Levels of Human Existence

A great explorer of human nature reveals his secrets. "At each stage of human existence the adult man is off on his quest for his holy grail, the way of life by which he believes men should live. At his first level he is on a quest for automatic physiological satisfaction. At the second level he seeks a safe mode for living, and this is followed, in turn, by a search for heroic status, for the power and the glory, then by a search of everlasting peace, a search for material fullfillment here and now, a search for personal fulfullment here and now, a search for integrated living and a search for spiritual peace in a world he knoes can never be known. And, when he finds, at the eighth level, that he will never find that peace, he will be off on his ninth level quest. As he sets off on each quest, he believes he will find the answer to his existence, and as he settles in each nodal state he is certain he has found it. Yet, always to his surprise and ever to his dismay he finds, at every stage, that the solution to existence is not the soultion he thinks he has found. Every state he reaches leaves him discontented and perplexed. It is simply that as he solves one set of human problems he finds a new set in their place. The quest he finds is never ending.