‘Conditioned beings love being conditioned so very much,’ I commentated wisely to myself. ‘They never slack off or play hooky – they’re in role absolutely all of the time without any break.’ This was a thought I’d had, you see – I thought about how very committed people were to their conditioned reality. You’d think that they might get fed up or bored seeing as how conditioned existence is so very tedious, so very devoid of any real possibilities. You’d think that they’d let the mask slip every now and again, just for a bit of light relief, just for a bit of fun, but no. I tell you, you can watch them for days and weeks and even years but this will never happen. You’ll never catch them out; it’s a point of pride with them…

I was a disembodied intelligence you see. I am a disembodied intelligence! Not necessarily the most intelligent disembodied intelligence you’ll ever meet perhaps, but definitely disembodied – there’s no doubt about that! I float around the room with no visible means of support. I’m free floating; I’m like a loose cannon. One of the great advantages of being a disembodied intellect  is that you don’t have to spend all that time showering and shaving and eating food and going to the toilet and all of that stuff. You don’t have to bother getting dressed, which is another chore. You don’t have to worry about what you are going to wear on a particular day (although admittedly that was never something that I seemed to worry about very much when I did have a body, as far as I can remember).

‘Conditioned beings love being conditioned so very much,’ I commented wisely to myself. ‘They love it so very much, they really can’t get enough of it.’ I wasn’t sure exactly how wise I was really being of course – I don’t even know what I’m on about half the time – I’m just listening to myself talk. That’s the habit energy doing that, needless to say. The bloody old habit energy. It’s kind of annoying when it kicks off but usually it seems to settle down again after a while. You keep running through all these routines and every time one of them hits you forget who you are and what you’re supposed to be doing and you really do believe that it’s all happening all over again, whatever it was. You’re back there, just as if you had gone back in time. And it keeps on happening to you, over and over again; you keep on going back in time, every time the habit energy hits…

When I say that the reiterated routine causes you to forget who you are and what you are supposed to be doing this is merely a figure of speech of course. I wasn’t anywhere and I wasn’t really doing anything – my existence, such as it was, was not a purposeful one. It was more of what I suppose you could call a reiterative one – my purpose was to reiterate thoughts that I had already thought before many times only this is of course not what you’d call a ‘purpose’ in the usual sense of the word. Or indeed in any other sense of the word, either. I was however to be able to make observations, and the occasional comment, on the conditioned beings that I was observing and this I found enjoyable enough, in a certain sort of a way.

‘Aah the conditioned beings! What can we say about them? What observations may be made? They’re such great jokers aren’t they? The conditioned beings are fascinated to the point of total absorption by the game that they are so very diligently playing. It’s hard not to admire this great diligence, this tremendous dedication, isn’t it? You’d have to agree with me on this point, surely? Such tremendous dedication to the act; when was the last time you saw someone break role and give you a wink or a smile? It never happens. And yet of course somehow you can’t help wishing that it would. You can’t help wishing that it would…