André Costa

“Do not believe this book because it speaks with confidence.

Do not reject it because it speaks of God.

Do not accept it because it moves you.

Do not dismiss it because it unsettles you.

Read slowly.

Question everything.

Test every idea against reason, experience, conscience, and Reality.

Truth does not require protection from honest criticism. What is true will remain true after examination. What is false should be allowed to fall.

This book does not ask you to surrender your mind. It asks you to use it fully.

It does not ask you to abandon science, philosophy, faith, or doubt. It asks whether each of them, when pursued honestly, may be looking toward the same Reality from different places.

You may find words here that resemble what you already believe. Look beyond the resemblance.

You may find words that contradict what you have been taught. Do not reject them for that reason alone.

Agreement is not understanding.

Disagreement is not refutation.

The purpose of reading is not to defend the person you were before opening the book. It is to discover whether there is something you have not yet seen.

No reader is asked to follow the author.

No reader is asked to join a movement.

No reader is asked to call this revelation.

The only invitation is this:

Seek what is true.

Keep what survives honest examination.

Release what does not.

And remember that the value of a book is not measured by the authority it claims, but by the clarity it brings, the questions it awakens, and the life it helps the reader to live.

Enter, therefore, neither as a believer nor as an enemy.

Enter as a witness.

The book is before you.

Reality will judge it.”