To ask the question, “What does it really mean to be alive?” is an intensely existential question that is not to be confused with tired old questions such as, “What is the purpose of life?” or even, “What is the meaning of Life?” We should be able to see that a question like “What is the purpose of life?” is not the question, “What is the purpose of my life?” Surely we do not as real individuals necessarily share the same purposes, desires, drives or values.  The same is true of the question “What is the meaning of (human) Life?”  Such a question is, again in no way the same as, “What is the meaning of my life?” The issue of meaning would have to apply to different levels of human understanding, perception and ability to grow in maturity.  No one can understand meanings beyond their level of understanding.  My life is both individually unique and on a certain level of consciousness.  Therefore there can be no general answer to the question “What does it really mean to be alive?” which would apply to all individuals on all levels of understanding and which assumes that human beings should buy that answer as one who converts to a religion or identifies with someone else’s philosophy.  Hence, here we can echo Husserl’s idea that each of us must answer the question directly in ourselves as a kind of Cartesian Meditation.  J. Krishnamurti also says the same thing, which is that each of us must see for ourselves as direct perception and deep self-insight what Life is really about for us as Human Beings.  So, the purpose of my article here today is not to provide an answer, but rather to explore how we can proceed most effectively to look into the incredible mystery of our being alive.  The quality and depth of the inquiry is therefore infinitely more significant than arriving at some dogmatically Final Answer-Set called “My Philosophy of Life”.  If you or I have a finalized, crystallized and rigid “Philosophy of Life”, our learning process as individual, existential human beings has dead-ended, stopped, in what Richard Rorty calls our Final Vocabulary, and we can’t have that, can we(?)

 

How fully and intensely and truly alive are you?  What is it in your Being that actually feels most threatened by Death?  How fully, intensely and authentically have you asked yourself these kind of questions?  Do you ask just with your brain, or your whole being?  To ask with your whole being is not merely the dry, abstract and logical or analytic inquiry that your physical brain can perform.  This is the difference between a mere intellectual question and a total question.  An intellectual question is arid, fruitless and only wants to impress others with what you have read and chewed on with your head.  A total question has an existential force you feel in your breath; it opens your nostrils more fully, so to say, to the smells of the Earth all around you outdoors, but also includes your emotions, your concerns and your intellectual powers, your ability to think in an original, creative way.

 

How does the question, “What does it really mean to be alive?” actually strike you?  Does it hit you hard where it counts or is it just some postmodern existentialist question of some philosopher who has written some article you were slightly interested in?  To really directly and personally ask yourself such a question in your entire being can become a deep revolution of your whole approach to life rather than a mere clever exercise of your cognitive system of your brain where you merely compare what is said here with other things you have read and form some conclusion about where it fits with conclusions, with beliefs or disbeliefs that you tend to defend with arguments.  Do you understand this issue?  Of course, our question, “What does it really mean to be alive?” is not for everyone.  No!  It is only for extremely intelligent and mature human beings who can read Heidegger, Krishnamurti, Rajneesh, Wu Wei Wu or Heraclitus with equal joy of deep stimulation.  This inquiry is total, so it is certainly not for stupid Christians or superficial Eliminative Materialists or exclusive members of some esoteric tradition.

 

Whatever your degree of engagement with our question of Being Alive, what would make the question even more alive and real for you than it is at present?  Please look into that.  You will not regret it.  It is in fact the way the original philosophers of Ancient Greece got started.  Those ancient philosophers where more alive and real than the present brain-in-a-jar mediocrities.  Nothing less is a true renewal of genuine thinking-within-Being.  Nothing less is a truly fresh re-beginning.