This book is a labor of love. I hope that it will help you experience joy, peace and satisfaction as I do. It is a story of finding answers to age-old questions such as:
    
     What is life all about?
     How should we live?
     How can we come out on top?
     What is the top?
    
     I asked these questions when I finally made it back to my home city Berlin after the end of World War II. I was twenty years old then and attempting to bring some direction and normalcy into my life after the turbulent experiences of the war. I would like to tell you how my struggle to cope with the events of that time started me on a mental odyssey that eventually brought me "heaven on earth."
     When I arrived, I was appalled how Berlin, once Germany's proud capital, was utterly devastated. Berlin's condition was symbolic of the state of our whole nation and of the political system that had governed it. The surviving citizens had begun to dig out from under the rubble. Food was even more scarce than it had been before the end of the war. People bartered their personal belongings for food on the black market. Those who had lost everything were utterly desperate and many didn't survive.
     I had lost several family members and the rest were scattered throughout the country. Only my uncle and an aunt were still in Berlin, struggling to survive. My home had been confiscated by the authorities and was now crowded with three displaced families. Living space was extremely scarce since most buildings were destroyed. But I was lucky to have found a room for rent. Its windows were shattered and I covered them up with cardboard. Somehow I acquired a little stove, a necessity since the central heating system did not work. There was a tiny balcony, and from it I could look down onto the ruins and into the streets beyond.
    
     My first priority was to survive. I had had some experience in electronics, so I found a job as a technician in the Blaupunkt Werke radio company that had recently reopened. My next priority was to finish my high school education, which had been interrupted during the war. At age fifteen I had been drafted, along with my classmates, as "Luftwaffenhelfer" (Air Force Helper). Originally we were called "Young-Soldiers" and we were proud of this label. However, the induction of child soldiers caused an international outrage, so the Government changed our titles, but not our assignments.
     We operated the anti-aircraft (Flak) batteries that defended Berlin. I actually welcomed this arrangement. My mother had died a few weeks earlier, and my father did not have to worry about what to do with me after my call to duty. He had been somewhat aloof with his two sons and it was clear that he was in over his head. Besides, I did not enjoy my assignment as a homemaker, even though it gave me a chance to hone my cooking skills by flipping pancakes at the ceiling. The occasional pancake landed on the floor and my father and brother wondered what tasted so gritty between their teeth.
    
     During our duty as anti-aircraft operators, we continued our high school education in the mornings, trained on the Flak equipment until supper, did our homework in the evenings, and defended Berlin against air raids during the night. Whenever a raid lasted beyond midnight, we did not go to school the next morning. Eventually we were transferred to regular military service without having finished high school. Defending the Fatherland had become more important.
    
     Now, after I had gained a foothold in West Berlin, I went back to school in the mornings and cut my work load (and earnings) in half at Blaupunkt Werke. It was tough. I was alone, and I didn't have enough to eat. Often, I ground a potato into boiling water, added salt and some spice, and had a pot full of thick pulp that gave me the illusion of having had enough to eat. Some days I couldn't go to school and work because I was too exhausted. Despite it all, I overcame my difficulties and received my high school diploma.
    
     As hard as this time was, it was nevertheless invigorating. I drew on my innermost reserves and this put me in touch with the essence of life that is in all of us. I felt a certain high and (this may sound strange ) I had the distinct feeling of having been helped and protected. I was not religious, although I had received Lutheran training and had been confirmed at age fourteen. But I did not believe in Jesus Christ, or in angels. However, I had the peculiar sensation that invisible entities were looking after me.
    
     A high school course in philosophy had motivated me to think about the deeper issues of life, and given the destruction of the world in which I had grown up, I wanted to understand the meaning of it all. I felt that I had been used and lied to. After all that had happened, what or whom in the world could I trust? I wondered what the basis of my life should be. I wanted to find out for myself what life was about. As a result, I started to spend most of my spare time pondering this question. The more I thought about it, the more important it became for me to find an answer and the more I focused on my search. My quest became an obsession. Eventually I boiled it down to one key question: do I have free will in the face of the overwhelming circumstances that had devastated this city, indeed the whole nation? Was I master of my own destiny, or was some unknown higher force determining my fate? Was I only a pawn that was being pushed around in a big chess game that I did not understand?
    
     To find the answer, I toyed with various thought-experiments, imagining the moments that define us and how we might, or should, react. And then, the answer was there, accompanied by an overwhelming feeling of freedom, joy and certainty. I "saw" a single entity, a super-being, comprised of individuals that were united in the way that our physical body unites the individual organs. I perceived two levels of reality, the physical one of individuals, and superimposed upon them, a group-entity that was much more powerful than the individuals themselves, though they were not aware of this greater entity. The group-entity existed as a distinct being at its own level of reality. With this insight came a deep intuitive understanding of the intimate give-and-take relationship between the group-entity and the individuals that belonged to it. This vision was so clear that its truth was beyond any doubt in my mind.
     Here was the answer to the question, are we free or are our actions determined by a higher power? I sensed that individuals are part of a higher force, their group-entity. However I understood that each one is still free to follow his own will, because his will and the will of the group-entity are the same. From the individual's viewpoint, the group-entity is in his heart, in his soul. Actually, the group entity is the common soul of all individuals. Therefore each person instinctively wants to do what the higher entity of his group wants. And he who can do what he wants is free. Soon this vision spread into my daily life. I realized that we, as human beings, are related members of a group-entity that is much larger and more powerful than we can imagine. We can't see it, yet it is very real inside all of us. This group entity defines us as humans, and we express our unity with it when we speak from our hearts.
    
     Within a few days, a logical concept of greater reality fell into place naturally and easily in my mind: ultimately, there had to be a supreme Group-Entity for the entire universe, transcending, encompassing and permeating all that exists. This Entity was also the innermost essence of everyone and everything, including me. I realized that this must be what we call God. I had heard this before, but now I understood that God was inside me, right there and then, in my heart. This realization suddenly swept me away into another state of consciousness. I can't find words to describe this experience. It was heaven. I was engulfed in a bliss of mutual love with the ultimate source of the universe. It was very powerful then, and the thought of it is still quite emotional now.
    
     After my euphoric experience I hurried to explain my newfound understanding to my friends, but I couldn't find the right words. The words simply didn't exist. My friends listened politely, but they obviously didn't understand what I was talking about. I tried to make it sound plausible by using physical analogies, but this turned out to be more comical than inspiring. Yet I knew that I had been exposed to an enlightening experience that would change my whole life. I decided then that I would devote my life to living according to the truth that I had witnessed. I knew that there was a higher, more advanced, reality beyond our life of suffering and warfare. While I was having my enlightening experience, lying on the couch in my room, I sensed the ruins outside and the troubled people as a hazy illusion, and I felt compelled to shout to them not to despair, that everything was actually all right. But they would not have understood. They would have thought that I was crazy. So I decided to pursue my new belief, to test these insights as I went about the tasks of my daily life. After all, I had been willing to give up my life for my country, fighting for a cause that had turned out to be contemptible. Now I was aware of a much nobler cause and I was willing to lay my life on the line for it. I wanted to live my truth until I could communicate it to others.
    
     In 1991 I wrote a paper titled Revolution in Common Sense, outlining the basic concepts of how we can understand true reality by moving beyond our present concepts. I distributed the paper to a select group of scientists and published it in 1994 on the Internet through CompuServe. Since December 1996 it can be accessed on my website Quantum Metaphysics (http://www.quantum-metaphysics.com). I have received many requests to write more about this subject using less "scientific" language. I hope that this book will satisfy this call.