IF LIFE IS JUST A MOVIE, THE UNIVERSE IS A GIANT HOLOGRAPHIC MOVIE
Life is pretending. We are all pretending that what we are experiencing during life is actually real. The fact is, it is anything but real. By one definition, becoming enlightened means that we stop pretending a little more each day, stop pretending to believe that what we experience around us is real. The truth teaches us many things, especially that we have been playing a game, so to speak. I think I once heard it explained in the phrase “at play in the fields of the lord”. I don’t know the intent of the first person who penned that expression, but to my way of thinking it is a definition of life itself. Life is a play, much as Shakespeare alluded. We are all players, actors portraying our little parts to an audience of the world.
What we see at a play or a movie (the modern equivalent) is anything but real. Although we may react in such a way while being a spectator in the audience, most of us would agree that only a fool would continue to believe what he saw in a theater is real. In fact, most people laugh at and ridicule those who are fans of one particular movie or other (usually a fantasy film or a sci-fi epic), those who are so enthusiastic for the story that sometimes they may dress up as one of the characters when they attend the movie. I don’t belittle these super-fans. At the very least, they are enthusiastic about something that speaks to them on a deep level. At least they are enthusiastic about something. Most people are enthusiastic about nothing at all.
Sometimes I wonder how much more we would voluntarily react to a movie if the movie was a hologram projected all around us. Such holographic movies, I think, are the way of the future. Imagine going to the movies and when the movie begins you find yourself completely alone in the theater which then disappears and gives way to a holographic projection all around you.
Imagine that movies became so big they could be projected to a whole country, then a whole planet, then a whole solar system, a group of stars and planets, then a galaxy, then a cluster of galaxies, then the whole universe. If one could project one’s idea for a movie to the whole universe, wouldn’t that seem like a power of God Almighty itself? More importantly, being that it is still a movie (of Universal dimension and scope), wouldn’t it still be stupid of us to react to it as though it were real? It is still a movie after all. Why bother to believe in its alleged existence as fact? Only a fool would be such a fan of movie that big…right?
And yet, I ask you…isn’t Life itself just a giant movie? If taking a movie too seriously are the actions of a fool, then isn’t taking life itself too seriously equally foolish?
People who take life too seriously are indeed fooling themselves. Let them be. They must learn the Truth one day or another. When we take things too seriously, we believe in the supposed reality of a thing that is anything but real, so unreal in fact that it is not even a thing to begin with.
Of course, none of this means that we should shirk off all cares and responsibility, as we would learn nothing at all. And the thing we must learn about life is that it is not really real in the first place. Just as we can learn from movies by keeping a level head during and after the viewing of the film, we may also learn the most from life in the same manner.
Being balanced is the key here. If we lead a balanced life, we can learn the most about it and the most from it…mainly its unreality. If we can learn this, then we will have no attachments to anything in life (which yogis warn us about) and we will be liberated from this otherwise endless movie called life.
This is enlightenment itself. Knowing of the unreality of life while simultaneously being in it. Stated another way, “Be in the world, but not of it.” Or “The world is a bridge, do not build on it.”
