Ali Baba’s. I am a thief. I steal ideas and then, based on my experience, try to point at Truth on the one hand and expose the false on the other.

I admire and respect some teachers and teachings, and I appreciate knowledge systems that have a degree of objectivity within the context their knowledge is addressing.

My favorite of the big-shot dead teachers is Nisargadatta Maharaj. My book’s title is a nod to his wisdom, which states that the only way to describe Self-realization is that there is “nothing wrong anymore” (or something along those lines.) Of the breathing ones, John Wheeler was the one who dropped the last straw on my ego’s sense of separation’s back, so he has a special place in my heart.

As for my opinion on teachings, Silence is the best one. The second best is Attention. The third best simply states that We Are That. The fourth best states that we are not what we think we are, and the fifth best describes the psyche in objective detail.

Each of the human functions, physical, emotional, and intellectual, and each of the seven universal patterns can manifest in a wholesome way or in a corrupted way. It is no different in the study of spirituality. People can get dogmatic faster than saying the word “god.”

Gurdjieff, one of the most dogmatized teachers to this day, told a pertinent story. It, more or less, goes like this:

“Some scout ants set out into the woods to look for food. They found a picnic table with the most amazing dishes and drinks — a veritable ant’s promised land. They ran back to their colony and immediately started drawing a map of the path back to the table and the table itself showing the different foods in full color and detail. The map was so wonderful, and all the ants were so excited that they began eating it and never returned to the picnic table.”