Is is as if life or reality itself has had it in mind all along to unravel the very design i have been trying all along to impose on it.

Now, however open a person manages to be, there is one possibility to which he remains as closed as ever: the possibility that when he uncovers his deepest anxieties he will find hidden inside them certain horrifying truths which his whole effort to control his life has been designed to keep repressed.

When we operate on the basis of the will to control, we are aware of only one kind of "evil": the failure of existence to conform to the plan we have for it.

What we work so hard to avoid is the shattering of our lives by horrors we know we will be helpless to control.

As the practical value of altering consciousness becomes recognized, procedures to effect these alterations will become increasingly ordinary and unremarkable. The whole concept of changing states of consciousness will cease to have a threatening or exotic aspect.

There is a species of primate in South America more gregarious than most other mammals, with a curious behavior.The members of this species often gather in groups, large and small, and in the course of their mutual chattering , under a wide variety of circumstances, they are induced to engage in bouts of involuntary, convulsive respiration, a sort of loud, helpless, mutually reinforcing group panting that sometimes is so severe as to incapacitate them. Far from being aversive,however, these attacks seem to be sought out by most members of the species, some of whom even appear to be addicted to them....the species in Homo sapiens (which does indeed inhabit South America, among other places), and the behavior is laughter.