Why did humans evolve with religion, with the capacity to experience spiritual ecstasy, to deeply feel that there is this Whole? Because it was rewarded, it worked and continued. Why? Because of the Actuality. We need to grasp and grapple with our environment — its strange ways and our lack of ultimate control.

Nature is full of patterns and we humans love finding them, creating them, repeating them. That’s at the core of language, math, music, and even ritual, which is the repetition of words or actions deemed worthy of representing something bigger than ourselves. Some rituals are very private, some are very public. Some are so commonplace we don’t even

The instinctive rapport with an enigmatic cosmos at once both nourishing and dangerous lies at the ancient heart of all that we have come to call “the sacred.”