First birth is from your parents, but real birth, real life, begins when one accepts a bona fide spiritual master and renders service unto him. Then the path is open for going back to home, back to Godhead, to live eternally in full knowledge and full bliss and in association with the Supreme Personality of Godhead Himself, Lord Krishna.
People once considered that religions were obsolete and that material science would solve all human problems. Then they have become disillusioned with materialism and machinery and have realized that spiritual sciences are also indispensable for human welfare.
I am sure I have heard this several times from places I can't recall, but it's not already in the Gaia Quotes database, so I add this profound insight from the fields of psychological healing and spiritual evolution. It sure has helped me.
The various features and aspects of human life, such as longevity, good health, success, happiness, and so forth, which we consider desirable, are all dependent on kindness and a good heart.
You have seen that the universe is at root a magical illusion and a fabulous game, and that there is no separate "you" to get something out of it, as if life were a bank to be robbed. The only real "you" is the one that comes and goes, manifests and withdraws itself eternally in and as every conscious being. For "you" is the universe looking at itself from billions of points of view, points that come and go so that the vision is forever new.
The whole history of Israel, its ritual and its government, is explicable only as it is typical of the spiritual Israel, of the sacrifice on Calvary, of the precious blood which alone can wash away sin.