I'm taking on what people call the big stuff here: questions about life, its purpose, and what each of us can do as an individual.
Many have asked these questions already, but there is some new information that has come to light in the last 100 years or so that brings a new way of looking at these age-old questions.
The difficulty with asking these questions is that we have been taught so much about the answers already.
Some of our information comes from our mandatory schooling, some from schooling that we have taken up out of our own desires and interests, and some from the conclusions that we have made ourselves as we have lived and attempted to understand living -- in the light of what we have been taught.
If everything that we have been taught were correct, this might work out just fine.
Unfortunately, that just isn't the case.
Much of what we have been taught is so outdated, so full of misconceptions, that we easily fall into false conclusions about what is going on and how to deal with living -- because those who taught us didn't really know any more then than we do now.
And the rest of what we have learned is only partly true, because it has been shoved into a framework based on the false.
The only way to fit that which is true into a framework based on that which is false is to remake the true into something that is no longer true: but at least it then fits with the whole.
To be able to look at these old questions with new eyes -- so that new information can be taken into account -- we first have to develop the new eyes.
So before we can even get into any discussion of answers, we will need to discuss what is required to truly see and investigate what we then see.
In other words, a lot of this book is about more than answers: it is about inquiring into questions, and developing a framework for seeing accurately.
Part of seeing is to first investigate what is already known about living in a new light.
It's very difficult to ask what the purpose of life is, if I don't see life itself clearly.
It's just about impossible when the questioner them self does not know them self well, because we always see from our own subjective point of view: accurate or not.
The subject of developing new eyes to see has been well discussed over the millennium, but it is presented here in a way that I hope is more contemporary than usual: therefore easier to understand and approach.
To this end, the book has been separated into several chapters, each of which looks at a small part of the investigation, until we can see what would make it possible to come up with a new point of view towards life and its purpose and make sense out of the whole shebang.
Chapter 1 is a story about a real person and part of their journey through life (not the author; and, of course, their name has been changed).
This person's story illustrates pretty clearly much that I feel needs to be understood before a person can even begin to answer real questions.
But it does so on an emotional level instead of the intellectual level of the rest of the book.
Of course, it has been fictionalized to make the point clearer: but it could have happened that way...I hope you enjoy it.
Chapter 2 begins to examine the question ``What is life's purpose?'', and shows that we need a new frame of reference for asking the question before we can begin.
Chapter 3 discusses some of our misconceptions about life itself.
If we can see that some of what we believe we know about life is wrong, then we can begin to build a new point of view for understanding life as it is.
Chapter 4 looks at our misconceptions about our psychology and personality, and introduces the seed of a new understanding of self.
Science seems to be just recognizing that until we understand ourself as the observer, our observations are rarely useful.
We have found that the observer simply cannot stand outside of -- or apart from -- what is being observed, as was originally believed to be possible.
I want to make a case for ensuring that the observer understands self well enough to be objective about the observer's influence on what is observed before answering questions that require objectivity.
Right now we believe that only machines can be objective (although even that is being questioned, properly, in some circles), so we consider scientific investigations into man's psychology as ``soft'' because it is difficult to study or measure with the aid of machines.
Chapter 5 finally gets to the point: now that we have been exposed to a way to experience the objectivity necessary to investigate properly.
What can be seen as life's purpose given our current understanding of the creation?
Chapter 6 rounds this out with a few observations based on the new understanding resulting from this investigation.
Chapter 7 includes some of the questions and answers that were used to springboard this book into existence.
It shows very clearly the difference in view point between those who have not considered life with understanding and one who has investigated life's purpose.