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 exis...