The ubiquitous human ego is actually not an “I” at all; it is merely an “it.” Seeing through this illusion reveals an endless Cosmic Joke, in which the human tragedy itself is part of the comedy. The irony of human experience is in how fiercely the ego fights to preserve the illusion of being a separate, individual “I,” even though this is not only

Humanity could be called an affliction with which we are all burdened. We do not remember asking to be born, and we inherited a mind so limited that it is hardly capable of distinguishing between that which embraces life and that which leads to death.3 The whole struggle of life is in transcending this myopia. We cannot enter into higher levels of

We pray to God to relieve us of the burden of our sins, and by confession, we look for relief. Remorse seems woven into the fabric of life. How can salvation be possible, then, for those who have unwittingly become ensnared in such destructive influences? In fact, however, even from a merely scientific viewpoint, salvation is indeed possible; in

Wisdom tells us that one worships either heaven or hell and will eventually become the servant of one or the other. Hell is not a condition imposed by a judgmental God, but rather the inevitable consequence of one’s own decisions. Hell is the final outcome of constantly choosing the negative and thus isolating oneself from love and truth.

recognition of our addictions has never given us the power to control them.

The intellect, contrary to its delusions of grandeur, not only lacks the ability to recognize falsehood, but lacks the necessary power to defend itself, even if it had the capacity of discernment. Is it irreverent, in light of history’s enormous accretion of works of intellectual speculation, to say that man’s vaunted capacity of reason lacks that

By humbly surrendering to this awareness, man may be forearmed. When we admit that we are gullible and easily seduced by the senses and deluded by glamour (including intellectual glamour), we have at least the beginning of discernment.

Although Socrates was put to death for teaching this discernment, his teaching remains: obscurity is dispelled by augmenting the light of discernment, not by attacking the darkness.1 The final issue, then, is the problem of how we may best cultivate and preserve the power of moral discernment. Our journey of investigation has finally led us to the

From a social-behavioral viewpoint, as we said, truth is a set of principles by which people live, regardless of what they might say they believe.