Another day, another unsolicited comment into the void of some Facebook friend's post

From this side of the curtain, I can't speak to the possibility of an overarching plan, be it a game, a play or an experiment, as you describe it. I do believe we (whoever and whatever that comprises) are here not without purpose. I have spent much time questioning, bemoaning, rebelling and sometimes sullenly going along with the idea that we're here to learn something.

My own quasi-spiritual beliefs are a mish-mash of Eastern philosophy, modern skepticism, veering at times toward nihilism, with an unfortunate sprinkling of Western Christian cultural influence. I try not to throw out the baby, but the bathwater of most religious ideologies, even the cool ones like Buddhism, tends to get clouded with dogma over time.

At my core, I believe this: We are all one consciousness, experiencing the illusion of separation through the apertures of an infinite number of individually sentient units, from quarks to quasars, atoms, human beings, rocks, dogs and paperclips, cats, cows and whatever else, for the purpose of...well, I don't know. We just thought it'd be a fun thing to try out? As Chester, The Reluctant Messenger said, "God is an experience junkie." I would add to that, perhaps a bit of a cross-dresser as well, and an outright drama queen diva at times, no disrespect to any of the aforementioned aspects of said deity.

So, I concur with your idea of many lives, one soul, which some of the more recent research seems to bear out (see Michael Newton's "Journey of Souls"). But at this moment in history, even though I want to take this semi-detached, long and aerial view of life on earth, dammit, for the life of me, I'm caught up in the game. Well played, God-Matrix-Everything-thingy, we've fooled ourselves again.