This instantly engaging and continually thought-provoking book is written by the same three authors who created the popular movie of the same name. The idea, by their own admission, was simple: “We trooped around the country interviewing brilliant people so we could get on film what they had to say.” What happened, however, was that many of these brilliant folks had different ideas—“different from some of our notions, different from each other, different from what we were taught in school, different from what was preached in church and different from what we see on the nightly news.” Yeah, that kind of sneaky different that gets us thinking outside the box. The adventure thus came to be to a personal exploration of truth, consciousness, perception, paradigms and, of course, reality itself. Or, as the authors put it, “to decide for ourselves where the truth lies and what to try out in our lives.”
Don’t think of this book as the movie in words. Rather, think of it as where the movie left off. Or, what fell through the cracks of the movie. Though many of the same ideas and notions are explored, there’s much more idea storming, roundabout musing and personal investigation encouraged here.
As the authors note, it is the great questions that open us up to what we previously didn’t know and grant access to the other side of the unknown. However, we first need to summon up the courage to ask these questions and allow ourselves the journey of discovery and self-awareness. Thus, each chapter in the book ends with a page of questions that poke beneath the layers of consciousness to the murky (and thus not often explored) layers of the subconscious. They are fun questions in that there is no ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ and yet they are also challenging questions, urging you to ask yourself why you do the things you do or think the things you think.
The whole of the book, in fact, is an exploration of questions: What is reality? What paradigms govern your/my/our realities? How can you know your consciousness? Do we really create our own realities? Or (one of my faves): Was time invented to keep instant karma at bay?
With the help of quantum physicists, mystics, philosophers, book and film characters, the authors and more, a wide variety of topics is covered—from emotional addictions and quantum logic to mysticism and the connectivity hypothesis. The pages are colorful and rich with illustrations, photos and intriguing sidebars. It’s a kind of crash-course workbook of life’s big questions for adults. Indeed, the whole thing is a wild ride, full of rabbit holes and shapeshifting paradigms, science and philosophy plunging into the unknowable core of spirituality, while all the time everyone seems to keep pointing out that we are all on this ride together—co-creative participants in an ongoing, deeply meaningful, ingenious and inspired adventure. What could be more fun?
