The transformation toward eternal life is gradual. The heavy gross energy of body, mind, and spirit must first be purified and uplifted. When the energy ascends... then self mastery can be sought.
I'm at that age where I watch such things with two minds, one that cackles at these capers and another that never gets much beyond a rather jaded and self-conscious smile, like the Mona Lisa.
And the more you become aware of the unknown self - if you become aware of it - the more you realize that it is inseparably connected with everything else that is.
The living self has one purpose only: to come into its own fullness of being, as a tree comes into full blossom, or a bird into spring beauty, or a tiger into lustre.
If you awaken from this illusion, and you understand that black implies white, self implies other, life implies death - or shall I say, death implies life - you can conceive yourself. Not conceive, but feel yourself, not as a stranger in the world, not as someone here on sufferance, on probation, not as something that has arrived here by fluke, but you can begin to feel your own existence as absolutely fundamental. What you are basically, deep, deep down, far, far in, is simply the fabric and structure of existence itself.