“And what is the primary datum? It’s the felt presence of immediate experience. In other words, being here now is the primary datum.”

Chaos is what we’ve lost touch with. This is why it is given a bad name. It is feared by the dominant archetype of our world, which is Ego, which clenches because its existence is defined in terms of control.

You are not naked when you take off your clothes. You still wear your religious assumptions, your prejudices, your fears, your illusions, your delusions.

Being imposes some kind of obligation to find out what’s going on.

There is no knowledge without risk taking.

It is true that when you smoke DMT, for example, at a sufficiently high and prepared dose, you get elves, everybody does. All you need do, is inhale deeply three times, and you know… You want contact? You want elves? You want alien contact? You’ll have that!

The psychedelic inner astronaut sees things which no human being has ever seen before, and no other human being will ever see again. But in fact this has no meaning unless it is possible to carry it back into the collectivity.

Every click of the cosmic clock brings us closer to the process for which the planet called us into existence.

The overriding problems are brought on by the existence of the ego, a maladaptive behavioral complex in the psyche that gets going like a tumor. If it’s not treated – if there’s not pharmacological intervention – it becomes the dominant constellation of the personality.

The real secret of magic is that the world is made of words, and that if you know the words that the world is made of you can make of it whatever you wish.

Nature is not mute, it is a man who is deaf.

The drugs of the future will be computers. The computers of the future will be drugs.

We do not birth our children into the world of nature. We birth our children into the world of culture.

What was created by the era of the proper gentleman was excellent table manners and genocide over most of the surface of the planet.

This is the shamanic dance in the waterfall. This is how magic is done. By hurling yourself into the abyss and discovering its a feather bed.

To the degree that you avert your gaze from this truth, you build the potential for pain into your life. Everything is this act of embracing the present moment, the felt presence of experience, and then moving on to the next felt moment of experience. It’s literally psychological nomadism is what it is.

The world which we perceive is a tiny fraction of the world which we can perceive, which is a tiny fraction of the perceivable world.

These are data points, not judgments of your ability to manage your diabetes.

Don’t use the language of ‘good’ or ‘bad’ when talking about blood sugar numbers

Most executives, many scientists, and almost all business school graduates believe that if you analyze data, this will give you new ideas. Unfortunately, this belief is totally wrong. The mind can only see what it is prepared to see.

The analysis of data will not by itself produce new ideas.

Soon I knew the craft of experimental physics was beyond me – it was the sublime quality of patience – patience in accumulating data, patience with recalcitrant equipment – which I sadly lacked.

I was really intrigued by the idea of using live streams of data that’s relevant to real people, and that would allow us to reflect and learn about ourselves.

Data can actually make us more human.

Experts often possess more data than judgment.