The Game of God: Recovering Your True Identity

A God for the Twenty-first Century. Does life have any meaning or purpose? Does God exist? How can you reconcile a loving God with cruelty and suffering? This book makes the radical claim that the universe is literally a game of God. One purpose of the universe is for God to enjoy the vast array of experiences that God, as an unlimited being, cannot experience: life and death, joy and pain, beginning and end, fear and hate, happiness and sorrow. In order to have a realistic experience of limitation, God must forget that She-He-It is God. The universe is a game in which God forgets His-Her-Its identity and in the process of playing remembers who She-He-It is. We are not separate creatures who are victims of existence. We are expressions of God experiencing limitation and overcoming it. We are God in disguise. Human suffering comes from the erroneous belief that who we really are is our personality, or ego-identity. Our lives are a constant battle for the survival of a mistaken identity; we spend most of our time either flighting from reality or fighting it. Love and transcendence lie in the cessation of survival behavior, in the acceptance of reality (what is). Love is the experience of unconditional acceptance of what is. With a cartoon on every left-hand page illustrating the text on the right, formatted like poetry, these ideas are presented in a light and humorous manner. Tim Allen says, "If you really have your shit together, read this book.” (From the suggested reading list in his bestseller, “I'm Not Really Here.”) Oprah called it, “A great book about God.” This is a revised edition of the 1993 book, which reflects the latest thinking of the authors and includes some new cartoons.

Arthur B. Hancock is a singer/songwriter, philosopher, writer, and cartoonist. Born in North Florida in 1945, Arthur briefly attended Florida Memorial College in St. Augustine, 1964-65, as its first white student. In the 60s and 70s, as a singer/guitarist, he played folk music in clubs and coffee houses in Florida, California, and Nepal. Arthur contracted Guillain-Barre Syndrome in Kathmandu and wrote his first song while paralyzed. John Denver recorded one of his songs, "Relatively Speaking." You can hear 74 songs on Arthur's YouTube channel, Songs in the Key of Consciousness. Kathleen Brugger is a philosopher, writer, videographer, weaver, and entrepreneur. Kathleen attended Northwestern University and has a B.A. in Molecular Biology and Biochemistry. She blogs at: http: //kathleenbrugger.blogspot.com/.