Book excerpt: Is the world around us alive or is it dead? If the widely held belief were true--that matter is the basis of all we know as reality--then life would make no sense. The world would essentially be dead--an absurd notion! What we know as life would be an unexplainable phenomenon, an astounding but accidental miracle. Does this sound familiar? In the undeniable presence of life, this belief can never truly make sense. It demands faith. Thus materialism is superstition. If we dare to entertain the notion--albeit akin to a modern heresy--that life (being), not matter, is the foundation of what we know as reality, then both matter and life make perfect sense. Karsten Massei--who is exceptionally sensitive to the invisible beings of life that surround us always and everywhere--offers a gentle but powerful call, from those beings themselves, to discard superstition and begin to awake to the reality of life. As beings of the living Earth, we have certain responsibilities, too long neglected. The Earth is not an abstraction--a dead "rock" hurtling through space--but a living being. The elemental beings, who are intimately, intrinsically connected to the living Earth and to the living human race, suffer from our indifference, egoism, and ignorance of life, but they have much to teach us and patiently await our attention. "Know your environment!" It can begin with this book.