Mindfulness is the new religion for the atheists: PCs Vs NPCs

Just like in a video game where some characters are controlled by a player (PCs) and the rest operate automatically under programmed rules (NPCs), human life can be imagined to unfold in one of two broad conditions. Either there is a conscious “Player” — God, Brahman, Awareness, the Divine — guiding the movement of individuals much like a gamer directs an avatar, or life is functioning purely as a sophisticated program where thoughts, emotions, and decisions arise through genetics, neuroscience, and conditioning, just as NPCs follow their coded pathways without knowing they are doing so.

If God or a higher consciousness is the Player, then what we call “my life” is more like a perspective within a larger intelligence. The body, mind, personality, preferences, and history become the visible form — the avatar — while consciousness behind the eyes is the true controller, the witness that experiences joy and suffering, love and loss, growth and transformation. In this view, free will exists not at the surface level of identity, but at the level of awareness, and destiny becomes a story woven by a deeper intelligence. We think we make decisions, but perhaps we are being moved by something vaster that sees the entire map, not just the patch of terrain in front of us. Just as a character in a game cannot know the mind of the player, the human mind may not fully grasp the intention of the consciousness that flows through it.

But if life is conditioned like an NPC, then everything we do — from falling in love to feeling threatened, from choosing a career to reacting with anger — is simply the output of biological algorithms. Genetics sets our defaults, temperament, and vulnerabilities. Family, culture, society, and past experiences shape the behaviors we believe to be “ours.” Neuroscience shows that choices begin in the brain before the conscious self is even aware of them. In this framework, free will looks less like independent agency and more like a narrative we tell ourselves to make automatic processes feel personal. The NPC does not know it is following code — it just moves, reacts, lives — and perhaps much of humanity functions in exactly that way.

Yet the real curiosity arises at the boundary between these possibilities. What if humans stand somewhere between Player-controlled and programmed? What if both are true depending on the depth of awareness? Someone who operates entirely out of habit, fear, desire, and conditioning resembles an NPC — predictable, reactive, moved by unseen scripts. But someone who begins to notice their inner mechanics, their emotions, their impulses, their stories — someone who reflects — starts to resemble a PC, a character influenced by a deeper consciousness rather than by conditioning alone.

This is where mindfulness becomes more than a spiritual suggestion — it becomes the pivot. By paying attention to our thoughts rather than being pulled by them, by observing emotions instead of drowning in them, we begin to see the code. In seeing the code, we loosen its authority. Whether life is divine play or neurobiological programming, mindfulness is what allows the system to recognize itself. It is the shift from being lived to becoming aware of living — the difference between performing a script and understanding it as a script. And through that recognition, the character wakes up to the possibility that it might not only be the avatar — it may also be the Player.