The late mythologist, Joseph Campbell, liked to tell a story that not only gives meaning to much of this journey, but offers me great hope for the future of humanity.

On the oldest island of the Hawaiian chain lies a beautiful and haunting place called Na Pali. It is a series of folded mountains that greet the great winds that blow unobstructed from the north and west.

For perhaps as long as man has inhabited that land, Na Pali's high cliffs have beckoned those who find this life too unbearable and has been that place where many have chosen to end it.

In one of these instances, two island policemen discovered one of these lost souls as he was preparing to throw himself off a precipice. Without thinking and with an extraordinary effort, one of the policemen grabbed the man just as he was going over. Now, both men were in grave danger as the policeman continued to hold the man while losing his own footing.

The second policemen quickly ran to both men and pulled on his buddy who wouldn't let go of the man who seconds before had been determined to plunge to the ocean below.

When asked later why he had risked his life in a near-impossible attempt to save a stranger's life, the first policeman answered, "I had resolved to save him and if I had let him go just to save myself, I wouldn't be able to live one more day knowing what I'd done."

Campbell goes on to comment on this kind of selfless act, one that happens time and time again in the world. The philosopher Schopenhauer wondered about selfless acts like this and came to the conclusion that the reason this happens is that when confronted with a situation like this, some people are able to go beyond the thinking, rationalist part of their brain into a transcendental state where there a single immutable realization takes place: that beyond the material shells of our physical existence, we are, in fact...one.

This really is the fundamental idea in all of mystical art, literature and philosophy. It also helps explain much of what is wrong with humanity today. While there are no doubt many who understand this idea and many fewer who "know" this as reality, the vast majority of people on the earth--including myself--have yet to either understand or know.

Yet most religions, including Christianity, have had their own followers who "knew". Sadly, religions generally move from a quest for this mystical knowledge to a search for social community. In our time, it seems that religion has moved from the idea of community to become little more than organizations of exclusion.

If the quest for transcendence were more important in the lives of those who practice (and especially lead) the world's religions, the practice of exclusion could simply not be possible.