To me it begins and ends with these psychedelic substances. The synergy of the psilocybin in the hominid diet brought us out of the animal mind and into the world of articulated speech and imagination.

In shamanism and certain yogas, Taoist yoga, claim very clearly that the purpose is to familiarize yourself with this after-death body, in life, and then the act of dying will not create confusion in the psyche. You will recognize what is happening. You will know what to do. And you will make the clean break.

I think ideology is toxic, all ideology. It's not that there are good ones and bad ones. All ideology is toxic, because ideology is a kind of insult to the gift of human free thinking.

One thing that these Buddhists have certainly gotten right is that attention to attention is the key to taking control of your mental life.

The terror of drugs is a terror of giving up control. This is what people are most alarmed about by psychedelics, is the giving up control.

This is the nature of going forward into being: A series of self-transforming ascents of level.

I think transcending our cultures is going to be extraordinarily necessary for our survival. I don't think we can carry our cultures through the keyhole of the stretch of the next millennium