We can try. Indeed, plotting the escape from this prison of matter is the raison d'être of the world's great religions. As Hindus and Buddhists, we deny it as illusion; as Christians, we attempt to bribe our way free with a ransomed savior and, together with the other “people of the Book”— Muslims and Jews—we hate it and fear it as a devil, make war upon it as an enemy, flee from it as sin, and (discarding God-given common sense) gamble our souls on the historicity of myths and obedience to scriptural law so that, after death, we might discover we have won the prize of immortality.
