What a phrase:  the great beyond!  We hear it invoked in tales of exploration, in countless discussions and ruminations about existential meaning, or as a catch all for anything that we consider to be outside our everyday purview.  I was newly reminded of the phrase as I listened recently to REM's song, "The Great Beyond."  Although I know little about the songwriter's spiritual convictions, I came away from the song marveling anew at how all of us, at least once in our lives, ponder what we think or believe is metaphysically beyond us.  Moreover, even if we subsequently reject the metaphysical, we cannot dismiss that we all at one point in our life consider that it may be an avenue for determining life's meaning.
     It's easy to say that if this is true, we can therefore conclude that we, we human beings, are hard wired to look beyond us for answers to our point and purpose.  Perhaps this is a facile conclusion.  Perhaps.  Yet it speaks to something deeper:  we all seek purpose, we all seek point.  We cannot help but do so.  And it is a purpose greater than mere survival. We all strive to do more than simply exist.
     So it is not so much a question of the great beyond than a question about who we are--and why we are this way.  Why do we seek meaning?  Although I do not deny that evolutionary processes, guided by a divine intelligence, may well have brought the world to its present state, I do wonder why, if the goal of evolution is to ensure survival and nothing more, people seek meaning.  Every other animal does not require meaning to survive.  But we do.
     Even if we deny it, the metaphysical still speaks.