after all accrued karma has been cleared or forgiven, and certain aspects of soul growth have been accomplished. The soul is rather a complicated beast, and obviously takes many years of training to shape up.

The final aspect of 'self' or 'aspect of existence' is the question of the life-force or spirit. No matter which body we are to study, we will always find the same three things - the DNA based evolving body (with it's ability to reason and make choices); which simply provides an acceptable vehicle for existence. Secondly there is the soul which gives the vehicle a driver, and thirdly there is the spark of life which gives this vehicle the power to move about. Quite a few people agree that this element of power comes from an energy force, often known as the life-force, and comes from the spirit dimension (or heaven, or the universal energy or even the collective power). This is again where theories differ, but most believe each living thing is given its fair share of life-force somewhere around conception; the body will then draw in as much as it needs until the death of the host body.

So that's life in a nutshell then, mind & body, soul, spirit. But what's it all mean?

The Artistic View..
Artists, particularly those receiving unemployment benefit, create mirrors of life everyday. Sometimes using graphical mediums such as sketch, painting, sculpture, carving or photography, and sometimes utilizing the scripted arts; books, storys, songs, plays and poetry. These form miniature snapshots of life from the eyes of the author and can often provide us with clues and theories we can use to build on. As an example, here are a few quotes from literature and song:

• "Life: - To experience the world and gain as much knowledge as we need to get through to the end." --DW

• "Life is just a series of trying to make up your mind."-- Timothy Fuller

• "Life is a succession of moments. To live each one is to succeed." -- Corita Kent

• "The game of life is not so much in holding a good hand as playing a poor hand well." --H. T. Leslie

• "I searched through rebellion, drugs, diet, mysticism, religion, intellectualism, and much more, only to find that truth is basically simple and feels good, clear and right." --Chick Corea

• "Time deals gently only with those who take it gently." --Anatole France

• "Brains will only get you so far.." --Anon

• "Life: To try out different things to meet your requirements." --DW

• "The Aim Of Life - To prove yourself worthy of it." --DW

• "Do not work in the shadow of others, learn what they found out and take it on from there." -- DW

• "Decide what you think is right, and stick to it until you find enough evidence to chance your opinion." -- DW.

• "To cleanse your life takes more than time" --Smashing Pumpkins (Suffer)

• "Instant Karma's gonna get you, gonna knock you right on the head, You better get yourself together, pretty soon you're gonna be dead." --John Lennon (Instant Karma)

• "We came out from the deep, to learn to love, to learn how to live. We came out from the deep, to avoid the mistakes we made. That's why we are here!" -- Enigma (Cross of Changes)

• "Life is a wheel of changes, but changes are life, and someday we will have to say good bye. But our spirit will survive. Reason is lasting, passion is living, and dying is teaching us how to live." -- Enigma (The Roundabout)

• "Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans." -- John Lennon (Beautiful Boy)
  

[If you know any more good quotes/lyrics, please post them here.]

We can at least conclude from these words that life is about making decisions and to make the best of it while we can. It may also be a good idea to learn from others and take notice of their mistakes to help us form our own judgment of the way things are. There have been quite a few characters who, for one reason or another, have made the understanding of these issues into a lifelong study of their own...

The Philosophical View..

"Life is like a box of chocolates... soft on the surface but hard once you get your teeth in."
-- Alan Smithee

So what's it all about? I mean life isn't straight forward is it. First you go one way, then another, asking directions and missing turn-offs. It's a bit like driving around Birmingham City Centre. You could take the usual routes along the main roads (where things soon get congested), or you could try your luck down a side street. It's about how fast and how far you want to go, what you want to do when you get there, and how bored you were along the way. Many have tried to come up with the answers - scientists, philosophers, mathematicians, prophets and wise men, the Liberal Democrats, and some have succeeded...

Socrates (470-399BC) - Self Confidence. The ancient Athenian philosopher Socrates saw life as a trial of ones own intellectual self-confidence, and tried to explain why people are so willing to go along with the crowd and fail so miserably to stand up for what we truly believe. The answer is partly because they are too easily swayed by other peoples' opinions, partly because they are afraid to 'rock-the -boat' and make a potential mockery of themselves, and partly because they don't know when to have confidence in their own ideas. Socrates is now seen as the father of western philosophy and attracted many students from all over Greece, most notably Plato (428-348BC) who took the words of Socrates further though his own writings. Socrates' motto was 'know thyself' and he believed that knowledge of the self could lead to true wisdom. More than that, he believed that knowledge was virtue.

Epicurus (341-270BC) - Happiness. Will money make you happy? Many people imagine that if only they had enough money they'd be happy. But is this really true? The ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus saw the aim of life to be the way of finding ones own happiness, and believed that we need just three simple things in order to be happy: friends, freedom and thought. Money, as he saw it, is simply an aid to help us find the three necessities. As well as having ideas about pleasure, Epicurus was also interested in freeing people from fear. He believed that two of the greatest sources of fear were religious ideas and the dread of death, after all, if we feel nothing after death, then death is nothing to us. He did not doubt that the Greek gods existed, but his ideas about them were controversial because he believed that they didn't bother with what people did on earth. He saw the gods as hedonists who were much too busy with their own moderate pleasures to bother with human beings or punishing them. Epicureanism, which lasted for hundreds of years until it was driven underground by Christianity, founded the motto 'cultivate your garden' and showed the path of life to be more private and personal than political, and rated friendship and the quiet life over the drives of ambition.

Seneca (4BC-65AD) - Overcoming Anger. The Roman philosopher Lucius Annaeus Seneca saw anger as a huge hindrance in life, and was inspired enough to write a book about it. Being a Stoic, he refused to see anger as an irrational emotion and argued that the problem with enraged people is that their ideas are too optimistic. He was an orator, so he was fully aware of how emotions can be swayed by words and how reason can argue you out of feeling something. He saw just how horrific life could be and expounded this in many stories and plays, some of which are still around today, including versions of the Oedipus, Medea and Phaedra tragedies. His tragedies show us how disastrous life can be, but his Stoical philosophy and especially his calm attitude to his own death suggests that people can remain dignified even in the worst situations. The world is not perfect.

Montaigne (1533-1592) - Self Esteem. The French 16th-century writer Michel de Montaigne considered one of the aims of life to be the aim of building up ones own self esteem and not to suffer for it. Montaigne singled out three main reasons for feeling bad about oneself; sexual inadequacy, failure to live up to social norms, and intellectual inferiority; and offered practical solutions for overcoming them. Such a way to raise self-esteem is through continued education and reflection, and to find ones own Truth. He was not an academic, but a lawyer who dropped out of public life at thirty-eight to compose his essays (published in 1580). His approach, similar in ways to Socrates, was to take nothing for granted but to question everything. He agreed that trying to conform with society was not only unnecessary, but also harmful to ones own self-esteem. In one of his most famous essays on Raimond Sebon, he points out that despite our claimed superiority, humans are often inferior to animals because of vanity, stupidity or immorality. He suggests that we can discover much about ourselves by admitting that even the more animal side of our nature is part of what makes us human.

Schopenhauer (1788-1860) - Love. Although love is very important to most people, few philosophers have taken the time to analyse it in detail. One was the 19th-century German thinker Arthur Schopenhauer who believed that love was the most important thing in life. The essence of his theory is that there are two aspects of the self: the self as phenomenal and the self as noumenal. Basically, phenomenal means understanding an object by looking at its appearance, while noumenal means understanding the inner essence of an object. Such ideas enabled Schopenhauer to see humans not as split between mind and body (which many previous philosophers had thought) but as whole entities. It also allowed him to see humans as slaves to their unconscious wills, and to see art and culture as a place where you could escape the pull of the will and enter a realm of beauty and contemplation. His answer therefore would be to use love to fully appreciate the beauty of the world, of friends, of nature and of ourselves.

Rather than single out any particular opinion, it can at least be said that each of the above is in fact true. How lucky would a man (or woman) be not only to find happiness through thoughts, feelings the joy of friendship; to have a high self-esteem though knowledge and contentment; and a high emotional tolerance to even the worst situations. But also to be self confident and open enough to love the world and the people who share it. Surely the mastery of these qualities is more important than chasing material wealth..? Yet we still use just these sorts of things to aspire to, and to rate our progress on the social ladder. This is the life of todays culture.