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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

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
You are not naked when you take off your clothes. You still wear your religious assumptions, your prejudices, your fears, your illusions, your delusions.
TERENCE MCKENNA

Assumption Clothes Naked Off Prejudice Religion Religious Take
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
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
Who is to say what is real and what is not?’Real’ is a distinction of a naïve mind.
TERENCE MCKENNA

Distinction Mind Native Psychedelic Real Say
It’s meanings that we need to coax into our lives.
TERENCE MCKENNA

Coax Lives Meaning Need Our Live
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.
TERENCE MCKENNA

Blowing Consumer Create Culture Fetishzes Mania Mind Object People Prevention Silly
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
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
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
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
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
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

Data Datum Experience Felt Immediate Primaries
How do we fight back? By creating art.
TERENCE MCKENNA

Art Back Create Fight Inspirational Life
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
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.
TERENCE MCKENNA

Civilization Create Imagination Names Political Power

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.

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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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