Swallow Your Pride And Admit That We

It Would Be Good If We Bore One Another's Burdens.

As Known Unknowns Become Known; Unknown Unknowns Proliferate; The Larger The Island Of Knowledge, The Longer The Shoreline Of Wonder.

The Word Translated, Koan, It Means A Problem. But It's A Very Special Problem. And To Strip It Down To The Way It Works, You Are Given A Problem Which Has No Rational Solution. There Is A Contradiction Built Into It. One Standard - One Is This Is The Sound Of Two Hands Clapping. What Is The Sound Of One Hand Clapping? And So On. All Right, So The First Thing Is That It Brings Your Rational Mind To An Impasse.

Modernity Sees Humanity As Having Ascended From What Is Inferior To It - Life Begins In Slime And Ends In Intelligence - Whereas Traditional Cultures See It As Descended From Its Superiors. As The Anthropologist Marshall Sahlins Put The Matter: We Are The Only People Who Assume That We Have Ascended From Apes. Everybody Else Take It For Granted That They Are Descended From Gods.

The Heart Of Religion Is Not Altered States But Altered Traits Of Character. For Me, Then, The Test Of A Substance's Religious Worth Or Validity Is Not What Kind Of Far-out Experience It Can Produce, But Is The Life Improved By Its Use? That's The Test. Now, On That Score, If You Remove The "religious Cocoon," The Experiences Don't Seem To Have Much In The Way Of Discernible, Traceable Effects.