All the World’s A Stage
“All the world’s a stage and all the men and women merely players”; Shakespeare truly penetrated a profound truth here, in the opening line of this famous soliloquy. And if you take a good long look at ancient Indian philosophy, this worldview, at least according to my own hunches, seems absolutely spot-on.

The Cosmic Drama
In the Judeo-Christian and Islamic traditions, life is often seen as a linear, God-separated happening that has a definite beginning and end, with rewards and punishments dished out in the ending days. Eastern traditions, however, believe in the ever-oneness with God, and that consciousness moves through time in a circular manner with differing levels of consciousness.

In India, the concept of ‘God’ is completely different from what most of us are probably used to. ‘God’ is not seen in the Hindu tradition as an all-powerful monarch, a cosmic boss, who engineered a great machine called the world. ‘God’ is seen as the fundamental ground of being; the reality that always was, is, and will be; that which lies at the basis of reality. Additionally, the world is not seen as an engineered artifact, but rather, as a drama, a wonderful and utterly delightful play. Here, God is not seen as the maker of the universe, but rather as the actor of it, playing all the parts at once. And I am very inclined to agree with this.
So, for now – let’s assume that there is a Great Central Self – call it God, Jah, Allah, Source, Intelligent Infinity, Cosmic Consciousness, Creator, Life itself – call it whatever you like – and it’s all of us. It’s playing all the parts, all beings whatsoever, everywhere and anywhere, all the time. And it’s playing the game of hide-and-seek with itself. It gets lost, it gets entangled and caught up in all sorts of distant adventures, but in the end… it always wakes up and comes back to itself.
Now, let’s play a little mythological imagination game: say, you had the power to dream anything you wanted every night. Naturally, your dreams could take up any span of time, as they do – in a few minutes you could dream up whole days or weeks or years. Say, this was your gift. Of course, you’d want to dream the most exciting and rapturous dreams first – fulfilling all your wishes, dreams, and desires. But, after a while of un-contrasted fun… you’d probably get a tad bored. And maybe you’d begin to think: “Let’s have a little adventure. Let’s spice it up a bit!” And then, perhaps, just for fun, you would dream yourself into all sorts of imaginary dangers and troubles, but you’d always emerge from the ordeal as the ultimate hero. Then, perhaps, with some more time passing, you’d start daring yourself to do some more outrageous and extraordinary things, and at some point you might be so brave as to say: “Tonight I want a surprise. I don’t want to be aware of the fact that I’m dreaming. I want to think that what I’m experiencing is real!” And so, you would experience the drama of your dream as complete reality, and what a shock and relief when you finally wake up! Whew! Got away from that one! And then, as this continues, you might gain some serious courage momentum and get yourself into more extreme and intense situations, just for the experience of stark contrast when you woke up and you realized it was all a dream and that everything was, really, all splendid. Do you see where I’m going with this?

Paramahansa Yogananda, renowned and revered yogi and guru, explains the cosmic drama something to the terms of this*: “The movies are hugely fascinating to me because I see the whole show of the Universe when I’m at the movies. I was in the booth and I saw that the operator was reading a novel and I saw that this automatic machine was projecting a beam that was causing a terrible horror picture on the screen. And I thought: “Lord, you are this operator who is thinking of new plays, and your nature is throwing this beam, this cosmic motion picture show, into the ether, and I see that the hero and the villain are nothing but pictures projected by your beam.” Sometimes we wake up from a nightmare or a wonderful dream, and when we do, we quickly realize that all those things were made up of our dream consciousness. This world is exactly the same. And until you find this out, this world is a terrible show. I said to God: “But Lord, look at the audience! They are howling and screeching downstairs at his horror show! Why do you hypnotize them with such terrible delusion? I see that it’s nothing but a dance of shadow and light for I see the invisible beam, but Lord, what about them? They don’t know this!” And the voice said: “Tell them all to look into the beam within and they will realize that this show was given to entertain them, not to get mixed up with it.” So, even as the man who was engrossed and crying, watching the tragedy show, when he suddenly looks up at the beam and sees that the beam has created everything, he realizes that everything is just shadow and light. How could I feel sad about the tragedy picture? Such is the perception of God: as you lift yourself through non-attachment and learn to love the world as your own, all the tragedies you know of will no longer have meaning, and you shall find the Great Director, who is creating this motion picture of universes on the screen of your consciousness and the screen of the ether. Then you’ll suddenly realize it was only a show. There is no Time or Space, everything is happening in your own thought. If you realize that, you will Realize the Infinite Bliss of God.”

The Nature of Time
When we penetrate the true nature of the Universe, as Yogananda states, we discover that there is no Time or Space and that means that there really is only one instant, and it’s Now. Yes – that famous ‘Now’, the Present, the Presence, that so many mystics and spiritual paths refer to. Yet, here we are, trapped in this illusion of the self and the other,  the past and the future, birth and death, the good and the bad, pain and pleasure, sorrow and joy – all the dualities that seemingly defy that ultimate truth of unity and which makes us worry and suffer.

My theory is that the narrative of everyone’s life, even behind the seemingly phenomenal difference in human experience, is exactly the same. We are all essentially moving from the “No” to the “Yes”. What do I mean by that? Well, in the Now, in this instant, right now, I believe that ‘God’ is essentially posing a question to us, which is basically: “Do you want to be one with eternity? Do you want to be in infinite bliss?” And we’re all going: “Erm… Nah. No, thanks. I’m quite enjoying this adventure, this identity, this play.” It’s like being disrupted right at the best part of the movie, when we are completely wrapped up in the story, on the edge of our seats, rooting for the hero, and we’re being asked if, perhaps, we’d like to leave now? And we turn around, shocked by this audacious disruption and cry out: “Of course not!” “But I can tell you how the story’s going to end. Or how any movie you’ll ever see starts and ends.” “Yes, wonderful, but I don’t want to know! I want to experience it!” And so, the experience of Time and all the dualities of life on this plane is based on this constant saying “No” to ‘God’s’ invitation. Because we want to be here. We put ourselves here. It’s exciting. It’s full of surprises. But in the end, eventually (and thank ‘God’), we all wake up. Everybody gets to the “Yes” in the end.

The Hero’s Journey
Mythologist Joseph Campbell wrote an incredibly insightful book on the monomyth, named The Hero With A Thousand Faces. Which, in my personal view of metaphysics, very accurately describes what ‘God’ essentially is: the hero with a thousand faces. The Hero’s Journey lays bare the fact that in myth (and in most storytelling in general), there is really only one journey, separated into three acts: departure, initiation, and return. It is the journey from the “No” to the “Yes”, as I previously mentioned. The journey itself is split into twelve stages, which Campbell names slightly differently, but I like to refer to them as such: Ordinary World, Call to Adventure, Refusal of the Call, Meeting the Mentor, Crossing the First Threshold, Tests, Allies and Enemies, Approach to the Inmost Cave, The Ordeal, The Reward, The Road Back, Resurrection, and Return with the Elixir.
Think about it for a moment: do you remember a time in your life when you were Called to an Adventure, or Met a Mentor, or experienced a Dark Night of the Soul (The Ordeal)?

Familiarizing myself with this theory exposed to me clearly that this journey is what all of us humans, essentially, live. All of us, without a single exception, live this myth of the hero. That is why, as a collective, we resonate so much with the books and movies that follow exactly this structure (The Lion King, The Matrix, Star Wars, Avatar, Harry Potter, The Alchemist) – it reminds us of our own hero’s journey – our journey as individual soul returning to merge with the Infinite Spirit. Of course, the journey might not be so linear or even so cyclical as Campbell proposes. My theory is that, in fact, it functions as a spiral, just as the great Spiral of Consciousness itself. We return to similar themes, archetypes and experiences in our lives, each time – hopefully, if we are evolving – at a higher vibratory rate to apply the ‘Elixir of Life’ (ie. our new knowledge, wisdom, self-realization) to progress along the path, until we outgrow the lessons that this plane of existence has to teach us.

And so, the Hero’s Journey, at its most fundamental, is the journey from individualized focused unit of consciousness (the wave of an ocean) back to the ocean of Cosmic Consciousness. This is the story we are all living, individually, and collectively with all beings whatsoever everywhere and all the time.

Everything is the Self
What’s more, when we combine this with the truth that all the cosmos is a dance of light and shadow, that this is the cosmic movie of the Creator, we realize that our deepest essence, our true nature, is not just the Hero: it is also the Shadow. Everything is the Self.

The Shadow, quite simply, represents the Hero’s fears and unexpressed, rejected, or unrealized qualities. It is the qualities we have renounced, operating in the Shadow world of the unconscious. And so: we are all the Hero, battling with and ultimately integrating and transmuting the Shadow – which – surprise! – is also us. And guess what – ‘we’ are all the other archetypes in this epic quest story too (the Trickster, Ally, Shapeshifter, Mentor, Threshold Guardian, etc. etc.). If you look back at your life, at your ‘identity’ (which is just a system of memories), you might recall that at some point or another, you have worn the mask and performed the function of one or all of these archetypes for another-self that is playing this drama with you. In fact, the word ‘person’ comes from the Latin word ‘persona’, which is the mask worn by actors in Greek and Roman drama. Then, when you separate that word into ‘per sona’, it translates to ‘to sound through’, perhaps hinting at the possibility that God is creating and playing all the masks, all the persons, by sounding through us at different frequencies.

What A Great Show
I have personally had a profound experience where I ‘died’. Initially, I heard, from afar, the cosmic vibration of ‘aum’ resonating and it was approaching me with rapid speed. It got louder and louder and louder until the whole frequency became me, and in that instant, I felt as if my soul got yanked out of my body and I shot through a tunnel of white light and arrived on the other side to the sound of… cheering. Yes, cheering – like applause, after the curtain falls and the show is over. One of the most immediate things that occurred was that I was welcomed by everyone I ever knew, including people that had hurt me, or perceivably had worked against me, or even worse, abused me. They now playfully revealed themselves for who they really were – brilliant cosmic actors. It quite literally felt like the curtain call after a very intense production and the actors that play the hero and the villain embrace each other backstage and say “Wow, good show!”. Turns out, we had decided together, prior to this incarnation, what roles we would play for each other to help each other grow and evolve and integrate that which we dislike and fear (which is essentially the repressed, rejected side of us) – so we could progress on the Spiral of Consciousness.

The Essence of Why We Love Drama
Now, why do you think we love drama so much? What keeps us hooked on movies, books, TV shows, plays? I believe that the essence of drama rests upon what is termed ‘suspension of disbelief’. Meaning that, in drama, all the people who see it know it’s only a play, an illusion, make-believe. The proscenium arch, the cinema screen, tells us: “This is an illusion, it’s not for real.” But the actors come on with the intention of playing their parts so convincingly that they have us on the edges of our seats, completely captivated by the drama – they want to make us laugh, cry, howl in horror, take us by surprise! Isn’t that the reason we go to the theatre or the cinema or get hooked on our favorite new Netflix show? Because we want to get out of ourselves for a bit and project part of our consciousness into another? Because we want a surprise, entertain ourselves, ‘other’ ourselves? Because we want to release some of that pent up nervous tension we feel while embodied here, and experience some catharsis? Catharsis, often translated to ‘purging’ or ‘purification’, is a spewing-up of feelings; a heightened emotional release which triggers a sudden expansion of awareness, a peak experience of higher consciousness for both actors and audience. Yet, nevertheless, no matter how invested in the hero and the story we are, all this time, in the back of our minds, way, way, way, back, we have the understanding that it’s all just a play. We are simply choosing to ignore that (to suspend our disbelief) so that we can go on this rollercoaster ride of emotions, challenges and ultimate victory – for fun. So what if God, with eternity and infinite power at His/Her/Its disposal, is doing the same? Simply to avoid the sheer boredom of all-knowing, all-powerful, all the time? This is what the Hindu philosophy of the Cosmic Drama is getting at.

An Attitude For Life
Now, if we applied this philosophy to our attitude towards life, what would happen? What if you – yes, you – reading this, with all your individual problems and complicated life situations, pretending not to be It, suddenly realize that you’re It? What if, no matter how invested we all were in ourselves and all that happens to us, and play our roles with absolute sincerity (which we should!), we also throw in a dash of humor and the thought that, perhaps, nothing is really at stake? What happens if we choose to become conscious in this dream and turn the whole thing lucid? And we realize that this cosmic play allows for some improvisation by all the players in it? Then, perhaps, we might discover that all along we were absolutely captivated and fooled by the greatest and most convincing actor of all time – God.

In Conclusion
I personally choose to believe that the Creator is indeed having a blast, moving through cycles of dreaming and full wakefulness. And I, as an individualized, focused pinpoint of that same consciousness, believe it’s my pleasure to continue in His/Her/Its favorite hobby: authoring, directing and performing great plays, raising the vibratory rate of all the souls involved as we go; expanding the essence of Itself, entertaining Itself, reminding Itself of Itself. Just as my consciousness is divided into three when I dream and I am all at once the dreamer, the creative process of dreaming, and all the beings and objects in the dream. So am I also: the Author, the Actor, and the Audience. And so, I Am: the Power Acting, the Intelligence Directing, and the Substance being acted upon. I Am One with All that is. I Am One with the Dreamer, I Am One with the Dreaming, and I Am One with the Dreamed. And so are you.

* Edited; combined from several of his informal talks and lectures on the subject.