This mini-book is a chapter from my forthcoming book Enlightenment 101: A Guide to God-Realization and Higher Human Culture. The book looks at the experience of enlightenment for the individual and the race. This chapter was begun in dialogue with an online correspondent who argued against what she said is my Eurocentric perspective on culture and in favor of the actions of some environmental extremists seeking to halt Western civilization. It continued with a friend who disputed my claim for the inherent superiority of America in the process of cultural evolution. It begins: Dear C: You...

This mini-book is a chapter from my forthcoming book Enlightenment 101: A Guide to God-Realization and Higher Human Culture. It looks at the experience of enlightenment for the individual and the race. Its subtitle is "Practical Spirituality and Applied Wisdom for Everyday Life." This chapter-letter responded to a 21-year-old college student who wrote to me in a desperate state. He expressed an "unshakable fear of death and absence of God" which left him "totally miserable and confused" because all his ideas about God, life and the universe were in profound doubt. I've identified him only by...