Transcendence gets you beyond ego. If you go beyond ego, you see all of this in a more decent perspective and you can start to put all the pieces together. We haven't done that yet. Not as a civilization.

I have been a strong proponent of helping people understand that during the last decade or so, as it lies at the very bottom of how we know anything. Let me give a couple examples to get that point across.

There are no unnatural or supernatural phenomenon, only very large gaps in our knowledge of what is natural... we should strive to fill those gaps of ignorance.

I experienced an ecstasy of unity. I not only saw the connectedness, I felt it and experienced it sentiently. The restraints and boundaries of flesh and bone fell away.

To bring the tools of science and to recognize that the flaw in the Cartesian Duality and to bring the tools of science to look at this question of mind and consciousness and to explore it using the tools of science â€" instead of saying, as has been the tradition for 400 years, that consciousness is not a proper subject for science to look at.

One way of saying that is that there is an objective reality beyond our mind. A way to think of this in a philosophic sense is to look between the two great extremes: the idealist philosophy that says mind and consciousness is the only thing and that matter is simply an illusion, or a Maya, the product of mind; and the other extreme, a strict materialist determinism, which says that mind and consciousness is a secondary phenomenon of the collision of matter.

It's rather clear that we've got to do something differently â€" and going into space and learning to utilize these resources, to think differently about ourselves, is vital right now.