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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

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
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
Our assumptions are the edges of our worlds.
TERENCE MCKENNA

Assumption Our World
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
Our ability to destroy ourselves is the mirror image of our ability to save ourselves.
TERENCE MCKENNA

Ability End Mirror Image Mirrors Psychedelic
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
Culture is a plot against the expansion of consciousness.
TERENCE MCKENNA

Against Consciousness Culture Expansion Pilot Plot
Reality is made of words.
TERENCE MCKENNA

Made Reality Word
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
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
Shamanism has always known this, and shamanism has always, in its most authentic expressions, taught that the path required allies.
TERENCE MCKENNA

Always Authentic Expression Knowm Shamanism
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
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
There is no liberation to compare with freeing oneself from the illusions and delusions of the age in which one lives.
TERENCE MCKENNA

Age Choice Compare Epidemic Free Illusion Liberation Live Nightmare Real
The world is not made of anti-mu mesons, quarks, and photons, and electromagnetic fields. Reality is made of words.
TERENCE MCKENNA

Field Made Meason Photons Quark Reality World
Nature is not mute, it is a man who is deaf.
TERENCE MCKENNA

Deaf Environment Men Mute Nature
The terror of drugs is a terror of giving up control. This is what people are most alarmed about by psychedelics, is the giving up control.
TERENCE MCKENNA

Alarmed Control Drug Giving Most Npsychedelics People Terror Up
The problem is not to find the answer, it’s to face the answer
TERENCE MCKENNA

Answer Face Mind Blowing Problem
This is the shamanic dance in the waterfall. This is how magic is done. By hurling yourself into the abyss and discovering its a feather bed.
TERENCE MCKENNA

Abyss Bed Discover Done Feather Shamanic
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
You are a divine being. You matter, you count. You come from realms of unimaginable power and light, and you will return to those realms.
TERENCE MCKENNA

Being Count Divine Inspirational Life Light
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
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
Astonishment is the proper response to reality.
TERENCE MCKENNA

Astonishment Proper Reality Response
I don’t know what life is like without cannabis, I hear there is such a thing.
TERENCE MCKENNA

Cannabis Hear Life Like Thing
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?
TERENCE MCKENNA

Dilemma Doe Expansion Planet Thinking
Nature is not our enemy, to be raped and conquered. Nature is ourselves, to be cherished and explored.
TERENCE MCKENNA

Conquer Enemy Expression Nature Raped Teaching Understanding

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.

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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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