THE MEANING OF LIFE

by Walter Last

A treatise about the meaning of life is normally a dry and theoretical affair, and few might want to read it. While writing Mali's Story I felt that it provided information which could be used to demonstrate some ageless spiritual wisdom in a more interesting way.  

Mali was born 1976 as a spina bifida baby in New Zealand, and while not being able to walk or properly talk, and as a non-Maori, she was declared as being a great Maori chief. This certainly is a rather unique happening, but even more interesting are the events surrounding her life. Most of this information comes from Robina, her mother, who is a gifted psychic and visionary, but I was sufficiently involved myself to be confident about using these events to illustrate my explanations.

Nevertheless, I want to state very clearly that I do not put any of this forward as proof of anything or to convince anyone of anything, but just as a means of illustrating the meaning of life according to a spiritual science as opposed to the accepted non-meaning of life by materialistic science.

The first feature that stands out is the existence of a non-material world right around us, in which the material world seems to be embedded. An example of this is the first meeting of Robina with Manawatere, the Maori Ancestor, which took place in a transformed landscape, apparently her garden as it existed a long time ago. A large number of individuals, more so in traditional and non-western societies, are more or less aware of different aspects of this non-material world through various forms of psychic ability. According to spiritual science our world of matter is a denser form or precipitation of an etheric world.

Another feature of interest is the survival of Mali's personality in spirit form. This really is "the ghost in the machine". It shows the real explanation for the observation in neuroscience that already a fraction of a second before we consciously decide to do something, such as lifting an arm, our brain has already received the signal to lift that arm. Our brain activity is part of the world of matter. Therefore I interpret this signal, which precedes our conscious decision, as coming from another dimensional level where our real self resides. It sits at the keyboard, and our brain is like a computer wired up to some biological machinery. We are usually only aware of information that is processed by our brain computer.

Commonly, departed spirit personalities tend to move soon into another dimensional levels without further communication, but Mali's spirit remains very active in our world in a constructive way. This points to a highly evolved consciousness. At the other end of the scale are entities of generally low consciousness who remain earth-bound in a more or less negative capacity.

Of crucial importance for a deeper understanding is Robina's past life regression in which she met a healer in whom she recognised a previous incarnation of Mali with the same dark eyes and black hair. Inadvertently she caused this healer and revered teacher to be tortured and burned at the stake. This shows us several things. There is reincarnation, but it is not the personality that reincarnates. Instead, we may think of it as a life-stream with many different personalities. We may regard the consciousness that guides this life-stream as an oversoul. The oversoul resides at a very high level of consciousness that is much less compacted or dense than the etheric level. It appears to be the aim of the oversoul to build itself a vehicle or avatar with which it can fully operate at much denser levels, such as in our world of matter.

Initially the projected avatars are rather primitive, but with the experience of repeated projections they come ever closer to perfection. The avatar starts like a computer program that is gradually lowered into regions of ever higher density. At each of the main density levels, such as the mental, the astral and etheric, the avatar builds itself a pre-programmed body composed of the matter of that region. The totality of these projected programs and energy bodies may be called a soul. This soul now attaches to a pre-determined embryo and becomes a 'living soul'. While the soul contains already some important programmed characteristics or personality traits, the personality as such develops mainly through further programming in utero and early childhood. Therefore we basically consist of 3 parts - a soul, a personality, and a biological body. The combination of these three are the completed avatar or human being.

The relationship between Robina and Mali also shows how the law of Karma works. The healer, during torture and being burned at the stake, suffered great emotional traumas. For building a perfect avatar, these emotional traumas need to be erased from the life-stream. Therefore they are part of a new projection, causing a severe distortion of the astral body which contains the projected emotions. This in turn causes a corresponding distortion in the life-force and etheric body, finally leading to a severe physical disability. Robina, being part of the life-stream that caused these traumas, was the obvious choice to heal Mali's energy bodies through a life-time of deep love and devoted care.

While this appears to have been a great sacrifice on Robina's part, in reality Mali helped Robina to an equal degree by providing the opportunity for Robina to move to the next higher level in our evolution. In all there are seven dimensional density levels through which consciousness evolves. These levels correspond to our seven main energy centres or chakras.

The lowest or etheric level, corresponding to our base chakra, is that of the elementary physical forces. The second level is related to the life-force and the evolution of biological systems. The third level, related to the solar plexus chakra, is the operational level of present humanity. We have used emotions to become highly individualised, and we did this by focusing on the self, on our self-interest. At its peak this leads to a society of selfish individuals. With this society becomes more and more dysfunctional, and a longing for more harmonious living conditions arises. This then becomes the driving force for starting to operate on the fourth level, the level of the heart chakra and the higher or spiritual emotions. The crown of these is unconditional love. This now allows highly individualised personalities to work lovingly together building a cooperative and just society for the greater good of everyone.

To get to this level, the avatar needs to devote more loving care to the service of others rather than on selfish interests. With this the avatar is now sufficiently perfected that the next incarnation of its life-stream can be in a more highly evolved society operating at the fourth level. This was Mali's gift for Robina. However, the spiritual benefit from being a carer does not come from the activity itself, but rather from the motive, attitude and emotions of the carer. 

On the other side of the human condition we have the story of Rex, the childhood dog of Robina. Rex had died decades ago at the farm where Robina lived. Normally animals have a group soul and do not develop an individualised life-stream. But pets and other animals working closely with humans can become sufficiently individualised so that they are suitable to be used as starting point of an individualised life-stream. This is now happening with Rex as he merrily follows Mali on her missions. It was his love and devotion to Robina that helped Rex to individualise rather than return to his group soul.

What conclusions can we now draw from all of this about the meaning of life? My main conclusion is that life, here defined as biological life, is a stage in the evolution of consciousness. Consciousness evolves and individualises by building bodies of increasing complexity. The human stage in the evolution of consciousness has presently led to peak individualisation, and is now starting to flow in the opposite direction of uniting highly individualised humans in the goal of forming a social body based on cooperation, compassion and unconditional love. We all can make our life more meaningful by consciously participating in this great venture and start treating everyone in a way that we would enjoy being treated ourselves.           

Here are some useful links for further reading and study: Mali's Story, and the more detailed and illustrated Mali and Manawatere, while The Spiritual Path gives practical instructions on moving to the next higher level. I also recommend the books and channelling of the Law of One which closely agrees with my spiritual philosophy as outlined in The Science of Spirituality.