[Rumi] is trying to get us to feel the vastness of our true identity... like the sense you might get walking into a cathedral.

I think we all have a core that's ecstatic, that knows and that looks up in wonder. We all know that there are marvelous moments of eternity that just happen. We know them.

[Rumi] is trying to get us to feel the vastness of our true identity... like the sense you might get walking into a cathedral.

It's such a foolish thing to argue about names, when what we're doing is all one thing.

I had been a kind of natural mystic my whole life, growing up there in Tennessee next to the river. Somehow, that was important for my consciousness. I still don't study [mysticism]. I just wait for experiences.

Anything you grab hold of on the bank breaks with the river's pressure. When you do things from your soul, the river itself moves through you. Freshness and a deep joy are signs of the current.

The religions of the world are luminous in their individuality, and they have valuable social and soulmaking functions. Surely someday we will quit killing each other over their different strategies.