I’m sitting here at the flight engineer’s station. The first engineer is taking a break, and I’m in charge. I’m the second engineer, a First Lieutenant in the Strategic Air Command (or SAC,) a branch of the United States Air Force. I am one of thirteen crew members. We’re flying in a B36, a giant six-engine bomber. We’re heading to Russia. This is it!

One of the observers in the back of the plane tells me that engines numbers two and three are putting out a lot of smoke. I look at my gauges. At first all looks okay, but then I see that I’m loosing fuel fast. Now the observer tells me he sees fire coming from these engines.

I realize that it’s up to me. I turn off the fuel to those engines. I still can’t stop the fires. The observer yells that it looks like the whole wing is ablaze. I begin to panic. The pilots tell me they are having trouble controlling the plane with the two adjacent engines out. Suddenly I hear an explosion. The observer yells that most of the wing is gone. We’re spiraling out of control. The pilot tells us to say our prayers and prepare to crash.
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The lights come on now and a voice comes over the load speaker – “Lieutenant Marks, there was a simple fix that you would have had to initiate at the beginning of this crisis, when the smoke was first reported.” I listen as the voice explains what I could have done. It seems so simple, hearing it now.

I’m in a flight simulator, a collection of computer run programs that present various possible situations that can occur in flight. I certainly failed this one.
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The other day, remembering my times in those flight simulators, I wondered if perhaps life itself, what we call life anyway, is a simulator, a life simulator. Is life itself a training program for a race of beings more conscious than us humans? Have human beings long been part of a breeding program of organic life simulators for this hypothetical race of higher beings? If so, perhaps this is why us humans, unlike all the other animals, have become more and more conscious over our long history. Perhaps we are organic simulators and have learned from the experience ourselves.

If this is so, it would explain much. For example, why did the gods speak so freely to us humans in our earlier days? Why did they have to? Perhaps because we needed to reach a certain level of consciousness in order to be relevant simulators for this higher race.

Most of us humans mistakenly think that we are the highest consciousness around. But what if we are basically organic computers running through various programs (the 64 Hexagrams of the I Ching perhaps?) that test our life skills, while the higher beings watch and learn both from our errors and our successes.

Today this other and higher consciousness, that has long coexisted with human consciousness, that has used humans as life simulators since the beginnings, has become primarily the silent witness. It seldom if ever becomes involved in our lives now, being content to learn by merely observing us as we live out our little lives.
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For another take on this, hear what Hyemeyohsts Storm says in his book, Seven Arrows. “The Six Grandfathers taught me that each man, woman, and child at one time was a Living Power that existed somewhere in time and space. These Powers were without form, but they were aware. They were alive.

Each Power possessed boundless energy and beauty. These living Medicine Wheels were capable of nearly anything. They were beautiful and perfect in all ways except one. They had no understanding of limitation, no experience of substance. These Beings were total energy of the Mind, without Body or Heart. They were placed upon this earth that they might learn the things of the Heart through touching.”
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Recently Aspen’s mother died. The next morning our neighbor across the street died too. I felt that death was out hunting in my neck of the woods. Was he coming after me too? After all, I was older than either of them had been.

These two deaths have had a very strong effect upon me. At first I didn’t even know this. But I watched my energy disappear. I started feeling old. Then I became sick, coming down with pneumonia. And I haven’t had pneumonia in years.

Finally though, I became conscious and realized what was happening. I realized I was in shock from these two deaths. That was why my energy had gone. That was why I became sick. I realized too that it was a wakeup call. If I had anything important to still do while I was in this body, I had better do it soon. I wasn’t going to live forever.

For one thing, I have decided, and have begun to identify with the witness, with this higher consciousness within me. This is the important part of myself, the part that will survive the death of this body.

Then the death of this human body will be like it was when the lights came on and the voice on the loud speaker told me what I could have done to save the plane and all of us aboard it. Death will be like it was back then when I left the flight simulator and returned to my own life.
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I’m remembering my early death experience from when I was a young boy and died on the operating table. At that time, I left my body and, after realizing that I wasn’t falling, that I was actually flying, I floated blissfully towards the white light that I saw before me. I was returning to my life as a powerful energy being, a sun perhaps.

However, I am glad that the doctors dragged me back into this body and this life. I’ve had more than seventy good years in this body since then. It’s been a great body. I’ve had a wonderful life too.

But I’m not ready to leave yet. I have a few important things to do before I finish being this life simulator. I want to be Wanderer again and walk my walk. I want to continue loving on my wife and raising our three boys too. I want to stay with them at least until they are young men. I am asking for enough time for all this.

After that, I’ll be happy when the lights come on, and the voice on the loud speaker tells me that I did well and welcomes me home.