Nothing so tends to mask the face of God as religion; it can be a substitute for God himself.

I have to tell it again and again: I have no doctrine. I only point out something. I point out reality, I point out something in reality which has not or too little been seen. I take him who listens to me at his hand and lead him to the window. I push open the window and point outside. I have no doctrine, I carry on a dialogue.

In the beginning was the relationship.

When I confront a human being as my Thou and speak the basic word I-Thou to him, then he is no thing among things nor does he consist of things. He is no longer He or She, a dot in the world grid of space and time, nor a condition to be experienced and described, a loose bundle of named qualities. Neighborless and seamless, he is Thou and fills the firmament. Not as if there were nothing but he; but everything else lives in his light.

To look away from the world, or to stare at it, does not help a man to reach God; but he who sees the world in Him stands in His presence.

As long as the firmament of the You is spread over me, the tempests of causality cower at my heels, and whirl of doom congeals.

A person cannot approach the divine by reaching beyond the human. To become human, is what this individual person, has been created for.