The Sufis say there are three ways to know fire - by hearing it described, by seeing it, or by being burned.

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

Walnuts have a shell, and they have a kernel. Religions are the same. They have an essence, but then they have a protective coating. This is not the only way to put it. But it's my way. So the kernels are the same. However, the shells are different.

In order to live man must believe in that for which he lives.

At the center of the religious life is a peculiar kind of joy, the prospect of a happy ending that blossoms from necessarily painful ordeals, the promise of human difficulties embraced and overcome.

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

Institutions are not pretty. Show me a pretty government. Healing is wonderful, but the American Medical Association? Learning is wonderful, but universities? The same is true for religion... religion is institutionalized spirituality.