After work today, I went through a bookstore and was perusing the religious philosophy section before I went to the music section.

I ended up picking up a book of dervish anecdotes. While I was looking around I saw so many books in every faith, sect, and religion, with the word 'secret' or 'secrets of' or something along those lines. I found this amusing and thus skimmed through some of them.

Being a student of Zen I saw the cosmic joke of it all. These so called 'secrets' are not really secrets at all. They are things that are right in front of your face every day of your life. Ideally people shouldn't have to have some of these relatively simplistic ideas and concepts pointed out to them. But I guess people are unwilling to seek things out or even just open up their eyes and really look at the world around them and the greater universe at large. So much of life isn't about understanding what is told or explained to you so much as gaining experiences in your life that both grant you wisdom no one can teach you and help define your true self.

There can never be a true virtual reality substitute for the human experience.

People want everything done for them. Be told what to think, how to feel, what to do. The concepts of free will, individuality, and the self are lost. They need a book to tell them to think for themselves in order for them to think for themselves.

People are somehow content living as automatons, walking corpses. They seem to lack the qualties that truly make someone alive. Maybe it will end up being a good thing when we are all replaced by machines. When the machines are more human than humans. Objects that were never alive begin with, living more than the sacks of flesh that created them.