Meaning of Life Jakub Svoboda Contents 1 Meaning of Life 2 2 License 2 3 Formats 2 4 Introduction 3 5 Personal Take on the Meaning of Life 3 6 Free Will 4 7 Reality, Things, Events 5 8 The Word “Meaning” 5 9 The Concept of Meaning 6 10 Difficulty in Describing the Meaning of Life 6 11 Meaning of Life in General 6 12 Possible Locations of Meaning of Life for a Conscious Mind 7 13 Reality After Death is an Illusion 7 14 Existence After Death 8 15 Discovering Personal Meaning of Life 8 16 Difficulty in Describing Personal Meaning of Life 9 17 Hell 9 18 God 10 1 1 MEANING OF LIFE 2 19 Knowing my God 11 20 Distributed Mind and Existence After Death 12 21 Prayer 17 22 Not Running Away 17 23 Living This One Life, Not Cramming in Three Lives at the Same Time 18 23.1 Year 2016 ............................... 18 23.2 Year 2020 ............................... 19 24 Growth Framework 20 25 How to Meditate 21 26 Finding Peace 22 27 Thanks 22 28 Quotes 22 29 List of Books 61 1 Meaning of Life 2 License 2015-2017, 2020 Figure 1: icon for the cc-by-sa 4.0 license Meaning of Life by Jakub Svoboda is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Quotes are intellectual property of their respective authors and are copied in the good intention of Fair Use of the copyrighted materials. 3 Formats • Multi-page HTML web • GitHub page 4 INTRODUCTION 3 • PDF • epub 4 Introduction My theory does not have to be objectively flawless because I mostly use it from my subjective point of view. However, it should be good enough to withstand confrontation with reality for the rest of my life. I borrow most of my ideas from other people, since there are far greater minds with far greater wisdom and knowledge than mine. The listed quotes are an integral part of the theory. Just as the availability of information on the Internet helped me in the pursuit, I freely publish the ideas back on the internet to inspire others. If one other person’s mind is enriched, it will have been worthwhile. 5 Personal Take on the Meaning of Life I can’t definitely know whether there is god and what god is on all levelsof meaning. I know there is wind, and trees, and stars, and whole lot of matter in the universe. I’m just a small lump of matter. I’m just a small lump of matter that is somehow special in its arrangement from the majority of matter in that I am aware of something. I have my own priorities and will and I find my own meaning in the existence. I have some information already encoded in me, and also in other people, probably by the way I (and we) came into existence. How that came to be, I don’t know and I will probably never know. In nature at large, there is no evil, no vanity, no good, no bad. Nature just is, as the matter just is. In one nature’s aspect of its many aspects — people — these concepts apparently exist. It is debatable how those concepts came into existence, or where from. Any human-understandable concept of God is too small and restricted, including the following one, but I can try. If I think about everything known in reality, and of everything we know that is unknown, of any frame of reference, there is something outside of it, that cannot be perceived, cannot be described, cannot be conceptualized, cannot be comprehended by humans. There is nothing I can do about it, but it is a part of this reality, and might underpin something — or everything — that is or happens. And for me, that is God, and I believe in it. I’ve realized that much of my (and others’) behavior is denial of the sheer incomprehensibly large part of reality we cannot understand and an attempt of bending one’s view of reality into something concrete and mentally manageable; but that is not reality, that is not an acceptance of reality; it causes repeated clashes between what one thinks should happen and what happens, and that doesn’t help with finding peace of mind and embracing reality as it is.In 6 FREE WILL 4 between much thought, meditation, and appreciation of the present moment, there are glimpses of how everything is connected, what a wonder it is that anything exists, and what incredible beauty and complexity can be found in anything, if studied closely enough or sincerely enough, without preconceptions, with a child-like appreciation, as if everything is seen for the first time. We can think, yet don’t understand much of the mind and consciousness. We are, yet we don’t understand much of why we are. I believe in whatever there is, even though I can never understand it. After realizing this, these experiences stick, changing my perception of everything. There’s no way we can explain the Internet to an ant. I see ourselves as ants before something much bigger that we would be unable to see even if it was right before us. In my opinion, any amount of humanely attainable knowledge can only be the ever-starting point for more and more thinking and learning. The answer about the meaning of life is probably nothing concrete yet probably nothing complicated either. I think it’s partly something that has existed with us and in us longer than our civilizations, ideas, or the concept of god, and partly something that is outside the realm of existence — a purely theoretical construct. There are two levels to the answer. The first deals with everything, and the second with humans. At the first level, there’s no other meaning in nature than the exact way of its existence which is its only meaning. (It can then be considered merely a label, a word, a construct.) There’s no need for much else since the concept of “meaning” is anthropomorphic. At the second level, there’s us — humans — whose brains work in such a way that we need a meaning, or answer, or explanation. A lot of our actions are just a coping strategy of being on terms with the fact that ultimately we have no definite answers. Since humanity came to no satisfactory conclusion so far, by an improvised induction I infer that it won’t come to one in my lifetime. And since I need an answer, a coping strategy, and none of the existing answers so far fully satisfies me, I need to find one myself, just for me. Some people came very closeto with what I identify with, and their work helped me immensely on my journey towards the answer. There is no single concrete goal to pursue. I want (or need?) to be happy and to do things that I feel are good and right. As indescribable a soul is, as indefinable is the definition of the good action. From there, everything else unwinds. 6 Free Will There is a great deal of literature about free will and so I tackle it from a different perspective. Our free will is predetermined by the whole physical process of the 7 REALITY, THINGS, EVENTS 5 universe we are a part of, and hence is not entirely free in all conceivable ways, since we are merely limited humans. Each human is a part of the process and their actions are part of the process and change the process. Each human then has a domain in which their will is free and makes a difference. Outside of the domain, the free will doesn’t exist. 7 Reality, Things, Events • Reality is one whole interconnected process, there are no parts that are fully separate and independent of it. • We recognize some parts of reality as being independent or separate, and we call them things or events. • Some things or events are so interconnected and dependent we still see the connection intuitively. For others though, we don’t intuitively see the connection and think of them as wholly separate or independent. 8 The Word “Meaning” • Meanings of “meaning” – Purpose, significance, end, causal connection between facets of reality we call events. – Intention of an agent. – Information ordering, relationship between pieces of information, re- lationship between events and information. • Meaning is a human word and a human concept. Other life forms may have a different concept of meaning or may not have it atall. • Quotes about meanings of “meaning” from Flow (Mihaly Csikszentmiha- lyi): – “Its first usage points towards the end, purpose, significance of some- thing, as in: What is the meaning of life? This sense of the word reflects the assumption that events are linked to each other interms of an ultimate goal; that there is a temporal order, a causal connec- tion between them. It assumes that phenomena are not random, but fall into recognizable patterns directed by a final purpose.” – “The second usage of the word refers to a person’s intentions: She usually means well. What this sense of meaning implies is that peo- ple reveal their purposes in action; that their goals are expressed in predictable, consistent, and orderly ways.” – “Finally, the third sense in which the word is used refers to order- ing information, as when one says: Otorhinolaryngology means the study of ear, nose, and throat, or: Red sky in the evening means good weather in the morning. This sense of meaning points to the identity of different words, the relationship between events, and thus it helps to clarify, to establish order among unrelated or conflicting 9 THE CONCEPT OF MEANING 6 information.” 9 The Concept of Meaning • Meaning is not governed only by conscious and intellectual processes, it is largely governed by feelings, emotions, and unconscious mental and physical processes.