That's sort of the idea that if we, in attempting to explain away that which is experienced, the experience itself is diminished.

Certainly in terms of technology, it's made a tremendous impact, but medicine is still within the realm of what we might call "objective" science. It's still part of the objective way of looking at the world.

The kinds of mystical experiences that I have had definitely convinced me that I was able to get out of time. I have had experiences, or brief glimpses, of being able to see the future and then come back into time, and then go into extraordinary realms of the past.

When I worked with various healers of one kind or another, very often what came up was that there was an "inner" person who was controlling what was going on in the life of the "outer" person, who thinks he's in control of his life. That inner person has a vested interest in keeping the person from getting well, so the healing doesn't take place.

We find that alchemy has to do with magicians or magic and may even have roots in the Chaldean people who lived in the land that we now call Iraq.Abraham emerged and took a flock of people with him into Egypt. They were later called the Hebrews because of the valleys that they came out of. The alchemy that they saw was a transformative power within the individuals to affect the "out there" reality - and that, of course, is the basis of shamanism and is the basis for most magical and so-called Third World belief systems.

It's very frustrating if you've never had an experience and somebody comes up to you and says, "I've just been on a flying saucer." Your tendency is to think, "Oh, this guy must be wacko, nuts, having an hallucination. None of that can be true because none of that has ever happened to me."

The real alchemy is transforming the base self into gold or into spiritual awareness. That's really what new alchemy's all about.