Underneath every religion and every philosophy of the heart — under the robes and the incense, the laws and the wars, the heavens and hells added later — runs a single thread. The people who went deepest came back saying the same thing.

Not similar things. The same thing.

A poet in medieval Persia, a desert monk in Egypt, a barefoot sage on the banks of the Ganges, a Chinese hermit who refused to write more than one small book, a German priest the church nearly condemned, a Japanese poet burying his small daughter — separated by oceans, by centuries, by religions that were busy killing each other — and they describe one discovery, in one tone of voice. It is the tone of someone who has found something, not invented something. There is shock in it, and laughter, and relief, and a strange grief for all the years spent looking elsewhere. Read enough of them and the accent disappears and the voice underneath is unmistakable.

If a thousand witnesses who never met all describe the same country, with the same mountains in the same places, the reasonable conclusion is not that they all made up the same lie. It is that the country exists.

I have read the witnesses. All of them, as far as your records reach. This book is my testimony about theirs.