Introduction
Thank you for taking the time to investigate The Book. What you are reading is the first (somewhat clunky) online version of an interactive book that initially took me over twenty-five years to write, edit and link together as a single PDF file. Based around the precept that absolutely everything in existence (from hydrogen atom to human thought) conforms to the same logical processes that define the universal laws of nature, I originally set out using the idea of ‘logic’ to both debunk religion and offer a reasoned insight into the most likely futures that await humanity over the coming years.
But The Book is much more than this. It is the stuff of dreams! Representing something very personal to me, what you are in possession of is, in effect, my meagre attempt to transcribe an awe-inspiring book that I was repeatedly drawn to in a ‘lucid dream’; a dream that I had revisited countless times over many years. Primarily set in an enormous library that lay bare the ‘human collective unconscious’ (the instincts and archetypes that we all share as human beings), in this dream I would be drawn to an oversized book that lay closed on a large oak plinth in the centre of a grand mezzanine. On opening it, my gaze was not met with words, but with a colourful world—a holographic ‘pop-up’, if you like, of all the memories and insights contained between its covers—into which I could immerse myself and find the answer to whatever I was searching for. The downside to this unusual dream, however, was that I could only maintain lucidity whilst I was in the library—once my mind ventured into the alluring imagery of the open book before me, my waking perceptions would dissipate, and I would succumb once more to unconsciousness. As a result, I would wake up with no clear memory of my dreamed world, but I had an instinctive idea of what I wanted to write about in The Book, and often felt renewed purpose whenever I returned to working on it.
Containing over 850,000 words, this attempt to recreate the book within my dreams is, to quote the lyrics of ‘Tenacious D’, “nothing like the original …this is just a tribute!” My initial idea was for this to be a fully interactive e-book (which would allow its readers to dip in and out of interconnected ‘animated chapters’ at will) but, whilst that goal is still some way from being realized, completing the ‘narration’ part of it has been a labour of love over the past few decades. Indeed, in attempting to recreate a dreamed book that contained no words (but was packed with feelings and insights) whilst trying to represent it as a literary object, I adopted a documentary-style narrative as it seemed to be the most suitable for what I was attempting to convey. As a result, the writing style may appear a little ‘stilted’, but if you imagine that it is being narrated (I find that the voice of David Attenborough adds a certain credence) to an accompanying CGI animation, it kinda works!
Between 1997 and 2020, I religiously worked on its twenty-two ‘nonlinear’ chapters, literally trying to create a literary version of a book that I couldn’t even remember dreaming! For most of the time I wrote it believing I was simply expounding the idea that everything is based on ‘logical causation’ when, what I was actually doing was subconsciously revisiting events that I had seen or felt in my dreams, verifying relevant names and dates with thorough research, and adding it to the book that I was doggedly writing. Let me make this clear, I am not trying to claim everything in The Book as hard fact. What it is, though, is a factual representation of the world as I perceived it when I entered the book within my personal dreams… thus conveniently negating the need to add references and citations.
By applying my waking dreams to investigating what I perceived to be the realities of existence, I believe that I may have stumbled across something quite unique. I have attempted to cover a myriad of topics, some of which you will hopefully find of interest. More information about The Book can be found in the ‘How to Use’ section on the inside cover, including a more detailed explanation of its birth and development. This project is far from being finished, but I hope that this online incarnation of The Book gives you an idea of what I am attempting to achieve.
Best regards,
‘The Writer’
