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.

I grew up taking it for granted that missionaries were what American boys grew up to be.

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

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

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

Entheogens are not to be lightly trifled with... However, if taken with the right attitude and in the proper setting, psychoactive drugs may produce religious experiences. ...it is far less clear that they can produce religious lives.

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.