When asked the question, "What do you want out of life?" the vast majority of humans around me have answered "To be happy,"-and yet they have often remained uncertain how to attain the ultimate state of happiness-paradise. To be helpful, I want to suggest a pathway to paradise.

One of my favorite television episodes of all time told a story about a criminal who awakened one day to find himself in an unknown location. He found himself a guest in a strange house. His host was more than willing to take care of his every need, though, so much so that the criminal soon learned that he could get anything whatsoever he asked for, and thus the thief came to suspect he was living in a heavenly afterlife after having been shot to death. The criminal was thrilled at first, until he wanted to rob a bank and his host asked which bank and how much he wanted to get away with. The thief frowned, saying that if you knew all outcomes ahead of time, you would take all the fun out of life. The host was insistent, however, that the criminal provide all details in advance, and finally the criminal erupted in frustration, "What kind of heaven is this anyway?!" to which the host erupted even more violently, "WHAT MAKES YOU THINK THIS IS HEAVEN?"

I have always loved that episode.

Imagine if you could have anything you wanted with the snap of a finger, all the time, and nothing unexpected ever happened. How many millennia do you think it would take for boredom to set in? I suspect not long. Soon, after perhaps a mere few geological eras, the monotony of a world without challenge would leave many wishing for challenge and the unexpected.

So here we are.

We all seem to long for happiness, but, given that experiencing the unexpected is inevitable to all those who are not omniscient, the rules of this life appear to be that intesifying happiness can best be accomplished by an ever deepening effort to discover, assimilate, and master the ways life works. I believe we can embrace this truth, and find paradise, or flee from it, and find hell. The choice is ours.

There seem to me to have been two primary ways of exerting such effort historically-imagining life the way we would like it to be and disconnecting from life when it does not conform to our wishes; and imagining life the way we would like it to be and then working with real resources to build what we want. The first view, in many ways, strikes me as being similar in many ways to the historical view of the philosopher Plato, while the second is more reminiscent of Thales and Aristotle.

The Platonic view, believing that studying reality corrupts the imagination and therefore each man should devote himself to pure imagination, began in ancient Greece and sadly is pervasive to this day. Go into the library and read the history of mathematics and physics and you will hear the same tales repeatedly: how Archimedes, the genius of ancient Greece, boasted of his abstract mathematical developments but disdained his real inventions; of how Leonardo da Vinci thrived on imagination, but also believed that if sex were not necessary for human reproduction, no humans would mate, as the bodily organs were too repulsive to him; of the countless scientists who loftily state they are more pure and angelic than those greasy technicians who are so lowly as to actually solve real problems in engineering and mechanics.

One idea seems never to have occurred to all those in the Platonic tradition, however. So far as I know, all religions of the world are unanimous in believing a higher force designed the universe, and I gather that at least 90% of humans believe in a higher power. Therefore, it stands to reason to any religious man that the world we live in represents nothing less than the imagination of a higher power. Thus, whenever men claim they are better off staying clean in the towers of imagination than getting dirty in the garden of experience, they are essentially contending that their imaginations are more interesting than the imagination of any higher power.

Even if some choose to disbelieve in any higher power, Nature nevertheless does exist, and the question automatically presents itself: is the imagination of man superior to the reality of Nature?

Some try to prove their own imaginations are better than real life by insisting to me that I should accept that most of reality is ugly. Curiously, humans, more often than not, point to their own constructs as proof that life is ugly, forgetting that they themselves were responsible for building their own constructs. I do not see men condemning crystalline structures in geology, or plunging waterfalls, or snowcapped mountains for their ugliness very often. No, they usually condemn themselves and their works, which proves not the ugliness of a higher power or Nature, but rather of human laziness chosen of our free will. Thus, we have learned that the clay of reality can be molded into ugly shapes, or beautiful ones, but men are often, if not always, responsible for their own ugly works.

History vindicates the view that, in the end, those who contribute most to actual progress are those who immerse themselves deeply in reality, changing crude understandings of patterns to elegant understandings, for nature is astonishingly elegant, in the way she builds crystals, flows rivers, and designs trees. Ideally, science--a word derived from a root word meaning 'knowledge'-- would be the best subject for helping us appreciate these patterns. Alas, few students in school today are taught the profound beauty inherent in the designs of nature in either math or science. As a result, the majority miss the fundamental spiritual challenges embedded in reality to encourage growth. Three areas mandatory for survival present direct opportunities for growth: food, shelter, and relationships. In these areas, we can choose to look beneath the surface, finding the natural harmony that enables ideals of form, function, and fun, or dismiss all our chances, leading to pervasive suffering.

But all of that changes, right here, right now. The primary subjects of benefit schools should offer involve language, math, science, geography, and history. You can find books on these subjects in the recommended reading list at this website. Those texts do offer a complete education, which can be arranged as described in the Optimal Education article featured in the Science section of this website. Too often, parents who are uneducated throw their children into educational systems on faith alone, not being educated themselves. This is irresponsible, and must stop. Do not say you cannot afford education--go to the library and educate yourself first, then you can teach your children directly or guide them using the right books. Do this, and all future generations will be maximally empowered towards independence.

In prior centuries, mathematics was taught with a far stronger visual element, such that students felt more connected to reality when studying numbers. Detrimentally, since the Renaissance, this has changed drastically, until we find ourselves in a world today where reality shows up on the merest fraction of our mathematics textbooks' pages (pun intended).

Yet the modern view is not the only view, and one can find a soulful satisfaction in pursuing the ancient way of connecting more deeply to reality in mathematics. How can you do this, you ask? The book offered in this science section, The Math Wizard, shows the way. Read it and a whole new world will be revealed to you, based on my attempt to resurrect the seven degree path to enlightenment I believe was once offered to humanity in Atlantis. Some of the sources that have inspired me along this path, in both math and science, follow.

To create a basic foundation for science and patterns, try A Beginner's Guide to Constructing the Universe by Michael Schneider and Patterns in Nature by Peter Stevens. For children just getting their first understanding of science, the old but engaging writings of Jean Henri Fabre are delightful: The Story Book of Science, The Wonder Book of Chemistry and The Science of Everyday Things. For a general understanding of science and our world for the teenager, I would recommend the excellent book Conceptual Physical Science by Paul Hewitt, et al. Then try fantastic books like Atoms, Electrons, and Change and Molecules, by P.W. Atkins, Structures, or Why Things Don't Fall Down by Gordon, and Metallurgy Fundamentals. Thus braced, you may then wish to sample the writings of Philip Ball in Designing the Molecular World and The Self-Made Tapestry. Master these few books and you will be well on your way to seeing this life in a whole new light. I could recommend far more books, and may do so in the future.

Generally, the greatest satisfaction I have found in my own life has been in those areas where I have exerted the greatest effort, empowering myself not only to understand reality, but change it to better match my ideals. I have certainly found tremendous satisfaction in supporting the effort to revise the current understanding of the atom, and incorporating the nonfictional new atomic theory freely offered on this website into a vision of a better world presented in the novels Death of the Innovator and Triumph of the Innovator sold on this website. Now, if mankind simply acts on the evidence, many formerly difficult, if not impossible, goals, shall be met relatively quickly.

Synergetics, once made dominant, shall undoubtedly enable us to beat virtually any challenge nature can test our skill with, for Synergetics shows us the structures of cells, viruses, and any event in reality on its multidimensional grid.

As the paper on the atom on this website shows, there exists a far richer visual beauty in the atom than we ever expected. We now have the foundation to grasp the fundamental structure of our reality, which serves as the first step on the path to rebuilding it to match the boldest fantasies man can muster.

And history proves, with hard work, any goal can be attained.

Until such time as synergetics gains the acceptance it deserves, there remains plenty that can be done on a practical, everyday level to encourage individual independence. As the pivotal book Suppressed Inventions and Other Discoveries by Jonathan Eisen suggests, there exists a whole other world of suppressed science out there. Grasping these ideas can greatly prepare one to explore many new applications of science.

One of the most important applications of science, if not the most important, is to promote health. The book offered at this website, Natural Healing Self Empowerment, is the single most powerful health book ever written, as no other book offers more cost effective comprehensive health strategies. So if you do wish to take the first step to paradise, being healthy, you have only to read the book offered on this website, take action, and your adventure to a better world begins. The next step is to become supremely fit, athletically and sexually, as the Optiflex booklet shows. When you add in the science ideas in this next section, especially within the framework offered in The Math Wizard, you have the skills making you capable enough to overcome the basic challenges of life. You attain harmony within. And once you attain harmony within, you can then work on independence-harmony without-by developing the technological skills to enable you to live sustainably in harmony with nature. The first steps toward harmony without are suggested in the technological paper, The Technology of Paradise, and followed up in the paper on the ideal economy, the template economy, which relies not on money, but templates to build the products of civilization. Nature does not need money to make a new apple--only a template!

All life should be that way. In the technology section of this website a pathway to such a world is offered.

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