On a recent flight I sat next to a Phillip Yancey lookalike named Marc. At first blush I thought Marc a sharp and erudite hippie-ish lawyer from Northern California, because he is. As we talked, I learned that Marc grew up in the greater Atlanta area, attended one of the many First Baptists in what used to be town distinct from Atlanta, graduated from Furman in the early 1970s, got involved in Democratic electoral politics. Eventually he became an attorney-lobbyist in California, advocating for affordable rent and low income housing. He is now retired.

Marc is a charming, gentle and thoughtful man, widowed, and a proud and loving father. He made the mistake of asking what I do for a living, and I sensed this would not play well, but being a gentle, hippie-ish guy Marc had tolerance adequate to the moment. As our time on the flight unfolded, we had a delightful conversation. Again, he's is quite bright and very well read and with his openness to others we were able to find common ground.

At age 12 Marc put a question about a central claim of Christianity to his respected Sunday School teacher at First Baptist, and the teacher affirmed Marc's sneaking suspicion. Thus validated in heresy by a Sunday School teacher, Marc became untethered from anything resembling Christianity, and he now practices what he terms "Indian spirituality," a variant of Hindu meditation. [Did he seem like a Marin County stereotype in his appearance, demeanor, career, politics and spirituality? Yes!]

I plumbed Marc's understanding of his faith in the context of the values he placed on being open-minded, educated and thoughtful, and in the context of his critique early in our conversation of famous Christian spokesmen in the U.S.  who have appeared the opposite of those characteristics. Marc, through guided meditation, has experienced "the blue pearl." I probably will mess up the description, but I think he said this "blue pearl" experience is when your deeper inner consciousness takes you to a point in which all is blue, and one, and you are intensely aware that you are participating in, that you are part of, this universal consciousness.

This is the most important experience of his life. Marc could not help but speak of this with a smile, with reverence, with longing for more of it, with rock-ribbed certainty about this being IT.

And this is precisely where and why the conversation was delightful and fascinating to me. Marc had already, in his gentle way, put up his flag of disapproval for close-minded, thoughtless Christian leaders. Early in the conversation, remarking upon his hobby of neuroscience, Marc had implied that if one saw things in a black and white way one had likely experienced some sort of brain trauma. Really. He backed down as I put pressure on this implication, but the message was clear: black and white thinking was poor, grey thinking was good.

And yet an hour later he was regaling me with the most important experience of his life, one that was indubitable, certain, black and white. I pressed the contradiction upon him-- would he back down and say his experience of the blue pearl was merely subjective, merely a "local truth", or would he dare claim that this universal consciousness was true for all. What do you think he did?

Marc, because of the power of his experience, would not let go of the universal, absolute nature of the truth of universal consciousness. Did he see the inconsistency with his beliefs that led him to criticize Christian fundamentalists? Yes. He may not have been in anguish over this inconsistency, but he visibly and verbally expressed the tension from recognizing this.

How about science? How could he reconcile his spiritual beliefs and experiences with naturalistic science. Again, more tension, but even though he has LOVED scientific inquiry for years, the power of his experience of the blue pearl is more powerful than submitting to naturalistic scientific orthodoxy.

Was there anything that could make him give up this belief? No. The experience of the blue pearl was and is the most powerful of his life. For him it is true beyond all reason.

Because he had told me that the term or label for this area of spirituality he was exploring was "Indian spirituality," I told him, "Marc, you are an Indian Spirituality Fundamentalist."

What do you make of that?