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This is the message of your life and my life – it’s that nothing lasts. Heraclitus said it: Panta Rhei. All flows, nothing lasts. Not your enemies, not your fortune, not who you sleep with at night, not the books, not the house in Saint-Tropez, not even the children – nothing lasts.

Terence McKenna

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
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
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
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
The Imagination is the golden pathway to everywhere.
TERENCE MCKENNA

Everywhere Golden Imagination Pathways
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
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
Our ability to destroy ourselves is the mirror image of our ability to save ourselves.
TERENCE MCKENNA

Ability End Mirror Image Mirrors Psychedelic
To realize that all of the last hundred years of economic progress was actually a shell game to create billionaires, while the great masses of people saw their standard of living eroded and destroyed.
TERENCE MCKENNA

Actual Billionaraire Create Destroy Economic Hundred Masses People Standard Year
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
Our assumptions are the edges of our worlds.
TERENCE MCKENNA

Assumption Our World
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
The cost of sanity in this society, is a certain level of alienation
TERENCE MCKENNA

Alienation Certain Cost Dmt Level Mind Blowing Sanity Society
Nobody is smarter than you are. And what if they are? What good is their understanding doing you?
TERENCE MCKENNA

Doing Good Nobody Smart Smarter Understanding
Every click of the cosmic clock brings us closer to the process for which the planet called us into existence.
TERENCE MCKENNA

Call Click Clock Closer Cosmic Existence Planet Process
Cultures are virtual realities made of language.
TERENCE MCKENNA

Culture Language Made Reality Virtual
People without plants are in a state of perpetual neurosis, a state of existential wanting.
TERENCE MCKENNA

People Perpetual Plant State Want
I don’t know what life is like without cannabis, I hear there is such a thing.
TERENCE MCKENNA

Cannabis Hear Life Like Thing
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.
TERENCE MCKENNA

Anything Artist Burn Country Journey Mankind Self
The absurdity of that assertion would be self-evident, but in our case we make an exception.
TERENCE MCKENNA

Absurdity Assertion Evident Exception Self
It is true that when you smoke DMT, for example, at a sufficiently high and prepared dose, you get elves, everybody does. All you need do, is inhale deeply three times, and you know… You want contact? You want elves? You want alien contact? You’ll have that!
TERENCE MCKENNA

Dose Elves Everybody Example Prepare Smoke Sufficient True Want
Nature is not mute, it is a man who is deaf.
TERENCE MCKENNA

Deaf Environment Men Mute Nature
What happens with DMT is you leap over all the barriers in the first few seconds. Unlike mushrooms where over hours and hours on a high dose you might navigate yourself to the center of the mandala, DMT is like being struck by metaphysical lightening.
TERENCE MCKENNA

Barrier Dmt Few First Happen might Mushrooms Second
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
There is no knowledge without risk taking.
TERENCE MCKENNA

Knowledge Risk Take
Reality is made of words.
TERENCE MCKENNA

Made Reality Word
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

This is the message of your life and my life – it’s that nothing lasts. Heraclitus said it: Panta Rhei. All flows, nothing lasts. Not your enemies, not your fortune, not who you sleep with at night, not the books, not the house in Saint-Tropez, not even the children – nothing lasts.

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This is the message of your life and my life – it’s that nothing lasts. Heraclitus said it: Panta Rhei. All flows, nothing lasts. Not your enemies, not your fortune, not who you sleep with at night, not the books, not the house in Saint-Tropez, not even the children – nothing lasts.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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