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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

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
If you actually look at the etymology of the word ‘hallucination’, what it’s come to mean in English is a delusion. But what it really means in the original language is to wander in the mind. That’s the meaning of ‘hallucination’, to wander in the mind.
TERENCE MCKENNA

Actual Delusion English Look Mean Mind
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
Reality is made of words.
TERENCE MCKENNA

Made Reality Word
Alcoholism isn’t a disease. It’s a failure of self-image.
TERENCE MCKENNA

Alcoholism Disease Failure Image Self
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
For all we know, we know nothing.
TERENCE MCKENNA

All Know Nothing
How do we fight back? By creating art.
TERENCE MCKENNA

Art Back Create Fight Inspirational Life
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
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
We have to recognize that the world is not something sculptured and finished, which we as perceivers walk through like patrons in a museum; the world is something we make through the act of perception.
TERENCE MCKENNA

Museums Perceive Perception Psychedelic Recognize Sculpture Something Understood World
The psychedelic inner astronaut sees things which no human being has ever seen before, and no other human being will ever see again. But in fact this has no meaning unless it is possible to carry it back into the collectivity.
TERENCE MCKENNA

Astronaut Before Being Fact Human Psychedelic Seen
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
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
Anything which must be understood by millions of people is so hopelessly divorced from how it is that it becomes a form of fiction.
TERENCE MCKENNA

Anything Become Divorce Fiction Form Hopeless Million People Understood
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
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
One thing that these Buddhists have certainly gotten right is that attention to attention is the key to taking control of your mental life.
TERENCE MCKENNA

Attention Buddhist Control Key One Thing Take
How can we know who is the other until we know who is the self?
TERENCE MCKENNA

Know Other Self Until
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
If the ego is not regularly and repeatedly dissolved in the unbounded hyperspace of the Transcendent Other, there will always be slow drift away from the sense of self as part of nature’s larger whole. The ultimate consequence of this drift is the fatal ennui that now permeates Western Civilization.
TERENCE MCKENNA

Civilization Dissolve Ego Hyperspace Other Regularly Repeatedly Self Transcend Unbound
We are the inheritors of a million years of striving for the unspeakable.
TERENCE MCKENNA

Ingheritor Million Strive Unspeakable Year
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
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
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
$Terence McKenna Quote - The world which we perceive is a tiny fraction of the world which we can perceive, which is a tiny fraction of the perceivable world.$

The world which we perceive is a tiny fraction of the world which we can perceive, which is a tiny fraction of the perceivable world.
TERENCE MCKENNA

Fraction Perceive Tiny World

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.

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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.

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Popular Authors

More Terence McKenna Quotes