I don't really advocate for psychedelics. I don't really think anybody needs to do them, or has to do them. For me, they were the only way I could have cracked open my own spirit in a way.

If consciousness is the ground of being rather than an epiphenomenon of physical processes, we may find that a basic question asked by modern astronomy and space science- 'Is there life out there?'- should be rephrased. Organic life, as well as intelligence, may already be a property enmeshed in the fabric of the cosmos, brought to fruition through the spiraling dynamics of the solar system and the galaxy, built into the structure of the universe itself.

I think what we're going to ultimately recognize is that capitalism was a transitional and immature system. It got the planet to be globalized and now something else has to emerge. We have to be the ones. We can't wait around. Nobody else is going to do it for us. We have to be the ones who create that new emerging system.

Shamanism is a kind of universal spiritual practice with indigenous cultures around the world, and one important element of it is taking care of spirits.

As a German philosopher writing in the aftermath of the Nazi regime, Marcuse understood the sleep inducing force of indoctrination, its power to make people forget and forfeit their own real interests. "The fact that the vast majority of the population accepts, and is made to accept, this society does not render it less irrational and less reprehensible," he wrote. "The distinction between true and false consciousness, real and immediate interest still is meaningful."

People used to make their own clothes, now they buy clothes. People used to take care of their own kids, now they pay other people do it. And that was because capitalism requires more and more things being turned into money - being turned into profit. But that has reached this absurd limit where there's nothing left to turn into money, and the capitalist system is breaking down.

I grew up in a very artistic, cultured home, but without any kind of spirituality. My parents were secular materialists, so I saw art as having an alternate value.