Terence McKenna locutes:

I asked the mushroom once about the social chaos at the end of history, and the mushroom said "No worry, bro." This is what it's like when a species departs for hyperspace, there's a little shimmy in the landing zone as we take off, so the metaphor that I have created to try and calm people and to make it possible for us to go into this future with dignity and hope - which I think is the only appropriate response - is the metaphor of birth. If you had never heard, if no-one had ever informed you, of the facts of life, and you were suddenly to come around the corner and encounter a woman in the act of giving birth, this situation vibrates medical emergency - blood is being shed, clearly there's a great deal of physical pain and agony, pleading, a sense of helplessness, it looks as though an enormous tumour is metastasizing out of someone's body, it would be a real leap of faith and understanding to be able to contemplate that for the first time and to know or to guess that this is how nature does it, this is how we move to the next higher level, this is what is happening to us. Matter and the human body is the placenta of the soul and it is certainly true that the earth is the cradle of the human race, but no infant remains in the cradle forever. Again, to harp back to the birth metaphor, if it's time for birth to occur and it doesn't occur, then you do have medical emergency, what's called toxaemia sets in, dangerous to the mother, fatal to the foetus, the two must be medically parted jolly quick or there will be permanent repercussions. This is why we must aid this birth process, because it is painful, life is sculpted out of death and the feeling that we as a species have in this moment is the feeling that the foetus has, I think, as it moves into the narrowest neck of the birth canal. Gone forever are the endless amniotic oceans of peace and tranquillity when we could rape and pillage and burn and explore to our heart's content because the earth seemed infinite in extent. Now, we have the same feeling that the foetus has as it starts down the birth canal - we can't breath, there's no oxygen, we can't get food, we appear to be .. the walls are moving in to crush us - what we have to understand that this is the narrow neck that we have been trained for, this is our destiny...