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There is no knowledge without risk taking.

Terence McKenna

What civilization is, is 6 billion people trying to make themselves happy by standing on each other’s shoulders and kicking each other’s teeth in. It’s not a pleasant situation.
TERENCE MCKENNA

Billion Blowing Civilization Kick Mind People Shoulder Six Stand Themselves
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.
TERENCE MCKENNA

Abyss Bed Discover Done Feather Shamanic
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.
TERENCE MCKENNA

Archetype Chaos Dominant Fera Lost Name Our Our World
I don’t believe consciousness is generated in the brain any more than television programs are made inside my TV. The box is too small.
TERENCE MCKENNA

Believe Brain Consciousness Generated Inspirational Life Television
Our ability to destroy ourselves is the mirror image of our ability to save ourselves.
TERENCE MCKENNA

Ability End Mirror Image Mirrors Psychedelic
Being imposes some kind of obligation to find out what’s going on.
TERENCE MCKENNA

Impose Kind Obligation Out Some
I think ideology is toxic, all ideology. It’s not that there are good ones and bad ones. All ideology is toxic, because ideology is a kind of insult to the gift of human free thinking.
TERENCE MCKENNA

Bad Good Ideology Life One Thinking Toxic
Science does not deal with subjective experience… Well that’s too bad because that is all any of us ever have.
TERENCE MCKENNA

Deal Doe Ever Experience Science Subjective Well
For all we know, we know nothing.
TERENCE MCKENNA

All Know Nothing
Knowledge, or verbal facility, is no proof that you know what you’re talking about.
TERENCE MCKENNA

Know Proof Talking Verbal
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
Nature is not our enemy, to be raped and conquered. Nature is ourselves, to be cherished and explored.
TERENCE MCKENNA

Conquer Enemy Expression Nature Raped Teaching Understanding
What we call imagination is actually the universal library of what’s real. You couldn’t imagine it if it weren’t real somewhere, sometime.
TERENCE MCKENNA

Imagination Library Real Universal
To me it begins and ends with these psychedelic substances. The synergy of the psilocybin in the hominid diet brought us out of the animal mind and into the world of articulated speech and imagination.
TERENCE MCKENNA

Animal Begin Imagination Mind Psychedelic Substance
To the degree that you avert your gaze from this truth, you build the potential for pain into your life. Everything is this act of embracing the present moment, the felt presence of experience, and then moving on to the next felt moment of experience. It’s literally psychological nomadism is what it is.
TERENCE MCKENNA

Act Degree Everything Experience Literally Moment Movement Potential Present Truth
The 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.
TERENCE MCKENNA

Adventure Authentic Being Culturally Give Major Real True

There is no knowledge without risk taking.

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There is no knowledge without risk taking.

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