Introduction: The Why and the Wherefore

Since January 2001, the global situation has begun a downward spiral, with no apparent end in sight: 1. escalating violence in the Middle East 2. the largest corporate bankruptcy in history 3. the largest retail bankruptcy in history 4. the devastating scandal in the Catholic Church 5. a proliferation of sexually transmitted diseases, every one of them incurable 6. the 9/11 New York City terrorist attack 7. for the first time, the unemployed outnumber the employed 8. the disintegration of both the marriage institution and the nuclear family 9. an archaic educational system that combines metal detectors and a police presence with eighteenth-century teaching methods 10. greed as the primary motivating force in business 11. vanity as the primary motivating force in our personal lives 12. conflict as the primary motivating force in our forms of entertainment

Disturbing? I could easily add to this list...there's enough here to make anyone believe in apocalypse, armageddon, World War III...and yet, surprisingly, no one does a thing; no one suggests making any drastic changes.

The Vanilla World View is a metaphysical system that transcends the bounds of social, political, economic, and religious decorum in its demand for drastic, immediate change. The focus, however, is on what you, the individual, can do, how you can use your untapped personal power to influence your life, how you can use that power to change even the course of events in your immediate environment.

You are indeed the intended audience of the Vanilla World View; what's more, your way of looking at the world will be altered long before you finish this book, even though the basic ideas presented here are really rather simple. In fact, you could say that these revelations represent a "plain vanilla" way of looking at life and death.

Like you, I'm on a quest, I'm a seeker. I'm a teacher, a writer, a speaker, a composer, a musician, a philosopher, a metaphysician. I've visited the holy shrines of Asia Minor, witnessed the bombing of Beirut, crossed the Atlantic Ocean just to understand the Sargasso Sea, traveled though Mexico with no more than a bag with one change of clothes, climbed the great Pyramids of Egypt, investigated paranormal phenomena, come face to face with Evil itself. Perhaps one day I will explain how I came to have the insights presented on the following pages. But first I have to think about what I can do for you.

How can we lead happier lives? How can we make our marriages last longer? How can we raise our children successfully? How can we help bring about world peace? Can we heal ourselves if we get sick? How can we affect the future? Is there a way we can influence chance events? What can we do to fix the problems with our educational system? How do we deal with the evil in the world?

Does God exist? Or is God just a mindless force? Or is there no God at all? And is there life after death?

Impossible, you say: many of these questions should not even be attempted, much less answered. This book is some kind of insolence, some kind of audacious hoax. The author must be a lunatic, a quack guru, a carnival barker, the Devil himself.

Welcome to the 21st century, and a new way of looking at life, at death, at eternity. You'll just have to turn the page to find out the answers to the questions asked here, perhaps to all questions asked everywhere.

You'll just have to read about the Vanilla World View

The Vanilla World View, covering as it does the entire range of human experience, has repercussions and implications that may not be immediately apparent, and as such I consider it a project-in-progress, one that will be expanded and developed further.

Plans call for the creation of a central Website where suggestions, differences, corrections, and revelations may be e-mailed to me; a message board will be set up for an exchange of ideas about practical ways of putting our metaphysical agenda in motion. Telling everyone to love others is pretty simple and direct, but may not be the most productive or effective, so remember that there are a myriad of ways to produce positive energy besides loving that are also quite useful.

The point is that, according to the Vanilla World View, manifestations of positive energy may actually alter the nature of events that are occurring, alter the nature of chance, alter the nature of the way people behave, alter the nature of human health, even alter the nature of the future. Far from saying that peace and harmony are brought about only by revolution, acts of congress, wars of conquest, passage of laws, and social upheaval, we are asserting that peace, love, and harmony can be reached as an end result through positively energizing our environment, through positively charging the air in which we live and work, through energizing our world in a way that will further enable the occurrence of events leading to world stability and peace.

The assertions made in this book, while quite radical in nature, are actually not entirely inconsistent with the principles and practices of traditional religion. Much more work is needed to reconcile the principles of the Vanilla World View with those put forth by the churches, but it must be remembered that our goals are primarily the same.

I sincerely hope that one, some, or all of the preceding pages will change your life in a positive way; the recharging of a life from the negative to the positive isn't brought about by simply believing in a different set of rules or assumptions, but by putting into action those rules and assumptions. The beauty of this system is that you can make a difference as part of a larger group - or by yourself, alone.

After all, it really is a matter of life and death.

Energy

Here's where we start: energy, one of the basic elements of the universe, the stuff that your science teacher said can't be destroyed, the stuff that your science teacher said can only be altered in form.

Your teacher was quick to point out that we know energy in different forms:

light
chemical
mechanical
heat
electric
atomic
sound

OK, fine. We'll buy it. But there are still questions that remain..

If I become angry, so angry that I want to pound the dining room table with my fist, isn't some type of energy involved? And what type of energy is that? Maybe chemical? Maybe heat? Maybe, but what if I were to add other "types" of energy to the equation? What if I were to add emotional energy, personal energy, spiritual energy? If I become so upset, perhaps because my favorite football team was just eliminated from the playoffs, that I stomp my feet in disgust, isn't energy being expended?

OK, fine. There's human energy, and there's spiritual energy. Go ahead and annotate your textbooks. But what does all this have to do with daily living? How can knowing about energy influence the way we work, play, love, hate, make plans, choose careers, help others?

Answering those questions is no easy taskbut if you stop and really think about energy, the forms it takes, and what you can do with it, you'll reach a number of significant conclusions that will forever alter the way you see the world around you.

Make a list of ways that we, as human beings, manifest energy, and then try to answer the following questions: Can you see this type of energy? If so, how do you go about "seeing" human energy? How can you "see" spiritual energy? And where do you go to look for it?