posted on May, 30 2013 @ 05:39 PM
One of my favorite short stories ever. That story had quite an effect on me...
It opened my eyes in a way. At some point after reading this my philosophy on life
began to change. And I did begin to start seeing myself as two separate entities--one,
a sack of meat and bone, and the other, the spirit inside controlling the meat puppet.
It has influenced me to this day...
When I am physically hurting, hungry or am experiencing some other biological need I realize
that this is simply my meat sack responding to stimuli from its nervous system, that I AM in
control of this meat-puppet and that IT will do as its told. I could probably type pages here about
this, but suffice it to say that it is an empowering feeling to separate body from spirit, to realize
(or hope, or even at best, to approach life from this perspective) that my meat sack is doomed
to fail and die--it was doomed from the moment it was born--but that "I" supercede this meat
sack in some way as yet unrealized.
The other thing it opened my eyes to was all the infinite possibilities for ET life in the universe.
We humans or so self-important in our quest to find life that we anthropomorphize our alien
quest, expecting that alien life forms will be carbon based, respirating, eating, drinking, copies
of ourselves. While that is a likely scenario, and given that terrestrial life is all we know, that is
an excusably myopic quest. But alien life forms have endless possibilities of form. We can't
know what shape, size, or biological make-up alien life may take...
I think this story was published originally in OMNI magazine.....it is funny how this one short story
keeps popping up in my mind so many years later