A revealing question, certainly. The 'search for meaning', the universality of some sort of religion and God or gods at all levels of civilization, the ability and virtual inevitability that we all live for more than the sake of our own well-being -- all these things and more demonstrate conclusively that man' was made for more than the world of appearances he usually calls 'reality'.
But if there is God, or even the Law of Karma (Buddhist), or the law of historical necessity (Marxism), then the world as we apprehend it with out limited senses must NOT be THE ULTIMATE REALITY. Ok, or have I lost you already?
Well, to make a short essay even shorter, the 'meaning' or Ultimate Reality people seek is, in fact, that God concept that Carl Sagan derides. Someone (was it Sagan?), recently released a book, The God Hypothesis. Well, if God is just a hypothesis to you, then you know nothing of the subject on which you claim expertise. (I suppose writing a book presumes expertise on the subject.)
Yeah, it's God people are looking for, and He has arranged things such that no matter how many other people have found Him, each individual must seek and find Him for himself. Herself too if you are not Moslem. The big, grown up men and women of academia reject God as a childish belief, then spend their lives trying to avoid thinking about death. But Jesus said you must become a little child again to inherit the Kingdom (IOW, have eternal life). Now if that ain't Socratic irony, what is?
Seems it was not Sagan (who passed on years ago as I recall)...I checked out the book's amazon page...guessing per the subtitle about Goldilocks that the author retreads an old fallacious argument which tries to apply the Weak Anthropic Principle to discount the evidence for a designed universe...but that is only a hunch of coarse...and I am not curious enough to buy the book. Maybe the author demonstrates the fallacy in the argument instead? It is a pervasive defensive argument among naturalists, so a good book demonstrating the fallacy would be welcome.