Introduction

Some think that the soul pervades the whole universe, whence perhaps came Thales's view that everything is full of gods

—Aristotle

After graduating from college, like many recent graduates, I was unsure of myself and the direction in which I should take my life. I had a job which I enjoyed, but I found myself questioning exactly what the purpose of my life should be.

In order to clarify my thoughts, I decided to write a book on the purpose of life. Perhaps that was a little presumptuous for a twenty-one-year-old fresh out of school, but I felt that if I couldn't pick a goal that I could somehow justify, what hope was there that I wouldn't waste my life?

I wrote a one-page outline, detailing what I believed the purpose of life to be and the proper way I should organize my life and goals in order to achieve that purpose. The outline was broken up into various sub-topics which I then began to study in-depth in order to be able to write a proper book.

I began a systematic study of science, Christianity, Buddhism and philosophy in order to flesh out the hazy ideas floating in my mind. When I encountered Stoicism, Epicureanism and the works of Spinoza and Whitehead, my life was forever changed. As I began to read, I notice that I had to make some small changes to my outline. The more I read, the more I was forced to change it. After a while, I stopped making changes. I was in such a state of confusion that I was well beyond the point of simply editing and tweaking my original idea of the purpose of life. I wasn't even sure I could start over with a new version, I was truly perplexed.

The first problem I encountered was the problem of pain. If God loves us, why does he allow pain? Perhaps life is a test, I reasoned. But it seemed very cruel for a supposedly omnipotent being to create a universe full of pain and misery and throw sentient beings into it to see how they do. Surely, God couldn't be like that, I thought. And if He was, then I had no hope of being able to understand Him.

It was through contemplating this and many other similar problems that I began to feel that God could not be something separate from us. God must experience what we experience. God is not watching us, He is living through us. The very concept of a God as some sort of separate person, some sort of 'He' apart from us, began to feel more and more indefensible. If I felt it was cruel for me personally to put someone in pain, how could I justify a super-being who allows all of the famines, wars and disasters I saw around me and in history?

This led me to a period of atheism, until the logical inconsistencies of scientific materialism and dualism became too much for me to handle.

When I began my studies, my very idea of philosophy reflected my idea of the nature of reality. The world to me seemed largely dead and only sparsely inhabited by life. Likewise, philosophy was dead. It was a theoretical, intellectual construct. It was a purely rational investigation of nature, a systematic categorization of reality.

But as I progressed, the world came alive. I began to see life everywhere, nothing was dead, nothing was still. Everything was in motion. Everything was full of mind and life. Philosophy likewise came alive for me and it became a way of life. It became something I turned to every day to guide my interactions with others, control my passions and provide meaning to my life.

Philosophy has been indispensable to me in dealing with the challenges I've faced over the years. As I slowly developed a more systematic worldview and understanding of the nature of things, I found myself more and more at peace with myself and the world around me.

The book I have written is completely different from the book I set out to write more than 15 years ago. Many of my conclusions I reach are the exact opposite of what I believed when I started. This book is an attempt at a more precise depiction of the nature of reality and what that means for how I should live my life. This book is itself a spiritual exercise. In writing it, in the repetitive practice of expressing my beliefs on paper, in my various attempts to express the same things in different ways, I instruct myself.

I have given up attempting explanations of the ultimate nature of reality, accurate observations are difficult enough. I do not believe certain questions can be answered. We will never know why the universe exists and why it is the way it is. But a better understanding of the true nature of things can have very practical effects on our daily lives.

Rodrigo Etcheto, Olympia, Washington
2018