I've read the books. God is not a moderate. There's no place in the books where God says, "You know, when you get to the New World and you develop yo… - Sam Harris

The neighbors find the event a great cause for celebration and honor the young man’s parents by giving them gifts of food and money.

While the philosophy of Advaita, and Ramana’s own words, may tend to support a metaphysical reading of teachings of this kind, their validity is not metaphysical. Rather, it is experiential. The whole of Advaita reduces to a series of very simple and testable assertions: Consciousness is the prior condition of every experience; the self or ego is an illusory appearance within it; look closely for what you are calling “I,” and the feeling of being a separate self will disappear; what remains, as a matter of experience, is a field of consciousness — free, undivided, and intrinsically uncontaminated by its ever-changing contents.

There is now little question that how one uses one’s attention, moment to moment, largely determines what kind of person one becomes. Our minds — and lives — are largely shaped by how we use them.