Interesting to know that this world is not the only one. Scientists now believe there may really be a parallel universe - in fact, there may be an infinite number of parallel universes, and we just happen to live in one of them. These other universes contain space, time and strange forms of exotic matter. Some of them may even contain you, in a slightly different form. Astonishingly, scientists believe that these parallel universes exist less than one millimetre away from us. In fact, our gravity is just a weak signal leaking out of another universe into ours.

It all started when superstring theory, hyperspace and dark matter made physicists realise that the three dimensions we thought described the Universe weren't enough. There are actually 11 dimensions. By the time they had finished they'd come to the conclusion that our Universe is just one bubble among an infinite number of membranous bubbles which ripple as they wobble through the eleventh dimension.

Alongside comes the idea that these "parallel universes" can be human-created computer worlds, like Second Life or Counter-Strike. According to the scientists, even book and film heroes "live" in these book and film worlds "led by the godlike imagination of their creators - writers and film directors". Remember "Last Action Hero" with Arnold Schwarzenegger, when a boy came into the film world and acted like a hero?

Scientists are right. There are countless worlds we live and even more we can't imagine, but somehow can influence them. We CAN create them!

You may not know it, but you're a Jedi - at least according to the thousands of people who compare their own faiths to the spirituality of "Star Wars."

According to the character Obi-wan Kenobi, a Jedi knight: "The Force is what gives the Jedi his power. It's an energy field created by all living things. It surrounds us and penetrates us."

There are definite connections between the Tao and The Force. Yoda said The Force is everywhere - the tree, the rock - and binds all things together. The Tao is called "the Mother of All Things" and is described as humble, the giver of life, patient, and so forth.

Tao, often translated as the way or the path, is the ineffable, eternal, creative reality that is the source and end of all things. Te refers to the manifestation of Tao within all things. Thus, to fully possess Te, one must be in perfect harmony with one's original nature.

Take the scene from the first Star Wars movie, where Obi-wan Kenobi is teaching Luke Skywalker the "ways of the Force" on Han Solo's Millennium Falcon. Luke is trying hard to avoid laser blasts from a remote, but fails miserably. When Obi-wan Kenobi places a blaster helmet on his head so he can't see, he easily deflects the remote's laser blasts.

Luke Skywalker turns off his targeting computer to take a shot at the first Death Star. That's really Taoist.

The last battle scene when Luke blows up the Death Star is interesting too. Several deliberate attempts by the Rebels, using a targeting computer, end in failure. But when Luke, once again listens to Obi-wan Kenobi to "use the Force", he turns off the device and takes a successful shot.

But we won't go deep into philosophy. Instead let's think about this force in terms of its reality. What is used to complete the hardest projects, to hit the goals seen by others as unrealistic or very complicated? Some sort of energy. Energy of your mind. Energy that unites all living creatures and that can do miracles.

This energy can be trained by meditation, by mental excersise, by your life experience. It exists for you to use it.

May the Force be with You!

Person's pursuit for happiness in modern world is tightly connected with the idea of owning and consuming. It is believed that delusion that genuine happiness can be found this way. According to the 1999 UNHDR, the percentage of Americans who considered themselves happy peaked in 1957, despite the fact that consumption per person has more than doubled since then. At the same time, studies of U.S. households have found that between 1986 and 1994 the amount of money people think they need to live happily has doubled! That seems paradoxical, but it is not difficult to explain: when we define ourselves as consumers, we can never have enough. For reasons we never quite understand, consumerism never really gives us what we want from it; it works by keeping us thinking that the next thing we buy will satisfy us.

Higher incomes have certainly enabled many people to become more generous, but this has not been their main effect, because capitalism is based upon a very different principle: that capital should be used to create more capital. Rather than redistributing our wealth, we prefer to invest that wealth as a means to accumulate more and spend more, regardless of whether or not we need more. In fact, the question of whether or not we really need more has become rather quaint; you can never be too rich.

From the other hand, poverty is a source of unhappiness in itself and also makes it more difficult to grow spiritually and intellectually. Who would pay for Internet and electricity? So, some wealth IS needed for a person to be happy not to borrow, mounting debts and ever-increasing suffering.

But the truth is in the middle. Not growing consumerism or poverty makes a person unhappy. That's why I would like to quote Dalai Lama: "I was thinking for whole my life: what is necessary for happiness? And came up with the conclusion: nothing can be done without freedom. Everything else is secondary, even faith..."

Since most early literate civilisations were located around the warm Mediterranean region, the first mention of an iceberg in world literature did not come until the ninth century A.D., when an account of the travels of the Irish monk St. Brendan in the North Atlantic, three centuries before, appeared. It mentioned that he saw a "floating crystal castle." What else could that have been?

The way people get aquainted with something new, describing it with the words they used for other phenomena, we are trying to describe the creative force of the human mind - Imagination. Why capitalized? Because Imagination is the most pervasive thing, a kind of energy to shape the world we know. It can be developed and used to organize and innovate the environment. Imagination sees, foresees and being applied creates. GlobalPuzzle makes it possible for you to develop this Universe driving force. The GlobalPuzzle territory is purposely unmapped for you to create it and seek for the treasures your imagination hides by solving the wisdom pieces and challenging the world with that of yours.

As Robert Anton Wilson, a writer, says: "The development of the highly developed is a matter of highly developed only".

Imagine the sound of one hand. It's from famous zen koan "Two hands clap and there is a sound; what is the sound of one hand?" How can you imagine the thing containing aspects that are inaccessible to rational understanding? This is the puzzle!

According to buddhist teachings, there are a lot of dimensions a human lives in. Actually, these dimensions correspond to the senses a human body has - the world of the visible, the world of sounds, the world of tastes, the world of tactile senses, the world of scents, and the world of the inner perception (emotions, intuition). They are also the sources of the life energy. Zen puzzles, or koans, can be accessible only to intuition. To our sixth sense.

How can we answer koan having such an imperfect instrument as words? Koan can be solved only if you are in the buddhalike state of mind, when you understand that the only way to percept the unimaginable is to use your sixth sense. Zen buddhists promise Enlightenment to those who solve a koan. What does it mean? It means the way out of your artificial mind boundaries which were created by the way of thinking you got used to. Difficult to comprehend, but try. Try to solve at least one koan and see the results.

GlobalPuzzle is such a koan until it is solved. It is designed to combine the questions and the answers that are of all the mind accessible spheres. The access level depends on one thing - your imagination.