Justin Smith-Ruiu:

Psychedelics are remarkably helpful in coming to see what an utter farce human institutions are: academia, celebrity, media, elections, prize committees, social distinction of any sort, nations, wars—vanity of vanities! “It is all ridiculous, when you think of death,” the atheist writer Thomas Bernhard said upon being given some distinction or other. He was right, of course, but he could not detect a certain significant corollary that only becomes clear when you look beyond death: that a life spent working in full knowledge of our true nature, as mortal sinners offered the infinite gift of redemption, can be a pretty wonderful thing, even if, incidentally, some prizes and distinctions happen to come our way in the course of it.