Ach, but there must be some way of escaping the human condition...
Interesting post.
Have you ever heard about the concept of a Walk-in? I think there were books written about it in the mid-80s. Supposedly, souls with noble agendas (say, world peace) hover around the Earthly Plain, hoping to sense and home in on some weakling soul that's not up to the task of its life's mission.
As with vampires, Walk-ins can't possess the body unless the soul says, "I think I'd like to go back to heaven. I don't want to live in this body anymore, experiencing life as a Chinese peasant. So come on in, and good luck!"
Then, if all goes well, the person wakes up the next morning, and instead of a morose and difficult Chinese peasant who doesn't enjoy planting rice or cooking with dung--whatever--the family is startled to find a remade man! A man who not only wants to plant rice for his family, but wants to figure out how to build a rice-planting machine to help his neighbors! Who is also kind and understanding and just wonderful.
I suspect Scrooge in A Christmas Carol was a Walk-in.
If all this is true, and certain psychic writers seemed to have been convinced of it (unsurprisingly, most of them were also convinced they were enlightened souls who walked in), then there's a great way to have your cake and eat it too.
You get to escape the human condition when the going gets tough, and let some finer spirit take your post and impress the hell out of your friends and relatives, giving you all the credit, while you're presumably floating around and watching the antics below.
That's my plan. I'm just not sure about the mechanics involved. Suppose something gets jammed?
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Date: 2004-10-20 01:24 pm (UTC)Interesting post.
Have you ever heard about the concept of a Walk-in? I think there were books written about it in the mid-80s. Supposedly, souls with noble agendas (say, world peace) hover around the Earthly Plain, hoping to sense and home in on some weakling soul that's not up to the task of its life's mission.
As with vampires, Walk-ins can't possess the body unless the soul says, "I think I'd like to go back to heaven. I don't want to live in this body anymore, experiencing life as a Chinese peasant. So come on in, and good luck!"
Then, if all goes well, the person wakes up the next morning, and instead of a morose and difficult Chinese peasant who doesn't enjoy planting rice or cooking with dung--whatever--the family is startled to find a remade man! A man who not only wants to plant rice for his family, but wants to figure out how to build a rice-planting machine to help his neighbors! Who is also kind and understanding and just wonderful.
I suspect Scrooge in A Christmas Carol was a Walk-in.
If all this is true, and certain psychic writers seemed to have been convinced of it (unsurprisingly, most of them were also convinced they were enlightened souls who walked in), then there's a great way to have your cake and eat it too.
You get to escape the human condition when the going gets tough, and let some finer spirit take your post and impress the hell out of your friends and relatives, giving you all the credit, while you're presumably floating around and watching the antics below.
That's my plan. I'm just not sure about the mechanics involved. Suppose something gets jammed?