Quotessence
Home / Books / How to Change Your Mind: The New Science of Psychedelics

How to Change Your Mind: The New Science of Psychedelics

Book by Michael Pollan · 4 quotes · Science, Ants, Brain

Filter quotes by topic

AllScienceAntsBrainCordycepsFungusImaginationMoral PanicNaturePhilosophyPsychedelicsSoulStametsWar On Drugs

How to Change Your Mind: The New Science of Psychedelics Quotes

“Psychedelic experiences are notoriously hard to render in words; to try is necessarily to do violence to what has been seen and felt, which is in some fundamental way pre- or post-linguistic or, as students of mysticism say, ineffable. Emotions arrive in all their newborn nakedness, unprotected from the harsh light of scrutiny and, especially, the pitiless glare of irony. Platitudes that wouldn't seem out of place on a Hallmark card flow with the force of revealed truth. Love is everything. Okay, but what else did you learn? No - you must not have heard me; it's everything! Is a platitude so deeply felt still just a platitude? No, I decided. A platitude is precisely what is left of a truth after it has been drained of all emotion. To resaturate that dried husk with feeling is to see it again for what it is: the loveliest and most deeply rooted of truths, hidden in plain sight.”

PhilosophySciencePsychedelics
Book:How to Change Your Mind: The New Science of Psychedelics
Create image

“The second or third time I watched Stamets show a video of a Cordyceps doing its diabolical thing to an ant—commandeering its body, making it do its bidding, and then exploding a mushroom from its brain in order to disseminate its genes—it occurred to me that Stamets and that poor ant had rather a lot in common. Fungi haven’t killed him, it’s true, and he probably knows enough about their wiles to head off that fate. But it’s also true that this man’s life—his brain!—has been utterly taken over by fungi; he has dedicated himself to their cause, speaking for the mushrooms in the same way that Dr. Seuss’s Lorax speaks for the trees. He disseminates fungal spores far and wide, helping them, whether by mail order or sheer dint of his enthusiasm, to vastly expand their range and spread their message.”

ScienceBrainAntsFungusCordycepsStamets
Book:How to Change Your Mind: The New Science of Psychedelics
Create image