the mind

After the slaughter in Paris I called a Portuguese friend in the Azores who had lived for nearly 20 years in California. We hadn’t talked in nearly half a year,…

Despite the recent floods in southern California that may foretell a hellacious El Nino winter, traveling from a state where water has become scarce to a state where rain is…

To contact the numinous, one has to forget experiences, not accumulate them. And peak religious experiences are the most important experiences to forget.

Do our conceptions of the mind determine emotional states, or even influence them to any significant degree? Or is the globalizing culture, manifesting through family, friends and oneself, much more…

With the first step out of the car, the feeling of early spring at about 1000 meters in the mountains is palpable. Despite the drought, the small reservoir is about…

Overhanging the gorge are great angular outcroppings of volcanic rock—solid and sharp-edged protrusions from some long-ago eruption of Lassen or some other volcano in the area.

After a light all-night rain, the clouds cleared and the sun made a welcome appearance in the early afternoon. People got outside and into the parkland in droves, including me.…

As hard as it is to emotionally perceive, one’s country is not the world; the world is not man; man is not humanity; and humanity is not the universe.