New def of religion: the vision of the primacy of self-care! (Not in the “primacy of self over others” sense, but as taking care of infrastructure that determines your very will. Not just havingness, but actions that shape future desire … and action. The making the maker. Or—the realization that you are responsible for making the maker. That is the peak cognition.

That’s really what it is today—I mean, that is its essential component. Everything else fits better in philosophy, metaphysics, ethics, cosmology, mythology, and so on. The one essential component is—the feeling of being struck by a vision or a voice that shows you, as an undeniable immediate truth, that it is in the nature of existence that you ought to take care of yourself. And you instantly condemn certain actions and habits. You oath to stop them and to cultivate new actions and habits. Conviction full of ethical import and seriousness and you see the source of the revelation (or the revelation itself) as important and “sacred”—as a friend from a better space or substance visiting this entropic animal-passion plane, worthy of protection and support.