There's only the integrity of doing and having done. - Terence McKenna

What blinds us, or what makes historical progress very difficult, is our lack of awareness of our ignorance. And [I think] that beliefs should be put aside, and that a psychedelic society would abandon belief systems [in favor of] direct experience, and this is, I think, much of the problem of the modern dilemma, which is that direct experience has been discounted, and in its place, all kind of belief systems have been erected. … If you believe something, you're automatically precluded from believing in the opposite, which means that a degree of your human freedom has been forfeited in the act of this belief.

What you see, I think, is the morphogenetic field. The invisible world that holds everything together. Not the net of matter and light, but the net of casuistry—of intentionality, of caring, of hope of dream—of thought. That all is there, but it has been hidden from us for centuries because of the exorcism of the spirit that took place in order to allow science to do business. And that monotonous and ill-considered choice has made us the inheritors of a tradition of existential emptiness. But that has impalded to us to go back to the jungles and recover this thing. … The question is: can we dream a dream that is sufficiently noble that we give meaning to the sacrifices that have been made to allow the 20th century to exist? … I am convinced that if there were no shamanic pipeline, there would be no higher life, as we know it, on this planet. … We are all cells of a much larger body, and like the cells of our own body, it is hard for us to glimpse the whole pattern of the whole of what is happening. And yet, we can sense that there is a purpose, and there is a pattern …

The reason we feel alienated is because the society is infantile, trivial, and stupid. So the cost of sanity in this society is a certain level of alienation. I grapple with this because I’m a parent. And I think anybody who has children, you come to this realization, you know — what’ll it be? Alienated, cynical intellectual? Or slack-jawed, half-wit consumer of the horseshit being handed down from on high? There is not much choice in there, you see. And we all want our children to be well adjusted; unfortunately, there’s nothing to be well adjusted to!