The realist claim that awareness of the world arises from the world, and the idealist claim that the world arises from awareness might both be mistaken in their dualist assumption that mind and matter are separate. Mystics seemingly claim they are united in a nondual awareness without an object.

The movie Seven involved a serial killer whose victims exemplified the Seven Deadly Sins. At the Hollywood premiere a celebrity was asked her opinion, and said, “I didn’t know pride was a sin.”

And who can blame her? No one cautious us now to enjoy our good fortune, but never to take credit for it.

I don’t think God helps those who help themselves. God helps me when I get out of God‘s way and stop trying to arrange things the way I want. My attempts to solve problems always spawn new problems I hadn’t foreseen and that frustrate the attempt. God’s elegant solutions arrive just as unexpectedly.

Some say that objectivity turns scientists into cold-hearted robots. But a scientist who objectively suspends their commitment to a belief in order to test it is merely acknowledging that they might be wrong. Objectivity is a form of humility, and is the common ground uniting science and religion.

Consider the following experiment: A group of researchers run experiments to test their hypotheses. Some researchers are more objective than others. What if the more objective researchers had their hypotheses confirmed more often? What if such objectivity enhances rather than deters subjectivity?

There’s an untested assumption within the scientific method which, if mistaken, would permit the reality of both divine intervention and mystical union without contradicting any currently accepted scientific observations and experimental results. Regrettably the scientific method cannot test itself.

It is not, as some idealists claim, that the external world is not real. It is that the real world is not external. The self is merely a belief in autonomy which is subjectively confirmed by the illusion of externality. Abandoning that belief dissolves the illusion to reveal mystical nonduality.

How was God first discovered?

A hunter-gatherer who noticed that his problems solved themselves when, instead of his trying to solve them, he calmly accepted their inevitability, might conclude he was being helped by an omniscient, omnipotent, and invisible friend who insisted only on his trust.

“ Thy will be done.”

The next time you foresee a problem, try this: calmly leave yourself vulnerable to it, planning to deal with it as best you can when it arrives, and let God decide to solve it or not, however is best.

Accepting the world is more effective than forcing it to do as you wish.

The scientific method assumes that subjectivity, the tendency of our beliefs to confirm themselves in our perceptions, can be deterred by objectivity, the intentional suspension of beliefs. What if experimental objectivity enhanced the likelihood of the researcher’s hypothesis being confirmed?

Why doesn't violence ever work as well as we think?

Violence is the great broken promise of realism. If the world were as real and external to us as it looks, then violence should change things just as we always expect it to. But the external world is not real, and the real world is not external.