Life experience and the soul

Perhaps. But is it all that important? In the internal, what-would-I-like-to-do-with-my-life sense?
I would say it's very important. But it's also answerable with an honest journey of self-discovery as we uncover what it is we do like and dislike. Find out what's important to you, and you'll find out why you're here. In the external, absolute, purpose-from-some-other-being sense?
I would say it's not important at all. Useless, even.
Consider the tautology - The external, absoute reason we're here matches those thing I find important to pursue individually, or not.If they do match, then the external, absolute reason for being here was useless and unnecessary because I already figured it out on my own anyway.If they don't match, then why would I consider the external, absolute reason for being here as anything to bother with if it's something that's not a priority of importance to me?Example: Let's say I find love, peace and harmony to be incredibly important, they are my priorities.External, absolute reason for being here = to pursue love, peace and harmony.
Result - Awesome! I'm already doing it! No change to my life.External, absolute reason for being here = to explore the universe as much as we can within the cosmic time-limit.
Result - Who cares? I don't care to explore the universe, I care about love, peace and harmony. Perhaps one day this will lead to spreading love, peace and harmony throughout the universe... then I will explore the universe as a by-product to my personal purpose, but other then that it would hold no interest for me. Therefore, there's still no change to my life.Therefore, regardless of what the external, objective, absolute "reason for being here" is, or if it even exists at all, there is no change to my life. So, using any of my resources to contemplate or pursue the existence and concept of an external, absolute reason for being here is useless (as far as I can tell).

We don't.Only a very small percentage of the population is actually "engaged in such pursuits."That is my point. Some people are going to find things like astronomy important... and those people will engage in those pursuits. Others will find things like playing baseball to be important, and they will engage in those pursuits.There doesn't exist any subjective concept that all humans follow or desire. Such things are different for different people. Sure, plenty of folks will agree, and form groups with common interests. But certainly not "all." I agree. But the things humans are curious or interested about vary widely from person to person. Not really. If that's all you said, I'd have you imprisoned, remove the machine to the dump and forget about the whole thing. Such things aren't worth my curiosity. I reserve my curiosity for those things which have facts behind them, and that I'm interested in their possible results. You just saying that such a thing is important isn't enough for me. You'd have to provide some facts before you got me interested. I completely agree with the first part of the above paragraph. But then you seem to imply that "we humans" are all curious about heaven. And that's where you're wrong (if that's what you're actually implying). Some humans certainly are curious about heaven. But not all, humans aren't so easily generalized.Those who find ideas with no factual basis to be irrelevant and worthless will not find "heaven" to be interesting and will not try to find out as much as they can. Basically, they won't try because they already know that when no facts are present, there's only useless speculation to be done...