We hunger not for bread alone, but for pleasure, for acclaim, for power, for the deep touching of kindred flesh. Maybe it is just for relief from some aching, nagging affliction that we are driven with irresistible compulsion. Such biological motives are powerful enough that we regard them as destiny. But transcending these are the stories, the narratives, the cultural myths that shape our collective lives, for which we forgo gratification, we endure torment or boredom or deprivation, for which men (more than women) are called to sacrifice their very lives — and they do! overriding their biological programming with an act of will that feels more like destiny than heroism. Good vs evil, justice vs corruption, liberty vs oppression, Jehovah vs Satan — these stories have historic potency because they feel more real than our own experience.
It is all a collective dream. We are children playing make-believe, actors on a stage, avatars in a video game. Our souls dip into the human melodrama for sport, and emerge as audience members when the lights come on. Between incarnations, we converse about aspects of the game of Life, we learn and we grow. Maybe we take a long vacation from the 3-D reality game, or maybe we dive right back in for another chance to seize the brass ring. Sooner or later, our appetite wanes for the violence and pathos that lend poignancy to this game, and we choose to participate in a collective project of a different kind, one that feels more like play.
All this is what everyone knows in the instant after they quit the mortal coil. I was gifted with this perspective when a hermit sage touched my head in Benares, 1996
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