True pluralism on the other hand, is always universal pluralism, (or integral-aperspectival): you start with the commonalities and deep structures that unite human beings--we all suffer, and triumph, laugh and cry, feel pleasure and pain, wonder and remorse; we all have the capacity to form images, symbols, concepts, rules; we all have 208 bones, two kidneys, and one heart; we are all open to a Divine Ground, by whatever name.  And then you add all the wonderful differences, surface structures, culturally constructed variants, and so on, that make various groups--and various individuals--all different, special, and unique.  But if you start with the differences and the pluralism, and never make it to the universal, then you have only the aprespectival madness, ethnocentric revivals, regressive catastrophes.

 I read the first chapter of A Brief History of Time when Dad was still alive, and I got increadibly heavy boots about how relatively insignificant life is, and how compared to the universe and compared to time, it didn't even matter if I existed at all.  When Dad was tucking me in that night and we were talking about the book, I asked if he could think of a solution to that problem.  "Which problem?"  "The problem of how relatively insignificant we are."  He said, "Well, what would happen if a plane dropped you in the middle of the Sahara Desert and you picked up a single grain of sand with tweezers and moved it one millimeter?"  I said, "I'd probably die of dehydration."  He said, "I just mean right then, when you moved that single grain of sand.  What would that mean?"  I said, "I dunno, what?"  He said, "Think about it."  I thought about it.  "I guess I would have moved one grain of sand."  "Which would mean?"  "Which would mean I moved a grain of sand?"  "Which would mean you changed the Sahara."  "So?"  "So?  So the Sahara is a vast desert.  And it has existed for millions of years.  And you changed it!"  "That's true!"  I said, sitting up.  "I changed the Sahara!"  "Which means?"  he said.  "What?  Tell me."  "Well I'm not talking about painting the Mona Lisa  or curing cancer.  I'm just talking about moving that one grain of sand one millimeter."  "Yeah?"  "If you hadn't done it, human history would have been one way..."  "Uh-huh?"  "But you did do it, so...?"  I stood on the bed, pointing one of my fingers at the fake stars, and screamed: "I changed the course of human history!"  "That's right."  "I changed the universe!"  "You did." "I'm God!"  "You're an atheist."  "I don't exist!"  I feel back onto the bed, into his arms, and we cracked up together.

The God content of the past no longer sustains the contemporary spirit.  We sense that our only hope is to journey past those definitions of a God who is external, supernatural, and invasive, which previously defined our belief.  We must discover whether or not the death of the God we worshiped yesterday is the same thing as the death of God.

When we unravel the theological tomes of the ages, the makeup of God becomes quite clear.  God is a human being without human limitations who is read into the heavens.  We disguised this process by suggesting that the reason God was so much like a human being was that the human beings were in fact created in God's image.  However, we now recognize that if was the other way around.  The God of theism came into being as a human creation.  As such, this God, too, was mortal and is now dying.

The task of the church, for example, becomes less that of indoctrinating or relating people to an external divine power and more that of providing opportunities for people to touch the infinite center of all things and to grow into all that they are destined to be.

If we can stay awake when our lives are changing, secrets will be revealed to us--secrets about ourselves, about the nature of life, and about the eternal source of happiness and peace that is always available, always renewable, already within us.

To accept the truth of who you really are takes nothing short of realization.  You have to see the diamond for yourself.

Imagine for a moment you are dreaming.  You are completely engrossed in the dramas of your dreamworld when a mysterious stranger appears in your dream.  He sidles up to you and softly whispers something extraordinary in your ear: "Pssst! Wake up.  You're dreaming."

You are disconcerted but you keep your cool.  You know the best way to deal with people who are clearly out of the box is to nod politely and hope they will go away.  But the stranger is persistent.  "I know it sounds mad to you right now, but you're dreaming."

You feel irritated: "That's absurd!" The stranger is unperturbed: "Is it really absurd?  Haven't you noticed how full of significant patterns and strange coincidences your experience is?  As if there is some hidden meaning?  Well, that's because this is a dream."

You become angry:  "What!  Are you saying that this world is just some kind of unreal delusion?  I find that offensive.  Tell that to all those people who are suffering!"  The stranger is patient: "Of course this world is real.  It is a real dreamworld.  Its wonders are truly wonderful and its horrors are truly horrible.  I'm not dismissing it.  I'm simply pointing out that it's a dream."

"That's how love got lost,"  he said. "When we started laying down rules for when love should or shouldn't appear."

History will never change because of politics or conquests or theories or wars; that's mere repitition, it's been going on since the beginning of time.  History will only change when we are able to use the energy of love, just as we use energy of the wind, the seas, the atom.