The surface of things is not where attention should rest.
TERENCE MCKENNAThe surface of things is not where attention should rest.
TERENCE MCKENNAThese allies are the hallucinogenic plants and the mysterious teaching entities, luminous and transcendental, that reside in that nearby dimension of ecstatic beauty and understanding that we have denied until it is now nearly too late.
TERENCE MCKENNAThe 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 MCKENNAWhat 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 MCKENNABeauty is self-defined, perceived and understood without ambiguity. It’s the stuff that lies under the skins of our individual existences.
TERENCE MCKENNAThe world is not made of anti-mu mesons, quarks, and photons, and electromagnetic fields. Reality is made of words.
TERENCE MCKENNANo one knows enough to worry.
TERENCE MCKENNAPsychedelics are illegal not because a loving government is concerned that you may jump out of a third story window.
TERENCE MCKENNADon’t worry. You don’t know enough to worry. . . . Who do you think you are that you should worry, for cryin’ out loud. It’s a total waste of time. It presupposes such a knowledge of the situation that it is, in fact, a form of hubris.
TERENCE MCKENNANotice that the whole story of Eden is the story of the struggle over a woman’s relationship to a psychoactive plant.
TERENCE MCKENNAYou 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 MCKENNAThe 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 MCKENNAThink 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 MCKENNAWe are caught inside a mystery, veiled in an enigma, locked inside a riddle
TERENCE MCKENNAAlcoholism isn’t a disease. It’s a failure of self-image.
TERENCE MCKENNAThe apocalypse is not something which is coming. The apocalypse has arrived in major portions of the planet and it’s only because we live within a bubble of incredible privilege and social insulation that we still have the luxury of anticipating the apocalypse.
TERENCE MCKENNA