What I always hoped for out of the psychedelic voyaging was to bring back something. I always felt, and still feel, that that is the attitude with which you should go into these things.

There's something in the Western mind that gets very nervous when you try to talk about the bedrock of ontology.

You have to take seriously the notion that understanding the universe is your responsibility, because the only understanding of the universe that will be useful to you is your own understanding.

I believe that the totemic image for the future is the octopus. This is because the squids and octopi have perfected a form of communication that is both psychedelic and telepathic; a model for the human communications of the future. In the not-too-distant future men and women may shed the monkey body to become virtual octopi swimming in a silicon sea.

All the accoutrements that distinguish us from animal existence were put in place when we had a different kind of mind than we have now. We didn't have a mind that favored role specialization, and male dominance, and anxiety over female sexual activity related to feelings of male ownership. That all came later.

Behind us: the unknown. Before us: the secret.

It was the fall into history that enslaved us to the labor cycle, to the agricultural cycle. And notice how fiendish it is.