What is the meaning of life?
The "crucible" of earthly life
What is the meaning of human life? In addition to the accumulation of experience, there is one more important side in life on the earthly plane: it is on the Earth that all the spiritual and spiritual qualities of a person are revealed and their transmutation, that is, improvement, evolutionary transformation in the fire of a harsh life struggle. This is what is valuable in the experience of earthly incarnations. Life on Earth, with its intensity and intensity, is like a crucible that processes and strengthens all the inner qualities of a person.
Only on the earthly plane can a person change something in his character and, as a result, in his future destiny. In the Subtle World, no fundamental changes are possible, only following the already beaten path is possible. It is life on Earth with its hard energies, dense and heavy matter, sharp boundaries of space and time that creates the best conditions for the rapid processing of karma and acceleration of spiritual evolution. There are no such conditions in the Subtle World, although the accumulation of knowledge is possible there as well.
Man needs life on Earth and the dense world itself as a necessary stage in the process of his spiritual development. This segment of the individual's life path is especially important, because it is here, in the dense world, that each of us makes his decisive choice. The conditions of choice are simple: light or darkness, evolution or degradation. About the influence of life on Earth on the posthumous state of consciousness, the "Faces of Agni Yoga" says: "You can choose here on earth, there you will have to deal only with the consequences of the choice made. Previously, this provision was distinguished by the inscription: "Leave the hope that enters here." Now you can say: "Know, entering, that you are entering the sphere of realization of all your aspirations."
Thus, it is said that each person should take care of his out-of-body existence in advance: “The house of the spirit is being erected while still living in the body in order to pass into it when the body ends its existence. If it is not there, if the house of the spirit is absent, then where, then, to strive and where to find refuge after liberation from the body? But the one who has taken care of this in advance, calmly rushes to where he used to fly during his life in the body. The attraction is done automatically through a channel dug in space. Where there is thought, there is home. The house of the spirit is built by thought."
For what reason is it here, on the imperfect earthly plane, and not in the Higher Thin worlds, that such a choice is made? The main condition for choosing is sincerity. Only life on Earth with its bright, visible images, with its clear boundaries of good and evil, light and darkness, is capable of creating the most objective conditions for a person to make a sincere choice. A person carries in the depths of his consciousness many unreleased, unmanifest thoughts and desires. In order for his choice to be true, these hidden impulses must manifest. And only when everything dark, imperfect, manifests itself in his consciousness along with the light and best that he has accumulated over all the lives he has lived, - only then in his soul will a true struggle begin for the choice of what to keep in himself - Light or darkness? And with what to stay on your own, on whose side? The moral choice that is made in the soul of a person,there will always be a struggle between light and darkness, between the best and the worst in himself.
The main choice of a person is not made in words - it is made by his earthly life. And if a person dreams of one thing, but lives in a completely different way, if he speaks about light, but by his very life sows evil around him - no words can justify him before the Cosmos. Only the whole earthly life of a person in the totality of his thoughts, feelings and deeds can be considered his true moral choice. Well, the difficult and harsh conditions of dense earthly existence are inevitably the best conditions for tempering his spirit. Only thanks to the severe trials of earthly life can a person understand the essence of himself - and change it, forging from himself what he wants to become.
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“… Only the Earth is that crucible, in which our energies are transmuted and new ones are renewed and accumulated,” Helena Roerich wrote about the Earth and earthly life.
The crucible of earthly life serves both as a test of all the qualities of the embodied spirit, and as conditions for their further improvement, perfection. Many good souls in the intervals between incarnations decide to take on a special mission of helping other people. But, having incarnated in earthly life, in which the knowledge of the spirit is obscured by the dense shell of the physical body, they either forget about their intentions, or do not find enough strength to implement it in real life. With its rigidity, life on the earthly plane burns the snow-white wings of the spirit and subjects it to severe tests of strength, courage and purity. Not all incarnated spirits pass this test. But it is necessary, because as soon as it honestly and objectively shows a person the real degree of his spiritual development, his true capabilities, his achievements and shortcomings.
There is one more curious aspect of the interaction of human consciousness with the dense world. If individuals with a sufficiently high level of development need earthly life and the physical plane only as the best conditions for self-improvement, then for people of a low level of consciousness, life on Earth, among other things, is also a necessary stage of cognition of the environment. The overwhelming majority of people can cognize life only in coarse-objective, rigid forms of dense material existence. Only when the spiritual level of humanity rises to a higher level will it be able to go through its evolution in more perfect, subtle worlds.
The meaning of human existence
What is the meaning of human existence - on the earthly plane and in other planes of the Cosmos? It is the accumulation of knowledge, experience and spiritual forces that are both indicators and engines of the spiritual evolution of all of us. The accumulation of knowledge is inseparable from another task: the creative, constructive application of this knowledge in all spheres of cosmic life, where the spirit of man and his consciousness can manifest themselves. Accumulation and application, receiving and giving - this is the essence of the energy-information exchange between man and the Cosmos, the exchange in which our whole life consists. "The meaning of life is to strive beyond the known and help each other."
The experience of many incarnations passed by the spirit will not disappear into oblivion with the death of the physical body. All the best, bright, creative that a person could achieve during his earthly lives is preserved in a special treasury of the spirit, the carrier of which is the fifth principle - self-consciousness, the Higher Manas. This treasury also has a concrete reflection in the subtle energetic nature of man. Slightly above the anahata chakra - the energy center of the heart - is the center of the "Chalice". It is in this center that the crystallized experience of all incarnations of the soul is preserved. The energy-informational content of the "Chalice" is the main result of the entire endless cycle of reincarnations, the meaning of all lives lived by a person on the earthly plane.
About the meaning of human life, about the accumulation of treasures of experience and knowledge in the "Faces of Agni Yoga" it is said: "Everyone living on Earth is fully occupied with earthly interests, questions and problems, forgetting that the Earth is a preparatory stage for a longer life in the Supermundane … King Solomon said correctly: "What is the benefit of a man from all his labors, which he works under the sun." And in fact, what good is it if the once great civilizations perished and the peoples disappeared along with the continents they inhabited; What good is it if ours disappears too. In the course of time, everything is doomed to destruction.
But the benefits of all earthly labors are in another dimension. The "Chalice" collects the fruits of all man's labors, which he works under the sun. Experimental deposits are being accumulated in the "Chalice". And from visibility to invisibility, a person will take with him the result of his achievements. When applied to the earthly plane, the question was absolutely correct, because people who had forgotten about the spirit, by the Earth and the earthly, limited their existence. But the spirit exists, the spirit does not die, the spirit is independent of whether the earthly mind of a person knows about it or not.
And the purpose and meaning of a person's life can be explained only by the tasks of the spirit, gaining experience and knowledge and multiplying them in each incarnation in the body. And then a person can derive great benefit from his life on Earth and all his labors, which he works under the sun, because, illuminated by the understanding of the task of the evolution of the spirit, they take on a completely different meaning and become a means of achieving more and more steps in the evolution of all mankind …
N. Kovaleva
