I decided to become a surgeon named Bernie who writes books and gives seminars to teach people what he has learned and is still learning about how to deal with life's difficulties.

Physicians need to be good technicians and know how to prescribe, but for healing to occur they also need to incorporate philosophy and spirituality into their treatment. We need to feel as well as think.

The spiritual message is we lose our lives in pleasing others; if you're the good child who pleases Mommy and Daddy but internalizes anger, you're setting yourself up for disease.

A surgeon is surrounded by people who are sick, discouraged, afraid, embittered, dying - but also courageous, loving, wise, compassionate and alive.

Faith is reason grown courageous.

On the spiritual theory, man consists essentially of a spiritual nature or mind intimately associated with a spiritual body or soul, both of which are developed in and by means of a material organism.

Those of us who were brought up as Christians and have lost our faith have retained the sense of sin without the saving belief in redemption. This poisons our thought and so paralyses us in action.

Love fills and empties simultaneously. It makes us reach out to God, ready to be pruned, recklessly desiring whatever the cost. It soothes the aching heart and then makes it thirst for more.