What is the relationship of the obvious things that we see around us to the things that we believe we understand within ourselves? This is the ancient alchemical formula: "as above, so below, as within, so without."

Consciousness is the creative element in the universe. Without it, nothing would appear.

I believe, or sense, that the universe has not been constructed from a purely mechanical, logical, rational point of view, but there is a magic afoot in the universe, that God can be looked at as a kind of a magician in which we get to perform tricks ourselves, without knowing that we're doing so.

The place where...knowledge occurs is the present. That which recognizes the present is mind.

When I worked with various healers of one kind or another, very often what came up was that there was an "inner" person who was controlling what was going on in the life of the "outer" person, who thinks he's in control of his life. That inner person has a vested interest in keeping the person from getting well, so the healing doesn't take place.

What I thought was unreal now, for me, seems in some ways to be more real than what I think to be real, which seems now to be unreal

We find that alchemy has to do with magicians or magic and may even have roots in the Chaldean people who lived in the land that we now call Iraq.Abraham emerged and took a flock of people with him into Egypt. They were later called the Hebrews because of the valleys that they came out of. The alchemy that they saw was a transformative power within the individuals to affect the "out there" reality - and that, of course, is the basis of shamanism and is the basis for most magical and so-called Third World belief systems.