Introduction
Before we get started with a discussion of the nature of reality, I think you deserve to know who I am, why I embarked on a study of the nature of reality that resulted in this book and what I hope you might be able to get out of it.
As an infant, I was baptized in the Catholic Church but to be honest, like many “Catholic” families I spent virtually no time at church as a child. My parents were burnt out on organized religion from their own childhood experiences and did not feel the need to impress upon us the same strict upbringing. My brothers, sister and I were raised to believe there was a God and Jesus was the Son of God who died for our sins. It sounded like a nice, feel-good story and I was curious enough in the matter that of my own volition I read and reread the Gospels and much of the rest of the bible before I began to think that something was wrong with the entire concept of organized religion. However, as a young child, one’s misgivings are not easily rectified with logic. Neither was there an easy way to seek alternative information for a broader understanding to answer my questions, so the matter was relegated to limbo for most of my childhood as I pondered.
One of my most vivid memories as a young child was walking outside and suddenly wondering, “What if life were but a dream?” What if there was a greater being out there and I was but a figment of his imagination? Now, that is an odd thing for a child to ponder!
It either sounds like fantasy or is so ridiculously deep in philosophical implications that assuredly such a thought was not dreamt up in the mind of a child. But it fostered in me a feeling of curiosity about life that stuck with me. I was certain my existence did not begin with life as a child, but I could not fathom from whence I came or why. As it would turn out, that farfetched childhood idea remained with me, in the back of my head, for more than two decades. As a child I was not ready to tackle this philosophical challenge, but as an educated adult I gained the tools to reconsider this problem and address it with a deliberated purpose that was both logic-based and analytical. That journey took a decade to complete as I gathered wide-ranging evidence across many diverse genres to support answers to the questions that haunt us all, and would eventually result in a personally acceptable answer, manifested in the form you see as this book.
Along my search for answers, I considered many other problems I had with organized Western religions. Of course the easiest conundrum was the one that vexes man almost daily: If God loves us, then why does he make us suffer with floods, Earthquakes, tornados and a plethora of other natural disasters? Alternately, if God is perfect, then why would he put us on a world where human conflict and competition leads us to commit war, rape, and pillage against our common brethren? The answer to these questions and many more, I’m happy to say, are in this book, since the typical answers provided by most preachers, Imams, Fathers, deacons, etc. in the world’s organized religions was simply not satisfactory to me.
Similarly, I wondered: Why are some people ridiculously rich or beautiful or famous while the vast majority is poor, hungry, or quite simply mundane? How is there justice in a world where slavery and famine still exist; or where murderers and thieves still lurk in the dark no matter how many are placed in overcrowded, inhumane jails? If a child lives but a few days, months or years, how can one say God loves us all equally when someone else lives past 100? And why must there be disease, cancer and accidents that result in death well before our time? Where is the fairness? The answers are in this book, and quite logically satisfying, unlike the so-called answers I heard from organized religion.
There have been many books written on the subject of, ‘What is the purpose of life?’ Unfortunately, many point to their own religion as containing the -- “one and only” -- answer, but again as I read the theories proposed in those books I knew deep down that the books were either partially or completely wrong. They were often mere feel-good books that had underlying motivations: their particular religion was the only answer so one should listen to that particular author, or face the wrath of a vengeful God at death if the message were ignored. I was troubled that it seemed odd how many preachers and sects of Christianity thought their particular interpretation of the Bible was the only one that was right, and must be followed implicitly in order to ‘thread the eye of the needle’ to enter Heaven. This is not to say that these self-help and religious books did not have many good points. Yes, it is important to love your neighbor as yourself and one should love God, but how can that be the summation of the whole purpose of creation? Surprise, it’s not! Again, organized religion does not hold a logically sound answer for the question concerning the purpose of life, but I’ll help you learn your own purpose herein.
I think the one thing that upset me most about organized religion was the absolute insistence that each religion has claimed to have the answer, and only the followers of that particular religion could claim a hold on the truth and the way to “salvation,” if indeed there is even a need for salvation; an answer that I think might surprise many readers. Consider the implications if that religion were but the smallest subset of a larger belief, such as and probably most especially Christianity. Then only that church’s “true believers” could hope for salvation and the rest of the seven-plus billion people in the world were simply out of luck. I’m sorry but that to my mind is the ultimate counter-argument for their religion’s own validation because I cannot fathom how a loving God could create a universe some 12-14 billion years ago to reach its current state, so that mankind could evolve on Earth over the most recent one million-year period, all for the sole prospect of saving a few thousand to a million-plus of that religion’s followers – who follow a particular subset of a religion or preacher, and tithe to the “appropriate” church or cause. Doesn’t that strike anyone else as counterintuitive at best?
It struck me as asinine. There must be an answer, and I was going to find it. So in my spare time I started reading, researching and postulating; a process that would last more than a decade. There was no one book to go to that could provide all the answers I sought. If there was, I certainly wouldn’t need to write this book. It took years because one book was as likely to provide a half-dozen more leads to follow as have nothing of use in it at all, and only a few of those leads would ultimately prove productive. It was a grueling effort to separate the wheat from the chaff in order to find consistency on issues that indicated solid, evidential support of basic underlying truths. But there were a few books that asked some thought provoking questions, and other books that helped me start an internal discussion, or provided studies on information that led me down yet more tangents, or provided bibliographic clues as to where else I should look. The search resembled a scavenger hunt, to say the least, in my quest to find and then assemble all the pieces into one cogent theory of reality and meaning of life.
I’ve read many dozens, if not hundreds of books on the subject by this point, and I’ve found that many needed to be re-read a second or third time because without a clear guide to follow to assemble the understanding I needed, I was not ready to understand and assimilate all of the information in each of the most important works at the times I initially read them. Many glossed over highly important information because such might be tangential to the main discussion but when I returned to the piece a second time, a minor point or sentence hidden within a larger thought often times suddenly seemed to be a key to understanding or helping corroborate important information somewhere else completely – sometimes in an entirely different genre of study. For example, near death or out of body experiences might provide information of amazing import within the context of understanding principles of quantum physics.
Now at this point you probably need to know a little more about me. I am not a new age hippy, living off the land and making sure I have a zero carbon footprint – though I certainly have nothing against living a responsible, sustainable lifestyle. I have been a Soldier most of my adult life, and like many Soldiers, I’m probably more conservative than I am liberal, though I cannot be typecast so limitedly.
I am a very cerebral-type person. I have a Master’s degree in Strategic Intelligence and a Liberal Arts B.A. in Natural Sciences and Mathematics. I found my niche in the Army in the intelligence field because I liked the mental challenge of the specialization, including analyzing unknowns and assessing how best to discern means to acquire information for or otherwise overcome strategic challenges. Obtaining a master’s degree was an easy choice and accomplishment for me: I like to read and write, and assembling papers that proved a thesis statement was hardly a challenge; it was a pastime and something I did most every day at work anyway. And thus, the challenge of determining for myself the true nature of reality was a massive but feasible endeavor for a goal-oriented, highly motivated “student” of knowledge. The process simply took a lot longer than completing a college degree, but the basic work path was an old familiar one: research information that was most readily available, take notes, make assumptions, follow leads to obtain information that was less readily available, assess and compile ideas, assemble/modify a working outline and thesis, and repeat.
So what you will find herein is a thinking man’s examination of the nature of reality. I would like you to know that I was a skeptic who did not accept most of what I read on any subject until I had massive amounts of corroborating evidence in hand, especially if that evidence was merely anecdotal. I have an ingrained preference to insist on argumentative agreement from multiple sources across completely separate fields of research before lending weight to any proposed ideas. Thus this guide, if it does the job I hope to do, should help fellow skeptics understand the path I took to discovery and the reader can then decide whether the presented logic is sound and transferable to their own experience-set and level of acceptance.
Historically, I have found it very hard to read most new age-type, spiritual books because the authors tended to discuss various, possibly harebrained concepts as if they were a given truth – with no intention of convincing a skeptic to believe those points, and expecting every reader to already exist on their same baseline of understanding. I hope not to repeat those mistakes.
Even after writing this book, I am still a skeptic and if I have not experienced something personally or had it proven to me logically, then the item of interest still resides in potential fantasyland for all intents and purposes. I’m sure that many would be readers and personal growth explorers have been similarly turned off from the new age-genre because of that disconnect, so it has been my intention not to make the same mistake here. With this book, I hope to break down those stereotypical walls and create a methodology that engenders general acceptance from the common man.
This book can be considered a study guide – a path of research that I walked over many years time to come to a greater realization of the nature of reality and the meaning of life, and the peace of mind that knowledge brings. However, one should be aware that this book is not presented in the same order by which I eventually came to these conclusions. Writing a book that mimicked my own path of discovery would have resulted in a disjointed sequence, so I needed to impose some logic and structure on the thesis ideas so a beginner could more quickly come to their own decision on the logical merits of my work.
This work will mostly concentrate, therefore, on presenting the body of evidence for each listed topical area. The reader is invited and encouraged to research further by exploring the references used in each chapter as those authors – mostly scientists, doctors and professional researchers – have all done exhaustive research in their own specialty. I could not possibly do justice to their work by presenting all of their collective ideas, evidence and work in my own summarized, analytical piece, so those references are an excellent continuation point for a reader’s own exploration of truth. The cited bibliography of this work is also by no means exhaustive on the topical areas, but merely a starting point that is stilted towards my own experience and research path in the search for the truth. It does not include every important work on the covered research topics because I simply could not reference or cite all of the thousands of books and academic papers written on each topical area of research. Also, many works that I did read are not referenced herein, for one reason or another. Many were secondary sources providing information that would be better cited in my work by primary sources, or otherwise did not offer substantive information necessary for this book. Nevertheless, many more sources contributed to my search for the truth as I sought an overwhelming consensus from the body of available information.
The following chapters then provide a cross reference of corroborating evidence between the various genres of research I explored. The study begins with the most scientifically sound evidence available and moves down a continuum of esoteric, though solid anecdotal evidence within increasingly metaphysical genres. This includes the fields of quantum physics, near death experiences, out of body experiences, reincarnation, hypnosis-studies, including inter-life sessions and spirit guide interviews, and finally channeling. The evidence is intended to convince even skeptical readers to reach similar conclusions to my own on the true nature of reality and the meaning of life. The evidence leading up to the conclusion is obviously the most important component of this book as without it, my conclusions would make little sense to the reader, and indeed the journey to the conclusion is most of the enjoyment of the experience anyway. Still, I ask you not to take my word for any of the ideas presented herein, but to consider the evidence provided, read the material referenced throughout for further information, and then come to your own conclusion.
I hope you enjoy the journey.
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