OM-let: Andy Weir's "The Egg"

  

Andy Weir is an American novelist, focusing primarily on science fiction and speculative sci-fi. He is the author of four books, including The Martian (2014), which was adapted into a movie by Ridley Scott in 2015. With a background in mechanical sciences and computer programming, his writing is often characterized by an in-depth exploration of the mathematics behind the concepts he explores. This is in stark contrast to one of his most prominent works, a short story released in 2009 called “The Egg.” With almost no scientific bearing, “The Egg” is best described as a religious or philosophical query into how life is connected, and what those connections mean. 

The plot of “The Egg” follows a man who has just died in a car crash. The Egg is written in the second person, and the person addressing the reader turns out to be God, who explains the reader’s death. Naturally, you (the reader) inquire about the nature of life, what will happen to your loved ones, what the purpose of existence is. God has a very simple answer to that. There is one soul, that has lived in every person who has ever lived. That soul puts a tiny fraction of itself into every human, and gains all of the experience and knowledge of that human being throughout their life. When asked what the meaning of life is, God simply says 

The meaning of life, the reason I made this whole universe, is for you to mature.

Your soul in totality is a fetus of a god, growing and maturing, which makes the universe your egg. 

“The Egg” has been connected to Hindu ideas regarding the soul and reincarnation. According to some strands of Hinduism, a soul reincarnates again and again on earth until it becomes perfect and reunites with its source. A being has to live many lives and undergo many experiences before it attains perfection and becomes one with the Divine. The concept of a soul living through different bodies and learning from the experiences to attain divinity in "The Egg" parallels these ideas. One apparent difference between them is the multiplicity of souls in Hinduism. The idea of a cosmic egg is present in Hinduism as well: Hiranyagarbha is the golden egg that is the source of the creation of the Universe. The Upanishads call it the Soul of the Universe or Brahman and elaborate that Hiraṇyagarbha floated around in emptiness and the darkness of the non-existence for about a year, and then broke into two halves which formed the Svarga (one of the seven higher Lokas in Hindu cosmology.) and the Pṛthvi (Sanskrit name for the Earth as well as the name of a devi, goddess). 

The implications of the “The Egg” for the Anthropocene are less clear. It proposes a concept of oneness that could be used to inspire an omnilateral push towards protecting the Earth and its denizens. On the other hand, it could also be used to reduce the planet and experiences on it to a stepping stone in a larger existence. If this life is just the waiting room for godhood, it would be easy to accept its demise. Once The Egg is broken, the shell is discarded. Alternatively, one could extrapolate Weir’s idea of one soul for every human to embrace every living thing. If a god’s soul needs to be reincarnated as every form of life that has or will exist, the suffering inflicted on non-human life is pain inflicted on our collective self: 

you were victimizing yourself. Every act of kindness you’ve done, you’ve done to yourself. Every happy and sad moment ever experienced by any human was, or will be, experienced by you. 

If we choose to pull the thread even farther, we’re left with the idea that you will be everything that has ever existed and will ever exist. If part of the collective soul is in every crumb, speck of dust, and molecule, then the connection between humans, non-humans, and even nonliving entities would be even more important. A key part of our collective cosmic growth could be stewardship and nurturing this small rock floating through space. Ultimately “The Egg” presents a simple shell of reincarnation and a single soul, but the inner implications of that have yet to be cracked. 

 (TC)

Picture source: https://www.sloww.co/the-egg-andy-weir/

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