What is life?

The usual, the seemingly obvious, answer is this: That in the evolution of the physical universe, there is an emergent quality which results in self-sustaining organized entities.  We refer to the ones we know of as biological: animals, plants, and so on.

Life then is the ability of such entities to defy entropy, to maintain a given physical form in the face of the tendency of such forms to decay and dissipate.

But this answer is self-limiting. It assumes a purely mechanistic view of existence.

There is another approach to answering the question. It is one that will also fail in the end to produce a truly satisfying answer. But perhaps it comes closer.

This approach starts with the assumption of spirit as the source of life. The fail of course is then, whence comes spirit?

It is an ancient view: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. And then, God said, Let there be light: and there was light. 

By stages, from this thought, this Word, comes the concept of energy, followed by the concept of localized concentrations of energy, and the concept of differentiations among these concentrations, and the combining of these different elemental energy units, gradually building more and more complex concentrations, until physical life, and eventually human life, emerges.

All in some perhaps Platonic sense emergent from mind.

This energy driven, entropy limited, exploration of the possibility of individuated, independent expressions of mind, presents a new problem. It presupposes a form of intelligence, capable of imagining the possibilities of life. 

More simply, it presupposes intelligence. And it, apparently, presupposes time.

But then, time itself, in the modern view of Relativity, is only apparent. And in the even more modern view of entanglement, so is distance, space.

These views express a connectedness, a relationship, which is part of the eternal fabric of reality. This reality is thus conceived to be a single thought within the mind of god.

We lesser beings cannot comprehend this whole in detail. We cannot be all, but only part of all. It is our limited comprehension that produces the illusion of space and time.

When for a moment we can rise above the plane of matter and inhabit the plane of thought, all becomes one.

We can, in our limited way, in thought encompass vast reaches of space and time. But only by leaving behind awareness of the mundane.

So the whole story is recursive, folding back on itself with really no better explanation than "it is therefore it is."

No matter how many dimensions we allow to be added, the circularity remains. The snake is eating its own tail.

There may be moments of personal enlightenment when all (or some of it) becomes clear, but these are epiphanies, by definition personal and not fully shareable. Glimpses into the mind of god, if you will.

Recall, if you can, (or if you can't, then imagine) being an infant, perhaps still in the womb, and your first glimmer of awareness beyond yourself. What did you become in that instant? Was that, in your world, the origin of awareness, the origin of the universe?

What were you before that? Were you merely some molecules organizing themselves into body parts? Or were you a spirit, descending into this world from some higher realm?

It doesn't matter. Even if you recall in detail a prior existence, or many such, it doesn't  actually matter.

What you are, what you know, remains exclusively your awareness, your existence. You may attempt to communicate it, in speech, in writing, by some means more subtle, it doesn't matter. Even if you were to meld your whole soul entirely with that of another, it doesn't matter. The most you might achieve would be the existence of one soul where before there were two. But that would be a reversal, a lessening of the diversity. Perhaps even a defiance of God's plan.

We may conceive of such a melding of minds as a step toward godhood, and there may be some truth in that. But that would suggest that the one God is exactly the sum of all lesser godlike entities, including us: a sum of all beings who possess the power of the word. Thus the whole of existence is precisely the whole of existence, folded back into itself, all individual awareness abandoned, or as yet unconceived.

The epiphany may be a momentary and partial merging back into the god mind, of which realm we may retain some glimmer when we return to our separate selves.

The image of a splintered hologram may correctly capture this view of reality.

Accessing this reality is a beatitude, an ascendance. 

Your first experience of accessing virtual reality may feel like this.

If so, that may be your future.