As with all reviews on this website, our goal is not to provide a complete overview of the book; rather, it is to examine how the book relates to the meaning of life.
About the Book: The Real, True Meaning of Life: The Real Meaning of Life, the Universe, and the Afterlife was written or if you like, edited by Ray Ouellette. The book totals only 61 pages and is found in Amazon's Kindle store currently for 99 cents — hence continues endev42's quest of reading bargain bin Kindle books on the meaning of life.
Ouellette claims to have been contacted by a person he refers to as Shaw Dreyer, and Dreyer claims to have been contacted by spirits who refused to leave him alone until he told the world about what they had to say. Dreyer does not appear to want money, fame, or anything of that nature. Instead, he is a ghostly figure who wants to remain in the shadows. In fact, although Ouellette writes about eating dinner with Dreyer and his wife, visiting Dreyer's house, etc. in the Afterword, Ouellette admits to knowing nothing about Dreyer. In fact, he could not even contact Dreyer if he wanted, because Dreyer would only contact him by phone and meet him in public places. That is, the dinners, house meetings, etc. were added to make the book more enjoyable. However, it might have been more intriguing to have kept the story real, after all, who doesn't love a secretive figure to add a little spice to things?
So, what was so pressing that the spirits wouldn't stop pestering Dreyer until he made their revelations public? Well, not so much really. The spirits offer some proof of their existence through "more accurate" stories of Noah's ark, Troy, and the building of the pyramids (although this "proof" is very much debatable at best). After this, Dreyer outlines guidance these spirits have for us which includes: they love to watch people who struggle and make the right decisions to better themselves, there is a 1000 foot sphere of negativity on Earth—but if you travel high enough you can escape this, all souls are equal (including that of animals, makes the case for vegetarianism), Jesus was not the peaceful person most people think he was, and more.
But besides this, there wasn't much to add to the real and true meaning of life as the title would suggest. In fact, the spirits seem just as confused as everyone else. According to Dreyer, the spirits grew bored in the afterlife and asked God to create the world so that they'd have something to do. After first, God was very active in the world, but then took a laissez-faire attitude by request of the spirits. Some spirits believe in God, some don't, but most have never seen him because he has also withdrawn from the afterlife. What the spirits do want us to know is that they want us to live good lives, and to realize the equality of all life, of all souls. If we do bad things of our own volition, then we may opt to reincarnate to a hard life as penitence for our sins. The fact remains that we select our incarnation. But, our number one purpose according to the spirits is still to worship God, although they openly welcome debate on the subject... unless you are Richard Dawkins.
Notable quotes:
God may have created the afterlife, but this universe, this physical world was thought up by beings in the afterlife for their entertainment or experience (or in some cases for punishment), and the older spirits say that God created the universe at their request. He agreed to create the universe for them but insisted that the number one purpose of humans had to be to worship Him. He made the universe on the condition that He would have dominion over everything, and that anything that the beings wanted changed in the universe would have to be approved by Him first.
We rate the book the following: Overall - 2 Meaning of Life Relevance - 2 Uniqueness – 3
What did we miss? The book cites Matthew 10:34-36 as evidence of Jesus not being as peaceful as everyone usually thinks. What do you think the verse means despite your religious background?