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The Replica
(Chapter 1)

Having eaten of the tree of knowledge, man was no longer the perfect image of God. God saw that man had changed and told man he had to leave the garden.

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In the beginning there was man. To symbolize who he was, man decided to make a world that was square. And so the world was made square with a high wall enclosing its borders. This is what took place on the first day.
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I Need Time to Think
(Chapter 13)

I need time to think. It takes time to think the thoughts I’m thinking about thinking. The kind of thinking I’m talking about involves quality output rather
than quantity of input. I already receive plenty of information input. Too much input, with not enough time to sort it out, make connections, or be creative.
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Old God, New God
(Chapter 30)

In the old days God was in heaven, yet everywhere, seeing and hearing everything humans did, said, or thought. God was the ultimate all-powerful being who kept track of each and every human,remembering every sinful deed committed. At the end of time God would judge humans according to how sinful they were, sending bad sinners to hell. Humans were afraid of God. They were afraid to break God’s laws for fear of being caught and punished and sent to an eternal hell.
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Buddha and the Wilderness
(Chapter 46)

The story is told that Siddhartha Gautama was born in 563 B.C. and was the son of a wealthy ruler of a small kingdom in the Nepal region of India. Siddhartha’s family were Hindus, who believe that humans are trapped in an endless cycle of life, the samsara cycle of suffering, death, and rebirth. The goal of life is to escape suffering by accumulating knowledge and wisdom to transcend attachment to the physical world and unite with Brahmin in the spiritual world. Hinduism dates back to before 2,000 B.C.
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Fall Time
(Chapter 47)

The smell of drying, dying, decaying, deciduous leaves in autumn is as distinct as the smell of those same leaves being burned in a fire. It’s a primal, earthy smell that I recall as recently as last fall and as distantly as when I was a child playing in piles of raked leaves. It’s October again.
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