An important part of religion is the journey into our own subjective depths. Our personal consciousness is a vapor burning on a primordial sea. Religion contains the record of thousands of years of prior trips into that darkness. Religion often symbolizes this journey as going into a cave or being swallowed by an animal- of dying and being reborn. We cannot go far into our own liquid substrate by thinking about it. As Edward Abbey said, “You can’t study the darkness by flooding it with light.”