There is an ability to move and transform things. I think each human being has that power, and it's often one that we are willing to relinquish to others.

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

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.

In the new alchemy, we have a similar kind of way of thinking. Our internal space includes our intuitions, our thoughts, our senses and our feelings, and from these we construct or build a picture of the outside world. From intuition and thought, we construct time. We also construct space from thought and our sensations. From our senses and our feelings, we experience energy, and from our intuitions and our feelings, we experience motion.

I describe the variety of different kinds of experiences I had, from seeing into the future to being inside the body of a bird and feeling the bird consciousness, to being in a plane of existence with beings that do not exist on this planet at all. And I described my experiences to shamans who started to laugh, saying, "Oh, we know those guys."

Learning to see love and to express that love is the purpose of living this life. What's real has love at its heart; the universe is constructed from love, and that love is very much tied to our power of attention and imagination.

I'm not talking to you from the point of view of wishful thinking or imaginary craziness. i'm talking to you from a deeper, basic understanding.