The magical effect of the rite is factual enough, and in no sense illusory. Moreover, it actually works out, just as primitive man supposes, in his hunting successes; only the effect does not proceed via the object but via the subject. The magical rite, like all magic and indeed every higher intention, including those of religion, acts upon the subject who practices the magic or the religion, by altering and enhancing his own ability to act.

Like the bee gathering honey from different flowers, the wise man accepts the essence of different scriptures and sees only the good in all religions.

A person cannot discover through any sort of movement the direction in which he ought to move, and yet every movement is inevitably performed in some direction. In just the same way it is impossible in philosophy or science to use mental effort in order to determine the direction in which such efforts should be made, and yet all mental effort is inevitably performed according to a given direction. It is religion that indicates the direction of such mental effort.

According to faith it follows that in order to comprehend the meaning of life I must renounce my reason, the very thing for which meaning was necessary.

Among the members of various religions I met many deeply moral men with sincere belief. I wished to be a brother to these people. And what happened? The teaching which had promised me unity of all through one faith and through love, that very teaching, speaking through its highest representatives, told me that all those people were living a lie, that the thing which gave them strength of life was a temptation of the devil, and it is we alone who are in possession of the only possible truth. I ...

Surely if men fail to see that if their two convictions (religions) contradict each other, then neither of them possesses the whole truth that constitutes faith.

Grammatically, the term Ahura Mazda is both masculine and feminine. Ahura (the being, the essence) is masculine, and Mazda (the source of wisdom, the super wisdom), is feminine. It is a perfect grammatical construction: a God who is both masculine and feminine, representing the strict equality of men and women which is one of the bases of the Zoroastrian system.

The ultimate word in our English language for that which is transcendent is God. But then you have a concept, don't you see? You think of God as the father. Now, in religions where the god or creator is the mother, the whole world is her body. There is nowhere else. The male god is usually somewhere else. But male and female are two aspects of one principle. The division of life into sexes was a late division. Biologically, the amoeba isn't male and female. The early cells are just cel ...