Rainn Wilson of 'The Office' Visits Mountain View

Rainn Wilson, more commonly known as the character Dwight Schrute from the hit sitcom "The Office," may play a crazy, lovable salesman on television, but there's another side to him that many may not know about.

That other, elusive side comes out in SoulPancake: Chew On Life's Big Questions, a book he co-authored with Devon Gundry, Golriz Lucina and Shabnam Mogharabi, with whom he also co-founded the website SoulPancake.com.

Wilson was greeted by a huge crowd of enthusiastic fans when he popped by on Castro Street Thursday night to sign copies of the book and discuss the ideas behind it and SoulPancake.com.

The premise behind SoulPancake is to explore life's big questions--but instead of giving the answers, the book encourages readers to think through the issues themselves.

At Thursday night's event, Wilson discussed how SoulPancake.com got its start.

“We wanted to do something to make the Internet a better place," he explained. "The Internet is mostly a lot of car insurance ads. It’s just a lot of crap. It’s just kind of the worse of humanity, and we wanted to do something uplifting and interesting. [SoulPancake.com] is a place for people to upload their minds and download their souls."

On SoulPancake.com, users discuss life and bond together over common issues. They can post questions that happen to be on their mind and start a conversation with the SoulPancake community.

The book, inspired by what blossomed out of SoulPancake.com, brings an even bigger audience to the online community and encourages readers to think about their beliefs. This is accomplished through exercises including a concept called "reverse pick-pocketing"–sneaking money or an inspirational quote into someone’s bag, rather than taking it out.

At Thursday night's book signing event, Wilson spoke candidly to the audience, and said, the idea of exploring life’s big questions was always a part of him, but "when I had the opportunity to become well-known because of The Office, I thought, ‘we have a chance here to do something really special with this.’”

And so, SoulPancake was born. Both the book and website have been well received, and many of the event's attendees expressed their gratitude for its creation.

Wilson spoke with the crowd, made them laugh and answered their burning questions, included many that pried into his beliefs. He offered a unique view to the idea of creativity, explaining to the massive crowd--crammed tightly into all corners of the bookstore--that what kills his creativity is getting inside his head, or over-thinking. Creative people, he said, are always striving for more, which begs the question, can we ever be truly happy?

“Don’t get me started on ‘happy,’” he said to the crowd. Instead, Wilson suggested a more attainable goal--he explained that people can obtain a “deep soul satisfaction,” rather than a happiness that is always just being pursued. That way, people can still search but be satisfied at the same time.

One curious attendee asked Wilson what Dwight, his quirky character on "The Office," would think of SoulPancake. Wilson laughed, “Dwight would think SoulPancake is a colossal waste of time.”

It’s a good thing most people don't agree with Dwight.

SoulPancake is available at bookstores for $19.99. "That’s the cost of a latte!” Wilson joked.

Users can sign up to be a part of the SoulPancake community for free at SoulPancake.com.