Inhaling fumes directly from burning foliage, either in a confined space such as a cave or a tent, or scooping up and breathing in the vapors from psychoactive plant materials scattered on a bowl full of hot coals, must be an extremely ancient practi...
You can’t, if you can’t feel it, if it never Rises from the soul, and sways The heart of every single hearer, With deepest power, in simple ways. You’ll sit forever, gluing things together, Cooking up a stew from other’s scraps, Blowing on a ...
When I was young, I had to choose between the life of being and the life of doing. And I leapt at the latter like a trout to a fly. But each deed you do, each act, binds you to itself and to its consequences, and makes you act again and yet again. Th...
Isn't atheism just another religion?' No, it isn't. Atheism has no creeds, rituals, holy book, absolute moral code, origin myth, sacred spaces or shrines. It has no sin, divine judgment, forbidden words, prayer, worship, prophecy, group privileges, o...
Books are a bad family - there are those you love, and those you are indifferent to; idiots and mad cousins who you would banish except others enjoy their company; wrongheaded but fascinating eccentrics and dreamy geniuses; orphaned grandchildren; an...
People carry around with them internalization's fixed-feature space learned early in life. Man is like other members of the animal kingdom , first, last and always a prisoner of his biological organism. No matter how hard he tries, it is impossible f...
But those eyes, those big green eyes of hers, they bore right into me with crippling force. She wanted it too much; the space Tommy had left in her, she wanted me to fill it. And I couldn't. She looked too young and too scared. almost like she didn't...
The ancient trees are the deep earth's language for speaking to the universe. The earth communicates through trees to the animals and to the birds living above - and to the very heavens. The trees draw the earth's water up from the ground. Then breat...
Modern cosmetic surgeons have a direct financial interest in a social role for women that requires them to feel ugly. They do not simply advertise for a share of a market that already exists: Their advertisements create new markets. It is a boom indu...
Today’s milestone is human madness. Politics is a part of it, particularly in its lethal outbursts. Politics is not, as it was for Hannah Arendt, the field where human freedom is unfurled. The modern world, the world of world war, the Third World, ...
Acting is such a desperately futile profession anyway. Playing out the lives of other men. Knowing of their failures and successes long before they ever do. Living, suffering, murdering, dying … all in the space of three hours. Sometimes only two. ...
Scientific advancement carries risk,” Kohler argued. “It always has. Space programs, genetic research, medicine—they all make mistakes. Science needs to survive its own blunders, at any cost. For everyone’s sake.” Vittoria was amazed at Koh...
Wherever sufficiently numerous series of the remains of any given group, which has endured for a long space of time, are carefully examined, their morphological relations are never in discordance with the requirements of the doctrine of evolution, an...
Hope had finally learned to live in the present. Often, when she found herself in a space of tremendous comfort, usually out in nature, or when her children were safe all around her and on the verge of going to bed, she forced herself to take stock. ...
Perhaps my sense of reality is not very highly developed, perhaps I lack a sound and reassuring instinct for the solid facts of our earthly existence; I can’t always tell memories from dreams, and often I mistake dreams, coming to life again in col...
Contrary to what is generally believed, meaning and sense were never the same thing, meaning shows itself at once, direct, literal, explicit, enclosed in itself, univocal, if you like, while sense cannot stay still, it seethes with second, third and ...
Her eyes widen and she shoves me back and then there's a space between us, enough to paralyze me with all of the things I could do to her next. I could raise my hand and hit her in the face or bring my knee into her stomach, take a fistful of her hai...
After a duration of a thousand years, the power of astrology broke down when, with Copernicus, Kepler, and Galileo, the progress of astronomy overthrew the false hypothesis upon which the entire structure rested, namely the geocentric system of the u...
The terms we use for what is considered supernatural are woefully inadequate. Beyond such terms as ghost, specter, poltergeist, angel, devil, or spirit, might there not be something more our purposeful blindness has prevented us from understanding? W...
Something must always remain that eludes us ... For power to have an object on which it can be exercised, a space in which to stretch out its arms ... As long as I know there exists in the world someone who does tricks only for the love of the trick,...
Well, see, I think it's that most people don't like that lonely feeling. People don't like looking up and feeling small or lost. That's what I think prayer is all about. It doesn't matter which stories they believe in, they're all doing the same thin...
