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Terence McKenna

Terence McKenna Quotes

Philosopher

Terence McKenna was a renowned philosopher known for his profound insights into consciousness, botany, and human potential. His ideas were deeply influenced by his family's genetic research and studies on the evolution of human consciousness.

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All Psychedelic Humans Ifs Thinking People World Mind Culture Psychedelic Experience Kind

Famous Terence McKenna Quotes

“Once you have the psychedelic tool in hand then some real choices have to be made.”

Made Real Hands Choices Tools Psychedelic

Author:Terence McKenna

“It puts people who are into this psychedelic thing in an entirely different stance from all other spiritual seekers, because all other spiritual seekers are furiously seeking. Psychedelic people are holding it back with all their power, because they are in the presence of the mystery. And then the trick is to get a spigot on it so that it can be turned on and off rather than coming at you like a tidal wave a mile high and twenty miles wide.”

People Different Spiritual Mystery Twenties Wave Seeking Wide Miles Tricks Seekers Psychedelic Stance And Off Tidal Waves

Author:Terence McKenna

“What the churches are peddling is high abstraction, and you really have to work yourself up into a lather to be able to accept that as worthy of that kind of attention. The psychedelic subset of society is into an experience, and it's accessible.”

Kind Able Church Attention Accepting Worthy Abstraction Psychedelic Peddling

Author:Terence McKenna

“There will be difficult moments in a five-gram trip, but on the other hand certain questions will be solved forever for you, because you will validate the existence of this dimension. You will see what your relationship to it is.”

Moments Hands Certain Difficult Existence Forever Five Dimensions Our Relationship Difficult Moments

Author:Terence McKenna

“This is a general comment that you should take a committed dose of whatever it is you're taking so that there is no ambiguity, because there's nothing worse than a sub-threshold psychedelic experience.”

Should Committed Comment Ambiguity Psychedelic Threshold Dose Psychedelic Experience

Author:Terence McKenna

“At the interface of the say-able and the unsay-able is the novel, the new, the never before seen, said or done. And that's what I think it's important to try and bring out, ideas. Because I think we are the animals that bring back ideas.”

Thinking Trying Said Important Ideas Done Able Animal Novel Interfaces

Author:Terence McKenna

“Human populations that do not have contact with the psychedelic tremendum are neurotic because they are male ego dominated.”

Humans Ego Males Population Contact Neurotic Psychedelic Human Population Male Ego

Author:Terence McKenna

“One way of assessing the toxicity of a drug is how do you feel the next day?”

Way Feels Next Drug One Way Next Day Toxicity Assessing

Author:Terence McKenna

“DMT is the most powerful hallucinogen there is. If it gets stronger than that I don't want to know about it.”

Ifs Knows Want Powerful Stronger Most Powerful Dmt Hallucinogens

Author:Terence McKenna

“It seems to me that right under the surface of human neurological organization is a mode shift of some sort that would make language beholdable.”

Humans Seems Language Organization Surface

Author:Terence McKenna

“It's a relationship like to a crusty Zen master, or something like that. And it is really like another entity because you cannot predict the answers.”

Answers Masters Entity Zen Master

Author:Terence McKenna

“To my mind this is what shamanic training must really be, is mnemonic training. If you want to bring the stuff back you have to train yourself to bring it back.”

Ifs Want Mind Stuff Training Train

Author:Terence McKenna

“One thing that these Buddhists have certainly gotten right is that attention to attention is the key to taking control of your mental life.”

Attention One Thing Keys Buddhist

Author:Terence McKenna

“Memory training is great psychedelic training.”

Memories Training Psychedelic

Author:Terence McKenna

“There's something in the Western mind that gets very nervous when you try to talk about the bedrock of ontology.”

Trying Mind Western Nervous Ontology Bedrock

Author:Terence McKenna

“'Drugs' and psychedelics are not two members of a family, they are antithetically opposed to each other. The pro-psychedelic position is an anti-drug position.”

Two Position Drug Members Psychedelic

Author:Terence McKenna

“Alcoholism isn't a disease. It's a failure of self-image.”

Self Disease Alcoholism

Author:Terence McKenna

“I can't think of a society on Earth where people don't take drugs that any of us would want anything to do with.”

People Thinking Want I Can Earth Drug

Author:Terence McKenna

“The world is mental in some way that we do not yet understand, but that which we're edging toward understanding. And the world is made of language. I can't say that enough. Whenever we get into these discussions about reality, or effects in space and time, we are operating outside this assumption that the world is made of language.”

World Way Made I Can Enough Reality Language Understanding Space Effects Discussion Assumption Time And Space

Author:Terence McKenna

“Astonishment is the proper response to reality.”

Reality Response Astonishment

Author:Terence McKenna

“At still higher doses psilocybin triggers this activity in the language-forming capacity of the brain that manifests as song and vision. Psilocybin may have synergized the emergence of higher forms of psychic organization out of primitive protohuman animals. It can be seen as a kind of evolutionary enzyme, or evolutionary catalyst.”

Kind May Stills Form Song Language Animal Brain Vision Higher Activity Capacity Organization Primitive Psychics Triggers Dose Catalyst Emergence Enzymes Psilocybin

Author:Terence McKenna

“The overriding problems are brought on by the existence of the ego, a maladaptive behavioral complex in the psyche that gets going like a tumor. If it's not treated - if there's not pharmacological intervention - it becomes the dominant constellation of the personality.”

Ifs Problem Existence Personality Ego Complexes Treated Dominant Intervention Constellations Tumors

Author:Terence McKenna

“Animals are something invented by plants to move seeds around. An extremely yang solution to a peculiar problem which they faced.”

Problem Moving Animal Solutions Plant Seeds Peculiar Mind Blowing Psychedelic Experience Plants And Animals Yang Dmt

Author:Terence McKenna

“Without sounding too cliché, the Internet really is the birth of some kind of global mind.”

Mind Birth Internet Cliche

Author:Terence McKenna

“We are so much the victims of abstraction that with the Earth in flames we can barely rouse ourselves to wander across the room and look at the thermostat.”

Looks Earth Rooms Victim Wander Flames Abstraction Mind Blowing Psychedelic Experience

Author:Terence McKenna

“The discs which haunt the skies of Earth indicate that the unconscious cannot be kept waiting forever. These things are going to have to be dealt with.”

Earth Waiting Forever Sky Unconscious Discs Waiting For Forever

Author:Terence McKenna

“The real secret of magic is that the world is made of words, and that if you know the words that the world is made of you can make of it whatever you wish.”

Ifs Knows World Made Real Reality Wish Secret Magic Psychedelic Mind Blowing Psychedelic Experience Blowing It

Author:Terence McKenna

“Ego is a structure that is erected by a neurotic individual who is a member of a neurotic culture against the facts of the matter. And culture, which we put on like an overcoat, is the collectivized consensus about what sort of neurotic behaviors are acceptable.”

Matter Facts Culture Individual Members Ego Behavior Structure Acceptable Consensus Neurotic Mind Blowing Overcoat

Author:Terence McKenna

“Only psychos and shamans create their own reality”

Author: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.”

Television Drug Tools Excellence Manipulation Uniformity Mind Blowing Brainwashing Dmt Blowing It

Book:Food Of The Gods: The Search for the Original Tree of Knowledge

Source: Food Of The Gods: The Search for the Original Tree of Knowledge

“Even as the nineteenth century had to come to grips with the notion of human descent from apes, we must now come to terms with the fact that those apes were stoned apes.”

Humans Facts Term Century Notion Apes Nineteenth Century Descent Mind Blowing

Author:Terence McKenna

“It is the imagination that argues for the Divine Spark within human beings. It is literally a decent of the World's Soul into all of us.”

World Life Inspirational Humans Soul Spiritual Imagination Human Beings Divine Arguing Decent Sparks Mind Blowing Blowing It

Author:Terence McKenna

“The imagination is the goal of history. I see culture as an effort to literally realize our collective dreams.”

Life Dream Culture Goal Realizing Imagination Effort Collectives Mind Blowing Collective Effort

Book:Chaos, Creativity, and Cosmic Consciousness

Source: Chaos, Creativity, and Cosmic Consciousness

“Chaos is what we've lost touch with. This is why it is given a bad name. It is feared by the dominant archetype of our world, which is Ego, which clenches because its existence is defined in terms of control.”

World Names Lost Given Term Existence Ego Chaos Defined Our World Dominant Mind Blowing Archetype Dmt Blowing It

Author:Terence McKenna

“Human history is a Gaian dream.”

Humans Dream Historical Human History Gaia

Author:Terence McKenna

“Western civilization is a loaded gun pointed at the head of this planet.”

Earth Vision Planets Civilization Future Gun Western Sustainability Loaded Planet Earth Sustainable Development Western Civilization Mind Blowing Loaded Gun

Author:Terence McKenna

“My voice speaking is a monkey's mouth making little mouth noises that are carrying agree-upon meaning, and it is meaning that matters. Without the meaning one has only little mouth noises”

Littles Matter Voice Mouths Agree Noise Monkeys Agree Upon

Author:Terence McKenna

“You have to take seriously the notion that understanding the universe is your responsibility, because the only understanding of the universe that will be useful to you is your own understanding.”

Universe Understanding Responsibility Notion Mind Blowing Understanding The Universe

Book:True Hallucinations: And, the Archaic Revival

Source: True Hallucinations: And, the Archaic Revival

“If the words 'life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness' don't include the right to experiment with your own consciousness, then the Declaration of Independence isn't worth the hemp it was written on.”

“Right here and now, one quanta away, there is raging a universe of active intelligence that is transhuman, hyperdimensional, and extremely alien... What is driving religious feeling today is a wish for contact with this other universe.”

Life Feelings Today Universe Wish Religious Active Rage Driving Contact Aliens Quantum Here And Now

Book:True Hallucinations: And, the Archaic Revival

Source: True Hallucinations: And, the Archaic Revival

“It is not easy to measure the ocean, but we can be measured by it, confront it, and be in it.”

Book:True Hallucinations: And, the Archaic Revival

Source: True Hallucinations: And, the Archaic Revival

“Our self discoveries make us each a microcosm of the larger pattern of history. The inertia of introspection leads toward recollection, for only through memory is the past recaptured and understood. In the fact of experiencing and making the present, we are all actors.”

Self Facts Past Actors Memories Understood Discovery Patterns Self Discovery Introspection Recollection Inertia Microcosm

Book:True Hallucinations: And, the Archaic Revival

Source: True Hallucinations: And, the Archaic Revival

“Time will perfect matter.”

Author:Terence McKenna

“The cost of sanity in this society, is a certain level of alienation”

Certain Levels Cost Sanity Alienation This Society Mind Blowing Dmt

Author:Terence McKenna

“A hallucination is a species of reality, as capable of teaching you as a videotape about Kilimanjaro or anything else that falls through your life.”

Reality Fall Teaching Capable Species Hallucinations Kilimanjaro

Author:Terence McKenna

“Life lived in the absence of the psychedelic experience upon which primordial shamanism is based is life trivialized, life denied, life enslaved to the ego.”

Ego Absence Denied Psychedelic Shamanism Psychedelic Experience

Author:Terence McKenna

“You are an explorer, and you represent our species, and the greatest good you can do is to bring back a new idea, because our world is endangered by the absence of good ideas. Our world is in crisis because of the absence of consciousness.”

World Ideas Can Do Consciousness Crisis Species Absence Our World Good Ideas New Ideas Explorers Mind Blowing Psychedelic Experience Dmt

Author:Terence McKenna

“Nature loves courage. You make the commitment and nature will respond to that commitment by removing impossible obstacles. Dream the impossible dream and the world will not grind you under, it will lift you up. This is the trick. This is what all these teachers and philosophers who really counted, who really touched the alchemical gold, this is what they understood. This is the shamanic dance in the waterfall. This is how magic is done. By hurling yourself into the abyss and discovering its a feather bed.”

“We can begin the restructuring of thought by declaring legitimate what we have denied for so long. Lets us declare Nature to be legitimate. The notion of illegal plants is obnoxious and ridiculous in the first place.”

Firsts Long Plant Notion Ridiculous Illegal Denied Obnoxious Mind Blowing Declaring Dmt Restructuring

Author:Terence McKenna

“The shaman is not merely a sick man, or a madman; he is a sick man who has healed himself.”

Men Sick Healed Madmen Mind Blowing Sick Man

Author:Terence McKenna

About the Author

Born: November 16, 1946
Died: April 3, 2000
Known for: Philosopher
Quotes: 722

Related Topics

Psychedelic Humans Ifs Thinking People World Mind Culture Psychedelic Experience Kind

Popular Topics

People Ifs Thinking Knows Men World Way Want Love Life Inspirational Needs Giving Feels Should Writing Trying Years Mind Firsts

Books & Sources

True Hallucinations: And, the Archaic RevivalRelated source material

Chaos, Creativity, and Cosmic ConsciousnessRelated source material

Food Of The Gods: The Search for the Original Tree of KnowledgeRelated source material

History Ends in Green: Gaia, Psychedelics and the Archaic RevivalRelated source material

True HallucinationsRelated source material

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