h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Sorry for delay in answering.
Why is the answer to b) no?

b) are they looking for an organism to live in?

The answer is no because; this suggests two entities. Consciousness creates the physical body to inhabit out of choice.
Consciousness/dark energy/soul vibrates at different frequencies to produce the physical. Even a rock has movement within it's atoms.
There is no 'surrender' to the infinite, because it is all part of the same substance. Becoming part of the everything is not a one off choice. Everything is where soul/consciousness goes after ego leaves, but it returns to the physical as many times as it chooses.
Reincarnation is not the rebirth of the individual ego, it is the rebirth of particles of the Everything. Since these particles are mingled within the *Everything,* each particle is the same but different ! Is a drop of water the same substance as the ocean when removed?
Within the *Everything,* every One becomes *Every Thing* with the loss of ego. Ego is a physical thing.
It is only within the physical body that we feel separated from each other.
NDE wasn't all negative. It was blissful until I beagn to think about my ego.
My experience tells me that after death BUT before the loss of ego the mind fills the unexplained and unrecognised with 'familiar' expectations.
If you expect Jesus or relatives, the mind will provide, likewise Hell or gardens in heaven. So what you believe in life becomes very important at this point.
This is merely a transitional period, but as there is no time or space this transistion can seem like a second or an eternity until ego lets go.
This is that I 'knew' upon clinical death told to me by my expected familiar comforter, that my mind created because it could not 'recognise' the unimaginable.
This is a complicated re-telling but the words are often hard to find without resorting to metaphor, which then tends to divert the conversation into the metaphor.

I am happy and content because I think I am.
- Alain-Rene Lesage

or maybe it was mean't to be 24, haha!!!

this 42 thing gets on my nerves.do we know WHAT we r talking about?
there's much more to it ...in fact 42 has nothing to do with life.i mean i'm serious ...i get the sinking feeling so often...WHAT is life, who am i.. and 42 has never helped.

You are right. 42 is just a joke.

42 is a joke, but hey, its easy to explain. Its probably something that simple. Maybe the earth 42 millenia before it self destructs.

Seriously (?), 42 was the funniest number Douglas Adams and a friend could think of one day while writing the script for radio. Maybe its his meaning, and we all need to find our own. I don't think theres one for all of us, but each life has its own meaning. We just have to find it.

The meaning of life may well be 42, but thats just because the meaning of life irrelevant to everyone. I don't want to know the meaning of life, I just want to know the meaning of MY life then I'll know what to do with myself.

Until some all knowing entity sees fit to tell me I'll just use the following working hypothesis:
(1) Enjoy myself
(2) Help others to enjoy themselves

Define 1 and 2?

Suppose there were an experience machine that would give you any experience you desired. Superduper neuropsychologists could stimulate your brain so that you would think and feel you were writing a great novel, or making a friend, or reading an interesting book. All the time you would be floating in a tank, with electrodes attached to your brain. Should you plug into this machine for life, preprogramming your life's desires?...Of course, while in the tank you won't know that you're there; you'll think it's all actually happening. Others can also plug in to have the experiences they want, so there's no need to stay unplugged to serve them. (Ignore problems such as who will service the machines if everyone plugs in.) Would you plug in? What else can matter to us, other than how our lives feel from the inside?"

My friend believes the meaning of life is 's**t happens'

I think its an individual thing, everyone must discover why they are here, then in the end, it could all come together, every being from every galaxy in every universe, like a jigsaw puzzle, and make the big meaning. That would be cool! No, really, the first two clauses of this sentence were serious, the rest were kirp off in a world of her own. I live much of my life in this manner!

*Kirp goes back to Kirpville*

hasselfree packs small overnight bag for trip to kirpville

I suspect the opposite to the meaning of life is french campsite toilets. Any help?

In your hypothetical tank how do I achieve number 2?

Other than that yeah why not? You could see it as meaningless since you wouldn't actually achive anything, but once you were in you wouldn't know about it. Come to think of it is there any guarantee that this is not already happening and any adversety I encounter is simply to sweeten my inevitable sucsess when it arrives.

That'll keep me happy all day.

reply to Post: 569, hasselfree, have you seen the matrix? thats the main story behind that.

YEs I'm a Matrix devotee
but I think the head in the tank theory is pre matrix.
and possibly the Matrix is a metaphor for how things could really be, - except take the tank away, beause consciousness, the thing that we really are, doesn't need a physical support system.

Acid
Number 2?

It may be happening already

if 42 is a joke... i don't even find it funny.i mean douglas adams has left us bickering over a puzzle.
more than what is life, what is death is more disturbing

Maybe the answer to 'what is death?' will be defined by the answer to 'what is life'. It could be like an equation, find one answer, and you can deduce the other...

I think 42 could be a honest and almost as close to answer about the meaning of life as we can get.
Life is what you make it and douglas thought the meaning was 42. There must have been rhyme and reason for him to use that number, which is why he used it for the meaning of life.
Me, i think the meaning of life is three.
Maths, though i am truly crap at it, are the basis for our lives, our universe and everything.
3, to me, seems a nice rounded number.
After all, 3 is the magic number!

I suspect that the meaning of life is a bit of a test by God on his own omnipotency. He may have failed.
Alternatively, and more probably, it was just to p#ss someone off.