The Odyssey Of Elysion

By Douglas C. A. Paula

It all begins when Elysion, a twelve-year-old boy, builds a spaceship and travels to another galaxy. He arrives on an Earth-like planet - a parallel world dominated by animals.

The story takes the reader on a journey both to outer space and into the human mind, outlining the struggles of mankind through their dreams, fears, and frustrations. 

By avoiding the chains of society and opposing it, Elysion always does what he truly wants; and he demonstrates it as the best way to conquer his freedom.

With numerous philosophical and psychological insights, mystery and paradigm shifts, The Odyssey of Elysion leads to various interpretations, encouraging and broadening the way human beings view the world around them and their purpose in it. 

• Language: English
• Publisher: DOUGLAS PAULA
• Release date: Jun 18, 2018
• ISBN: 9781386118541

Book preview

Acknowledgments

To Providence who gave me the initial insight to write The Odyssey of Elysion, and to all those who, directly or indirectly, gave me the inspiration to create the story.

To Eric Wyman, my book editor and backbone of this project. To my brothers and Filipe de Souza, for the support with the publication. To Bai Ying Xue (柏迎雪)for thefinal editing and Nash Makunis for his helpful comments.

Special thanks to my parents and Nivaldo Ribeiro (in memoriam), who gave me the most exciting childhood a boy could ever ask for. None of us could have imagined that those experiences would trigger such a fascinating literary adventure.

Preface

I started writing when I was fourteen. It was a diary I called The Diary of My Thoughts. Every time I had an idea I would write it down there. I was afraid of forgetting my thoughts, and since I considered them too interesting to be wasted, I often made sure that I kept a record of them. Many thoughts, when they are not recorded, can indeed be forgotten and lost forever. And losing my thoughts, to me, would be almost the same as losing a part of myself since I am neither more nor less than the thoughts I have.

I’ve spent over twenty years recording my ideas. I created something like a memory file of my mind. It was the way I found to immortalize my thoughts. From that time on, and for several years, I would only write for myself and most of it was never read by anyone. But later I realized that many of those philosophical insights could perhaps be useful to others. So, I started writing books.

One of these books tells a story, and I named it The Odyssey of Elysion. Einstein was once asked what parents could do in order to make their children intelligent, and he replied, If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales. The reason why he mentioned that came up in a speech when he said Imagination is more important than knowledge. That fact happens because knowledge is somehow limited; we can, for example, reach an estimated number of published books and articles worldwide. The imagination, the creation from the human mind, however, is limitless. Our imagination is so vast that it simply can’t be measured. Our minds are as immense as the universe itself. In fact, I’m certain there are two universes: one in outer space and the other in the human mind.

Without fiction mankind would, in the most optimistic view, stop developing and, in the most tragic one, completely destroy itself. And that is so because everything humans have ever created until now has originated from their imagination. Even the chairs we sit on nowadays were completely nonexistent in the past. But one day, a long time ago, someone thought about a chair. First, he designed it in his mind and then he made it with real materials. Thoughts really become matter. Imagination is real. It’s real from the metaphysical point of view; it’s real in the mind, and it’s also real after we apply it. Humans have the ability to transform their imagination into all kinds of realities, from the 3D reality of our surroundings to virtual reality.

Besides that, having people occupying themselves with good deeds, helps prevent them from evil. Reading good books fills people’s minds with meaningful ideas, and this is indeed a very powerful way to prevent many people from not only wasting their time with trivialities but also from committing crimes. It goes without saying that the countries where the populations have the habit of reading are not only the ones which have the highest standard of living and intellectual minds, but they are also the ones that have the lowest crime rates.

Nevertheless, it’s a unanimous and tragic discovery that in our current century most people don’t read books anymore. The vast majority have replaced books by messages, photos, videos, or computer games. But the content of the information they create, receive, and share is often meaningless, thoughtless, or stupid. If we keep incentivizing people to replace books for electronic gadgets and social media, we will definitely create a generation of idiots who will make this world a living hell, with plenty of ignorance, evil, and stupidity to enslave them in the same jails that they created for themselves.

I’ve met a vast number of people and I’ve read enough biographies to conclude that, in most cases, the first years of life are determinant in shaping who we’ll become. If anyone wants to understand a person’s character all they need to do is ask about his or her childhood. The exceptions I’ve come across are those who, despite not having a supportive environment in their childhood, found the source of their successes through friends or teachers in school, university, or at work. But most of them found the inspiration or courage to pursue their dreams still in their youth.

I’ve also met a great deal of people who spent their lives almost entirely based on the expectations of others rather than on what they really wanted. Both in my readings as well as in life, I’ve discovered that society plays two main roles: one is benevolent and the other is evil. The benevolent one is when good relationships help people achieve their goals; whereas the evil one tries as hard as it can to control others. After being chained by everyone, they find themselves locked in a cage from which escape seems impossible. Despite the fact that freedom is usually hard to achieve, it’s possible when one manages to break the chains that society has placed on them.

Both capitalism and communism have enslaved their citizens. Almost everyone who was raised in a human society has engraved in their minds lifestyles that must be followed if one wants to be happy. But what few can see is that the same source of a person’s happiness is the burden of another. This lack of understanding in regards to people’s individuality is one of the biggest problems of society.

Most of us were raised to believe that the only way to be happy is to study hard, get a job, work hard, become rich, buy a mansion with a big swimming pool and a fancy car, get married, have children, then later on make sure our children also do the same things, then retire, play cards, drink beer, read the news, watch television and die.

On the other hand, life doesn’t need to be this way or, at least, not only this way. In real life, most people have become products that are manufactured in the same mould. They all think almost the same way and do the same things. Nevertheless, each person can be unique in their own way, and that’s the beauty of the diversity in human psychology.

But society teaches us that we should all be the same, and because most people become too busy with the duties of others, they don’t have enough time to think that their lives could be different and that they would be much happier if they followed their own instincts rather than those of others. If they had a better idea of who they were, they would all find out that their talents are beyond their imagination. But since most people don’t know themselves, they spend their whole lives thinking they are not good at anything. And worse than that, they believe when others tell them that it’s true.

No one is right or wrong, everyone is right in their own way. But those who oppose the lifestyle of others, and try to change them, are the ones who are wrong.

The ideal society would be the one in which people would become so interested in their own affairs that they would never feel the need for gossip or trivialities, simply because they would realize that it’s a waste of time. It’s a fact, but it is unfortunately not the way many people behave in the real world, and the reason why many of us spend precious time talking about trivialities or doing useless things is because our knowledge is too limited and our consciousness almost empty. Since we don’t have anything meaningful or interesting in our minds, we waste our time with all kinds of banalities.

But there’s a solution for this issue, and it’s through education. And by education I don’t mean only going to school or university. Most people study and read books only in their youth, and once they start working, get married, or have children they drop their education completely. But education should be a personal decision in support of a lifelong learning. According to the educator and researcher Allen Tough, almost 70% of our learning projects are self-planned. The renowned psychiatrist Carl Jung affirmed, Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate. Nevertheless, according to the theory of the eternal return the future is just a repetition of the past; an eternal cycle of both good and bad. But I truly believe that although a few situations cannot be changed, our future is not completely pre-destined; it’s a conscious and personal choice. We can change our own future if we decide to do it and take action. So, no matter how old we are, most of us can continue to learn if we take it as a personal decision. And lifelong learning is the only path to real learning. Only two decades of studying is certainly not enough to gain a reasonable understanding of the subjects we are interested in. Even when we don’t want to get another degree we can still create our own home university apart from the campus and workplace. It’s a decision to change ourselves for the better. We all need to improve ourselves because, except for our natural instincts, none of us is born knowledgeable. In fact, we are all born completely ignorant about everything. Those who have had a supportive environment are lucky because they don’t need motivation. They already found it and now all they need to do is to continue learning. Most people in the world, however, have to motivate themselves, and most of them simply fail to do it. But when we come across books that can light the fire of knowledge in ourselves, we then receive the motivation we need.

I believe the biggest challenge is to learn how to learn. When we are very young we usually don’t know where nor how to start,