Throughout this, I kept paring away at the accretions of my conditioning. I subjected all my beliefs to radical doubt and questioned the values by wh… - Nina Graboi

A vast gap between who I was and who I could be had opened up. I saw that we humans carry within us the potential for a greatly expanded awareness of reality that embraces levels which are not accessible to ordinary consciousness. The cosmic nature of the reality that the books described dwarfed the microscopic portion of it that I knew. More than anything, I longed to look into the invisible realm. (Chapter Nineteen)

As a young girl, I thought that being in love with the man I married would guarantee a life of eternal joy. I soon learned that there weren't too many

Before long, I read my first book on Hindu philosophy. It was like a blow to my solar plexus; it jarred me awake. Here, at last, was what I sought. Instead of an object of dispute and often ridicule, here, reincarnation was taken for granted. The teachings were logical, unsentimental, yet filled with the spirit of non-harmfulness, compassion, understanding, love. To my western ears, Hindu philosophy sounded naive. The world I knew, the "real" world, was ruled by money and desires. But the words in Patanjali's Yoga Aphorisms struck a deep chord. Unlike Christianity and Judaism, which insist on unquestioning faith, Patanjali tells us to believe nothing without first testing it. This was just right for me. It was the way I had chosen long ago, when I was still a child. (Chapter Nineteen)