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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.

Terence McKenna

The problem is not to find the answer, it’s to face the answer
TERENCE MCKENNA

Answer Face Mind Blowing Problem
Cultures are virtual realities made of language.
TERENCE MCKENNA

Culture Language Made Reality Virtual
Our ability to destroy ourselves is the mirror image of our ability to save ourselves.
TERENCE MCKENNA

Ability End Mirror Image Mirrors Psychedelic
For all we know, we know nothing.
TERENCE MCKENNA

All Know Nothing
Notice that the whole story of Eden is the story of the struggle over a woman’s relationship to a psychoactive plant.
TERENCE MCKENNA

Eden People Person Plant Psychoactive Relationship Stories Struggle Woman
It’s meanings that we need to coax into our lives.
TERENCE MCKENNA

Coax Lives Meaning Need Our Live
For talking monkeys to speak of truth is hubris of the highest degree. Where is it writ large that talking monkeys should be able to model the cosmos? If a sea urchin or a racoon were to propose to you that it had a viable truth about the universe.
TERENCE MCKENNA

Degree Highest Hubris Money Sea Self Speak Talk Truth
The tension in the world is the tension between the ego and the feminine, not between the masculine and the feminine.
TERENCE MCKENNA

Ego Feminine Masculine Tension World
Reality is made of words.
TERENCE MCKENNA

Made Reality Word
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.
TERENCE MCKENNA

Against Blowing Culture Ego Fact Member Mind Neurotic Structure
The apocalypse is not something which is coming. The apocalypse has arrived in major portions of the planet and it’s only because we live within a bubble of incredible privilege and social insulation that we still have the luxury of anticipating the apocalypse.
TERENCE MCKENNA

Apocalypse Blow Blowing Coming Luxury Mind Something
I see the psychedelic experience as a birthright, and we can’t have a free society until people are free to explore their own mind.
TERENCE MCKENNA

Bright Explore Free Mind People Psychedelic Right Society
I don’t know what life is like without cannabis, I hear there is such a thing.
TERENCE MCKENNA

Cannabis Hear Life Like Thing
What we call reality is in fact nothing more than a culturally sanctioned and linguistically reinforced hallucination.
TERENCE MCKENNA

Call Fact Hallucinations Nothing Reality Sanction
Every click of the cosmic clock brings us closer to the process for which the planet called us into existence.
TERENCE MCKENNA

Call Click Clock Closer Cosmic Existence Planet Process
You don’t even want to play that game. You want to reclaim your mind and get it out of the hands of the cultural engineers who want to turn you into a half-baked moron consuming all this trash that’s being manufactured out of the bones of a dying world.
TERENCE MCKENNA

Assumption Cultural Die Engineer Manufacture Religious Turn World
Psychedelics are illegal because they dissolve opinion structures and culturally laid down models of behaviour and information processing. They open you up to the possibility that everything you know is wrong.
TERENCE MCKENNA

Behaviour Down Everything Illegal Information Model Psychedelics Structure Wrong
We are caught inside a mystery, veiled in an enigma, locked inside a riddle
TERENCE MCKENNA

Caught Enigma Inside Lock Mystery Riddle
The Imagination is the golden pathway to everywhere.
TERENCE MCKENNA

Everywhere Golden Imagination Pathways
The cost of sanity in this society, is a certain level of alienation
TERENCE MCKENNA

Alienation Certain Cost Dmt Level Mind Blowing Sanity Society
We’ve painted ourselves into a corner where the only choice is real nightmare – triage, epidemic disease, famine, fascism, the collapse of human rights – or a leap to an entirely different level. We’ve taken business-as-usual off the menu. Now only the extreme possibilities loom.
TERENCE MCKENNA

Choice Corner Disease Epidemics Famine Fascinate Hippie Nightmare Ourselves Paint Real Taken Triage
Shamanism has always known this, and shamanism has always, in its most authentic expressions, taught that the path required allies.
TERENCE MCKENNA

Always Authentic Expression Knowm Shamanism
Claim your place in the sun and go forward into the light. The tools are there; the path is known; you simply have to turn your back on a culture that has gone sterile and dead, and get with the programme of a living world and a re-empowerment of the imagination.
TERENCE MCKENNA

Clain Empowerment Forward Go Imagination Light Place Sun
Nobody is smarter than you are. And what if they are? What good is their understanding doing you?
TERENCE MCKENNA

Doing Good Nobody Smart Smarter Understanding
How can we know who is the other until we know who is the self?
TERENCE MCKENNA

Know Other Self Until
We are the inheritors of a million years of striving for the unspeakable.
TERENCE MCKENNA

Ingheritor Million Strive Unspeakable Year
The drugs of the future will be computers. The computers of the future will be drugs.
TERENCE MCKENNA

Computer Drug Future

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.

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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.

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Popular Authors

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