The meaning of life, emphasized Frankl, is an ontological reality, not a cultural creation. Frankl gives no philosophical proof of this statement, but the very path of logotherapeutic healing provides each patient with unmistakable evidence of the objectivity of the meaning of his life. The meaning of life simply exists: it is just a matter of finding it. Universal in its value, individual in its content, the meaning of life is found through a tenacious investigation in which the patient, with the help of the therapist, seeks an answer to the following question: What should I do and that cannot be done by anyone, absolutely anyone except myself? The immanent duty to each life then appears as an imposition of the very structure of human existence. No man invents the meaning of his life: each one is, so to speak, surrounded and cornered by the meaning of his own life. This demarcates and fixes at a certain point in space and time the center of his personal reality, from whose view emerges, clear and inexorable, but only visible from within, the duty to fulfill.

Mystical psychologies deal fundamentally with the meaning of the individual’s life, of the individual before his ultimate moral responsibility, something that is above the character, something that Humanity itself does not know. It is fundamentally the individual as Universal Man, as Christ, as pastor and responsible for all humanity. The saint's model represents the action of the individual as a function of the ultimate purpose of all things. For Gandhi — who is a prototype of a saint— only his relationship with a purpose that transcends the biological life and life of the human species is of interest. When both were over, God would be left, and it is waiting for this moment that his action is guided.

Duty fulfillment regarding a social role presupposes the existence of people who have an expectation regarding the occupant of that role. To act on the coherence of one’s own biography presupposes that it must continue. Acting toward goals dictated by the culture and intelligence presupposes that there are achievable ends within the time frame of a historical existence. But if the individual acts solely on the basis of an end, he is acting precisely on the inexistence of a world around him. With or without the world, he would act the same way. Acts then acquire a supra-temporal, supra-historical meaning, that is, eternally man should do so before the world exists or when it ceases to exist. Here action is taken as the direct expression of a divine quality that acts without the existence of the world.

We can speak of holiness only when one’s relationship with an eternal God motivates each of his actions. Not only accidental acts, but all, one by one, there is no single act that can be explained outside this dialogue. Who does the guy talk to, who does he respond to? If we erase this connection, his life becomes a collection of meaningless acts. An accomplished holy man acts on the eternal sense of existence, has no other motive, not even History.