There Must Be No Coercion In Matters

If It Is Written And Read With Serious Attention, A Novel, Like A Myth Or Any Great Work Of Art, Can Become An Initiation That Helps Us To Make A Painful Rite Of Passage From One Phase Of Life, One State Of Mind, To Another. A Novel, Like A Myth, Teaches Us To See The World Differently; It Shows Us How To Look Into Our Own Hearts And To See Our World From A Perspective That Goes Beyond Our Own Self-interest.

The First Person To Promulgate The Golden Rule, Which Was The Bedrock Of This Empathic Spirituality, Was Confucius 500 Years Before Christ.

The Constant Reprimands Made Me Hyperconscious Of My Own Performance, And So Instead Of Getting Rid Of Self, I Had Become Embedded In The Egoism I Was Supposed To Transcend. Now I Was Beginning To Understand That A Silence That Is Not Clamorous With Vexation And Worried Self-regard Can Become Part Of The Texture Of Your Mind, Can Seep Into You, Moment By Moment, And Gradually Change You.

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.

Jewish, Christian, And Muslim Theologians Have Insisted For Centuries That God Does Not Exist And That There Is 'nothing' Out There; In Making These Assertions, Their Aim Was Not To Deny The Reality Of God But To Safeguard God's Transcendence.