WHY WE LAUGH…AND HOW WE MAY NEVER LAUGH AGAIN
(inspired by the pivotal scene in the novel Stranger In A Strange Land by Robert Heinlein)
We laugh because it hurts. All of it. Everything hurts. All around us is the manifestation of all of our injustices, iniquities, misdeeds, transgressions, wrongs, revenges, etc., everywhere we look. All of the evils we visit upon each other abound, seemingly inescapable and impossible not to notice.
We laugh at the terrible things we do to each other because these things are wrong, just plain wrong. We blindly do horrible things causing so much misery upon ourselves and others, oblivious to the fact that we should not do such things.
There is no need to live the way we live, to suffer the way we suffer, to mistreat each other so awfully. That is the rub of it all. In life, there is no need to do anything to cause such suffering as is all around us everywhere we look. Any yet we ignorantly do it anyway. And so we laugh because we must.
Bliss is what we should be feeling as enlightened beings. But we are not born as enlightened beings. Human beings are little better than animals at our current stage of development. Being so spiritually ignorant, we behave accordingly. But it is our inner spiritual nature that compensates for our misdeeds by giving us the gift of laughter to keep us from going insane because of the evil things we do.
In my opinion, laughter is God’s compensation for the transgressions committed towards each other.
It makes me wonder. What would life be like if we did no terrible things to each other? Would anything be funny at all? What would make us laugh if there were no terrible things occurring to cause us to compensate with laughter? I really doubt any of us would laugh at all. Not that it would be so terrible. To be in a state of “doing no evil” means that we are in a state of enlightenment, whose natural state of being is that of bliss.
In the world of Duality, evil repels us and good attracts us. Either one is a reaction against “what is”. But if, thru some spiritual discipline one can achieve a high state of consciousness, then neither evil or good will cause any reaction. All will be seen as what it is, just a giant play of sorts, and none of it should cause any particular kind of emotional “investment” that would cause a reaction.
In a state of enlightened bliss, all seems “as it should be”. Therefore there is no need to be repelled by evil nor attracted to good, for both are snares of Maya (Delusion) that keep us trapped here away from a direct experience of God.
I think a world populated by enlightened beings would experience incredible blissful joy, but would be devoid of laughter. I think there would be plenty of smiles, owing to the fact of the constant state of communication with God. There would be no need to be unhappy but I fail to see how there would be any laughter.
Laughter seems a symptom of Duality. Its opposite manifestation would be crying. Ever noticed how extreme laughter forces tears from the eyes just like with crying? They are Polar opposites.
When these opposites are cancelled out, and being-ness is experienced from neutrality, bliss is the result. All occurrences seem as a play, an entertaining show authored by Divinity. Comedy, Drama…all the same in the eyes of God.
All the world is a stage. Life is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, in the end signifying nothing.
It is nothing in fact. It is a dream. A dream of God. We are just observers at best, observing from every possible angle and perspective this big strange universe. When we invest ourselves into the dream, we become trapped by it. Then we laugh and cry at what is happening before us.
When we remember our Spiritual origin, the dream is experienced for what it is. A show. A play. To be experienced, nothing more.
If we realize this within our lifetime, then the only reason to be here any further is to help others to realize the same thing. Then while we are here, we “work” or more accurately “participate” in the dream, doing whatever we can to help others to realize that existence is just a dream.
And if no one wants to bother to learn this? Then there is no choice but to let them live as they have, suffering eternally or at least until they figure the Cosmic Joke.
Now that is something to laugh about.
