Best Self Magazine

The Sacred Purpose of Human Life

The Sacred Purpose of Human Life by Barbara Ann Briggs. Photograph of hands, praying in the dark by Amaury Gutierrez
Photograph by Amaury Gutierrez

Humans are uniquely gifted with the capacity to seek enlightenment, to understand unity consciousness… so what are we to do with that gift?

In the Vedic literature, it is said that one attains a human body only after 84 million births as a lower species, and to get a human body is a rare boon which even the angels in heaven desire. Why? Because only in the human body can one attain enlightenment — a state of total Self-knowledge. According to the Veda, the individual is cosmic. In the Yajur Veda, it is written in Sanskrit:

Tatha Pinde, Yatha Brahmande

“As is the individual, so is the universe; as is the universe, so is the individual.” 

“As is the human body, so is the cosmic body; as is the cosmic body, so is the human body.”

Individual intelligence contains the potential to reflect cosmic intelligence. 

The purpose of human life is to expand, to progress, to evolve and to actualize the full

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