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Our ability to destroy ourselves is the mirror image of our ability to save ourselves.

Terence McKenna

Think about our dilemma on this planet. If the expansion of consciousness does not loom large in the human future, what kind of future is it going to be?
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Dilemma Doe Expansion Planet Thinking
I think that a lot of people are making a lot of money spreading anxiety. Anxiety sells.
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Anxiety Money People Think Thinking
The problem is not to find the answer, it’s to face the answer
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Answer Face Mind Blowing Problem
The artist’s task is to save the soul of mankind; and anything less is a dithering while Rome burns. Because of the artists, who are self-selected, for being able to journey into the Other, if the artists cannot find the way, then the way cannot be found.
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Anything Artist Burn Country Journey Mankind Self
The real secret of magic is that the world is made of words, and that if you know the words that the world is made of you can make of it whatever you wish.
TERENCE MCKENNA

Blowing Made Magic Mind Real Secret Word World
How do we fight back? By creating art.
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Art Back Create Fight Inspirational Life
If we were to place our power at the service of our imaginations rather than our primate politics we would create a civilization worthy of the name.
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Civilization Create Imagination Names Political Power
And what is the primary datum? It’s the felt presence of immediate experience. In other words, being here now is the primary datum.
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Data Datum Experience Felt Immediate Primaries
The cost of sanity in this society, is a certain level of alienation
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Alienation Certain Cost Dmt Level Mind Blowing Sanity Society
Being imposes some kind of obligation to find out what’s going on.
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Impose Kind Obligation Out Some
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.
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Art Dimension Freed Ourselves Void
Culture is a perversion. It fetishizes objects, creates consumer mania, it preaches endless forms of false happiness, endless forms of false understanding in the form of squirrelly religions and silly cults. It invites people to diminish themselves and dehumanize themselves by behaving like machines.
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Blowing Consumer Create Culture Fetishzes Mania Mind Object People Prevention Silly
Knowledge, or verbal facility, is no proof that you know what you’re talking about.
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Know Proof Talking Verbal
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
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.
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Civilization Dissolve Ego Hyperspace Other Regularly Repeatedly Self Transcend Unbound
What was created by the era of the proper gentleman was excellent table manners and genocide over most of the surface of the planet.
TERENCE MCKENNA

Created Eras Excellent Genocide Gentleman Gentlemen Manner Most Over Proper Surface Table Tables
We are led by the least among us – the least intelligent, the least noble, the least visionary. We are led by the least among us and we do not fight back against the dehumanizing values that are handed down as control icons.
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Among Fighting Icon Intelligent Leat led Noble Visionary
When you shed the cultural operating system, then essentially you stand naked before the inspection of your own psyche.
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Cultural Inspection Own Psyche Shed
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.
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Degree Game Job Player Told Unimportant
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.
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Degree Highest Hubris Money Sea Self Speak Talk Truth
Astonishment is the proper response to reality.
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Astonishment Proper Reality Response
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.
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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.
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Astronaut Before Being Fact Human Psychedelic Seen
Cultures are virtual realities made of language.
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Culture Language Made Reality Virtual
It’s meanings that we need to coax into our lives.
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Coax Lives Meaning Need Our Live
The message of psychedelics is that culture can be re-engineered as a set of emotional values rather than products. This is terrifying news.
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Engineer Product Psychedelics Terrifying The Message
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

Our ability to destroy ourselves is the mirror image of our ability to save ourselves.

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Our ability to destroy ourselves is the mirror image of our ability to save ourselves.

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