Gary

“You go deep enough or far out enough in consciousness and you will bump into the sacred. It’s not something we generate; it’s something out there waiting to be discovered. And this reliably happens to nonbelievers as well as believers.” Second, that, whether occasioned by drugs or other means, these experiences of mystical consciousness are in all likelihood the primal basis of religion. (Partly for this reason Richards believes that psychedelics should be part of a divinity student’s education.) And third, that consciousness is a property of the universe, not brains. On this question, he holds with Henri Bergson, the French philosopher, who conceived of the human mind as a kind of radio receiver, able to tune in to frequencies of energy and information that exist outside it. “If you wanted to find the blonde who delivered the news last night,” Richards offered by way of an analogy, “you wouldn’t look for her in the TV set.” The television set is, like the human brain, necessary but not sufficient.”
― Michael Pollan, How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence

“Kierkegaard’s most remarkable and subtle observations, that life can only be understood backwards but must be lived forwards. I think it means you have to turn around and start walking backwards, facing the past, if the present is going to make any sense at all.”
― Robert Ferguson, Scandinavians: In Search of the Soul of the North

“FRANK BIDART Song of the Mortar and Pestle The desire to approach obliteration preexists each metaphysic justifying it. Watch him fucked want to get fucked hard. Christianity allowed the flagellants light, for even Jesus found release from flesh requires mortification of the flesh. From the ends of the earth the song is, Grind me into dust.”
― Stephen Burt, The Poem Is You: 60 Contemporary American Poems and How to Read Them

“The same phenomenon that pointed to a materialist explanation for spiritual and religious belief gave people an experience so powerful it convinced them of the existence of a nonmaterial reality—the very basis of religious belief.”
― Michael Pollan, How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence