Ecstasy is a complex emotion containing elements of joy, fear, terror, triumph, surrender, and empathy. What has replaced our prehistoric understanding of this complex of ecstasy now is the word comfort, a tremendously bloodless notion. Drugs are not comfortable, and anyone who thinks they are comfortable or even escapist should not toy with drugs unless they’re willing to get their noses rubbed in their own stuff.

This rising global humanism is, in fact, the rising into consciousness of a tribal god similar to the kind of tribal god that functioned in these pre-Hellenic societies.

In our own time, through integrative sciences like ecology and animal behavior and psychology we have re-understood what was forgotten during the reduction centuries of modern science. We've re-understood that the world is one thing, and it's a living thing. It's a thing with an intent and a spirit within it, and this is the key concept.

One way of assessing the toxicity of a drug is how do you feel the next day?

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

What blinds us, or what makes historical progress very difficult, is our lack of awareness of our ignorance.

The good news about psychedelics is that they are incredibly democratic. Even the clueless can be swept along if the dose is sufficient.