According to a Talmudic legend, an angel escorts the soul from its abode in heaven into the tomb and there unites it to the embryo. The angel tutors the new being in the mysteries of the world, transporting it to heaven and darkness to see the heights and depths of creation, revealing to it the ways of beauty, truth, and goodness, disclosing the potential of its future life on earth, even to the time and place of death. As the child matures within the womb, it ponders the wonders it has seen. Then, at the instant of birth, the angel touches the child on the mouth, erasing all memory of these marvelous revelations.
The word integrity has two meanings. The first is "honesty. "We have to be honest in facing our limitations, in facing the sheer complexity of the world, honest in facing criticism even of things which are deeply precious to us. Integrity also means wholeness, Oneness, the desire for a single vision, the refusal to split our minds into separate compartments where incompatible ideas are not allowed to come into contact. An undivided mind looks in the end for an undivided truth, a Oneness at the heart of things. The whole quest for integrity presupposes that in the end we are all encountering a single reality and a single truth.