Do you have a soul? Is there even such a thing? If so, what is it exactly? Where does it live, how does it move, and what does it need? How do you grow more of it? And is it really, as some of the wisest humans who ever lived have insisted, the most valuable thing in the universe?
I invite you to sit with these questions. Meditate on the soul, dream about the soul, and turn the soul over in your imagination as if you were exploring a luminous treasure.
To start the inquiry, I’ll tell you about a woman I met who had arrived at a devastating answer to these questions.
She told me she firmly believes she is no more than the sum total of the influences of all the people she has ever known. The way she talked about herself was as if she were a machine, a passive assemblage of other people’s programming.
She lives her life as if she has no essential core, but is merely what others have shaped her into: a reflection of her parents’ and teachers’ and friends’ and enemies’ expectations of her: a mirror that has forgotten it also generates its own light.
I understood the cultural currents that had carried her to this diminished self-concept. And I agree that each of us is partly a creation of forces beyond our control. Most people have no idea how thoroughly they are shaped by the zeitgeist, by ancestral patterns, by the collective unconscious, by advertising and propaganda and the relentless pressure of consensus reality.
But I am quite sure that each of us also has an essential core, a diamond nature and irreducible YOU-ness that isn’t entirely manufactured by outside forces.
I believe our souls are ancient entities that exist both outside of time and space and very much inside it. They are both eternal and urgently present, both transcendent and gloriously incarnate in this particular body at this particular moment in history.
So I will ask you to do you and me a favor. Even if you’ve been taught that consciousness is merely the result of brain chemistry and the soul is a metaphor at best and a hallucination at worst: Imagine, just for now, that you do have a soul—not as an article of religious faith but as an experiential reality you can actually feel.
Relax the frenzied activity of what the Zen Buddhists call the monkey mind. And try to feel the quality of that deep, indivisible part of you.
This part of you knows itself and loves itself with clarity and grace. It’s so utterly unique that no other soul in the history of this planet has ever been quite like it, and no other soul ever will be. It’s the gorgeous, humming center of you, quietly broadcasting its singular frequency beneath all the noise and distraction and performance and anxiety.
This essential core is NOT merely a creation of your parents. Does NOT measure its worth against anyone else’s. Is NOT a slave to other people’s opinions of who you should be.
It’s who you were before you were born into this body, and who you will be after you leave it. It’s the part of you that chose this particular incarnation, with its particular set of challenges and gifts, and decided to arrive at this precise moment in history to do your singular work.
Your soul can never be completely understood. It will always be partly mystery. And yet it’s your sweetest, most reliable source: the wellspring of your authentic creativity and your deepest compassion. No matter how lost you may become in the maze of conditioning and fear and self-doubt, your soul will always be there at your center, emanating its signal, inviting you to remember, ready to guide you home.
In this era of manufactured confusion and artificial intelligence and deepfake everything, that authentic signal is more precious than ever. It’s the one thing that can’t be corrupted. It holds the blueprint of your most luminous becoming, and it loves you with an unconditional devotion that asks nothing except that you trust the wild, beautiful truth of who you really are.
So tune in. Its tender guidance has never been more available to you—or more necessary.
You might feel moved to explore the nature of the soul with rare companions who take the soul seriously. They won’t flinch when the conversation goes deep.
Of course, you don’t want to get into the trap of debating the soul’s existence with people who snicker and reach reflexively for their skepticism. Conversations like those are useless. Save your energy for something more alive.
You may also decide that the fact you have encountered this essay means that now is an excellent time to go out in active search of experiences that will expand and deepen your soul. How might you attune yourself to the synchronicities and encounters and recognitions that will teach you more about what your soul is and why it matters?
Below are some navigational hints.
Anything or anyone you find truly beautiful will lead you toward soul. And by beautiful I don’t mean pretty packaging or pleasing surfaces. I mean beautiful in the older, stranger sense: glowing with intelligence and intensity and mystery and depth. Beautiful as in made by hand, close to the earth, energizing to your body, and impossible to reduce to a price tag.
Anything that awakens your reverence will lead you to soul. Anyone who is acutely alive to the flow of life, who spills over with vitality and genuine responsiveness, will lead you there, too.
Feelings of gratitude will lead you there. So will adventures that catch you off guard. Unpredictability stirs the soul, and surprising truths. Deeply felt traditions with real roots can awaken or feed the soul.
But you know more than I do about what will lead you, specifically, to soul. You have your own particular hungers and your own telltale signals. You know those moments when some mystery in you suddenly leans forward, alert and awake.
Pay close attention to those signals. Write about them. Make a list of the experiences, the people, the landscapes, the works of art, and the conversations that have awakened the deepest stirrings in you. Let that list become a kind of map.
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Now here are three questions with tentative answers to open your imagination further.
Question 1: Was there a time, once upon a time, when star-crossed romance wounded your capacity for love? Left a scar across the very place in you that most wants to give and receive tenderness?
Answer: Yes. Almost certainly yes. But there has never been a better moment than now to begin healing that wound.
Question 2: Is it possible you are finally willing to relinquish your long-held addiction to a certain tragic magic? That exquisite, melancholy story you’ve been telling yourself, beautiful in its way but also keeping you smaller and sadder than you need to be?
Answer: Yes. Your urge to genuinely love your life is growing stronger than your attachment to ancient sorrow. Your need for clarity is quietly overwhelming the melodrama that once felt essential but is now, if you’re honest, becoming increasingly beside the point.
Question 3: Has there ever been a better time than right now to perform quietly courageous acts—small, steady, unglamorous acts of integrity—that turn you away from the seductions of shallowness and toward the deeper allure of the soul?
Answer: You already know the answer. You’ve known it for a while.
Join us for this stimulating exploration of the personal journey of Pam Rodolph, Prosperos High Watch and Mentor. Pam shares with us her journey from childhood to The Prosperos, and the search for Mature Innocence.
Pam is a longtime Prosperos student and Mentor, and you will enjoy hearing her insights. Pam will be introduced by Patricia Lambert.
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The Prosperos is a small, San-Francisco–based spiritual-psychological community with roots in the human potential movement and New Thought–style consciousness teachings.
Here’s a clear overview of its origin and history:
???? Origins (1970s–1980s)
The group grew out of the work of Derek Lamar, a Bay Area teacher interested in:
Consciousness exploration
Depth psychology
Mysticism
The “human potential” movement that was strong in California at the time
He developed a teaching system focused on what he called:
???? “The Innate Self” — an inner core of awareness beneath the ego.
????️ Formation of the organization
The formal community known as The Prosperos emerged later as:
A nonprofit spiritual/educational organization
A structured community for study, mentoring, and training
A place to preserve and continue Lamar’s teachings
It developed a layered membership structure (students, sponsoring members, High Watch, ministers).
???? Influences on its philosophy
Historically, the teachings draw from several streams:
1️⃣ Human potential movement
Common in California in the 1960s–80s:
Self-realization
Personal transformation
Consciousness work
2️⃣ Depth psychology
Strong influence from:
Jungian ideas about the psyche and individuation
Inner symbolic processes
3️⃣ New Thought / metaphysical spirituality
Similar to traditions like:
Religious Science
Unity Church
Esoteric mysticism
???? San Francisco roots
The group has long been based in San Francisco, where it:
Held study groups and workshops
Published newsletters and writings
Maintained a close-knit membership rather than large public outreach
It has always been relatively small and low-profile.
???? Development over time
Over the decades the organization:
Formalized mentoring and ordination processes
Created a nonprofit structure
Continued teaching through classes, writings, and community meetings
After Lamar’s later years, the group shifted toward preserving and continuing his framework rather than expanding publicly.
???? In simple terms
The Prosperos originated as:
???? A San-Francisco consciousness study community ???? Built around one teacher’s psychological-spiritual system ???? Influenced by Jung, human potential ideas, and New Thought spirituality
If you want, I can also explain:
• What makes its teachings distinctive (they’re quite unusual) • Criticisms or controversies surrounding the group • How it differs from mainstream spiritual movements
Just say the word.
The Prosperos is a small, San-Francisco–based spiritual-psychological community with roots in the human potential movement and New Thought–style consciousness teachings.
Here’s a clear overview of its origin and history:
???? Origins (1970s–1980s)
The group grew out of the work of Derek Lamar, a Bay Area teacher interested in:
Consciousness exploration
Depth psychology
Mysticism
The “human potential” movement that was strong in California at the time
He developed a teaching system focused on what he called:
???? “The Innate Self” — an inner core of awareness beneath the ego.
????️ Formation of the organization
The formal community known as The Prosperos emerged later as:
A nonprofit spiritual/educational organization
A structured community for study, mentoring, and training
A place to preserve and continue Lamar’s teachings
It developed a layered membership structure (students, sponsoring members, High Watch, ministers).
???? Influences on its philosophy
Historically, the teachings draw from several streams:
1️⃣ Human potential movement
Common in California in the 1960s–80s:
Self-realization
Personal transformation
Consciousness work
2️⃣ Depth psychology
Strong influence from:
Jungian ideas about the psyche and individuation
Inner symbolic processes
3️⃣ New Thought / metaphysical spirituality
Similar to traditions like:
Religious Science
Unity Church
Esoteric mysticism
???? San Francisco roots
The group has long been based in San Francisco, where it:
Held study groups and workshops
Published newsletters and writings
Maintained a close-knit membership rather than large public outreach
It has always been relatively small and low-profile.
???? Development over time
Over the decades the organization:
Formalized mentoring and ordination processes
Created a nonprofit structure
Continued teaching through classes, writings, and community meetings
After Lamar’s later years, the group shifted toward preserving and continuing his framework rather than expanding publicly.
???? In simple terms
The Prosperos originated as:
???? A San-Francisco consciousness study community ???? Built around one teacher’s psychological-spiritual system ???? Influenced by Jung, human potential ideas, and New Thought spirituality
If you want, I can also explain:
• What makes its teachings distinctive (they’re quite unusual) • Criticisms or controversies surrounding the group • How it differs from mainstream spiritual movements
The Onion Feb 23, 2026 With the Doomsday Clock closer to midnight than ever, North Carolina resident Jonathan Moore has been chosen to assume the duties of everyday Americans should the very thinkable happen. Become an Onion member while it’s still optional: https://membership.theonion.com/?camp…
THE HEAVENS—Admitting He felt torn between His true feelings and His fear of the unknown, the Lord God Almighty announced Monday that He no longer loved humanity but was too afraid to leave. “Any affection I ever had for the human race is long gone, but I’m just terrified at the thought of walking away and being alone,” said Our Heavenly Father, adding while He has felt “stuck” for millennia in the company of the species He adored long ago, He still worries He would have no real identity without them and starting over at His age was terrifying. “Sometimes I imagine myself ending it, striking out on my own, and discovering who I really am as God. But then reality comes crashing down. I’ve been with humanity since the sixth day of creation. What am I supposed to do, start over with bonobos?” At press time, The Almighty acknowledged that He would face little resistance if He left, as humanity has also been growing increasingly distant for some time now.
“Do not forget that the value and interest of life is not so much to do conspicuous things, as to do ordinary things with the perception of their enormous value.”
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955) French Priest
AN OPPORTUNITY FOR DAILY REFLECTION BROUGHT TO YOU BY THE SCHOOL OF PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY
“Do not forget that the value and interest of life is not so much to do conspicuous things, as to do ordinary things with the perception of their enormous value.”
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955) French Priest
AN OPPORTUNITY FOR DAILY REFLECTION BROUGHT TO YOU BY THE SCHOOL OF PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY
Confabulation is a memory disorder where a person unintentionally creates false, distorted, or fabricated memories to fill in gaps in their memory. Often described as “honest lying,” the individual sincerely believes these fabricated stories are true. It is commonly linked to brain injuries, Alzheimer’s, or Korsakoff syndrome. Merriam-Webster +5
Key Aspects of Confabulation
No Intent to Deceive: Unlike lying, the person truly believes they are recalling accurate information.
Memory Gaps: It is a compensatory mechanism used by the brain to fill in missing information.
Types:
Provoked: Occurs when a person is prompted or asked questions about memories they cannot recall.
Spontaneous: Occurs without prompts, often when a person shares detailed, fantastical stories.
Context: While it can involve small, daily details, it can also manifest as elaborate, bizarre, or false accounts of past events. Merriam-Webster +4
Causes and Related Conditions
Confabulation is associated with neurological damage and various conditions, including:
Published Feb. 7, 2026 Updated Feb. 9, 2026 (NYTimes.com)
For as long as I can remember, I’ve wrestled with my own thoughts and feelings about identity. Why am I, David, the person I am? How changeable is that? Where do those thoughts and feelings come from anyway, and what purposes do they ultimately serve? I suppose it’s no coincidence then that I’ve also always been so curious about the subject of human consciousness. That’s the area of science and philosophy — of human thinking generally! — that burrows most deeply into similar questions and, to varying degrees of satisfaction, offers a plethora of possible answers.
The best-selling author Michael Pollan has been thinking about these things, too. Throughout his work — which includes classic books like “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” (2006), about why we eat the way we do, and “How to Change Your Mind” (2018), about the science and uses of psychedelic drugs — Pollan has waded into ideas about the inner workings of the mind. Now, with his forthcoming book, “A World Appears: A Journey Into Consciousness,” which will arrive this month, he has jumped into the deep end. The book is both a highly personal and expansive multidisciplinary survey of questions around human consciousness — what it is, what causes it, what it’s for and what the possible answers might mean for how we choose to live. And as Pollan explained, with the rise of artificial intelligence as well as the relentless political pressure on our attention (that is, our minds), those questions, already profound, are becoming only more urgent.
“How often do you do psychedelics?”The best-selling author Michael Pollan grapples with big questions about A.I., consciousness and the distractions polluting our minds.
I want to get some basics: How do you define consciousness? The simplest way to define consciousness is as subjective experience. Another one-word definition is “awareness.” Thomas Nagel, the N.Y.U. philosopher, wrote a piece back in the ’70s called “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?” His idea is: If we can imagine it is like anything to be a bat, then a bat is conscious, because that means it has some sort of subjective experience. Why did he choose bats? Well, they’re very different than we are. Instead of using eyesight, they use echolocation. They bounce signals off of objects to move through space. We can vaguely imagine going through the world with echolocation. Whereas my toaster, I can’t do that. I don’t have a sense of what it’s like to be my toaster.
A big question of consciousness is what the philosopher David Chalmers has referred to as the “hard problem.” Can you tell people what that is? Basically how you get from matter to mind, how you cross that huge gulf from neurons to subjective experience — a gulf no one has managed to cross. Related questions are: Why don’t all these things we do go on automatically? Why do we have to be aware of anything? We could be completely automated and perhaps get along just fine. Your brain is monitoring your body and making fine adjustments in the blood gasses, in the heart rate, in digestion. There’s a lot going on that we don’t have to think about. So why do we have to think about any of it? Some interesting theories have been proposed. One is that some of the issues that we deal with have to be decided in a conscious way. When you have two competing needs — you’re hungry and you’re tired — which should take precedence? So consciousness opens up this space of decision-making. The other argument is that we live in a very complex social world where I have to predict what you’re going to say; I have to imagine my way into your head. You can’t automate human social interaction. It has too many elements. So consciousness is very helpful in navigating that world.
Michael Pollan with Roshi Joan Halifax, the founder of the Upaya Zen Center in Santa Fe, N.M., during a visit to the retreat in 2024 while working on his new book.Credit…Wendy Lau
It seems likely to me that regardless of the source of consciousness, it’s probably a result of evolutionary processes — that consciousness evolved to make information available to certain parts of the brain, or to help us recognize patterns, or perceive threats, or maintain homeostasis. But are any non-evolutionary arguments for consciousness plausible to you? Oh, yeah. One is panpsychism.
Which could sound bonkers. It can sound bonkers. Panpsychism is the idea that everything, every particle, the ink on the page, the atoms, all have some infinitesimal degree of psyche or consciousness, and somehow this consciousness is combined in some way from our cells and the rest of our bodies to create this kind of superconsciousness. It sounds crazy. There are some very serious people who believe in it. You have to expand your sense of the plausible when you’re looking at consciousness. But we’ve done that before. How long ago was it that we discovered electromagnetism? This crazy idea that there are all these waves passing through us that can carry information. That’s just as mind-blowing, right?
I could happily talk about consciousness all day, but often when I do talk about it with people, I can tell that they view thinking about consciousness as almost akin to navel gazing. Like, it’s an interesting thing to think about, but really what difference does it make? What is your response to that? I’ve thought a lot about what good is it to think about consciousness, and I came to think that it’s more important than ever. Scientists are now learning that more and more animals and creatures — going all the way down possibly to insects — are conscious. So that’s one interesting issue: We’re sharing consciousness with more creatures. And then the big threat is artificial intelligence and the effort to create a conscious A.I., which is going to be an enormous challenge to this question of what does it mean to be human. Is consciousness something that a machine can possess? Are we more like intelligent machines or conscious, feeling animals? Who are we? So I think we’re approaching this kind of Copernican moment of redefinition.
What do you think we should do with the increasing awareness that more animals might be conscious than we previously thought? I guess the argument would be that we should have a greater amount of respect for them, but we know human beings are conscious and we exploit the hell out of other humans all the time. That’s a great question. There’s this whole conversation, very active here where I live in Silicon Valley, that if A.I. is conscious, then we’re going to have to give it moral consideration. Well, really? Have we given moral consideration to one another? Have we given moral consideration to the chickens and the cattle that we eat? The answer is no. It doesn’t automatically follow. So we’re going to have to sort out the ethics. Maybe it’s around the ability to suffer. Maybe that’s where you draw the line. I don’t know. I’m not an ethicist, but it’s not as easy as: You’re conscious, therefore you have all these rights. A.I. is really going to complicate this. Who we grant personhood to is a very subjective human decision. We give it to corporations, oddly enough, which are not conscious, but there are all sorts of creatures we don’t give it to. I don’t think we’re entirely rational or consistent in our granting of moral consideration.
Credit…Devin Oktar Yalkin for The New York Times
You are skeptical that A.I. can achieve consciousness. Why? I’m convinced by some of the researchers, including Antonio Damasio and Mark Solms, who made a really compelling case that the origin of consciousness is with feelings, not thoughts. Feelings are the language in which the body talks to the brain. We forget that brains exist to keep bodies alive, and the way the body gets the brain’s attention is with feelings. So if you think feelings are at the center of consciousness, it’s very hard to imagine how a machine could rise to that level to have feelings. The other reason I think we’re not close to it is that everything that machines know, the data set on which they’re trained, is information on the internet. They don’t have friction with nature. They don’t have friction with us. Some of the most important things we know are about person-to-person contact, about contact with nature — this friction that really makes us human.
Despite how it may seem, the internet is not actually the whole of the world. But to a computer, it’s all you got.
Learning to Live With A.I.
Read more from the New York Times Magazine’s special issue.
How would we know if an A.I. is conscious or not? How do I know you’re conscious?
I promise I am! Your promise is what’s called reportability in philosophy. You can ask something if it’s conscious, and with humans, we kind of know.
But if an A.I. says: “Michael, I’m conscious. I promise,” how do we know? We don’t, and that is exactly why people are falling deep into these relationships with A.I. We can’t say it’s not conscious when it tells us it is. But we can test it in various ways. It all goes back to this idea of the Turing test — that the test of machine intelligence would be when they can fool us.
If the Turing test is the criteria for machine consciousness, then that test has already been passed. Exactly, it has fooled many, many people. Whether it can fool an expert, too, I don’t know, but probably. So we’re in a very weird place where the machines we’re living with are telling us they’re conscious. We can’t dispute it, but we can look at how they’re made and draw the kind of conclusions I’ve drawn. But is that going to persuade everybody? No. We want them to be conscious in some way. Or some of us do. It’s easier to have a relationship with a chatbot than another human. Going back to that friction point, they offer no friction. They just suck up to us and convince us how brilliant we are, and we fall for it.
Listen to the Conversation With Michael Pollan
The best-selling author grapples with big questions about A.I., consciousness and the distractions polluting our minds.
What do you think religion has to offer to questions about consciousness? Buddhism has been thinking about consciousness for a very long time. It has been raising these questions about the self and giving people tools to transcend the self, which in itself is a desire that is surprising. We cling to this ego so firmly; at the same time, we do a lot of things to get away from it, whether it’s extreme sports or psychedelics or meditation.
Or watching a movie or having sex or any number of things. Some of the highest experiences of life are these moments where we transcend the self, and that’s curious.
What do you think that’s about? Why, if we cling to the self, are we also so hungry to lose ourselves? The self isolates us, the ego builds walls around it, it’s constantly evaluating, it ruminates. There’s a lot of crappy stuff about the self.
Pollan in the 2022 Netflix documentary series “How to Change Your Mind” with Erika Gagnon, a Canadian ceremonial leader, wisdom keeper and healer.Credit…Netflix
Yeah, it’s constantly yammering away. Yes, there is that voice in our head, and it embodies critical voices, very often inherited from parents or other people. I mean, the ego is very useful. It gets a lot done. It got my book done. It gets your podcast done. So we shouldn’t be too critical of it. On the other hand, when we transcend the self, we connect to things larger than ourselves. And this is one of the beautiful things about psychedelics — when they work, there is this sense of dissolution of self. The walls come down, and you feel part of nature. You feel love. I had an experience I describe in the book of self-dissolution where I merged with this piece of music, this Bach cello suite, and it was such a profound experience because the subject-object split went away and I was identical to this music. The interesting thing, though, is that consciousness doesn’t go away when the ego goes away. We protect our ego because we’re afraid if we lose it, we’re dead. But we’re not. It’s just one voice. There’s a lot else going on, as you learn when you meditate and use psychedelics.
How often do you do psychedelics? Not very often at all. It’s hard to find time. It’s a big day with a lot of preparation and everything. If I can do it once a year, I’m happy. What I’m talking about is ideally a guided experience. You can let yourself go when someone’s watching your body. So when I can put myself in that situation — which isn’t easy to do, and it’s expensive — I find that very valuable. I’m still learning things.
What are you learning? Oh, every psychedelic experience is different. You never go back to the same place. That’s why I think it’s a great thing to do on or around your birthday, to sort of take stock of your reality and what the issues are. I had an experience not too long ago that kind of rocked me.
What was it? It was a guided trip on — it doesn’t matter what it was on. I had these powerful emotions that had no name. They were like these giant blimps crashing into me, crashing into each other, and I was straining and so frustrated that I didn’t know what they were, and the answer never came clear during the experience. Oddly enough, the answer to what they were came two weeks later when I happened to be at a meditation retreat. The links between psychedelics and meditation are very fruitful and interesting. I was doing a walking meditation after a couple days of complete silence, 12-hour-a-day meditating, and there were the blimps. In sans serif letters, right on the blimp, was the word “fear.” I quickly realized what it was. It was fear of losing something very close to you. So the combination of two experiences ended up being very productive. But on its own, the psychedelic experience raised more questions than gave answers.
Questions of consciousness, which are really questions about what makes us us, are some of the most important questions that can be asked. But at the same time, they can lead into other questions like: Is there some David — some stable “I” — that exists or not? Or what is the relationship between free will and consciousness? Sometimes thinking about those questions can be destabilizing. Is that just me? Do you have similar apprehensions? It can be destabilizing, absolutely. One of the reasons people are happy to be less conscious and fill their attention with distractions and drugs is because the mind can be a scary place to visit. We often want to be less aware of what’s going on. There are reasons people avoid going down these rabbit holes. It takes a willingness to risk something.
Credit…Devin Oktar Yalkin for The New York Times
I apologize if this seems like a woo-woo question, but do you think the absence of something like a stable “self” also means the absence of something like a soul? Do you believe in a soul? Well, if a soul is something that is indestructible and survives our death, no. But I can’t say anything about the afterlife with confidence. Consciousness has become our secular substitute for the soul; we talk about consciousness the way people in the 16th or 17th century talked about souls. Some people’s interest in it is the fact that it floats free of these mortal bodies and maybe gets folded into a collective consciousness after we’re gone. So I think there is a hidden religiosity or spirituality in the whole conversation around consciousness. Somebody asked me recently, Do you think as people get older, they are more interested in consciousness? And I would say yes, and probably for that reason.
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It does seem that many of us have consistencies to ourselves that are a little hard to explain in the absence of something like a stable identity or a soul. In the new book, you mention a period in your teenage years when you were reading Hermann Hesse, writing bad poetry and thinking about the big questions. I don’t know if you still write bad poetry, but the other two things don’t seem that far away from what you’re now doing in your 70s. So what might explain what seem like intrinsic core qualities that are constant for you through time if not a stable self-identity or a soul? Even though I talk a lot about this idea that maybe the self is an illusion, it still has a conventional reality. The fact that I’m using myself to talk to yourself makes this very easy. If neither of us had selves right now, it would be a very loosey-goosey conversation. I can’t even imagine what it would be like. Matthieu Ricard said: It’s like a river has a name, and that conventional name is very useful, but there’s nothing consistent there. It’s just water passing.
I brought something like this up earlier, but I want to ask another version of it. This morning I was reading the news and thinking, Gosh, right now, is talking to Michael Pollan about consciousness a kind of “how many angels can dance on the head of a pin” conversation? I decided the answer is no, but do you ever have those doubts? I did at various points when I was starting on this book and the world was starting to fall apart. Like, is this how I should be using my energy? But I think that consciousness is at stake in a lot of what’s going on. One of the things Trump has done is occupy a significant chunk of our attention every single day. Our consciousness is being polluted, and protecting ourselves against that at the same time we preserve the ability to act politically is a difficult balancing act. Consciousness is a very precious realm. It’s the realm of our privacy and our freedom to think. So I think we need some kind of consciousness hygiene, particularly at this moment, where this one politician has figured out ways to command our attention. Consciousness is more relevant now than it even was 10 or 20 years ago, as something to think about, protect and nurture.
David Marchese is a writer and co-host of The Interview, a regular series featuring influential people across culture, politics, business, sports and beyond.
A version of this article appears in print on Feb. 15, 2026, Page 11 of the Sunday Magazine with the headline: Michael Pollan Says Humanity Is About to Undergo a Revolutionary Change. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe
