An Old Soul's Guide to Life, the Universe and Everything summary

summary.

How It All Began – Excerpts from Chapter 1

For eons, the vast entity had tried to contemplate its own nature and discover its limits, but without success. It had reached the end of its resourcefulness. A castaway on a desert island can talk to him or herself only for so long before imagining a companion, as Tom Hank's character in the movie Castaway created the "Wilson" character based on a volleyball.

So, the vast entity created quadzillions of companions within its infinite consciousness, and imagined them interacting with each other and with it, their Creator. But it wasn't enough. It wanted to explore its own nature using its creations as mirrors, but imaginary characters in its vast mind could not give it the external, objective point of view that mirrors do.

For further eons, the vast consciousness pondered the problem and realized that it needed to somehow liberate its imagined characters, to give them an identity within its mind that allowed them to act, without it first giving them the thought to do so.

To understand how it all began, Imagine that you are a scriptwriter for a daytime drama. All the characters exist in your mind. Day after day, you run plot ideas and have your characters play them out, but you know it's all just you. Without you thinking them into being and acting, nothing happens. You want your characters to somehow leap out of the TV set and become independent, autonomous beings who interact with each other and with you, all of their own volition and free will.

After further eons of deep thought, the vast entity found a way. It would create a dimension, an area within itself, and project its imagined characters there. Then it would give them free will and ask them to explore, create, experience their creations, and return to share what they had learned. The experiences they reported would become part of it, and it would know more about itself. It would grow in experience of itself because of their creativity. Further, because its creations had free will, it would have no way of anticipating what would happen. What a grand game!

With an enormous, liberating burst of creativity, it let its creations go and they dispersed into the vastness of the new dimension of the Creator's mind.

It waited for the return of its creations. And waited. And waited. But its creations did not return. It wondered how it had erred ... and tried again. Again, nothing. After countless attempts over further eons, it realized what was missing. Nothing was holding together the energy of the creations and they "fell apart."

It experimented with different qualities in the energy from which it crafted its creations-curiosity, courage, resourcefulness. Still they did not return. It realized that a binding energy was necessary to ensure affiliation between the creations and with itself, so that they would cooperate with each other and return to it.

It imbued its next round of creations with an affiliation energy-love. This made the creations want to work and play together, to enjoy each others' creations, and then return to it and share what they had discovered. It was pleased. It had found the "glue" that would hold everything together. Cooperation instead of rugged individualism, a sense of purpose and belonging to a larger whole. And so its creations went out and explored the dimension within its mind, and returned to commune and share. And it was pleased. Of course, those creations are our souls at their highest levels-each a vast spiritual being in its own right.

After eons of forays on the part of its creations, it was growing in knowledge and understanding of its own nature. Then, its creations clamored for the ability to in turn create their own creations, so it imagined into being a new lower frequency dimension contained within the first. Into this, the creations thought into existence their own creations, and endowed these lower frequency versions of themselves also with free will, which is how it all began.