All human endeavors have the common goal of understanding or influencing human experience. To this end, man has developed numerous descriptive and analytical disciplines: Morality, Philosophy, Psychology, and so on. Regardless of what branch of inquiry one starts from-philosophy, political theory, theology-all avenues of investigation eventually converge at a common meeting point: the quest for an organized understanding of the nature of pure consc iousness. To explain that which is simple can be difficult indeed. Much of this book is devoted to the process of making the simple obvious. If we can understand even one simple thing in depth, we will have greatly expanded our capacity for comprehending the nature of the universe and life itself.