In my previous post, I commented on how Soupy Sales’ death inspired me to contemplate the deeper spiritual aspects of comedy and laughter, including how getting a pie thrown in one’s face actually could offer a valuable lesson in spiritual humility.
Soupy Sales’ death also caused me to contemplate death, itself. I grew up watching Soupy Sales in the 50s and 60s and the image of his 36 year-old rubbery face became fixed into my memory forever. It was somewhat of a shock that this funny, vibrant and expressive face had now morphed into a grey, 83 year-old man.
His death snapped me out of my habitual mind. It was a powerful reminder of my own mortality. Things don’t last forever.
Aging and dying (other than taxes) is something we can count on. Strangely, we do not use our inevitable death as a source for inspiration in our lives. In other words, we would live quite differently if we knew the exact time of our death. The reason for this is that we would be forced to quickly cut through all the crap and nonsense in our lives and decide what was most important to us.
If most of the people in the world would act differently if they had the knowledge of the precise time of their death, then we must be living our lives separated from our true inner or core values. It is as though the various vanities and allurements of the world had us hypnotized and disconnected from our true selves.
The 20th Century mystic, George Gurdjieff once said that we needed a special organ in our body whose function was to constantly remind us of our inevitable death. Such an organ would have the power to break through our trance-forming compulsions with an unrelenting slap to the side of the head.
When the Lord Jesus was in the world, He understood the strange psyche of men and women and the obstacles that stood in the way of true happiness and peace. He constantly warned us to “stay awake” and to “sleep not.” This divine warning (slap on the side of the head) was not to suggest that we should resist going to bed, but rather, that humankind needed to snap out of its daily and earthly trance.
Many atheists, post-modern thinkers, and relativistic theologians despise the traditional religious concepts of evil and sin. However, if they were to exchange the term “evil” for “hypnosis” they would see the scientific side of God’s ongoing challenge to save the human race from the tyranny of time and the illusions of materialistic life. My upcoming book Proving God will address salvation and eternal happiness from a scientifically plausible theory.
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