Most people who've never experienced non-ordinary states of consciousness and only hear them described tend to try to describe them in terms of the logical, rational way of looking at things, the so-called scientific explanation, which often leaves a lot lacking and doesn't really fulfill understanding the experience at all.

Every book I write is filled with ideas to open people's minds. And many of my books are intended for the lay mind, for people who have no idea about what's going on in quantum physics. They are meant to get big ideas across in the simplest way so young people can start to wrestle with these ideas.

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 old alchemy, or what was just called alchemy, has a history. Most people, if they've been trained in sciences, think of alchemy as the precursor to chemistry. Back in time, people were called alchemists and they worked for kings and rich people, smelting metal and trying to change base metal into gold, because the king wanted to be richer.

Chemistry comes about through the transformation of earth, air, fire and water. All chemistry is just movement within those things, and so we experience the joys and the sorrows of hot and cold, and dry and moist, because of these chemical transformations. In a similar way, we create and experience a world of time, space, motion and energy, through our intuitions, our thoughts, our sensing and our feeling.

In very subtle ways, how we regard ourselves and others continually changes us into something new.

Most people who've never experienced non-ordinary states of consciousness and only hear them described tend to try to describe them in terms of the logical, rational way of looking at things, the so-called scientific explanation, which often leaves a lot lacking and doesn't really fulfill understanding the experience at all.