"Coerced faith is nothing more than a device for silencing our own inner voices. It distorts our private revelations and epiphanies, if not devaluing them altogether. It is especially devised, however, to protect at all costs the deep doubts and inconsistencies upon which that particular faith is built. In the most radical cases, such false faith can lead to a pathological denial of the self, fanaticism, war, and terrorism, as it has in the past.

"Each person is born with a spiritual and biological faith that is personal, intimate, and optimistic. Real faith springs from innate awareness of our connectedness with all living beings, with nature and All That Is. It requires only that we retrieve that child part in each of us that knows the universe is good. Not good and evil, not even good and bad. Just good. It is knowing that every consciousness is uniquely meaningful and charged with purpose. That survival beyond the body is the only possible outcome. That the afterworld is not about judgment and condemnation. That All That Is is so all-encompassing, so unfathomably compassionate that even forgiveness is dwarfed into insignificance. This faith is what people who have returned from near-death states bring back with them. For the dead it is the ever-present state of grace in which they dwell."