Everything That Is (ETI) has been, will be and can be includes the real and the imaginary, the material and the immaterial (is there really a substantive difference?).
Within ETI are sentient beings and non-sentient beings, sentient beings with language, and sentient beings without language, subjects and objects, the living and the dead. So the Big Question is not about the purpose of life; it is about the purpose of life and death and everything between (POLADEV).
I believe that the POLADEV is to help ETI experience and understand Zirself in the totality of all Zir components, including what it is like to be me, what it is like to be you, what it is like to be a (specific) strange quark, what it is like to be a (particular) thought, what it is like to be a bat. The stuff of which ETI is made is the same stuff of which the parts of ETI are made, ie, ETI-stuff is incarnate in a rock, a tree, a bacterium, a force, an idea, a dog, a molecule, a piece of anti-matter, dark energy, light energy, a book, a singularity, a lightning strike, a formula, a thought, a person, an animal, an algorithm, an alien with language, an alien without language, etc. (And a bat.)
Now do you begin to understand entanglement? Now do you begin to understand why there is no separation between anything? Now do you begin to understand that everything is of the same stuff? Now do you begin to understand what the Buddhist said to the hotdog vendor ("make me one with everything")? It's the Great Chain of Being. It's worlds within worlds. Reality scales up as well as down.
Parts of ETI are smart. Parts are dumb. The parts that are smart comprise the brain and nervous system of ETI. Everything that is smart is a neuron firing in the brain of ETI. One neuron may not be aware of another, but ETI is aware of all.