The idea of humans being modeled after a greater creator, destined to move on to another spiritual plane isn’t exactly new. But, what if Earth is taken out of the picture? Well, not the idea of Earth, so much as the reality.

Carolyn Gervais, author of the new book I Dreamed I Was Human, started her spiritual journey young—really young.

“I was really little, like five years old, trying to find out how I got here and why I was here. It felt really complicated and chaotic and unsafe because there is just so much going on that a child doesn’t understand,” Gervais said.

She kept asking big questions but no one could answer in a way that satisfied her. They told her God didn’t want us to figure it out. That wasn’t quite good enough.

“I was determined for the rest of my life to search for those answers,” Gervais said, “And I did.”

When she became pregnant at 17, Gervais decided it was time to focus on finding answers. She read books—lots of books—eventually finding Eastern philosophy to be the best fit for her.

“I never took anything I read as complete truth because I realized through all my studies that we see things through our filters, through our perceptions, through our beliefs.”

During her research, Gervais would hold on to themes that she found in multiple sources, and meditate on them.

“What I realized after years is that none of it is real, but all of it is real to the five senses,” Gervais said. “What is creation? It’s not something we see, because whatever is created by the creating force—whatever you want to call that—is energy. Energy cannot die, it cannot decay, it cannot do anything like that except change the way it expresses, which means possibly going into another form. I realized that really, if that’s the case, then this is all an illusion that we keep imagining.”

That means Earth, the entire “reality.” From the trees to the Internet, everything.

“We are all aspects of that one soul that God created as a reflection of himself. And I’m not talking about religion here, I’m talking about spirituality as an energy. From that, we were given free will to create whatever we want to create. Whatever kind of life, world, whatever e wanted to create. As that one soul, we decided with our free will to create a physical world that we call real, but that can only be created in thought," Gervais said, adding "It’s only a dream of what’s real. It’s only a thought that we are envisioning as real. That’s what this life is all about."

So, if this isn’t real, what is?

“What I’ve been trying to do my whole life is see beyond that dream and see who I really am which is that energy,” Gervais said. “I wrote the book in order to express that we look at life and crate our life through our perceptions and our beliefs.

For more on Gervais’ meditations and visit her personal website or the book’s website. I Dreamed I Was Human is available for purchase through Amazon and Barnes and Noble.