Thread: Who's Dave?
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Old 7th May 2008, 10:48 PM
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Who's Dave?

Imagine this:

There is a computer programmer guy called Dave. He's very good at what he does; so good that he has created his own virtual reality world with trees, buildings, animals and of course characters too. The theme for Dave’s VR world is the story of Star Wars. No real reason, just that he likes it. Anyway, Dave decides to go and play in his VR world so he puts on his VR goggles and gloves and starts up his program.

Now stretch your imagination a bit further because when Dave goes into his VR world he doesn’t go in as one character he goes in as EVERY character simultaneously and once he's in there he gets completely immersed in the storyline and into each and every character so much so that he forgets that he's Dave altogether.

So when Dave is in character as Darth Vader he believes that he IS Darth Vader and when Vader gets wounded or has his plans foiled Vader takes ownership of the pain and indignation as his own. Likewise when Dave is in character as Obi-Wan, Obi-Wan sees Obi-Wan as “I” and Vader as “he” and the two of them together as “we”. But of course we all know that really there is no “we” here – there is only Dave.

Now for some reason, when Dave is in the character of Yoda he remembers that he is Dave and that he is just playing his VR game. The story is just as exciting and realistic but he knows it is just a story. However, when Yoda tries to explain to Luke Skywalker that nobody is real and everybody is "one", Luke doesn’t have the first clue what the little green guy is on about. All he knows is that Yoda seems to be aware of something that he isn't. Luke therefore decides that he needs to find out what this thing is and so wonders what he can do in order to bring this about.

Now of course there is absolutely nothing that Luke can do that is going to make him aware of Dave. It's impossible simply because he IS Dave or put another way he is already what he thinks he seeks. But even so, he tries. He meditates, he tries to be a better person and he tries to understand the universe around him. He also tries to emulate Yoda. To top it all he gets lucky one day and has the most amazing unity experience where he feels completely one with the rest of the universe. It changes him in the most profound way and he wonders if this is something to do with the "oneness" that Yoda has been talking about but of course no matter how enormous the scale of his experience, as long as it is being experienced by Luke, it is just more VR stuff happening to a VR character in Dave's VR program.

All that can really be done is that the Luke character can be deconstructed until Dave remembers that it is him just playing his game. Of course Luke thinks that it is him who is doing the deconstruction but it isn’t is it? It’s Dave. It’s only ever Dave.

So one day Dave is in character as Luke and suddenly realizes that he, as Luke, has been taking the whole story so seriously that he had forgotten that he was Dave. So now when Dave is in character as Luke as well as Yoda he knows he is Dave but neither Yoda nor Luke know anything about this.

If you were to equate one of the Star Wars characters to your own ego (or id) then once it has been seen for the illusion that it is and dropped, there is only Dave left.

So the question is: Who's Dave?
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