Excerpt from: [Towards the Unknown]
Q: Interesting that the mushroom also is a symbol in our culture of death and destruction, being the symbol of the nuclear explosion.
TM: Yes well my brother has made the point asking what mushroom is it that grows at the end of history? Is it the mushroom of Fermi and Oppenhimer and Teller, or is it the mushroom of Wasson and Hoffman and Humphrey Osmond?
Q: Somehow I think the latter is safer! (laughter)
TM: Well it may not only be safer, it may open the way to escape from the former. It's like a pun in physics that the force of liberation and the force of destruction could take the same form. It's what the alchemists call a coincidencia oppositorum.