'There are more things in Heaven and Earth than have ever been thought of in your philosophy Horatio" HAMLET TO HIS FRIEND HORATIO

This was never more true for me than when I went to India and Nepal and Thailand and Japan for 4 months time in 1985 and 1986.

When I have said in my past writings that "It was like going to another planet with different rules than we have in the U.S. and Europe.

What I mean by this is that many millions of people (many more than live in the U.S.)  (at that time) since India is about the same population as China.

Note: I just looked up the population presently of India which is:

1.438 billion (2023)

So, my point is that there were more people in India who believed in what Americans would call "Magical Thinking" than there are people in the U.S.

What do I mean by this?

Here people are more afraid generally speaking than in India (at least in 1985 and 1986 when I was there).

People were maybe 10 times as alive as Americans then or now. Why?

Because literally everyone was getting sick and dying all the time around them. I saw for example, bodies decomposing with no family or friends to bury them or to cremate them. So, maybe 10% of the people who were beggars there might die on the streets at any time with no help, no hope and die alone there and no one then would come pick up their body. So, they were exactly like Animal Road kill here in the U.S. (you know the dead deer you see sometimes on country roads or dead possums or raccoons or squirrels or even Elk Or Moose in the far north of the U.S.

But, because life was fleeting and life was expendable and short People were incredibly alive. They weren't afraid to ask questions of us westerners if they could speak English which many could.

And what they said to us might seem laughable then to our culture often too. But, the thing is "This magical thinking worked for them in their lives. It gave them hope. It gave them dreams."

As Americans who are materialistic and fearful often in life we might say that "They are unrealistic". But, what you have to remember is this type of thinking had kept at least some of them alive for thousands of years already.

When I returned to San Francisco after being in India and Nepal and Thailand and Japan I was horrified at how fearful and how "Hiding in their cars and apartments" Americans were. It was the opposite of what I experienced in India then because they were 10 times or 100 times more alive than Americans usually were. Why?

Because they knew that they literally could die any moment from literally any cause and because of this they grabbed every moment they had left.

By God's Grace