"As for me, I was raised in a conservative Southern Baptist Church. Yes, really! When I took LSD--yes, really--all that stuff bubbled up from the subconscious. Psychosis. Again and again. I have been an atheist several times. A college friend, ca. 1969, introduced me to mystical religion through a book called "Frontiers of Being," and later, urged me to read Alan Watts. I have been thoroughly psychologized, psychiatrized, and analyzed. Somewhere along the line, I came across "Metaphysical Meditations" by Paramahansa Yogananda and discovered what a REAL religion of love looks like. I added the scholarly stuff later. This dude told me that God was in ME as much as anyone else, and that I could see him in others as well. It's the Truth of truths and King of Secrets. The number of religious trips I've sampled is legion. Advaita Vedanta is the system that brings them all together. Now, I'm sitting in silence every week with the Quakers here in a mid-sized Northern town."