It is commonly said and known that each civilization has its own religion. Now my claim is that if we look deeper, the different civilizations were brought into being by the different revelations.

People are not losing their religious needs, but they are going to three places to get their needs met. One is to conservative churches, which, for all their social benightedness, nevertheless do present their congregations with a different view of reality. Second, they are going to Asian religions. Third, they are going to the New Age, which when I'm feeling cynical I refer to as "New Age frivolity," because some of it is rather flaky.

Swami Ashokananda was a brilliant and accomplished spiritual teacher in the West.

I'm not a chauvinist. I'm a universalist. I think that God imploded, like a spiritual big bang, to launch the eight civilizations that make up recorded history and the religions in those civilizations.

...primal people see the objects of this world not (or not only) as solid but as open windows to their divine source.

The first koan do not have rational answers. They are techniques devised over the millennia for triggering an actual experience.

Religion teaches us that our lives here on earth are to be used for transformation.