The Great Task Of Our Time Is

Religion Is Hard Work. Its Insights Are Not Self-evident And Have To Be Cultivated In The Same Way As An Appreciation Of Art, Music, Or Poetry Must Be Developed.

Nirvana Is Something Within You. It Is Not An External Reality. No God Thunders Down From The Mountaintop. Just As The Great Mystics In The Christian, Jewish And Muslim Faiths All Discovered, God Is Within The Self. God Is Virtually Inseparable From Ourselves.

If We Try To Hold On To Our Partial Glimpses Of The Divine, We Cut It Down To Our Own Size And Close Our Minds. Like It Or Nor, Our Human Experience Of Anything Or Anybody Is Always Incomplete: There Is Usually Something That Eludes Us, Some Portion Of Experience That Evades Our Grasp.

He [aristotle] Pointed Out That People Who Had Become Initiates In The Various Mystery Religions Were Not Required To Learn Any Facts 'but To Experience Certain Emotions And To Be Put In A Certain Disposition.' Hence His Famous Literary Theory That Tragedy Effected A Purification (katharsis) Of The Emotions Of Terror And Pity That Amounted To An Experience Of Rebirth.

Compassion Is Not A Popular Virtue