1. “There is a world beyond ours, a world that is far away, nearby and invisible.”
– Maria Sabina
2. “As we experience a resurgence of interest in psychedelics, we can again fantasize about a different future.”
– Erika Dyck
3. “The primary importance of psychedelic drugs, as far as I’m concerned, is that they give you access to a mode of consciousness that’s completely different from the mode of consciousness we operate in every day of our lives.”
– Aldous Huxley
4. “The only way to deal with this life is to immerse oneself in it. Use it to the hilt. And don’t be afraid of it or what other people think of it.”
– Ram Dass (formerly Richard Alpert)
5. “Psychedelics are not a substance for faith. They are a door to authentic faith, born of encountering directly the sacred dimension of everyday experience. This is not the only gate to that discovery, but it is the most ancient and universal, and potentially the most accessible to the majority of the human race.”
– Rick Doblin
6. “No wonder psychedelics are threatening to an authoritarian religious hierarchy. You don’t need faith to benefit from a psychedelic experience, let along a priest or even a shaman to interpret it. What you need is courage-courage to drink the brew, eat the mushrooms, or whatever it is, and then to pay attention, and make of it what you will. Suddenly, the tools for direct contact with the transcendent other (whether you call it God or something else) is taken from the hands of an anointed elite and given to the individual seeker.”
– Dennis Mckenna
7. “If we’re approaching life, from a non-fearful perspective, where your intention is to learn, then you can extract benefit from almost any experience…Even bad trips, though they can be difficult, can serve as a valuable learning experience.”
– Hamilton Morris
Read also: Life-Affirming Nuggets of Wisdom from Psychedelic Pioneers
8. “How long will this last, this delicious feeling of being alive, of having penetrated the veil which hides and the wonders of celestial vistas? It doesn’t matter, as there can be nothing but gratitude for even a glimpse of what exists for those who can become open to it.”
– Sasha Shulgin
9. “The human mind is just incredible. It’s one of the greatest things that evolution has ever produced.”
– Terence McKenna
10. “The most important thing I think that I’ve discovered dealing with psilocybin is that we’re not hooked to the body. There’s no end. There’s no death. Consciousness goes on, and it’s a trip and an exploration.”
– Kilindi Iyi
11. “LSD shows you that there’s another side to the coin, and you can’t remember it when it wears off, but you know it. It reinforced my sense of what was important, creating great things instead of making money, putting things back into the stream of history and of human consciousness as much as I could.”
– Steve Jobs
12. “It’s not like we’re going to wave the magic psychedelic wand and solve all our problems, but it’s a really important tool to have in the tool kit.”
– David Bronner
13. “We’re depriving millions of people of a better life by not making use of what has been known throughout history…These are tools to heal, to treat, to get to another level.”
– Amanda Fielding
14. “The hallmark feature of the mystical experience, that we can now occasion with high probability, is the sense of the interconnectedness of all things – a sense of unity, a sense of openheartedness or love, and a noetic quality suggesting that this experience is more real than everyday waking consciousness. I believe that the experience of unity is of key importance to understanding the potential existential shifts that people can undergo after having these kinds of experiences.”
-Roland Griffiths
15. “What psychedelics do is pull us so far out of our comfort zones, they decondition our thinking, they trust us out of everything we thought we knew about the world in order to see things as if for the first time and form new synaptic connections.”
– Jason Silva
16. “In many, many ways, all of us are indebted to Indigenous peoples and their traditions and their knowledge when we are interested in these medicines.”
– Beatriz Caiuby Labate
17. “You are an explorer, and you represent our species, and the greatest good you can do is to bring back a new idea, because our world is endangered of the absence of consciousness.”
-Terrence Mckenna
18. “In the province of the mind what one believes to be true, either is true or becomes true within certain limits. These limits are to be found experimentally and experientially. When so found these limits turn out to be further beliefs to be transcended.”
– John C. Lilly
19. “Whilst I’m all for psychedelic science—I think it’s fantastic—I don’t think we necessarily have time to wait for the science to tell us these medicines are useful. The indigenous cultures have already shown us the ways.”
– Gail Bradbrook
20. “Psychedelics are illegal not because a loving government is concerned that you may jump out of a third-story window. Psychedelics are illegal because they dissolve opinion structures and culturally laid down models of behavior and information processing. They open you up to the possibility that everything you know is wrong.”
– Terence McKenna
21. “To hold a fresh psilocybin mushroom in one’s hand is to possess the very nature of anything can happen. Their beauty meets their potency, both chemically and symbolically. Infatuation happens instantly and doesn’t easily fade. You will want to pay homage to their form in needlepoint, stained glass, and patches sewn onto jackets. I am Team Mushroom, give me my T-shirt, you will say. The persistent need for symbolic representation of the mushroom was something I judged as bad taste, until I became that person.”
– Brett Williams
22. “We’re fundamentally social creatures, and out isolation and economic inequality is creating our distress. Part of why psychedelics are such a useful model is that they foster a desire to be in relationship. That is the fundamental medicine.”
– Mellody Hayes
23. “The psychedelic process can bring profound changes and some answers. But the person still has to implement these changes and make some hard life decisions for it to fully take effect.”
– Jesse Gould
24. “Science is finally showing more and more the mind-body connection and how the limbic system works, and it’s supporting the idea that emotional experiences are stored within our bodies on physical and energetic levels. If we don’t do the work to process these experiences, then we get super blocked up and into much more of a survival mode, as opposed to allowing ourselves to be present and live in the moment.”
– Mareesa Stertz
25. “Turn on, tune in, drop out.”
– Timothy Leary
26. “Non-ordinary states are those that typically take us out of everyday waking consciousness where I am self-aware and have inner narrative going on, to those states beyond with a whole host of different qualities…Our conscious mind is no more than the headlines on the Sunday edition of the New York Times, compared to the entire week’s news.”
– Jamie Wheal
27. “Psychedelics prove to you that there’s more than one way of seeing the world.”
– James Lawler
28. “Part of what psychedelics do is they decondition you from cultural values. This is what makes it such a political hot potato. Since all culture is a kind of con game, the most dangerous candy you can hand out is one which causes people to start questioning the rules of the game.”
– Terence McKenna
29. “If we recognize the power of entheogenic substances to open us to the universal truth and full dimension of human experience, and if we accept the role of the shaman as hierophant and psychopomp into this realm, as enacted for example by the Huichol mara’akame, we have to conclude that today in Western society we are deprived of two key resources for complete human growth. Young people, in their hunger for meaning, will still gravitate toward entheogens. The more experienced among us may try to ease their journey, but in the absence of qualified guides not all will benefit from their experience.”
– Rick Doblin
30. “The rule of thumb is the more profound the experience, the longer you should wait before doing it again. The Guild of Guides suggests a minimum pf six months between entheogenic journeys because it takes at least that long for the learning and insights to be absorbed and integrated into your life.”
– James Fadiman
31. “Drugs allow us to taste the beyond but do not make us masters of the transcendental.”
– Satyananda Saraswati
32. “And so much of these plant psychedelic entities are at least 4,000 years old. Now, when you experiment – when you work with these plant psychedelics, what I have found is that these entities are actually there. They are aware of you, they are aware that you are a person, and they are able to communicate with you.”
– D.M. Turner
33. “Taking this drug, LSD-25, reality becomes objective… so reality is innocence, is pure, and is of divine beauty. In the same moment that the reality becomes to you this divine beauty, there is also the other side, reality is just of divine beauty because we don’t give any meaning to it, as is innocence. But in the same moment, to not give meaning to reality means that you don’t understand reality any longer. Reality becomes scenes without any meaning. So you can become a saint or you can become a crazy man.”
– Frederico Fellini
34. “Through all of history, mankind has ingested psychedelic substances. Those substances exist to put you in touch with spirits beyond yourself, with the creator, with the creative impulse of the planet.”
– Ray Manazarek
35. “The collective unconscious, the same as other transpersonal phenomena, is evidence that our mind is not an isolated entity but is constantly in touch with other minds as well as with the world around us. We are never entirely detached from the outside world; never entirely enclosed within our skin. Our mind and our body resonate with our environment, including other people in our environment. Our mind is coherent with the world, and when we do not repress the intuitions that link us with other people and with nature, we become aware of our oneness with the universe.”
– James Oroc
36. “It can be tempting to use psychedelics to self-medicate, but without proper psychological and emotional support in your life, this can actually exacerbate your symptom. Having a good support system in place is key.”
-Sara Gael
37. “I believe mushrooms can lead the human being into some form of mature sanity, leaving behind the immaturity of the last twelve thousand years.”
– Kilindi Iyi
38. “I had never seen anything like Iboga. It was basically like, here’s the red pill: You’re unplugging from the Matrix. As I was unplugging, I was going down these rabbit holes of who I really am…who we were really are… how important this earth is… the spirit world… my ancestors… Personally, I have African roots, so Iboga felt like I was going home. That’s my medicine.”
– Chor Boogie
39. “The primary importance of psychedelic drugs, as far as I’m concerned, is that they give you access to a mode of consciousness that’s completely different from the mode of consciousness we operate in every day of our lives.”
– Aldous Huxley
40. “I think psychedelic medicine has the potential to help heal the wounds of those suffering from racial trauma and bring healing to the consciousness of those who perpetrate and perpetuate racial violence.”
– Monnica T. Williams
41. “It can be tempting to use psychedelics to self-medicate, but without proper psychological and emotional support in your life, this can actually exacerbate your symptoms. Having a good support system in place is key.”
– Sara Gael
42. “Psychedelics show you what’s in and on your mind, those subconscious thoughts and feelings that are hidden, covered up, forgotten, out of sight, maybe even completely unexpected, but nevertheless imminently present.”
– Rick Strassman
43. “Fungi are the interface organisms between life and death.”
44. “I took acid and went: ‘Oh, I see, this makes sense.’ And in fact, when I was first told that I was bipolar, I went into the doctor, and I said, ‘well, I felt normal on acid.’
– Carrie Fisher
45. “Psychedelics and plant-based medicines are powerful tools in the process of healing, particularly for the most marginalized folks living under empire, who are underserved, underrepresented and experience the highest rates of violence. Marginalized communities already have limited access to healing spaces, so I think t’s important for folks invested in justice work to center and prioritize what nontraditional forms of healing look like for these communities.”
– Oriana Mayorga
46. “Subjects see new dimensions in the universe, have strong feelings of being an integral part of creation, and tend to regard ordinary things in everyday life-such as meals, walks in nature, playing with children, or sexual intercourse-as sacred.”
– Stanislav Grof
47. “If life wasn’t real it would be the craziest psychedelic trip ever.”
– Joe Rogan
48. “The opposite of spiritual is not material but egotistical.”
– Michael Pollan
49. “In terms of shifting to a new paradigm in the healthcare system, I think the key shift needs to be one from a system that is focused on managing disease or managing disease symptoms (which is what we currently have)…toward a system focused on producing well-being. And I think psychedelics have a big role to play in that type of system.”
– Bennet Zelner
50. “FDA approval, for example, of MDMA or psilocybin, is just step 1. What do you do when you’ve got a medicine now approved that doctors are afraid to recommend or prescribe because it come out of nowhere? they’re like, ‘Whoa, psychedelics were Schedule I and extremely dangerous and ‘Don’t do drugs!’ and now I’m supposed to be giving it to a patient?’ That’s a barrier.”
– Dr. Lynn Marie Morski
