I very much wanted to believe in God; but I could not deceive myself: I had no faith. "And suddenly there came a second, when somehow for the first time I saw (as if a door had opened from a dark room into the sunny street), and in the next second I already knew for sure that God exists... I call this moment the greatest miracle because this precise knowledge came to me not through reason but by some other way... And so by such a miracle my new spiritual life began, which helped me to endure another thirteen years of life in concentration camps and prisons."
A human being is part of the whole, called by us the "universe," a part limited in time and space. One experiences oneself, one's thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of one's consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the Oneness of nature in its beauty.