The Enlightenment was an attempt to liberate myth and base truth claims on evidence, not just dogma. But when science threw out the church, they threw out the baby with the bath water.

The great and rare mystics of the past . . . were, in fact, ahead of their time, and are still ahead of ours. In other words, they most definitely are not figures of the past. They are figures of the future.

For what we don't realize today is just what the typical self of every previous stage failed likewise to comprehend: this is not the highest and greatest mode of consciousness which can be attained - there lie ahead the realms of the superconscious and the pitiful ego, by comparison, is as a speck of nothingness.

The point of the overall meditative path is to have Wakefulness (or Consciousness as Such) transcend and include all state-realms, so it ceases to "black out" or "forget" various changes of state (such as dreaming and deep sleep), and instead recognizes a "constant Consciousness" or ever-present nondual Awareness, the union (and transcendence) of individual finite self and infinite Spirit.

The integral vision embodies an attempt to take the best of both worlds, ancient and modern. But that demands a critical stance willing to reject unflinchingly the worst of both as well.

The mystics ask you to take nothing on mere belief. Rather, they give you a set of experiments to test in your own awareness and experience. The laboratory is your own mind, the experiment is meditation.

One of the extraordinary things about awakening is that it carries with it the realization that there is only Spirit. Even the things of the world that we look at as problems are simply part of the way the world manifests, because it does so in terms of opposites.