JSR: If science learns of Prana, and studies it, and examines its every aspect, will we find a way to increase it with machines, even synthesize it in labs, and give it free to all, and make a heaven in this world?

Ezekiel: Medicine thinks it can eliminate human suffering, and there is no line it will not cross to keep people from suffering. Really, they have a narrow definition of suffering. A healthy body is good, yes; but when one is healthy all the time, health begins to lose its value, and one begins to suffer if there are no new challenges. If people lived a thousand years, half of us would kill ourselves by the age of thirty, with such a long and meaningless expanse ahead of us. But as it is we have a brief period on earth, and so we hold life more dear and love it, and are willing to put up with all sorts of suffering in order to enjoy the better things. We may one day cure cancer; but if we alter our very genes to cure it, we have made a great sacrifice, crossed a dreadful line, and what have we gained? I’ll tell you what we have lost: we have lost something that makes life and health more precious, dear, and valuable; we have lost the opportunity to engage in a heroic struggle for our lives, and either know the blessings of victory, or die as nobly and bravely as any soldier fighting for his comrades and nation on the field of battle. Say cancer is cured; say Alzheimer’s and schizophrenia and depression and everything that can kill us or make us miserable is cured; say there is a pill that can cure any disease, make us speak any language, know automatically what is in any particular book, understand what it now takes decades to learn. What have we then? Most certainly the whole human race would hang those doctors from trees and return to the caves! Even in the heavens there are struggles, even in the heavens there are crucibles and trials. Abundance of Prana merely means greater responsibilities, greater dangers—there is always a journey and a destination under the horizon, there is no highest world. For every world in the highest realms of the heavens, there are other worlds thousands of times better, which the people must struggle and work and build to get to. There are always new goals and greater missions. Were there a final goal, once one has reached it, what then? One would be ready to die, and disappear from the cosmos forever. For God, in his wisdom and mercy, has said:

I shall give each a crucible and trial,

that each may have a mission and passion,

and everything glorious or foul may shine from the heart;

and the glorious is only glorious

by virtue of the foul.