Here we stand, you and I, gazing with wonderment at the heavens not realizing the breadth and depth of what we humans call “reality,” defined by our dictionaries as “fidelity to nature.” As a species, Homo sapiens, in Latin “wise person,” has been the end result…so far…of a grand evolutionary experiment that has taken 4.54 billion years since the earth formed and our hominin species arrived 100,000-200,000 years ago, migrating from the Rift Valley of Africa, approximately 60,000 years ago, to populate the earth.

So, why do you and I exist? Is existence, or conscious awareness, ephemeral; disposed of in a mere blink of a cosmic eye like a newspaper read and then discarded? Or rather, does human consciousness surrender its fleshy tomb to continue on a journey to a dimension housing a continuum beyond the current understanding of man?

Physicists and astronomers continue a slow and deliberate trek to attempt to unmask the composition and complexion of “reality.” In their quest to reconcile Einstein’s general relativity, the world we live in, with the quantum world, the subatomic building blocks which make life possible, scientists have been met with seemingly insurmountable obstacles defying attempts to untangle the grand enigma of existence in order to construct a “Theory of Everything.” Adding to the confusion, religious dogma desperately clings to tales of fiction intent on impeding man’s search for the “truth.”

Emerson Alexander Weiss, in The Hand, admonishes us “not to walk through life with a blindfold shielding us from the illuminating light of enlightenment!” His quest to understand himself, and to unravel the mysteries of the universe, plots a course that is intended for Homo sapiens to contemplate in earnest in a quest to find eternity’s gate!