The 4 Fundamental Questions of Existence

As we get immersed in life, we sometimes forget to ask fundamental questions of life – but then we have times in our life when our so-called “normal” life gets disrupted, such as when there is a death of a loved one, we have a personal health crisis such as cancer, we lose our job, we face financial ruin. 

In these times of crisis, the fundamental questions of life can be triggered and an inward journeying, questioning can be started.

Who Am I?

Where do I come from?

Where will I go after I leave this world?

What is the meaning of our life?

Obviously, these questions can be and should be asked at all times of life, when we are happy, sad, disturbed, or at peace.  The fundamental questions are always there.

The real answer to all these questions is inside us.  We will not find these answers through an accumulation of possessions.  At the moment of death possessions have no meaning.  The more we clutter up our lives the more we lose sight of who we are.  We create these walls of meaningless stuff that search for the answers to the fundamental questions of life so much harder.

But this is why we can get glimpses, sometimes quite painful, of the importance of questioning who we are when some of these walls get brutally taken down – such as the death of someone we dearly love.  Then veils can rapidly fall away – for a time at least.

We don’t have to suffer to search for answers to these questions.  We can begin the enquiry right now.

At school and beyond, we learn so many things we have no use for and so little about who we are as human beings – this extraordinary, mysterious, complex structure that makes up who we are.

If we question our existence at all, many conclude that life “just happens”.  It is a series of coincidences; social and family conditioning and we are just a product of that.

Do we have any say in this?  Do we have any control over who we are, and who we can be?  Am I just a conglomeration of accidental happenings?  I just happened to have the mother I had, I happened to have the body I have, I happened to have a certain personality.

This lack of control and awareness of who we are leads us to have a chaotic life that takes us far from the path that could bring us peace and joy.  We trap ourselves in this hamster wheel of accumulations, agitations, and confusion.

We need to wake up our consciousness and gain control over our lives – real control – and actually to start intensely enjoying and loving life.

This is the journey of life.  Nobody can do this for you.

So how to begin answering these questions? 

1)Profound Enquiry

Read ancient spiritual texts written by souls who reached the ultimate state of enlightenment or were well on the way. 

I would recommend “Be As You Are” The Teachings of Sri Ramana Maharshi as one example.

Attend deep enquiry courses such as our Who Am I? Series at The Quantum Questions  

Ask yourself some interesting questions and look into some answers for this.  For example, what is a physical body? 

Did you know that if you put all the atoms of Planet Earth, including everything on it, in one space, and took away all the spaces in between, we would be left with something the size of a thimble.  Fascinating truth.  So, what are we as a physical body then?  What is all this space within us?  Food for thought

2) Spiritual Practices
This is a fast-track, efficient way to truly begin to answer these fundamental questions of life. Prayer, yoga postures, breath practices, meditation. And there are others of course. Why is this so efficient?

Practices done with attention and perseverance start to purify our being and then the glimpses, the feelings of “knowing”, the intuitions start to increase, to bubble up and we can get more of more and for longer and longer stretches these “oh my God” moments.

These are glimpses into our soul, glimpses into the reality of existence. But we have so much jumbled up inside us that these “knowings” inside us are veiled, covered up.

Practices, ideally done every day – even if only for 10 minutes – begin to unveil who we truly are and what truly is the point of existence.

We teach some practices at The Quantum Questions in our breath and meditation courses. https://www.thequantumquestions.com/courses

3) Declutter your outer world to create space to look within. Start to shed those things in your life that serve no purpose and only burden you and block your view of who you truly are.

Do an inventory of your possessions and ask yourself what the purpose of each possession is. You know you have wanted to do this anyway – we all do – but why not actually do it? Make a commitment of a month e.g. this July I will spend 30 minutes a day to go through my possessions.

I radically did this 4 years ago and shed so much of my life. It was immensely liberating externally and internally. It felt like a burden was shed and the external space that was created also opened up an internal space inside me to really begin to allow who I truly am to emerge.

These are just 3 things. There are many other ways to begin to explore these fundamental questions of life, but these 3 would take you far.

At The Quantum Questions we, as individuals, are very much on our own journey as well as offering some of what we have learnt to you so that your journey in this complex world might be a little easier and a lot more joyful.

As well as these 4 fundamental questions there are the answers to the questions. But this is a journey, an expansive process of understanding and knowing on the path of true spiritual evolution, which is the path to our inner Divine, eternal being of bliss.