The task of the human soul is simply to return from its exile in our shadowy, less-than-real material world to an ecstatic union with the One Source of all reality.

Each of us is an individual manifestation of the collective world-soul … we are also and paradoxically contained by the world-soul, like droplets in the ocean.

The trick is to cultivate “double vision” … A sense of metaphor, of translation - of two worlds interpenetrating - must be maintained. But this is also the essential movement of the imagination. We see through the literal world to the shape-shifting Otherworld behind.

Soul is what turns ordinary events into experiences; what imparts to the passing moment depth, connection, and resonance … The effect is unmistakable: an experience of stillness in our heads and, in our hearts, a fullness … Soul is what is transmitted and received in the experience that we call love.

The way of soul, we notice, is downward rather than the upward flight of the mystic.

However much we wish the soul’s path to be straight, upward, and ascending, it is more likely to be meandering, full of regressions, downward turns, and backward glances.

Ideologies can only ever hope to change our lifestyles; it takes soul to change our lives.

The paradox is that we can only truly love each other when we also love something beyond each other.