You are some kind of a mystery suspended between two eternities. And in that moment, when a mind looks out at a world and asks the question, ‘What is it?’ In that moment art can be created.
TERENCE MCKENNAThe major adventure is to claim your authentic, true being, which is not culturally given to you. The culture will not explain to you how to be a real human being. It will tell you how to be banker, politician, Indian chief, masseuses, actress, whatever, but it will not give you true being.
More Terence McKenna Quotes
-
-
There is no liberation to compare with freeing oneself from the illusions and delusions of the age in which one lives.
TERENCE MCKENNA -
There is no knowledge without risk taking.
TERENCE MCKENNA -
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 -
The world is not made of anti-mu mesons, quarks, and photons, and electromagnetic fields. Reality is made of words.
TERENCE MCKENNA -
Behind us: the unknown. Before us: the secret.
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.
TERENCE MCKENNA -
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 -
The message of psychedelics is that culture can be re-engineered as a set of emotional values rather than products. This is terrifying news.
TERENCE MCKENNA -
And what is the primary datum? It’s the felt presence of immediate experience. In other words, being here now is the primary datum.
TERENCE MCKENNA -
Worrying is betting against yourself.
TERENCE MCKENNA -
When we free ourselves we are not freed into a void. When we free ourselves we are freed into a dimension in which Art is an obligation.
TERENCE MCKENNA -
Nature is not our enemy, to be raped and conquered. Nature is ourselves, to be cherished and explored.
TERENCE MCKENNA -
Astonishment is the proper response to reality.
TERENCE MCKENNA -
People without plants are in a state of perpetual neurosis, a state of existential wanting.
TERENCE MCKENNA -
Nobody is smarter than you are. And what if they are? What good is their understanding doing you?
TERENCE MCKENNA