I suspect the real breakthroughs in our understanding of consciousness are going to come from an entirely different direction. That direction, controversially, has to do with psychedelics—which, as many of the contributors to The Divine Spark argue, offer spectacular potential for the investigation of the “hard problem” of consciousness. After a hiatus of nearly half a century, this potential is again beginning to be explored by science although as yet only in tentative and limited ways that focus on therapeutic outcomes and that shun the use of psychedelics to explore the deeper mysteries of consciousness. There are lots of ways of inducing the necessary altered state. The Bushmen of South Africa get there through night-long rhythmic dancing and drumming; the Tukano Indians of the Amazon do it through consuming the psychedelic beverage Ayahuasca, the “vine of souls.” In prehistoric Europe, it's most likely that the requisite altered states were reached through the consumption of Psilocybe semilanceata—the popular little brown magic mushroom that is still used throughout the world to induce hallucinations today. In Central America, the Maya and their predecessors used other Psilocybe species (P. mexicana and P. cubensis) to induce the same effects. Could the “supernaturals” first depicted in the painted caves and rock shelters—and still accessible to us today in altered states of consciousness—be the ancient teachers of mankind? Could it be they who first ushered us into the full birthright of our humanity? And could it be that human evolution is not just the “blind,” “meaningless,” “natural” process that Darwin identified, but something else, more purposive and intelligent, that we have barely even begun to understand? If so, then we demonise altered states of consciousness at our peril, and rather than sending our fellow humans to prison for seeking them out, we should encourage, reward, and support them as the true explorers and adventurers of our time. I have brought together this series of essays in The Divine Spark, written by researchers and activists in the field of consciousness whose work I respect, as a contribution to this exploration of terra incognita.