Walking down a tree-lined street on a cool Brooklyn night, we found ourselves with a friend from a former life: Michael, the lyric-tongued, shaved-head meditator we met in the courtyard of a Tibetan monastery in Kathmandu. The conversation looped in on itself in the way a remeeting may do: we spoke of the way things end and, in ending, don’t end.

Think about what happens, our friend the wandering yogi said. If what we really are is bundles of energy, if our thoughts are a part of us, then when people and places come into our minds again and again, they really are a part of our mental lives, and therefore part of ourselves.

Such a thing is powerful to hear, especially when it’s days after ending a relationship: when the person once related to, once physically next to us, is now known only in the mind—the smiles, the glances, the way that when she’s thinking deeply she sweeps her hair to one side. When a relationship ends, a physical presence may be gone, but a total presence is not—in the same way that a place, once visited, stays with us when we return home.

We are what we’ve eaten, we are what we’ve experienced: the places, people, and other loves with whom we’ve lived.

When a book is good, as we hope this one is, we begin to live with it: stealing into its pages when waiting in line or making a commute, relying on its touch when we need some unspoken but soon read assurance, and in time returning to it, revisiting the dog-eared pages months later, and in doing so meeting the person we were back then.

We hope to have earned a few of those dog ears over the past few pages. Although it’s not that our relationship is ending—this is not a breakup, dear reader—it is time for our relationship to transform. If you’ve made it this far, to the very last pages, we thank you for your time and energy and effort, your willingness to meet us where we are. We thank you for offering up the increasingly scarce resource of reading time to go on this walk with the two of us and the dozens of highly realized humans who have appeared in this odyssey.

This brings us back to the sense of journey, to the sense of purpose. When we were discussing the arc of collaboration—how it is both an individual, lonely pursuit and a collective, companionable one—we brought to mind the ideas of Joseph Campbell, the comparative mythologist whose life’s work showed that the religious traditions of the world are not separate stars but are part of a greater constellation. One of Campbell’s most essential insights was that religions—as well as literature—have a story structure universal to all of them: that of the hero and the journey. Reduced to its most basic elements, the hero is often an orphan or is orphaned in the course of the story and must go in search of an identity; in doing so, he or she will venture into the wilderness to find something of use to the people of the world and bring it back to them: a Holy Grail in its many guises. We hope that this book, in the many threads that have been woven here, has helped you search inside your personal and organizational wildernesses for grails you had not yet known—and may you bring them into your life and those of your family, friends, and colleagues.

In this way, with our walk ending, we hope to remain a part of your life, a firefly lighting within your memory, a signal pointing to the implicit connections underlying the way you engage with your consciousness and that of others. We admit the title for this book is a touch grandiose when you first hear it, but upon reflection it’s rather obvious, even humble: of course it all connects.

In A Path with Heart, Jack Kornfield relates an old Jewish story that we think will make a suitable final scene. One hundred fifty years ago there was a young rabbi in New York who was hungry in all the right ways: to meet God, to serve his people, to deeply know himself. One could say that his religiosity was an ambitious one.

As he was growing up and growing into the rabbinical world of America, he kept hearing about a master teacher in the Old World: an older rabbi living in Saint Petersburg, Russia, with jarring insights into the Talmudic tradition. A mentor in Manhattan gave the young man the master’s address, and with some trepidation he wrote to him, asking about his journeys in the faith, the lineage of the Jewish people, the symbolic meaning of ritual. The master replied with grace and sagacity, showing a wealth of lived experience. They wrote to one another for a year and then another. The young man continued growing up and even began to have a bit of the swagger of a New York bachelor, and he realized that to truly become a man, to truly become himself, he had to meet the person who had so shaped him through his correspondence. So he wrote again, asking if in the event he came to St. Petersburg, he’d be able to visit the old master. The elder rabbi replied positively: of course he could.

So the young man packed his luggage and bought a ticket for a boat across the Atlantic. First England, then mainland Europe, then finally to Saint Petersburg, the gilded city of Russia. Walking through the streets carrying his teacher’s address, he happened upon a market, and in the market, he happened upon a matryoshka doll. Looking up from the doll, he realized he was at his master’s address. Soon he was up the five flights of stairs. He came to an ancient wooden door. He knocked. A voice called from the other side, saying he should come in.

He entered into a simple room: the floors were wood, and there was a neatly made bed, a few stacks of books, and a desk at which an old man, dressed in black, was writing. The young New Yorker was struck by the bareness of the room: surely a teacher of such stature could afford a nice thing or two. But swallowing the thought, he said hello, nearly prostrating himself before the teacher. They spoke of the younger man’s journey, the older man’s scholarship, their mutual reverence to God. But then, as the conversation developed, the young man couldn’t help himself.

“Where are your things?” the young man asked.

The master paused, looked at the young man’s luggage, and replied.

“Well, where are yours?” the master asked.

“I’m just passing through,” the young man answered.

Then the elder: “So am I.”