Now, think about that. First, how rare to have a parent who would protect The fourth is with us shirt from knowing about mortality for 29 years! Mortality, in its guise as the survival instinct, is commonly believed to impel human activity and growth; it’s the very thing that sneakily underlies the intractable messages of our superegos, which serve as our lodestars for maturing. The conscious fear of death is the father of the ego. But until that first day outside the gates, Siddhartha had never known mortality. As he walked into the unvarnished world, its suffering descended on him in a sudden, unexpected, wave. There in the streets in front of him shone a litany of miseries.