See an interview with Larry Gottlieb About the Book
Imagine that each of us is a newborn fish. In the few days since we were born, we’ve cautiously swum about some, but now Mom has gathered us together to teach us about our world. She points out rocks, and that some good things to eat might be found around them. She tells us about the sand, and that there are some creatures that look like sand but that might sting us. She lets us know about what’s good to eat and what might want to eat us, and eventually we come to feel as if we have this fish thing wired.
What she doesn’t tell us about, of course, is water, because she doesn’t know about water. You know, it’s that water-to-the-fish thing: the fish doesn’t know about water because it’s all it knows. But imagine that one day something happens to you that takes you out of your well-understood reality, and it comes in the form of a feeling of something sharp and foreign in your mouth. All of a sudden you’re jerked around and pulled upwards, and suddenly you cross some kind of boundary and you can’t breathe. You’ve been caught, and fortunately for you you’re in a catch-and-release area and you’re gently put back where you belong. And now you know about the existence of water. You know about water by experiencing what we might call not-water, so that you can distinguish water from the background.
For human beings, the water in this metaphor represents not a physical thing, nor an emotional or mental construct, but rather an abstract idea. It takes the form of an explanation, a conventional explanation we have for the world and for our place within the world. We never think about this explanation, and for the most part we’re not even aware that we have one. But our entire world-view, our entire belief system is based on this idea.
For us, the conventional explanation is rooted in one fundamental idea:
That the world exists pretty much as we perceive it to be, whether or not there is a conscious being around to perceive it.
In this view, the world is a machine, a mechanical reality that acts and evolves according to well-established rules. And yet any student of physics who has encountered quantum mechanics will likely come to see that this view is untenable.
If that’s the case, what other idea might form the basis for explaining the appearance and behavior of the physical world?
The Seer’s Explanation is based on an inversion of the fundamental idea underlying the conventional view of reality. From this perspective, consciousness, or conscious, aware energy, is the fundamental “stuff” of the universe. Consciousness exists, whether or not there is a world around to perceive. The Seer’s Explanation takes this idea as a premise and follows it to its logical conclusion about us and our problems, hopes and dreams, and about what it really is to be a human being. It suggests the existence of a world of possibilities most of us have never believed possible.
To read excerpts from The Seer’s Explanation, please click on the following:
View an interview with Larry Gottlieb
The book The Seer’s Explanation is based on taking you out of your well-understood reality and bringing you face-to-face with who you really are.