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Nobody is smarter than you are. And what if they are? What good is their understanding doing you?

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

Art Dimension Freed Ourselves Void
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
How do we fight back? By creating art.
TERENCE MCKENNA

Art Back Create Fight Inspirational Life
Cultures are virtual realities made of language.
TERENCE MCKENNA

Culture Language Made Reality Virtual
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 MCKENNA

Art Become Divorce Hopeless Kind Million Mind Mystery People Some Suspend Two
The surface of things is not where attention should rest.
TERENCE MCKENNA

Attention Inspirational Life Rest Surface Thing
This is what they have suppressed so long. This is why they are so afraid of the psychedelics, because they understand that once you touch the inner core of your own and someone else’s being you can’t be led into thing-fetishes and consumerism.
TERENCE MCKENNA

Afraid Culture Emotional Long Psychedelic Suppressed Understand
Our ability to destroy ourselves is the mirror image of our ability to save ourselves.
TERENCE MCKENNA

Ability End Mirror Image Mirrors Psychedelic
We are caught inside a mystery, veiled in an enigma, locked inside a riddle
TERENCE MCKENNA

Caught Enigma Inside Lock Mystery Riddle
These allies are the hallucinogenic plants and the mysterious teaching entities, luminous and transcendental, that reside in that nearby dimension of ecstatic beauty and understanding that we have denied until it is now nearly too late.
TERENCE MCKENNA

Allies Beauty Dimension Late Mysterious Nearly Understand Understanding
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
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
Beauty is self-defined, perceived and understood without ambiguity. It’s the stuff that lies under the skins of our individual existences.
TERENCE MCKENNA

Ambiguity Beauty Define Life Lying Self Understood
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
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.
TERENCE MCKENNA

Dream Grindm Under Impossible Philospher Teacher Really Touch Trick Understood
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
The long night of human history is drawing at last to its conclusion.
TERENCE MCKENNA

Conclusion Draw Drawing Human Last Long Night
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

Abstraction Barely Earth Flame Flames Look Mind Blowing Much Ourselves Rouse Victim
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.
TERENCE MCKENNA

Behavioral Comox Ego Existence Metadative Override Personality Problem Psyche
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
Culture is a plot against the expansion of consciousness.
TERENCE MCKENNA

Against Consciousness Culture Expansion Pilot Plot
No one knows enough to worry.
TERENCE MCKENNA

Enough Know No Worry
Your memories are eroding away. The futures you anticipate, will mostly not come to pass, and the real richness is in the moment. And it’s not necessarily some kind of ‘Be Here Now’ feel-good thing because it doesn’t always feel good. But it always feels. It is a domain of feeling. It’s primary.
TERENCE MCKENNA

Anticipate Away Encode Feel Future Good Memories Pass Real Richness
I don’t know what life is like without cannabis, I hear there is such a thing.
TERENCE MCKENNA

Cannabis Hear Life Like Thing
Psychedelics are illegal not because a loving government is concerned that you may jump out of a third story window.
TERENCE MCKENNA

Concern Government Information Processing Jump Loving Oilligal Psychedelics
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
We are told No, you’re unimportant, you’re peripheral – get a degree, get a job, get a this, get that, and then you’re a player.
TERENCE MCKENNA

Degree Game Job Player Told Unimportant

Nobody is smarter than you are. And what if they are? What good is their understanding doing you?

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Nobody is smarter than you are. And what if they are? What good is their understanding doing you?

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