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THE WORLD IS IN DEEP SHIT RIGHT NOW. The only thing that can possibly save us from our own self-induced destruction is direct knowledge of the truth. And I say that without any reservation at all. Mankind cannot survive unless the truth dawns—from within—in each and every one of us. No political solution, bellicose or peaceful, will ever save us. No law. No pact. No treaty. No war.

We have developed the capacity to destroy ourselves and each other utterly and that is never going to go away. All we can do now is develop the capacity to see that we must never use that power—and we must see this not just individually but collectively, as the human race itself, as life itself, and from the very core of our collective being.

The lame-ass “solutions” we hear from political leaders, windbag pontificators, preachers, warmongers, peaceniks, tree-huggers, Bible-thumpers—without the clarity of truth behind them, they’re all meaningless, yammering noise. Trying to understand their twaddle makes about as much sense as trying to interpret the screeching of Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Music as a subtle treatise on the nature of being.

These talking heads are all trying to take truth and force it into categories of their own design. It’s as if they’re scooping up a bucketful of ocean water and saying that now that they’ve got it neatly in a bucket they totally understand what the sea really is. Right.

Before we can meaningfully talk about any of this, we need to address the real questions: What is all this? Who am I? Who are you? Why are we suffering?

Personally, I’ve never been interested in sugar-coated imitations of truth, sweet little pseudo-truth pills I could take three times a day with meals and a beer chaser. And to me, this seems at best to be what all religions, philosophies, and political views have to offer.

Religions, the supposed institutional repositories of humanity’s understanding of the deeper mysteries of the universe, have never offered anything more to me than sophisticated methods of avoiding the truth, of building elaborate fantasies in place of reality. As far as I’m concerned, religions obscure reality rather than reveal it more clearly. They serve up vapid platitudes in place of answers to the genuine and crucial questions that burn in our guts. Pretty buildings full of vacant-eyed people with freeze-dried brains all pretending to agree with each other that the empty words the guy up front wearing the funny costume says actually mean anything at all let alone anything actually useful—that whole scene never did a lot for me. Religions offer authority figures: Trust the wise people’s learned excretions and you’ll be fine. Uh-huh.

And philosophy, the academically sanctioned state religion of the Western world, isn’t any better. Philosophies offer clever suppositions phrased in five-dollar words. Sure, philosophy can lead to a deep-ass insight or two. Maybe you even have some orgasmically important philosophical thought and bask in its glow as you puff your self-congratulatory cigar and write it up for a journal—but soon enough you look around and the world is still the same old screwed-up mess.

Politics? Politicians can’t solve the problem of how to find their own asses with two hands and a flashlight, let alone figure out anything more complex and subtle.

Fame, fortune, really great sex—maybe those’ll cure all your ills. But beautiful famous people with loads of money are just as confused and miserable as anyone else. Spend your whole life chasing after wealth and power and you end up with nothing more to show for it than bleeding ulcers and a heart condition. You can master tantric yogic polyorgasmic Wonder Sex but you’re still gonna die alone. There has to be something more.

MY OWN QUEST for truth began because I knew there had to be some way to see the truth that didn’t involve following all the other cattle to the slaughterhouse. There had to be some way for me to see truth clearly—without relying on anyone else to interpret the world for me. There had to be a way