I picture a vast garden, with giant craggy rocks and forested hills, shrubs, flowers and grasses, with tall cataracts, flowing rivers and streams, placid lakes, ponds and pools where birds, animals large and small and insects gather. 

  Here and there a man or woman, and less frequently a man and woman, wander. 

  And around this unimaginably vast garden is a stone wall, and through the stone wall are many Gates. Some of the gates are wide, ornate and welcoming, like the one I visited this morning at the local Buddhist Temple, with well trodden paths beyond meandering deep into the garden and out of sight. 

  There are Christian gates and Hindu gates and Muslim gates too, in fact all sorts of gates, all with their respective well worn paths leading deep into the garden. 

  And there are other gates, smaller, less ornate and welcoming you might say. 

  And that is how I picture the Omphalos Cafe. A small nondescript doorway in the huge wall, and beyond only the slightest hint of a pathway worn in the tall grasses. 

  Beside the doorway are a pair of bookshelves containing a fairly wide assortment of books. On the right hand side there are books tracing the progress of learning, science, evolution and humankind’s history. On the left are works of the spirit gleaned from all ages and regions. 

  And that is all.