I had definitely booked a seat by a window on the plane to Stuttgart. I found it occupied by a little old Jewish lady, who was peering down in apparent delight at part of a wing, half an engine, and a patch of dirty Heathrow concrete twenty feet below.

She offered at once to move. I insisted that she stay. I had already seen, I told her grandly, quite a bit of Europe from the air. I had also decided already that she might be a German-Jew. I had just heard her speak, and I guessed, correctly as it turned out, that the foil-wrapped packets in front of her contained her kosher lunch.

This was my first meeting with the lady I know as Herthe. She has an English name now, but Herthe suits her better. I have tried in vain to learn her age. She has told me that she had arrived in England in 1939, on one of the last of the Kindertransporte bringing Jewish children from Nazi Germany, carrying all that she owned in her suitcase. It was only when the war was over that she discovered, as she put it: "I am all that is left of my lot." Before she dies, she has also told me, she wants to do something in remembrance of them and in gratitude for her life.

It hasn't been an easy life. In 1939 she might already have been seventeen, which was the upper age limit; meaning that she may be in her eighties now. In any case, no family took her in, as was supposed to happen. She went straight into an orphanage, and was found some kind of work.

I think she has told me that she was writing poetry even then, but I do remember that when I asked her what she did (I had admitted to being a teacher), she straightened her back, and told me proudly: "I teach poetry - and dance". She is actually an authority on the poet Shelley: an odd choice, really, that wildly amoral and an atheist; disinherited by his family; saved only by his genius: 'The fountains mingle with the river / And the rivers with the ocean / The winds of heaven mix forever / With a sweet emotion / Nothing in the world is single / All things by a law divine / In another's being mingle / Why not I with thine?'

The other day Herthe telephoned to tell me, in her usual breathless voice, which is sometimes difficult to follow, that she has found my little book "just wunderfool"; and that she has therefore decided to form a world-wide appreciation society. It will be known as the '473959 Society' and she had already appointed herself its PR representative. "Do you think that sounds quite right - or would 'consultant' be better?"

I assured her that her being my PR 'representative would be just fine. Then she asked me to write down 'something that I can easily send to people!"

The year when we met was the year in which I was beginning to realise that my hope of continuing any kind of relationship with the long-lost and re-found love of my life was as stupid as trying to persuade a pig to fly. And all that I knew of any value was still stuck inside my head in a jumble of several millions words. I felt completely washed out.

"And have you - any family?" asked the little old lady; the tone always dropping at the sentence' end, and then swooping up. Just as the engines began to roar for take-off, I told her that I had a son. I did not add that we had just had the most ferocious row.

"Ooooohh! A son! How wunderfool!" And this time the end note went UP even higher. I assured her that it is not exactly wonderful: not all the time.

"And are you," after a respectful pause, "religious?"

I realised that what she really wanted to know was whether I am a Jew. I have been asked before, more directly: 'Are you of the Faith!' I guess I look - or I looked - like a very distant son of Shem.

For some reason, I felt already drawn to her by an affection that had really no right to exist; and although I would normally have replied: "No", to such a question - both to the open and implicit question - I surprised myself by replying: "Yes, I am."

And then, quite unnecessarily, I added: "Very!"

This of course meant that now I had only one option - before the noise in the cabin got too loud for me to hear her speak: to tell her, very briefly, why.

Ever since then we have corresponded: intermittently, it is true, but crucially for me: for Herthe, with her gentle kindness and her persistent admiration gradually persuaded me that it is not necessarily a signal of insanity to write about God.

Certainly it is good to be able to make sense of one's own life without needing that much overburdened name.

On the other hand, to those for whom He is already a part of their reality that they know and that they trust, there should be no harm in it all.

So, here it is.

*

My dear Herthe,

You asked me to try to write down - as briefly as I can: hah! - all that I have learnt about our relationship with God. I will try this very gladly: not least because I can thus express my very real affection for you; but also because every time I attempt it, I learn a little more myself. I must, however, insert a serious warning. I will not write anything to please you. I will simply write what appears true to me.

It is almost a tradition, for example, for a visitation; a revelation - or what the first person I asked for advice called a direct apprehension - to be reported as a personal discovery that God exists. Somewhere, out there, beyond the stars.

This made far more sense when people believed there were alone on one single world. The whole extraordinary episode I have myself described: the absurdly rapid transit of the heavens; their parting like a curtain; the void; then that astonishing meeting with an immense and possessive being - all this made perfect sense up to just a few hundred years ago. It is an obvious source of nearly all the histories of the divine.

But what can it mean now? Now we know there are billions of times more stars than all the humans who have ever lived. There may indeed be 'many more rooms in my Father's mansion' than we can possibly imagine. Perhaps it is true that there is no point in life as it is given to us. Perhaps we have to find one.

Then, whilst thinking the other morning of what - and how - to write to you, I remembered an argument we had recently which I found very useful. It concerned the difference and different importance of knowing and knowledge.

Almost at once I found that this was suddenly helping me to understand yet another of the statements of that mischievous rabbi who was forever disturbing the great, the profitable, the powerful and the always utterly merciless market in the knowledge of God. "The foxes have their holes;" he declared, "the birds have their nests: but the Son of man has not where to lay his head!"

It is usual to read this as a dolorous lament: as if the poor man was pursued and harassed until nowhere was safe. But it is also possible to imagine it being uttered with a great ironic guffaw: "Huh-Huh-Huh-AHAH-HAH-HAH-HAH!"

For the truth is, of course, that anyone who understands the God knowledge market: anyone who know the value of the stock and of the shares of all those keepers of sacred sepulchres, holy tombs and gilded idols: anyone at all familiar with the entire busy industry of idolatry: of pretending to guide and direct the worship God through the worship of these gewgaws and fripperies - must know the response of this market to any one telling people that knowing God is easy, costs nothing, and promises life-long happiness and calm. It will be inevitable.

Muhammad knew all of this of course. He had the example before him of our rabbi, and spent the rest of his life making sure that the same did not happen to him - although, as I expect you know, in the end he suffered with his life for underestimating the courage of a widow, a sister, and a daughter.

But apart from religions which believe in no God at all, the rest of the historical record can be condensed into just a few lines. The majority of the religions with which I can more fully agree believe that their God has universal power; that his nature is fundamentally affectionate; that his aim is to unite all people into affectionate diversity, but with one simple understanding.

To the evident dismay of those who have sought to fulfil this aim, sharing this

knowledge has not served to unite people. There is still division.

All of which presents us with a mystery.

In itself this is not really so surprising. The material knowledge - if that is what it can be called - is of a deeply divisive nature. If you had asked me thirty years ago - and even if you were to ask me now - do you really believe that you were drawn across the entire cosmos; that you peered into the void; that you there met the being who caused this miracle, who then embraced you - and that this actually happened?

I would have to answer: it was real.

But as I have learnt to ask my pupils when they have obediently read to their class a line from their mathematics textbooks: "So, but what do you think it means?"

"Be honest!" is what I was told. Obeying this got me out of my particular fix. It also gave me courage. Yet it is obviously absurd to suppose that this huge cosmic power drew aside the entire veil of the universe simply to save one unimportant soldier from some minor inconvenience in well-run army mental hospital. Billions throughout history have literally prayed for their lives, for their children's lives, for their babies still unborn - in vain.

Why choose to grant me this truly immense privilege: giving, at the same time, a tremendous responsibility to a young man with no training whatsoever in how to respond to it?

The answer to this question is, I think, two-fold. First: it was because I was ready. Just a week or so before I was dropped into this new situation I had actually realised - and this was, I assure you, with a terrific shock - that throughout their lifetime every person's experience is fundamentally singular: unique.

In other words, no one of the billions of human beings who have lived and who are now alive can possibly have a mind that is like any other in all respects. We are all that singular. We all inhabit worlds which are not and cannot be exactly the same. In many cases the differences are unmistakeable. In others they may appear to be very slight. The point is that they always exist.

And what this means is that we can never be sure that any knowledge that we hope to learn from others is actually what they intend. Actually it cannot be. It is always a kind of translation of a translation of a translation - and so on. I am far less certain now that you will not be able to understand what I wish to communicate to you: so, I am no longer a Sufi; but at the time this realisation seemed apocalyptic. Suddenly I was no longer sure that any of the knowledge that I thought I had learnt and understood was what I supposed it to be.

So, you see, I was already in the void. Knowledge is not the same as knowing. It is at best an outline of reality: the lights and shadows of Plato's cave.

The second degree of preparation - possibly a third - was not voluntary. For some hours before the actual moment I had been aware that I had been stripped of every scrap of social importance - which is, for most of us, who we think we are - on which my present and also my future safety might depend. In a madhouse a patient is a non-person. I was stripped. But I still had a weapon. Anger. And I had still had one right. I could still strip myself of even more: of my pride in my strength, my intelligence, my self-belief: all of that which the Greeks called nous. In that moment of dropping to my knees, I let all that fall as well.

Dear Herthe, I do not trouble myself to relive those moments as if to describe some spiritual exercise that can unite mankind. I do not think this at all. The unity of mankind is not to be achieved by everyone humming the same tune. And if our God - the one you and I recognise - really wants to unite all the people of the world in sharing in knowing his existence rather than in fighting over knowledge - why not start with the obviously important: pharaohs, emperors, kings?

There is, I think, a better explanation of why these revelations cannot happen to people of high social status and high self-regard. Corresponding to this is another conjecture of what can be experienced with only half the fuss. (You may also realise - I hope - that virtually all I am writing here has been said and recorded before. It is only now that I will say something that is at least unusual: and for this I will need my third page!)

The impulse to extend the altruism common within the family to the clan, to the tribe, to the nation, etc - has a clear social value. But the impulse to look for knowledge is not the same. In order to know, one must inquire. To inquire, one must be dissatisfied with knowledge that has been given. To know more one must be honest about this dissatisfaction. Such honesty is a form of innocence.

This innocence is actually not so hard to achieve, although the market will do anything to prevent its achievement, mainly of course because it cannot be made to produce the huge profits to be achieved through selling idolatry. Sadly, I believe this is mainly why innocence is so rarely reborn. The market is far more successful. We drive it out of our lives by 'growing up'. We drive it out of our children by teaching them our knowledge, rather than showing them how to know.

Yet it is obvious that the impulse against this suppression of innocence has been common from the very beginning: the wish to feel re-born has emerged in many forms. This wish is highly active today. It is reified in many different forms.

Unfortunately what is so often created is yet another social identity. This social identity will have a social name. The truly singular identity that we all possess, however, has no social name.It has no name at all. But it is buried so deeply under so many layers social identity, that it is very rarely noticed. If it is noticed - just once : but also remembered - then I think this is noticed by God.

Of course I do not mean being noticed by a physical entity. It may be what it feels like - read my account again! But one of my mathematician friends once told me that the sensation of discovering new mathematics is also of finding a new hard reality hidden behind the mists of thought.

We are now obliged to admit that all of our perceptions are the consequence of changes in our brains resulting in perceptions. These are all singular. They are all non-physical. There is no point in pretending that what we know is what is!

I make this point not just to dispose of endless arguments about First Cause, First Mover, etc; but because it really important to know what we are really dealing with. The knowing of God is, I believe, an irruption into consciousness of a most intense and rare psychic impulse producing a uniquely singular knowing. In certain circumstances, this may result in yet another attempt to share the knowledge of it to unite mankind. Every attempt to do so has failed.

This repeated failure is exhibited in the history of many cultures. The actual fact of the visitation, the revelation, the apprehension - none of these can be all that rare. I believe there may be a dozen or more authentic occasions in every hundred years. Every experience can trigger a life-time's effort to communicate it to others. I cannot be all that rare. This I disbelieve.

But the market must always intervene. Cultures also intervene. I think it is primarily in understanding how cultures do this that we can come at last to the heart of their very great, very tragic, enormously wasteful conflicts over how to know God: by seeing what God has done and is doing for humanity.

Darwin proposed that environments will blindly select mutations in a species that best enable its progeny to prosper and survive. I suggest that a similar process operates in theology. From every new report of these experiences, cultures select what they require to prosper and survive in their own particular environment, and then almost always they turn this selection into their own sacred, unchallengeable, immutable dogma. This is what they worship. This is their idolatry.

Can our modern cultures escape this? Probably not: the best we can do as individuals within any culture is to learn to receive the notice of God into ourselves: instead of trying to force God to notice our importance. My book tells how to do this.

Can our children escape? I think they can. The market is beginning to exhaust many of its customers. Many more begin to notice that the knowledge that they are required to buy is different from that which others buy. Their family has always bought in one street. Others seem satisfied with what is sold just a street away. Can a universal God, universally powerful, active and affectionate, really be expected to wish to confuse everyone in this way? Is seeing through this confusion a test we are required to pass? Is this how we should use that freedom of will that many philosophers have decided is a myth?

There is another possibility. It fits the description of God I have given perfectly. Suppose that God has always been active, has always prompted people in every culture to try to be more honest with each other, to be more able and more willing to argue critically, constructively, and receptively with others - instead of always turning to aggression and violence to force their point.

What would God have prompted people to create? Where would He see people submitting almost universally to His purpose and His will?

You have to answer this!

Much love from,

Colin

Oxford, 19^th-22^nd October 2007.