For unknown reasons, there is a tremendous concentration of psychoactive plants on the South American continent. The South American continent has more known hallucinogens than the rest of the planet combined.

Ninety percent of the difficulty in your intellectual life would never have happened if you just had better taste.

The way I think of the psychedelics is, they are catalysts to the imagination.

Psychedelic experiences are beyond the reach of cultural manipulation, and discovering this and exploring it is somehow the frontier of maturity. Culture is a form of enforced infantilism. It's the last nursery, and most people never leave it.

In a way, this is a definition of shamanism. A shaman is a person who by some means has gotten out of their own culture.

Don't worry. You don't know enough to worry. . . . Who do you think you are that you should worry, for cryin' out loud. It's a total waste of time. It presupposes such a knowledge of the situation that it is, in fact, a form of hubris.

It seems to me that it is psyche in a way that has become occluded by the perverse development of language.