Albert Einstein, one of the foremost geniuses in history, is believed to have said: "The most important decision we make is whether we believe we live in a friendly or hostile universe." This decision shapes a person's worldview – everything around them and everything that they experience. If a person believes the universe is hostile, then they will also be hostile against it, doing everything they can to resist it. On the other hand, if they believe the universe is friendly, then they will seek to understand it and be grateful to it.
In response to this, Will Pye, a transformational coach, speaker, and author, takes the side of a friendly universe, having experienced it himself. In 2011, Pye was diagnosed with a potentially terminal brain tumor. The diagnosis came as a wake-up call for him, as well as an opportunity for profound growth. His experience led him to write his first book: Blessed with a Brain Tumor, which told his story and how a normally tragic event became a joyful and life-changing experience for him. This was followed by The Gratitude Prescription, which shows how people can transform their struggles and suffering by learning to cultivate unconditional thankfulness. Pye is writing his third book, titled The Truth: Healing Depression, Brain Cancer, and Hemiplegia Using the Power of the One Mind, which is scheduled to be released in September 2024. Pye offers coaching services, courses, and retreats, teaching radical gratitude and alchemical entelechy to help people realize their full potential, happiness, and well-being.
According to Pye, his philosophy is, in many respects, a response to the philosophy of ontological materialism and to theologies of a wrathful god waiting to punish us, which presumes that everything, in reality, is primarily physical and that material conditions are the basis of reality.
"From this false assumption of materialism, we imagine that consciousness arises from the brain in some sort of inexplicable and mysterious fashion," Pye says. "Therefore, we have this hard problem of consciousness. How does something immaterial and subjective arise from something that's material and physical? My contention is that consciousness is, in fact, primary. Everything that arises from and within consciousness. So, we're living in a conscious universe that wants to know and expand itself through us."
With regard to Einstein's question, Pye believes that the universe is friendly, and it naturally loves and cares for humans. It wants humans to prosper and expand because human consciousness facilitates the universe's expansion. This also answers the often-asked question about the purpose of human life. He argues that individual lives have one purpose and function, and that is the growth of the individual soul. By expanding and growing soulfully, humans are also expanding their consciousness.
"The universe will be as friendly as we allow it to be within our belief system," he says. "If we believe in a wrathful and judgmental god that's waiting to send us to our eternal damnation or some sort of karmic system of punishment, then we are creating the very circumstances and experiences that we may not desire but are in accordance with our beliefs. This view casts us as far more powerful and creative beings than either atheistic or common theistic worldviews. This creativity and power is evidenced in medical studies that demonstrate the placebo effect and the field of epigenetics where we understand how our genes express, not predetermined by a blueprint as such but via environmental influences, including the thoughts and feelings that arise in the human body,"
Pye cites the work of neuropsychologist Dr Rick Hanson, which says the human brain has a negativity bias, where it is hardwired to remember negative experiences more than positive ones, as an evolutionary survival mechanism. Hanson likened the human mind to Teflon for positive experiences but like Velcro for negative experiences, adding that we can arrive at a friendly universe by practicing gratitude and correcting our negativity bias.
"For me, gratitude is a necessary balance and practice of mental hygiene that really helps the mind and see just how abundant and beautiful our lives are. I personally experienced that in my own journey from depression to joy and purpose. This was followed by the diagnosis of a brain tumor when I was 31, which I experienced through the lens of that philosophy. One key aspect of my philosophy is that, as the universe expands, we take on challenges and difficulties that ultimately serve us and the whole."
Pye says there are 2 concepts from Carl Jung that played a huge role in shaping his worldview. The first is synchronicity, with Pye experiencing a huge number of synchronistic phenomena in his life at critical times, such as pointing him in the direction of a particular healer or reframing a particular challenge, serving as evidence of how everything is arising within one friendly consciousness. The second concept is enantiodromia, or the idea that all phenomena, given sufficient time, will become their opposite. Just like night turns to day or summer turns to winter, dysphoria will eventually become euphoria.
"The Western mindset, with its beliefs grounded in ontological materialism and a random, meaningless universe is a very depressing worldview, especially for someone suffering in darkness and depression," Pye says. "The Western paradigm also overly relies on medications, even when we know that many of those medications are ineffective and often do far more harm than good. I want to introduce people to a view that their depression is not primarily a physical or biochemical issue, but rather something far deeper and more profound and sacred than that, offering them a practical path to resolve it through self-discovery, gratitude practice, and meditation."
