Des Moines, IA -- (ReleaseWire) -- 02/24/2014 --"What is the meaning of life?" is a question each of us asks at least once in our life.

Philosopher and author T. E. Whitaker has attempted to answer the most basic question of our existence in his new book, "Why Am I? How to Find the Meaning of Life without God or Gurus."

"There is no 'meaning of life' that applies to all of us," Whitaker says. "There's the meaning of your life, and there's the meaning of my life. We all have different experiences and thoughts, and we each have a separate consciousness. So how can the meaning of life be 'one size fits all'?"

The idea for "Why Am I?" began with a simple chat between Whitaker and his brother.

"I asked my brother what I was doing wrong, why things weren't working out for me the way I thought they should," Whitaker recalls. "He had some excellent and harsh advice. It put me on the path to determining the meaning of my own life."

To write the book, Whitaker blueprinted his own experience.

"Once I’d determined the meaning of my life and, almost simultaneously, the purpose of my life and how I was going to pursue that purpose, I had to figure out what had just happened. For 'Why Am I?' I reverse-engineered the questions I'd asked myself over the course of several days."

But how did he know the resulting process would work?

"After committing the questions to paper," Whitaker says, "I went through the process again, to be sure it worked. My version of quality control, I suppose. The questions successfully guide readers through the process of self-analysis so that, by the end of the book, readers know and understand themselves better than they did, and have determined what they are going to do with their lives. How many times have you asked yourself, “What am I going to do with my life?” How many times has a friend told you, “I need to figure out what I’m going to do with my life"? That’s what 'Why Am I?' is all about—enabling you to answer that question with certainty."

"Why Am I?" is available February 21 on Kindle and in paperback on February 28. More of this interview can be read here.

"Why Am I" is published by Oddward TKE, Des Moines.