What they [psychedelics] cause is what I'm advocating, a fundamental revaluation of cultural values, because culture as we're practicing it currently is causing a lot of pain to a lot of people, and animals, and ecosystems, none of whom were ever allowed to vote on whether they wanted this process to go in this direction.

I see the psychedelic experience as both the centerpiece of prehistoric life and destined to be the centerpiece of any future that we want to be part of.

You know what, I'm stoned, and I'm proud.

It is curious that what these psychedelics do, on a scale of a community, is they release new ideas. . . . And that this is how culture moves forward. That culture is a phenomenon dependent on the generation of ideas, plans, notions, connections. So this is precisely what these compounds are doing.

What I like to talk about, and what I have very little competition in terms of talking about, is the content of the psychedelic experience.

Shamanism is just show business and philosophy is just a branch of that vaudevillian impulse.

A glacier rattles in the cupboard, the desert sighs in the bed, and the crack in the teacup opens a door to the land of the dead. The Maya call this Xibalba (Shibalba), the road to the dimension of the dead.