Sign-In
Cart
The Great Splintering
Paperback
PhilosophyMetaphysical General
Please select the version of book you would like to purchase.
ISBN13: 9798996337439
Publisher: Self
Published: May 24 2026
Pages: 86
Weight: 0.28
Height: 0.18 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
Publisher: Self
Published: May 24 2026
Pages: 86
Weight: 0.28
Height: 0.18 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
Have you ever had the feeling that you are more than your circumstances suggest? Not more successful, or more talented, or more deserving - but more fundamental. That behind the daily routine, the roles you play, the person your history has made you, there is something older and quieter looking out through your eyes. Most people have. It tends to arrive uninvited: in the silence after a piece of music ends, at the edge of sleep, in the aftermath of grief or unexpected joy. A sense of depth beneath the surface of ordinary life. A faint recognition, like catching your own reflection in a window you did not know was there.
This feeling has been reported in every culture and every century for as long as human beings have kept records of their inner lives. The mystics of the Christian tradition described it as the ground of the soul. The Hindu sages called it the Atman - the self beneath the self. The Sufi poets wrote of a longing to return to an origin that cannot be named. The Zen masters pointed at it obliquely, because they knew it could not be pointed at directly. That this experience appears so consistently across traditions that share nothing else - no common language, no common scripture, no shared history - is itself a kind of evidence. It suggests that whatever is being encountered is not a cultural artifact. It is something real.
This book is built around a single idea that I believe makes sense of that recognition - and of a great deal else. The idea is this: what we call the Creator, the Source, the One - that infinite awareness at the root of all things - did not make us from the outside, the way a craftsman makes a table. It became us. The One splintered itself into every fragment of experience in this universe - every particle, every living creature, every conscious mind - in order to do something that infinite knowledge alone could never accomplish: to feel what it is like to be alive.
That proposition sits at an intersection that this book will try to hold carefully throughout. It is a spiritual idea - perhaps the most ancient spiritual idea there is. It is also consistent with what modern physics has discovered about the nonlocal, deeply interconnected nature of reality. And it is a profoundly personal idea, because if it is true, it reframes everything about what you are and why you are here. Walking that intersection - between the spiritual and the scientific, the cosmic and the intimate, the ancient and the urgently contemporary - is what this book is about.
I want to be clear about what this book is not. It is not an argument for any particular religion, though it will find things worth honoring in all of them. It is not a physics textbook, though it will take certain discoveries in quantum mechanics seriously enough to follow where they lead. It is not a self-help manual, though I believe the framework it offers changes things in practical, daily-life ways. What it is, more than anything, is an invitation: to consider that the question of what the Creator is and the question of what you are may have the same answer, approached from opposite ends.
One final note before we proceed. Like all ideas, this one has gaps, flaws, and inconsistencies. This book does not claim to have discovered the final answer to existence. What it humbly suggests is that the explanation may be simpler than we have given it credit for. As you explore the concept you may find it compelling, you may find flaws in it, you may find places where it stretches further than the evidence supports. All of that is welcome. The journey of exploration is itself the real success of this kind of thinking. Hold the framework lightly, test it against your experience, and keep what is useful.
This book is built around a single idea that I believe makes sense of that recognition - and of a great deal else. The idea is this: what we call the Creator, the Source, the One - that infinite awareness at the root of all things - did not make us from the outside, the way a craftsman makes a table. It became us. The One splintered itself into every fragment of experience in this universe - every particle, every living creature, every conscious mind - in order to do something that infinite knowledge alone could never accomplish: to feel what it is like to be alive.
That proposition sits at an intersection that this book will try to hold carefully throughout. It is a spiritual idea - perhaps the most ancient spiritual idea there is. It is also consistent with what modern physics has discovered about the nonlocal, deeply interconnected nature of reality. And it is a profoundly personal idea, because if it is true, it reframes everything about what you are and why you are here. Walking that intersection - between the spiritual and the scientific, the cosmic and the intimate, the ancient and the urgently contemporary - is what this book is about.
I want to be clear about what this book is not. It is not an argument for any particular religion, though it will find things worth honoring in all of them. It is not a physics textbook, though it will take certain discoveries in quantum mechanics seriously enough to follow where they lead. It is not a self-help manual, though I believe the framework it offers changes things in practical, daily-life ways. What it is, more than anything, is an invitation: to consider that the question of what the Creator is and the question of what you are may have the same answer, approached from opposite ends.
One final note before we proceed. Like all ideas, this one has gaps, flaws, and inconsistencies. This book does not claim to have discovered the final answer to existence. What it humbly suggests is that the explanation may be simpler than we have given it credit for. As you explore the concept you may find it compelling, you may find flaws in it, you may find places where it stretches further than the evidence supports. All of that is welcome. The journey of exploration is itself the real success of this kind of thinking. Hold the framework lightly, test it against your experience, and keep what is useful.
Also from
Gallant, Rob
The AI Manager's Roadmap: How to Navigate, Lead, and Thrive in the Age of Artificial Intelligence
Gallant, Rob
Paperback
$15.59
Restoring the Republic: Thirty structural reforms for accountable, transparent, and trustworthy government
Gallant, Rob
Paperback
$15.59
Also in
Philosophy
Solidarity: The Past, Present, and Future of a World-Changing Idea
Taylor, Astra
Hunt-Hendrix, Leah
Hardcover
$14.99
In the Beginning Was the Deed: Realism and Moralism in Political Argument
Williams, Bernard
Paperback
$46.25
The American Indian Mind in a Linear World: American Indian Studies and Traditional Knowledge
Fixico, Donald Lee
Paperback
$72.79
Dreaming of Cinema: Spectatorship, Surrealism, and the Age of Digital Media
Lowenstein, Adam
Paperback
$51.00
Machine Intelligence and the Imaginal Realm: Spiritual Freedom and the Re-Animation of Matter
Lafitte, Luke
Paperback
From $14.99
The Sociogony: Social Facts and the Ontology of Objects, Things, and Monsters
Worrell, Mark P.
Paperback
$43.50
On Quality: An Inquiry Into Excellence: Unpublished and Selected Writings
Pirsig, Wendy K.
Pirsig, Robert M.
Hardcover
$25.64
The Electromagnetic Brain: Em Field Theories on the Nature of Consciousness
Joye, Shelli Renée
Paperback
From $12.99
Philosophy in Turbulent Times: Canguilhem, Sartre, Foucault, Althusser, Deleuze, Derrida
Roudinesco, Elisabeth
Paperback
$42.00
The New Science of Giambattista Vico: Unabridged Translation of the Third Edition (1744) with the Addition of Practic of the New Science
Vico, Giambattista
Paperback
$43.43
The Persuaders: At the Front Lines of the Fight for Hearts, Minds, and Democracy
Giridharadas, Anand
Hardcover
$10.99
The Dream of Reason: A History of Philosophy from the Greeks to the Renaissance
Gottlieb, Anthony
Paperback
$9.99
The Modes of Scepticism: Ancient Texts and Modern Interpretations
Annas, Julia
Barnes, Jonathan
Julia, Annas
Paperback
$48.84
Friendship and Society: An Introduction to Augustine's Practical Philosophy
Burt, Donald X.
Paperback
$28.49
Essays V2: Moral And Entertaining On The Various Faculties And Passions Of The Human Mind (1815)
Clarendon, Edward Hyde Earl of
Paperback
$37.44
The Daily Stoic: 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living
Holiday, Ryan
Hanselman, Stephen
Hardcover
From $12.99
The Mattering Instinct: How Our Deepest Longing Drives Us and Divides Us
Goldstein, Rebecca Newberger
Hardcover
From $19.99
The Obstacle Is the Way Expanded 10th Anniversary Edition: The Timeless Art of Turning Trials Into Triumph
Holiday, Ryan
Hardcover
$26.60
Self-Help from the Middle Ages: What the Seven Deadly Sins Can Teach Us about Living
Jones, Peter
Hardcover
$27.00
Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness
Godfrey-Smith, Peter
Paperback
$19.00
The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse Fifth Anniversary Limited Edition: The Global Bestseller
Mackesy, Charlie
Hardcover
$28.49
Bless & Release: The physics of letting go-and wanting what's meant for you.
Laporte, Danielle
Paperback
$17.10
The Ethical Slut, Third Edition: A Practical Guide to Polyamory, Open Relationships, and Other Freedoms in Sex and Love
Hardy, Janet W.
Easton, Dossie
Paperback
$17.99
My Big TOE Awakening Discovery Inner Workings: The Complete My Big TOE Trilogy Unifying Philosophy, Physics and Metaphysics
Campbell, Thomas
Hardcover
$56.53
Self-Reliance and Nature: The Complete First and Second Series of Emerson's Essays
Emerson, Ralph Waldo
Hardcover
$24.99
Eight Million Ways to Happiness: Wisdom for Inspiration and Healing from the Heart of Japan
Yoda, Hiroko
Hardcover
$26.10
Make Your Home in This Luminous Dark: Mysticism, Art, and the Path of Unknowing
Smith, James K. A.
Hardcover
$26.60