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So the conclusion that I reach, visa vie the individual and civilization, is this: Culture is not our friend. Culture is not your friend. It's not my friend. It's a very uncomfortable set of accommodations that have been hammered out over time for the convenience of institutions.
Terence McKenna -
As the bonfires of knowledge grow brighter, the more the darkness is revealed to our startled eyes.
Terence McKenna
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And psychedelics now, as we de-condition ourselves from the post-medieval world, they are present to hand as tools.
Terence McKenna -
If the world is made of language, then you can hack it in the sense that you can hack code.
Terence McKenna -
Television is by nature the dominator drug par excellence. Control of content, uniformity of content, repeatability of content make it inevitably a tool of coersion, brainwashing, and manipulation.
Terence McKenna -
Earth is a place where language has literally become alive. Language has infested matter; it is replicating and defining and building itself. And it is in us.
Terence McKenna -
We can will the perfect future into being by becoming microcosms of the perfect future.
Terence McKenna -
My idea of enlightenment is when ego and Tao are fused, and Tao is perceived as ego. Then everything happens with complete appropriateness.
Terence McKenna
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I regard these people who are peddling angst and peddling pessimism and all that stuff as so 'two minutes ago'.
Terence McKenna -
The main thing going on in the 20th century is a dissolving of boundaries, all the boundaries that historical civilization put in place.
Terence McKenna -
I believe in extraterrestrials, but I believe that real extraterrestrials are so peculiar that the job is to recognize them.
Terence McKenna -
Ultimately what we're touching is the invisible, all-pervasive intelligence that surrounds us and penetrates us. It is grooming us to be able to tolerate its splendor. It can't just reveal itself openly because we would be forfeited; we'd never know what hit us.
Terence McKenna -
Our task is to create memes... Launch your meme boldly and see if it will replicate.
Terence McKenna -
In a sense, sexuality is the built-in psychedelic experience that only a very few people manage to evade.
Terence McKenna
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What is the psychedelic experience? What promise does it hold for a sane future for our planet and our children? And what is it about it that kindles the kind of loyalty that I feel coming from the people in this room this evening? And I submit to you that it is nothing less than the rebirth of a voice that has been silent for at least a thousand years, the still small voice of the Logos of the planet.
Terence McKenna -
It is curious that what these psychedelics do, on a scale of a community, is they release new ideas. . . . And that this is how culture moves forward. That culture is a phenomenon dependent on the generation of ideas, plans, notions, connections. So this is precisely what these compounds are doing.
Terence McKenna -
It is true that when you smoke DMT, for example, at a sufficiently high and prepared dose, you get elves, everybody does. All you need do, is inhale deeply three times, and you know... You want contact? You want elves? You want alien contact? You'll have that!
Terence McKenna -
If you charge off with some political agenda that is not informed by clarity, you are going to end up with business as usual. The road to hell is paved with good intentions but it is not paved with clarity.
Terence McKenna -
When your time is turned into money, the felt presence of immediate experience is analogous to being enslaved. I mean, let's be frank about it, it is enslavement.
Terence McKenna -
Psychedelic experiences are beyond the reach of cultural manipulation, and discovering this and exploring it is somehow the frontier of maturity. Culture is a form of enforced infantilism. It's the last nursery, and most people never leave it.
Terence McKenna
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You are a divine being. You matter, you count. You come from realms of unimaginable power and light, and you will return to those realms.
Terence McKenna -
I think there is a global commonality of understanding coming into being. And it is not necessarily fostered by institutions.
Terence McKenna -
I discovered early in life a stunning truth that's made my life very complicated in its wake, but that I still think is true, and it's that people are very easy to love.
Terence McKenna -
Well, you could almost say, I suppose, that the scientist seeks what is similar between any two days, or bluebirds, or glaciers. And the poet seeks what is different. The artist seeks to celebrate the unique.
Terence McKenna