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["]His idea is that whenever you encounter any other grokking thing—man, woman, or stray cat…you are meeting your 'other end.' The universe is a thing we whipped up among us and agreed to forget the gag."
Jubal looked sour. "Solipsism and pantheism. Together they explain anything. Cancel out any inconvenient fact, reconcile all theories, include any facts or delusions you like. But it's cotton candy, all taste and no substance—as unsatisfactory as solving a story by saying: '—then the little boy fell out of bed and woke up.'"

This fragment of conversation between Ben and Jubal comes in Chapter XXXI when Ben recounts his experience seeing Mike preach at his temple. Ben recapitulates Mike's notion that all beings and things in the universe are extensions of one singular consciousness, which the Martians think of as "grokking" and humans posit as "God."

Although Jubal loves Mike and believes that Mike's intentions are good, he is highly suspicious of organized religion. Believing that every individual must pursue his or her own path through life, Jubal resents the idea that any self- promoting avatar, even Mike, can offer simple but substantive answers. Jubal attempts to debunk Mike's teaching as a combination of solipsism, one's belief that he or she is the primary consciousness in the universe, and pantheism, the belief that God is omnipresent and takes many different forms, that is designed to disallow any logical argument. Jubal suggests that Mike is trying to flatter people by telling them that they are Gods, but that any happiness that a follower of Mike's might derive from this philosophy would be illusory, based on an acceptance of faulty logic rather than any true learning experience. Jubal's considered skepticism here means that his acceptance of Mike's church at the end of the novel comes not because he is a "chump" or "mark" drawn in by Mike's salesmanship, but because he comes to recognize the legitimately profound wisdom behind Mike's teachings.

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