In horticulture, the art of grafting involves fusing the stems, leaves, flowers, or fruits of one plant with the rootstock of another. The process is especially useful with plants that can’t be propagated easily by seed. The basic principle also applies to ideas. Sometimes the best way to introduce a new concept is to marry it to one that [...]

In the mystic traditions, the death of the false self is comparable to physical death. The mercy is that after the first couple of killings, you realize you’re being killed into life. Then, as Andrew Harvey has said, you begin to participate in the killing willingly. “Everyone doing a serious yoga with a master or [...]

The line between creativity and psychological disorder is astonishingly thin. It seems to me that in our culture we cultivate creativity as if it were a rare hothouse flower while at the same time trying to stave off mental disorder like some kind of pestilence. But they’re really two sides of the same coin. In [...]

  I recently returned from another trip to the Salton Sea. It was my second time there this year. The lake levels have receded dramatically in recent years and the smell of decay is worse than I remembered. Dwindling inflows and rising salinity levels have transformed the sea from a quiet sanctuary to a toxic [...]