Re: your words wring thru me like some kind of sonnet

Not my words; Rosa Luxemburg's. No spiritual path? That depends on what you mean. I don't believe in a spiritual reality beyond the visible world. I regard the notion as complete nonsense. I am quite the positivist in that regard. At the same time, science is about facts. It can tell us how a given end is to be reached; what it can't tell us is that one end is to be preferred to another. I begin from the premise: I do not want to be in chains. And from that experience, I can shift my point of view and say: no one wants to be in chains; and can shift still further to: no living creature wants to be in chains. This shift in point of view, this possibility of brotherhood, empathy, and love, such as is displayed in Rosa Luxemburg's beautiful words, rests on no metaphysical basis, nor could any such be furnished. It is clearly intrinsic to us as beings capable of taking the point of view of the universe; and I find all this fascinating and somewhat mysterious.