It’s been said that a man is not actually born when he comes out of the female body, since he doesn’t know yet that he is born. He is actually born when he first obtains the knowledge of his birth. So it is when a revelation of great magnitude bursts upon a person’s consciousness with the power to change his trajectory in life. The Finest Story in the World is a narrative that centers on just such a revelation—a past-life experience that shatters Kip Morgan’s sense of identity, leads him down a path of determined self-inquiry, and ultimately brings him closer to grasping the true reality of existence.

Kip’s story begins in Cairo, Egypt, where he is studying with a number of other fellow Americans in a prestigious language learning program. We learn about how he came to be interested in the subject and his previous experiences in the Middle East. Kip’s stay in Egypt is not an easy one. He seems to be singled out or dogged by fate. It’s only when he returns to the States, however, that he has a shattering inner experience that leads him to question his very identity and leads to conflict with his father. Kip has to reconcile the new information he has gained about himself with his family history in order to re-emerge as an integrated individual.

Kip belongs to a distinctly different generation from that of his father, one that has never experienced the extreme violence and dislocation of the past. This relative ease has given members of his generation the chance to reflect on life in a way that members of other generations did not have the time and opportunity to do. Many of those who have been granted this freedom know instinctively that time is an illusion. There is no past, no future. Everything occurs in a single moment, or in eternity.

The lesson of The Finest Story in the World is that in order to understand what’s really going on, we have to let go of everything. And that’s practically impossible for most of us because we’re all preoccupied with our personal obsessions. There is only one true goal in life, and that is to get rid of these obsessions once and for all, and thus be able to grasp the true reality of existence.