This is a book about the ultimate graven image, Self. Dear reader, I will accompany you through this book to talk about civilizations, paradigms, human beings, the Self, individual and collective ego, and their relationship to God Almighty.
\nThis is a book about being proactive, not reactive. To move from being an object to being a subject, you must have choices: this book is also about those choices. To have choices, you must find your own questions, or you will be merely adopting those of others who have found theirs. This is, therefore, also a book about questions. By asking questions, I aim to assist you in generating your own, dear Reader, and in transforming your life into a series of questions.
\nThis is a book about questions, not about answers. I believe that asking the right questions is more important than finding the right answers; every innovation and invention in human history started with a question, driven by a rebellion against the answers of the age.
\nDear reader, in this book I will do everything I can to challenge your heart, to lead you from the shadow of safe answers to the light of questions. Answers lead more to endings; questions lead more to beginnings.
\nThis is a book not about the clarity of black and white, but the deceptiveness of grey. It is also a book about courage: the courage to call things by name. The courage to diagnose accurately. The courage to find a cure, to confront and tame the Self, to move from being an object to being a subject, to shift from unconsciousness to awareness, to seek your own questions, the courage to choose, the courage to try. The courage to fail, again and again and again, to learn from failure, and turn it into success.
\nThis is a book about common ground: how to find it, how to build on it. It’s about turning ‘or’ into ‘and’. This is a book about the future. We will revisit the past so as to learn about the present, look at the present in order to diagnose it, and find out what choices to make and what roles to play in the future. Naturally, since this is a book about the future, it is addressed to those who will live most of their lives in that future: the young. This book calls upon young people to do more than live in the future: it calls upon you to shape and create it.
\nMost importantly, this is a book about God, and God’s purpose for you. I plan to ask you some questions, and present some theories. My own answers to these questions are not THE answers; they’re my own attempt at answers, right or wrong. I am not presenting them to you for your agreement, but rather, to generate new questions within you. Even if you do agree with me, please set my own answers aside, and try to find yours.
\nWhy? Because my ultimate goal is for us to move our current civilization – which I believe is at a turning-point in history – forward. The alternative is to allow it to lead us somewhere unthinkable.
\nThis may seem odd; not many people call for establishing a new civilization. Past civilizations have been extensively studied, while active, or after their fall. But what gives me the courage to make this call is that humanity has never been so advanced, and especially, never so immediately and directly connected. This will not come about unless there is a critical mass of people with the courage to seek out their own questions and, through their answers, move the world forward into a civilization of the future.\u00a0This book, I hope, will be a tool to form this critical mass. I would like to alert the reader to something else: I plan to offer you a different perspective on ideas and situations you may already know. All I will do is ask you to move to a different vantage point. You will then be completely free to remain in the new location, or return to where you were. The greatest achievement, naturally, would be for you to move to a third location, and teach us all something new from this fresh viewpoint.<\/p>\n