To learn is to change.

It's fitting, then, that we begin this exploration of ourselves and of the world with music, and more specifically with a musical quality called vibrato. This pulsation that wells up within the sounded note can lead us to what is most spontaneous and creative in human life, and possibly even to deeper mysteries--to powers of knowing and doing which we have lost or given away during the epoch of civilization, and which perhaps we may now regain.

There is a human striving for self-transcendence. It's part of what makes us human. With all of our flaws we want to go a little bit further than we've gone before and maybe even further than anyone else has gone before.

Everything was God, holy; as God is total, so the driftwood branch was holy. This must be the stuff religion is made of.

For the atom's soul is nothing but energy. Spirit blazes in the dullest of clay. The life of every woman or man - the heart of it - is pure and holy joy.

Even without comparing ourselves to the world's greatest, we set such high standards for ourselves that neither we nor anyone else could ever meet them-and nothing is more destructive to creativity than this. We fail to realize that mastery is not about perfection. It's about a process, a journey. The master is the one who stays on the path day after day, year after year. The master is the one who is willing to try, and fail, and try again, for as long as he or she lives.

The simplest single-celled organism oscillates to a number of different frequencies, at the atomic, molecular, sub-cellular, and cellular levels. Microscopic movies of these organisms are striking for the ceaseless, rhythmic pulsation that is revealed. In an organism as complex as a human being, the frequencies of oscillation and the interactions between those frequencies are multitudinous.