My view of our planet was a glimpse of divinity.

Unfortunately, religions have become a part of the problem instead of part of the solution. We have fought our wars in the name of God, questioning whose God is the best God and whose exploration of this deeper reality is the best explanation. That defies everything that this deeper reality teaches.

I have been a strong proponent of helping people understand that during the last decade or so, as it lies at the very bottom of how we know anything. Let me give a couple examples to get that point across.

Space exploration must be undertaken not only out of simple human curiosity but also to further the survival of the species. The twentieth century has seen the unprecedented development and proliferation of magnificent technologies. Many of them, through design, ignorance, or misuse, are capable of destroying life as well as enhancing it. Space exploration alone holds the promise of eventual escape from a dying planet, provided we wisely manage our resources in the meantime and actually survive that long.

The downside was that for 400 years, science has grown up, has arisen and developed as a purely materialist concept and avoided the subject of mind and consciousness, leaving it to the realm of religion. Only with the founding of quantum science in the early part of the 20th century have we realized that the Cartesian Duality is wrong, that body, mind, physicality do interact and they're interrelated.

Our success and our understanding is that all beings are right inside, the deeper we go inside ourselves. There's a saying that Unity uses that I have always liked: "Let there be peace on earth, and let it begin with me." We all have to be a part of this. We have to be the initiator. We can't wait.

The transcendent experience is common to every culture in the world.