The Egg - An introspective Short Story

Eramen

Just posting this short story that caught my interest. I've always preferred stories and narratives that carry a deeper underlying meaning or outcome, rather than just being told for the sake of itself - hopefully you might get something out of it too! Upon finishing reading it I couldn't help but think about when Christ spoke about the Greatest Commandment:



Matthew 22:36-40


“Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”

Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”



http://www.galactanet.com/oneoff/theegg_mod.html



The Egg
By: Andy Weir

You were on your way home when you died.
It was a car accident. Nothing particularly remarkable, but fatal nonetheless. You left behind a wife and two children. It was a painless death. The EMTs tried their best to save you, but to no avail. Your body was so utterly shattered you were better off, trust me.
And that’s when you met me.
“What… what happened?” You asked. “Where am I?”
“You died,” I said, matter-of-factly. No point in mincing words.
“There was a… a truck and it was skidding…”
“Yup,” I said.
“I… I died?”
“Yup. But don’t feel bad about it. Everyone dies,” I said.
You looked around. There was nothingness. Just you and me. “What is this place?” You asked. “Is this the afterlife?”
“More or less,” I said.
“Are you god?” You asked.
“Yup,” I replied. “I’m God.”
“My kids… my wife,” you said.
“What about them?”
“Will they be all right?”
“That’s what I like to see,” I said. “You just died and your main concern is for your family. That’s good stuff right there.”
You looked at me with fascination. To you, I didn’t look like God. I just looked like some man. Or possibly a woman. Some vague authority figure, maybe. More of a grammar school teacher than the almighty.
“Don’t worry,” I said. “They’ll be fine. Your kids will remember you as perfect in every way. They didn’t have time to grow contempt for you. Your wife will cry on the outside, but will be secretly relieved. To be fair, your marriage was falling apart. If it’s any consolation, she’ll feel very guilty for feeling relieved.”
“Oh,” you said. “So what happens now? Do I go to heaven or hell or something?”
“Neither,” I said. “You’ll be reincarnated.”
“Ah,” you said. “So the Hindus were right,”
“All religions are right in their own way,” I said. “Walk with me.”
You followed along as we strode through the void. “Where are we going?”
“Nowhere in particular,” I said. “It’s just nice to walk while we talk.”
“So what’s the point, then?” You asked. “When I get reborn, I’ll just be a blank slate, right? A baby. So all my experiences and everything I did in this life won’t matter.”
“Not so!” I said. “You have within you all the knowledge and experiences of all your past lives. You just don’t remember them right now.”
I stopped walking and took you by the shoulders. “Your soul is more magnificent, beautiful, and gigantic than you can possibly imagine. A human mind can only contain a tiny fraction of what you are. It’s like sticking your finger in a glass of water to see if it’s hot or cold. You put a tiny part of yourself into the vessel, and when you bring it back out, you’ve gained all the experiences it had.
“You’ve been in a human for the last 48 years, so you haven’t stretched out yet and felt the rest of your immense consciousness. If we hung out here for long enough, you’d start remembering everything. But there’s no point to doing that between each life.”
“How many times have I been reincarnated, then?”
“Oh lots. Lots and lots. An in to lots of different lives.” I said. “This time around, you’ll be a Chinese peasant girl in 540 AD.”
“Wait, what?” You stammered. “You’re sending me back in time?”
“Well, I guess technically. Time, as you know it, only exists in your universe. Things are different where I come from.”
“Where you come from?” You said.
“Oh sure,” I explained “I come from somewhere. Somewhere else. And there are others like me. I know you’ll want to know what it’s like there, but honestly you wouldn’t understand.”
“Oh,” you said, a little let down. “But wait. If I get reincarnated to other places in time, I could have interacted with myself at some point.”
“Sure. Happens all the time. And with both lives only aware of their own lifespan you don’t even know it’s happening.”
“So what’s the point of it all?”
“Seriously?” I asked. “Seriously? You’re asking me for the meaning of life? Isn’t that a little stereotypical?”
“Well it’s a reasonable question,” you persisted.
I looked you in the eye. “The meaning of life, the reason I made this whole universe, is for you to mature.”
“You mean mankind? You want us to mature?”
“No, just you. I made this whole universe for you. With each new life you grow and mature and become a larger and greater intellect.”
“Just me? What about everyone else?”
“There is no one else,” I said. “In this universe, there’s just you and me.”
You stared blankly at me. “But all the people on earth…”
“All you. Different incarnations of you.”
“Wait. I’m everyone!?”
“Now you’re getting it,” I said, with a congratulatory slap on the back.
“I’m every human being who ever lived?”
“Or who will ever live, yes.”
“I’m Abraham Lincoln?”
“And you’re John Wilkes Booth, too,” I added.
“I’m Hitler?” You said, appalled.
“And you’re the millions he killed.”
“I’m Jesus?”
“And you’re everyone who followed him.”
You fell silent.
“Every time you victimized someone,” I said, “you were victimizing yourself. Every act of kindness you’ve done, you’ve done to yourself. Every happy and sad moment ever experienced by any human was, or will be, experienced by you.”
You thought for a long time.
“Why?” You asked me. “Why do all this?”
“Because someday, you will become like me. Because that’s what you are. You’re one of my kind. You’re my child.”
“Whoa,” you said, incredulous. “You mean I’m a god?”
“No. Not yet. You’re a fetus. You’re still growing. Once you’ve lived every human life throughout all time, you will have grown enough to be born.”
“So the whole universe,” you said, “it’s just…”
“An egg.” I answered. “Now it’s time for you to move on to your next life.”
And I sent you on your way.

Geomy

Nice story,probably won't go down well in this forum as not many here move outside their comfort zone or are willing to look outside the box

Kiwi in IE

I also quite liked it as a story. Probably for the same reasons it has recieved a 'no comment' in this forum.

Fanny Cradock

Kiwi in IE wrote: »

I also quite liked it as a story. Probably for the same reasons it has recieved a 'no comment' in this forum.

I would gather the story hasn't received any comments because it hasn't got anything to do with Christianity.

Eramen

Fanny Cradock wrote: »

I would gather the story hasn't received any comments because it hasn't got anything to do with Christianity.

Forgive me but my intention was to provide Christians with a piece of fiction that I personally found metaphysically satisfying. I would expect that at least some other Christians too would feel the same way. I'm not asking anyone to accept this as theology or otherwise, but simply a thought-provoking metaphor and a meaningful reading experience, nothing more, nothing less.

In the story where it says,


“Every time you victimized someone,” I said, “you were victimizing yourself. Every act of kindness you’ve done, you’ve done to yourself. Every happy and sad moment ever experienced by any human was, or will be, experienced by you.”


It reminds me clearly of the parable alluding to every person's personal reckoning at the feet of the Superior God.


“Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’

“Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’

“The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’

Matt 25: 34 - 40


That this story "has nothing to do with Christianity" is a mere technicality imo, because it seems patently striking to me to have had inspiration in some shape from the teachings of the Savior. Other people with whom I have shared the story have also commented that it reminded them of parts of Christ's life and words. A good piece of fiction can be universally applied, every person will take their own meaning from it and this work succeeds in that. Read and enjoy!

Fanny Cradock

What you posted is closer to Eastern religions and not Judaism, Christianity or Islam. However, I wasn't actually posting to quibble about this. Rather, I was responding to what I saw as the mean-spirited posts that followed yours.

Eramen

Fanny Cradock wrote: »

What you posted is closer to Eastern religions and not Judaism, Christianity or Islam. However, I wasn't actually posting to quibble about this. Rather, I was responding to what I saw as the mean-spirited posts that followed yours.

Reincarnation is more relevent to Eastern thought yet there is not much else in this story that suggests that this is non-Christian. In any case this should be thought of as a meaningful work of fiction rather than theology. I know your intent is not to quibble but I would differ and say the story actually contains much Western and Christian thought.


“When you make the two one, and when you make the inside like the outside and the outside like the inside, and the above like the below, and when you make the male and the female one, so that the male will not be male nor the female female; and when you fashion eyes in place of an eye, and a hand in place of a hand, and a foot in place of a foot, and a likeness in the place of a likeness; then will you enter the Kingdom.”

- Jesus Christ


Christianity is a religion seated in Monism, the concept that all things are generated from one substance which is not the body, not the world, not the mind, nor material etc, but an underlying principle that is the essence of all causality. I don't think it's any stretch at all to say that this mode of thought is critical to Christianity and without it there is no Christianity.

The Form of the Word is one that permeates all of the visible world, to the farest reaches of existence, sweeping through and inhabiting all organic activity. Yet this Word, as well as being present and the basis of the world, is allowed to become something beyond it too through its fusion with the Holy Spirit, and we find that this unity becomes the uniting factor between the soul and the Superior Source itself.


"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made." John 1:1-3


To say that 'I am you, and you are me' or like in the story that 'there is only me and you' is nothing more than to correctly equate ourselves [through the Word] with the vast produce of the First Breath, acknowledging within ourselves that everything originated of the One and that all rests in Him, and all is of the same value within His eyes. This is not a foreign element, but central to Christian teaching and theology.

"By the Word of the Lord the heavens were made, And all the host of them by the breath of His mouth." Psalm 33:6

In fact it's only by measuring ourselves to this Source of Being and everything it exhibits that we can understand what we lack and pinpoint the knowledge relating to the All-Good; God!


"Natural Reason tells us that because of the inadequacies we perceive in ourselves we need to subject ourselves to some superior source of help and direction; and whatever that source might be, everybody calls it God." - St. Thomas Aquinas

Peregrinus

Eramen wrote: »

Forgive me but my intention was to provide Christians with a piece of fiction that I personally found metaphysically satisfying. I would expect that at least some other Christians too would feel the same way. I'm not asking anyone to accept this as theology or otherwise, but simply a thought-provoking metaphor and a meaningful reading experience, nothing more, nothing less.

In the story where it says,

“Every time you victimized someone,” I said, “you were victimizing yourself. Every act of kindness you’ve done, you’ve done to yourself. Every happy and sad moment ever experienced by any human was, or will be, experienced by you.”

It reminds me clearly of the parable alluding to every person's personal reckoning at the feet of the Superior God.

“Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’

There’s a big difference there, though. In your story, if I treat somebody else well or badly, I am treating myself in that way. But in the gospel version, if I treat somebody else well or badly, I am treating God that way.

I don’t want to sound critical - I liked the story - but if I did want to sound critical, I’d say that the story essentially encourages a selfish morality - how you treat others matters because of the effect it will have on you - you should avoid injuring others because you will injure yourself; you build up others in order to build up yourself. It’s all about self-actualisation; constantly improving yourself until you, too, can become a God, this being the point of your existence. And others, and how you treat others, is presented here as mattering because it affects your self-actualisation. Others are a means to an end, not an end in themselves

Whereas in the gospel version, God - not the god-you-can-become, but God - is placed at the centre. Living morally and lovingly is presented as good, not because it will make you God, but simply because it is how you are called to live. In other words, you don’t live well in order to improve yourself; you live well because it’s a good way to live. Goodness justifies itself; it doesn’t become a means to self-actualisation.

Now, of course, that’s an oversimplification. In the gospel version, people are promised a reward, which is entry into God’s kingdom, rather than becoming God, so you could say that this, too, encourages a certain selfishness. It’s doing good in the expectation of reward, even if it’s a slightly different reward. Still, in the Christian version the focus is outside the self. Ultimately, good isn’t good because it’s good for you; rather, it’s good for you because it’s good.

Geomy

Fanny Cradock wrote: »

What you posted is closer to Eastern religions and not Judaism, Christianity or Islam. However, I wasn't actually posting to quibble about this. Rather, I was responding to what I saw as the mean-spirited posts that followed yours.

Mean spirited posts :S

Cool your jets there now,his posts happens to be more intriguing and interesting than most posts in here.

Eramen

Peregrinus wrote: »

There’s a big difference there, though. In your story, if I treat somebody else well or badly, I am treating myself in that way. But in the gospel version, if I treat somebody else well or badly, I am treating God that way.

I don’t want to sound critical - I liked the story - but if I did want to sound critical, I’d say that the story essentially encourages a selfish morality - how you treat others matters because of the effect it will have on you - you should avoid injuring others because you will injure yourself; you build up others in order to build up yourself. It’s all about self-actualisation; constantly improving yourself until you, too, can become a God, this being the point of your existence. And others, and how you treat others, is presented here as mattering because it affects your self-actualisation. Others are a means to an end, not an end in themselves

Whereas in the gospel version, God - not the god-you-can-become, but God - is placed at the centre. Living morally and lovingly is presented as good, not because it will make you God, but simply because it is how you are called to live. In other words, you don’t live well in order to improve yourself; you live well because it’s a good way to live. Goodness justifies itself; it doesn’t become a means to self-actualisation.

Now, of course, that’s an oversimplification. In the gospel version, people are promised a reward, which is entry into God’s kingdom, rather than becoming God, so you could say that this, too, encourages a certain selfishness. It’s doing good in the expectation of reward, even if it’s a slightly different reward. Still, in the Christian version the focus is outside the self. Ultimately, good isn’t good because it’s good for you; rather, it’s good for you because it’s good.

Hey Peregrinus. I agree with you in some part, in being that the 'you' or 'we' are not God, or a god-to-become, if you want to put it in this context. I'm not trying to present this story as anything more than worthwhile fiction yet it can have much relevance for Christians who want to voluntary seek the meaning of the story by way of their Christian religiosity, theology and devotions.

Yet at the same time, as I explained in my post above, we are all borne out from the Word of the Holy Breath so that in some senses, we are all one body in the way we act and behave toward one another [ 'Love your neighbor as yourself" as Jesus spoke - See my post no. 7 above on the Word]. All of existence is etched out from this Word, whether body, mind, qualities and substances, just as the ancient Athenian statues are hewn out from marble. Ultimately everything is of the same cause and the same primal quality. It is in this way that 'we are one in the Breath of God', and how each action done to others is done to God and even to ourselves.


"By the Word of the Lord the heavens were made, And all the host of them by the breath of His mouth." Psalm 33:63


"All live by one breath; as the one dies so dies the other, so that a man has no preeminence over a beast, for all go to the same place – all come from the dust and return to the dust together.”

- Jesus Christ


The Word is simply the white marble of the spiritual potential of worldly existence and of man; the potential to attain and take up a divine nature. In our tradition, this is known as Theosis, the ability to transform ourselves and to become more like God by making ourselves divine. In the Catholic Church this is called 'Deification'. This is a good way of how a Christian can relate to this story, and a good way that this story can help Christians experience their faith swell around them in a kindly embrace through its themes.


The Catechism of the Catholic Church says of Deification:

"The Word became flesh to make us "partakers of the divine nature": "For this is why the Word became man, and the Son of God became the Son of man: so that man, by entering into communion with the Word and thus receiving divine sonship, might become a son of God." "For the Son of God became man so that we might become God." "The only-begotten Son of God, wanting to make us sharers in his divinity, assumed our nature, so that he, made man, might make men gods."


As in the story, the godly figure character presents a scenario were 'You are going to become like me - although you are just an egg for now', meaning that the man in the story who has just died is destined to become much more in terms of his Being, perhaps by the way of spiritual renewal through his lives lived on earth. Similarly, St. Paul eruditely explains to us that our highest mission too is to seek and create a new Being in ourselves through the imitation of Christ, that no person is to be seen from a strictly worldly sense, so that in this way each person, thing, devotion activity, learning or action represents a chance to acquire spiritual merit in the construction of our soul.


"So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation"

2 Corinthians 5:15-18


You are right when you say self-actualization has no meaning for us. Instead the above is part of the process of becoming Christ-like and which is fulfilled by means of our common unifying antecedent - the Word (which is existence, the Word made Flesh, it is Christ). When the produce of the Breath of God fuses with the Holy Spirit, when our Soul is imbibed with the white fire of the Spirit, only then can we begin to ascend and come into reunion with God. It is all achieved through a realisation of the world around us, and once more of recognition of the Kingdom of Heaven in God Himself.

Lastly, on Good and Goodnes, and the emphasis on living well. I think you are quite right, Goodness does justify itself. Living well and devoting all actions and services to God, sacrificing to Him in all your duties goes hand in hand with what I've described above. Goodness can only arrive to us from the Supremely Good.

God is the origin of Good, because he is complete, lacking nothing, at rest in an infinite nature, the First Cause of everything. Something that is complete must therefore be lacking in error, and because it lacks error, it can be said to be Good. In our actions we must be the same. We must avoid the error of being incomplete or divided within ourselves in relation to the roles of the natural person and spiritual person.

At the end of the day I think this story can promote a mindfulness of God if Christians approach it in the right way, not as a theology, but as a reflection of their own knowledge and faith. I'll leave you with words of St. John of the Cross:


"In thus allowing God to work in it, the soul... is at once illumined and transformed in God, and God communicates to it His supernatural Being, in such wise that it appears to be God Himself, and has all that God Himself has. And this union comes to pass when God grants the soul this supernatural favour, that all the things of God and the soul are one in participant transformation; and the soul seems to be God rather than a soul, and is indeed God by participation; although it is true that its natural being, though thus transformed, is as distinct from the Being of God as it was before."

Geomy

I read another story recently,it was about a beautiful colored butterfly who landed on a cabbage, which was full of caterpillars.

The caterpillars marveled at the butterfly,then the butterfly told them all,one day ye will all be like me and will have the freedom to fly where ye want to and have a life beyond your wildest dreams...

At first the caterpillars were bowled over with joy and were captivated by the wisdom of this butterfly.

Then a few sceptical caterpillars started to question this butterfly about how they can become like Mr butterfly,they didn't like the answers the butterfly had,because they made no sense whatsoever...

So they all got together and crucified this butterfly...

I think its a Sufi parable.