'Blessed are the poor in spirit, for they shall see God' suggested to me a heavenly welfare program for the meek. Today that saying reveals an astute insight into egotism, about how those with swollen pride or vanity cannot see anything larger than themselves.

It would be good if we bore one another's burdens.

Exclusively oral cultures are unencumbered by dead knowledge, dead facts. Libraries, on the other hand, are full of them.

Human intelligence is a reflection of the intelligence that produces everything. In knowing, we are simply extending the intelligence that comes to and constitutes us. We mimic the mind of God, so to speak. Or better, we continue and extend it.

Modern science agrees that the universe consists of vibrations, but sound is more than vibration. Distinct from white noise, sound is vibrations in harmonic proportions, and from the billions of vibrations that are possible, the universe shows a startling, overwhelming preference for the few thousand that make harmonic sense.This is because the One, from which all things issue, is beautiful.

If human life is to survive on this planet, the old dualistic worldview, with people on one side and the environment on the other, must yield to a new vision that connects us with everything else and leads us to care for and take responsibility for it.

I am profoundly moved and persuaded by the near-death experience.