A Pen Named Man: Our Purpose

Preface

God writes History with a pen named Man

and a fluid called Life.

Acknowledgments

I wish to acknowledge my wife Sharon and my children Timothy, Kimberly, and Robert who have supported me in fulfilling my life long dream of publishing this book. For over forty years, Sharon has given me her love and allowed me to take the time I needed to work on and complete this manuscript. One of her great contributions was to remind me to read my own book whenever I got discouraged. If you believe in what you’ve written, then you have your answer.

Tim, Kim, and Rob have supported me their entire lives. My children never wavered in their belief in me and the love they’ve shown over the years. To them, I’m forever grateful.

Introduction

A philosophy of life represents an understanding of the nature of reality. Every person alive believes in something. Each of us holds his own philosophy of life It could be an interpretation of the way the world appears to be, a projection of how the world ought to be, or a description of the way the world actually is. Typically it includes an interpretation of the creating force behind the universe as well as a projection on where the universe is ultimately headed. In any case, a life-philosophy is generated because every human being desires a basic understanding of Nature. Everyone attempts to devise a perception about the structure of the universe and the manner by which it works. And everyone wishes to know where he or she fits into the overall scheme of Life.

There are several sources from which a person can acquire his or her philosophy of life. A life-philosophy may be obtained by the acceptance of the beliefs of one’s parents. Or, it may originate from the teachings of a particular religion. As a third source, it might be strongly tied to the principles of a socio-political way of life. For the most part, a person’s life-philosophy is reflective of the fundamental values of the society in which one is raised.

The degree to which a person accepts his philosophy of life varies. For example, an individual may not put much thought into the basic principles he’s taught to believe. For that person, a philosophy of life might be accepted in a somewhat casual manner. On the other hand, a person may apply considerable effort to develop a life-philosophy. That individual may be very specific about his beliefs and hold them very strongly. Regardless of how zealously a philosophy of life is held, however, everyone strives to understand the basis for his or her existence on Earth.

On a personal level a philosophy of life helps an individual conduct his or her daily life. A life-philosophy serves as a guiding-plan to monitor behavior and includes one’s principles, values, and ideas of right and wrong. Basically, a philosophy of life contains the rules by which a person lives. Many of these rules are collectively written into government constitutions, i.e., the laws of the land. Likewise, many rules are founded in religious doctrine. Further, there are the unwritten rules of society which are typically based on custom and tradition. From all their several sources the rules drive human behavior and formulate our outlook on life.

Fundamentally, a life-philosophy helps a person determine meaning to his or her life. It contains all the concepts and beliefs which are important to the individual and represents one’s entire social, political, and spiritual ideals meshed together into a coherent and workable design.

A more general term used to describe one’s philosophy of life is worldview. There is a multitude of worldviews held by mankind. They span a wide spectrum of social, religious, and political venues. Although varied, there are many similarities among them and in general they reflect the historical development of mankind. There’s continuity to the progression of human culture and continuity to the majority of worldviews held by man.

All worldviews attempt to define or describe reality. Most worldviews accept the premise that Nature is uniform and most state the same objects and events can occur anywhere in the universe. Worldviews are also similar in the way they define the role of man. Most worldviews believe the human experience is an important part of Nature’s design and the role of mankind on Earth is both necessary and significant. Worldviews state there is a universal call to mankind and that call is to accomplish worthwhile goals through proper behavior and attitude. The call embraces people of every age group, race, and social-economic class.

Everyone questions the reason for the creation of the universe. This wonderment begins at childhood and continues throughout a person’s life. One wonders if there is a master plan to the universe. For instance, we ask, why does the earth revolve around the sun and why does the sun move through space in a gigantic galactic structure? All of us are curious about our planet and its key features. Why are there mountains and plateaus in the world? Why are there oceans and seas, lakes, rivers, and streams? Why do trees exist and why are there plants, flowers, and blades of grass? Was the world designed to be beautiful, or is it beautiful because people are born to look for beauty? We ask if the universe has a greater destiny. People wonder about the overall plan to Nature and why the universe is currently expanding. Are the huge galactic systems racing away from each other by design or for some unplanned reason? Further, people wonder about the role of animate life on Earth. We ask why life is found both on land and in the sea. Why are there animals, birds, and fish? Does the evolution of life proceed along a prescribed course, or are species of life and individual organisms merely lucky to be born?

Each of us wonders if there is a purpose to animate life. Specifically, everyone wonders if there is a purpose to his or her own life. Each of us asks, Why am I here? What is so special, so unique, about me? I know something is unique and special. I know that something is important about me, but why can’t I realize or understand what it is!

The answers to the above questions are straightforward. There is a purpose to animate life and a purpose for the entire human race. There is a purpose for every person’s life. There is value to the human experience and we’re here on Earth to fulfill a mission. Besides man’s calling, there’s a purpose for everything that exists in Nature.

There are many books which discuss man’s purpose in life. There are many books that describe the value of the human experience on Earth. The Bible, for instance, is one source that contains a number of references on the purpose of mankind in the world. Corinthians I, Chapter 6, Verses 19 and 20, state . . . your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost . . . therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s.¹ As indicated in the Bible, as well as in other sources, fundamentally we are all this much important.

This book too describes man’s purpose in life. This book represents a distinct philosophy of life. It tells us who we are and why we’re alive. It also tells us what we are to do with our lives. Basically, this book can be considered a synopsis on how we as individuals should live. It also represents a useful outline on how the human race as a whole ought to proceed in the world.

The important issue concerning any book that instructs people on how to live, however, is not the book as it exists in printed form. The important issue is whether the book is believed and followed. The Bible can be cited as example. The Bible is the basic text of Judo-Christian doctrine and contains a vast amount of historical religious development. It contains stories about the lives of the great leaders of the Jewish and Christian faiths. It also contains many parables that illustrate various religious principles. The Bible further contains instructions on the way people ought to live. It lists commandments and offers a code of conduct for people to follow on Earth. The Bible, as a book of religious doctrine, is of little value unless the people who express belief in it adhere to its message. Thus, the Bible becomes useful only when people follow it in their daily lives. This is the measure of worth for any book that describes man’s purpose in life. What is important then is how life is actually lived; rather than a book on how life should be lived.

1. The Holy Bible, King James Version. N.T. 1 Cor, 6:19–20.

1

Existence

Forms of Life, Animate Form of Life

To begin, we should describe the domain of being. We should describe the realm where everything occurs. There must be a place for reality to reside. There must be a universe positioned somewhere. There must be a galaxy of stars located within the universe. In order to have a family of celestial objects, i.e., a solar system, there must be a stable star with a set of revolving satellites. At least one of the satellites must be made of solid materials, such as rock, stone, and metal. That satellite, i.e., planet, must remain intact if animate life is to have a home to inhabit.

Thus, there must always be a place. That is to say, there must be a plain where the antelope can roam, a sea where the dolphin can swim, and a sky where the eagle can soar. Similarly, there must be a street for a house to be built on and a sandlot where a softball game can be played.

There is indeed a place where reality resides. That place is EXISTENCE. EXISTENCE is the here of being. It is the realm that reality occupies. At this point, we will examine the here of being, the domain of EXISTENCE.

In the beginning there was what? This has long been a question in the minds of people. What was here before the universe came into being, before the galaxies of stars and planets were born? How were the stars and planets formed and how did the world begin? Where did life come from?

Mankind has always wondered about the formation of the universe. Mankind has always wondered about the origin of life as well. One prominent theory people held down through the years is the belief in a universal substance behind reality. A basis for this belief is: the world could not have been created from nothing. There had to be something, i.e., a substance, material, or force, present at the very beginning. From the initial substance, the great galactic systems of stars and planets evolved and the world was formed. Additionally, there had to be a special quality to this material. The material had to contain an attribute that induced the development of animate life.

From the beginning of human history, various philosophers held a belief in one original substance which creates everything that exists. The basic premise is: that all things come into being from this original substance and to this substance all things eventually return. According to philosophers, the elemental substance remains unchanged. It may take on different forms and it may evolve. However, the original substance will never regenerate nor will it ever be destroyed. The substance remains intact and eternal. The entities to which it gives birth are temporal.

For the philosophers before Socrates’ era, this universal substance took the form of one of several common elements. Thales was a philosopher who believed the universal substance was water. Anaximenes, another philosopher, believed that air was the creative force behind everything. A third philosopher, Anaximander, believed the principal element behind all objects was a non-definitive entity he labeled apeiron. According to Anaximander, the apeiron was not made of any physical components. Neither was it comprised of a nonphysical force such as the wind. Anaximander said the apeiron was eternal. He also believed it caused any and all worlds, as well as the inhabitants of those worlds, to come into being.

The belief in a universal substance behind reality continued to persist throughout human history. The belief became popular and progressed to become the basis of at least one major philosophical doctrine. That occurred in south-central Asia, which is now the country of India. Centuries ago, the Indo-Aryan people developed the philosophical religion of Brahmanism. According to Brahmanism, a universal substance was here before the formation of the universe took place. The substance was called Brahma. Accordingly, Brahma gave life to all things that existed. All objects in the universe, whether material or immaterial, were created from Brahma. That included inanimate objects such as metals, rocks, and stones. It included all living organisms as well. Brahma provided life to the cows, chickens, spiders, and ants. It provided life to the grasses, bushes, and trees. Notably, Brahma gave life to human beings. Similarly, it created the immaterial expressions of people; i.e., their thoughts and feelings. Adherers to the doctrine of Brahmanism believed that Brahma was perfection. In fact they believed it was the only perfection. Brahma was the ultimate reality behind Nature and extended infinite in range and eternal in time.

A similar concept regarding the fundamental unity of reality is founded in the Jewish and Christian religions. The common basis of these two important religions is the belief in one omnipotent, omniscient, and all good God. Judaism and Christianity do not identify God as the ultimate substance from which all things are created. Unlike the beliefs of Brahmanism, God is not an all encompassing material. In fact, these religions do not claim any particular substance from which everything is formed. Furthermore, although human beings are credited with possessing an individual soul these religions don’t claim a universal soul is shared by all living creatures. Nonetheless, the Judo-Christian religions do identify God as the fundamental cause behind life. These religions state that God is the creative force behind all beings, objects, and events in Nature. God is the force of life.

Thus, the concept that one universal substance or quality underlies all of reality has been long held by mankind. And correctly so! This belief in an ultimate unity to reality and to life is true. There is one universal quality that is infinite and eternal. There is one universal quality which serves as the basis for all creation. Of this there can be no doubt. The problem people face is not finding out whether this substance is there. The problem people face is investigating it. Indeed, we have difficulty trying to identify its very nature.

Through religious inquiry, mankind attempts to understand the fundamental essence of the universe. Through scientific investigation mankind also tries to determine the basis of reality. However, mankind is hampered in his investigations. He is not successful for the only answer to finding the true essence of being within the universe is that it cannot be found. It is impossible for mankind to describe the fundamental substance of Nature. The basic quality of Nature cannot be defined nor adequately described by means of any living creature. It cannot be understood by the means available to a man, a bird, a fish, or any other animal. No matter whom the being, that being cannot fully comprehend this basic feature of reality. It’s an entity beyond any organism’s scope of comprehension. Indeed, it is an entity that cannot be investigated by the creatures who benefit from it and who live in its domain.

Although human beings cannot totally investigate the essence of reality, they should attempt to understand it as best they can. Likewise, they should try to appreciate it as well as they can. In order to do this, we should put our quest to identify the basis of reality into proper perspective. That is, we should study the state of reality from a human being’s point of view. From our understanding of the world, we know that certain requisites need to occur before anything exists. The prerequisites include the following. First of all, there has to be a place, i.e., a location of some dimensional borders. Secondly, there has to be a span of longevity or some extent of duration. In other words there needs be the dimension of time. Thirdly, there has to be a substance or material of some sort which exists. And fourthly, the substance has to be of some form, i.e., some nature. The substance must be measurable in terms of its composition or some other feature. Specifically, it should have a quality to it. These are the conditions necessary for reality. These are the conditions which we understand to be important. We can now look at the universal substance behind reality with this perspective in mind.

As indicated above, there is one universal substance, quality, or force underlying all reality. This universal substance is EXISTENCE. EXISTENCE is the only a priori, the only perfection. EXISTENCE is the ultimate reality and the basic essence of life.

EXISTENCE is one entity. However EXISTENCE may best be comprehended by mankind if thought of as an entity that consists of three ramifications. EXISTENCE then might be thought of as an EXISTENCE-LIFE-GOD triumvirate. Defining the sectors of the EXISTENCE-LIFE-GOD triumvirate doesn’t provide a complete definition; nonetheless, it does serve as an explanation that can help people understand and relate to EXISTENCE as much as possible. In the triumvirate, EXISTENCE can be thought of as the place where everything exists. It is the realm or the domain of infinite dimension and eternal time. LIFE is the substance or actual material of being. LIFE is dispersed universally to encompass all space in every direction and for all time. Indeed, LIFE encompasses and fills the entire domain of EXISTENCE. GOD is the quality feature of this domain, i.e., the quality of being. GOD is the spiritual value of infinite and eternal life.

These concepts can be expressed in another way. It can be said that GOD grants there is LIFE universally dispensed throughout the domain of EXISTENCE. Thus, EXISTENCE-LIFE-GOD is the single and ultimate essence of reality. And together with the Forms of Life (universes) that the triumvirate supports, EXISTENCE-LIFE-GOD makes up the total and complete reality.

An attempt to more fully describe EXISTENCE-LIFE-GOD leads to the following conclusions. EXISTENCE is of no but every dimension, of no but every direction, and of no but eternal time. As far as vastness is concerned, there is no but every extent to EXISTENCE. EXISTENCE is infinite with no boundaries, either of dimension or direction. Also, EXISTENCE has no measurements of distance and no determinations of size. As far as EXISTENCE is concerned everything is of the same size. The atom, the molecule, the earth, and the universe are each and all the same size. That is, everything from the smallest to the largest object is of both zero and infinite size. To comprehend what this means, consider the following relationships. An object of known size, such as a marble, may be chosen as a reference point. It may be asked how large the domain of EXISTENCE is relative to the size of the marble. It would be said that the domain of EXISTENCE is many times larger than the marble. It may be shown that the size of a baseball is six times larger than the size of a marble. Although it may be correct from a human being’s point of view to say the size of the baseball is closer to infinity than the size of the marble, the correlation is of little value. When considering the size of a baseball as a reference point it would be said that infinity is many times larger than the baseball. A baseball is larger than a marble, but is nowise closer to the boundaries of infinity. Further, the earth may be found to be over 170 million times larger than a baseball. If the earth is used as a reference point infinity would be described as many times larger than the earth. The reference point increases in size, but the size of EXISTENCE cannot be drawn upon. That is because EXISTENCE is infinite. The earth is larger than a baseball, but it is not any closer to the size of infinity. Infinity will always be defined as an indeterminable size some x times larger than whatever reference point used. In practice, the larger the reference point used the larger the concept of infinity becomes. Thus, the tendency is not to close in on infinity nor draw limits on it. Instead, the tendency is to become further and further away while always proceeding in a positive direction.

This concept is similar to that of the Universal Mind. There are people who say, as man’s mind increases in knowledge and intelligence it approaches God’s mind. Yet as man’s mind approaches God’s mind, God’s mind also increases in knowledge and intelligence. The difference is this. God’s mind increases at a much faster rate. Consequently, the gap between man’s knowledge and God’s knowledge does not get smaller. Instead, it gets larger. Although it advances in a positive direction, man’s intelligence actually grows further and further away.

To go in the opposite direction the size of infinity does not become smaller when a smaller reference point is used. As discussed above, we don’t get any closer to the boundaries of infinity by selecting a very large reference point. Similarly, we don’t get any closer by utilizing a very small reference point. The size of infinity does not change! The size remains the same - if that size is considered as having no dimension and no direction. As indicated, EXISTENCE is of no but infinite size. It is of no dimension and no direction. All things are of the same size, that of zero, smaller than a neutron. It is of every dimension and direction. All things are of the same size, that of infinity, larger than the universe.

There is but one time to EXISTENCE. That time is the present. EXISTENCE lasts forever, and by lasting forever it has no past and no future. It has no beginning and no ending. It is unceasingly the same. That same is now.

As far as EXISTENCE is concerned the present lasts forever. A person can understand this if he expands his own time frame. He must expand his own time frame to include those events which happened before he was born as well as those events that occur after he dies. For example, extend the present to include yesterday and tomorrow, as well as today. Extend the present to include last week and next week, as well as this week. Extend the present to include last year and next year, as well as this year. Extend the present to include your grandparent’s time and your grandchildren’s time, as well as your own lifetime. Finally, extend the present to include the periods when stars are formed and the periods when stars are destroyed, as well as their steady-state periods of today. When you extend time this way it all runs together. And that’s the way the phenomenon of time is to EXISTENCE. To EXISTENCE, the present is extended forever. In the domain of EXISTENCE something happening today has no time separation from something happening a million years ago, or ten trillion years hence. Time is both zero and eternal. Time is a non-definitive quantity of EXISTENCE.

Likewise, there is no motion to EXISTENCE. As far as EXISTENCE is concerned there is no movement and no measurement of speed. To illustrate the significance of this as it pertains to the world of man, consider the following. Suppose a man was to climb into a spaceship, leave the earth, and travel in a straight line at approximately the speed of light. He would not come close to the edges of infinity no matter how long (years, centuries, etc.) he traveled. He would never come any closer to the edges of infinity than he is when standing on Earth. This is because EXISTENCE is endless. EXISTENCE is infinite. No point (location) in the domain of EXISTENCE is closer to the boundaries of EXISTENCE than any other point. A person may travel from one place to another such as from one country to another or from one planet to another, say from the earth to Mars. However mankind travels within his own frame of reference. He does not travel anywhere in relation to the extent of EXISTENCE. Like distance and time, motion is not a quality or quantity belonging to EXISTENCE.

Already the phenomena of vastness, time, and motion have been explored. Infinity and eternity are neither known to nor descriptive of EXISTENCE. Neither is the concept of motion. No concept, be it distance, extent, time, motion, speed, density, volume, or weight applies to EXISTENCE. None of these concepts is descriptive of EXISTENCE. Indeed, for any given language there are several-hundred thousand words used to describe material objects, to communicate feelings, and to explain natural occurring phenomena. For instance, there are words that indicate sizes, shapes, textures, and colors. There are words that indicate degrees of hardness and brittleness as well as content and composition. There are also words to describe the levels of quantity and quality. There are words to describe emotions and moods. There are words to identify interests and desires, drives and needs. There are words to distinguish forces in Nature such as gravity and solar radiation. And there are words to describe atmospheric conditions like temperature, air pressure, and relative humidity. There are words to indicate the seasons of winter, summer, autumn, and spring. Further, there are words to describe the relief features of the world such as mountains, valleys, hills, and fields. Of all the words that are written, or spoken, there are none that describe EXISTENCE.

No word in a dictionary of the entire English language, or of any other language, can modify or apply to EXISTENCE.