"It really is an odd spectacle. Nearly all other cultures around the world and across the ages treat the life force as an ordinary part of human experience. It’s not something spooky or weird, it’s just a normal aspect of life. [...] Yet in the Western world, for the last five centuries, our political and cultural authorities, our educational institutions, and our mass media have insisted at the top of their lungs that all this is dangerous superstitious hogwash."