n the "real" world, I am an engineer. People hire me to figure out solutions to problems, design new systems, create new things. One principle of engineering design which I consider of great importance is that all of the pieces must fit together. This may strike you as obvious and trite and you should be right. However, the number of instances in which engineering designs fail because of the violation of this principle is so great that it should never be considered as trivial. I believe that this principle should also have applicability to personal life and beliefs. Particularly about the nature of reality. If you are unfamiliar with the traditional tale of the Blind Men and the Elephant, click the link for my version. Bottom line is that I am attempting herein to paint a picture of the whole Elephant, trying to show how the pieces as viewed by the various blind men fit together into a single, complete as possible view. Some of the other viewpoints that I am weaving into this fabric are mentioned on page 4 of this Introduction. We have been blessed with the visions of a number of gifted explorers in recent decades and I have made use of their gifts to us in creating this composite model. I have been given the gift of contacting the Elephant at more than one point in my own personal explorations and thus having the personal viewpoint to attempt an even bigger view.

ne of the common themes of religious instruction which I have observed from my childhood is the asking of questions which can be generalized as: If God (or insert your favorite variant of the name for the Ultimate Reality) has the property "X", how can He (or insert your favorite variant defining gender or the absence of such attributes) permit occurrence "Y" to have happened in the world? Even as a child, I felt that the true nature of God was such that questions like this didn't really make sense. It was not within our province to dictate what God could or could not do or what in fact was the true nature of God. Clearly to me, it was not a father figure with a long beard sitting on a throne. Going beyond that image, It was clearly beyond all images, gender, personality and any other anthropomorphic concept of a being.