Author's Note: From the time of my earliest recollections, religion has been a major factor in my life. Perhaps it germinated in the ubiquitous if arid soil of religious belief that was so prevalent at the time of my growing up, not only where I lived in particular but in the country as a whole. Everyone it seemed went to church on Sunday or to synagogue on Saturday. Nine o'clock Sunday morning, someone once observed, was the most segregated hour in America. And it was in that state of skepticism that I strove to understand the origins of religion that I might come to know for myself how it all came about and what, if anything, was worthy of belief. That undertaking left me quite unconvinced of the veracity of what was being told and taught, as it seemed to me that what popular religion held as Holy Writ was moored more in mankind's head than in any divine reality. The craving for the elusive truth mutated into a quest to free myself of popular spiritual perceptions and man's dubious religious contrivances in order to see if I could ascertain for myself whether or not God existed, and if so, what that meant as far as how I was to live my life. There is only one truth: God either exists or does not. The quest to understand began with a child's innocent desire to know more and became a Journey to the Soul. In the end the Truth is revealed, as it is to all those who seek to know, the reality hidden beneath the layers of imperfect human rationalization is exposed: the immutable facts emerge, revelations that souls are immortal and that life is a cycle of karmic experiences which, when successful, end the cycle of Earthly incarnations with the individual returning to the Oneness from which it came. Human death is simply a door, a transition, through which we pass to further spiritual development; birth is the human manifestation of a soul beginning its karmic journey. Humans die; souls recycle and live eternally. J.B. O'Ryan, August 2019