Everyday incidents become a story for the media. Later when there is a lot of spice in the story it becomes immortal by means of a book or movie. The story of Malala is a recent example. The “Once upon a …” also became such.
If you delve in your past also, you will come up with some fantastic stuff yourself. We create memories and harbor them in our being. Sometimes we talk about them but mostly they are hidden in some dark spaces. We also blank out bad memories and dangerous episodes. Sometimes we quote them so often that the world around us ignores them as well as us. These would be like the grandfathers stories when there was rationing or war or the great famine or blackmarketeering days! Then the parents talking about the advent of computers, cellphones and Internet! Or when you meet your bro and they speak of the social media. Facebook and twitter! The evolution of such dated stuff rules every generation. The next one cannot relate to it. If you talk of the Beatles, John Travolta, Limp Bizkit, Maddonna, 
Michael Jackson, Beyonce, Demi Lovato, etc and you are clearly talking of an era! You are dated accordingly!
Then there are mythological stories from the past gone ages. Now they are immortal. Initially they were passed down by rote. Someone learnt it by heart and then conveyed it to their next generation. Later on they got written down in books, scrolls, papyrus, paintings, carvings, frescoes, etc and the memory carried on. Now the genesis cannot be traced backwards in time due to non availability of any proof. So they all are antiquated. We accept them at face value. Sometimes later books talk about them. Like the Book of John talks about the book of Zoraster! Or the ancient Hindu texts talk about the single Veda! So where are these words now? Have they been preserved somewhere?
We have to accept the later texts to the point of hearsay!
Imagine the Bhagvad Gita or the Bible got written much later by someone else! There is no proof of them being written down at the exact moment these great people existed! So we take the words with a pinch of disbelief! Then after someone wrote them down, the books were whetted by some other folks. How is it possible for someone else to whet them, is the great dilemma!
The story is a narrative but th
e real stuff is the essence of the story. The rest of the stuff can be considered as the fillers. Just like the medicine capsule can be considered a book, the story line as the filler and the antibiotic as the real essence of it. The essence is that medicine which cures us.
So always consider the real purport of the stories and arrive at the true understanding. You may not be qualified to understand the true essence so there are experts who can decode them for you. Ask these knowers of truth with humility and you will know the truth about these profound texts.
