What is Life?

Is it possible to define Life? or describe it?

A lot of us have attempted it. In fact every one of the 6 billion odd people of the world can describe life in their own words and each one can be interpreted in innumerable number of ways by the same 6 billion odd people. Any one that begins to describe life, uses one aspect of it depending on his/her speciality. A physicist view of life is entirely different from that of a politician or a priest. In all cases, they have a view of life and then they begin to live according to their views and their society influenced ambitions.

The basis of misunderstanding of life is just this. To have a view of life and then living that view. Because it is in our nature to try and understand everything with known factors and just live by that well known popular definition.

Let us take an example of a sweet dish, say Gulaab Jamun. Describe it. A Round, brownish sweet flour based dish in dripping sugar based solution. You can then break down to its constituents, recipe and list down the calorie value. Let’s say you took 1 hour to do all that. That would be your extensive description of Gulaab Jamun and you may even write a Wiki page for that. But to someone who has not had Gulaab Jamun in their life, all of this means nothing. They are just mere words of description which he/she can interpret and imagine in his own ways. Now serve one of this to this person. The person eats it and declares whether he/she likes it or not. But now, he also knows what a Gulaab Jamun is. No description is needed but somehow the moment he ate the Jamun, he knows what it is.

Life can only be created by another life. We owe our life to our parents. The tree that stands tall and big owes it to the seed from the fruit of another tree just like it. If you go back in the reverse, you will find that all known lives are only created through another life. We can trace this back till the point where the Universe existed as just primordial life substance.

According to Big Bang theory the Universe came out of an infinitely dense point of nothing. According to String theory this known Universe is just a result of collision between two other parallel universes. Whatever it may be, the Universe in the beginning was just a hot molten primordial life substance. The primordial life is the one that has evolved itself into various life forms as it exists in the universe now. Imagine that moment of heat when the whole Universe is densely packed in just a square inch or so. Earth, Sun, Moon, Planets, Galaxies, Stars, nebulae everything is contained in that one square inch of primordial life.

When that primordial life expands into what it is now, do you think Earth is a different object from Moon? Do you think the star in a distant Galaxy is separate from the stone lying on Earth? Physically they look separate, but their origin is nothing but that life substance. Now what about us. Humans. We didn’t jump from somewhere into this Universe. We evolved from the same life substance as this primordial life. Hence we aren’t separate either. If you keep thinking in this terms you will understand that the whole Universe is nothing but just this life substance evolved/manifested into various forms.

I cannot call this a creation because everything was just there and only evolution and manifestation of life is happening.

Life evolves itself and manifests itself into various forms because it wants to know its limitlessness by manifesting into infinite forms. It wants to live all of its possibilities, through the various life forms including us. In that sense the Human form is a stage in evolution which is able to perceive and experience this life in the most advanced way possible. So if you think about it, it is not us that are living our lives but it is Life itself living the life to experience and know itself with the help of this manifestation called Humans.

Whatever you do in life, be it good or bad and whatever you experience, pleasure or pain, you are just being an instrument for life to experience those various characteristics. When this instrument is no longer fit to experience life, life dissolves it in itself. If the life that is manifested inside the instrument has more desires to experience the life, it manifests again by being born as another life form, not just human but any life form. This is what they call as reincarnation. This can go on and on because as long as this particular portion of Life has things to do it will keep manifesting, because Life has nothing but infinite time and infinite Life energy to support this Life.

In short, Life is not something that has to be defined and we live by that definition, but rather we let the life live through us to experience life itself.