Terence McKenna

Terence McKenna

16-Nov-1946


United States


Author

QUOTES BY Terence McKenna


People have a right to get stoned. They have a right to think and explore their own minds. This is as intimate a part of their being as their sexuality. Any culture which mitigates that is clearly afraid of a full and fair and open dialogue about what reality is and what real human values ought to be.

I think the world is growing more psychedelic every day. I'm completely hopeful. . . . This is how it should be. This is what it's like when a species prepares to depart for hyperspace.

Ecstasy is a complex emotion containing elements of joy, fear, terror, triumph, surrender, and empathy. What has replaced our prehistoric understanding of this complex of ecstasy now is the word comfort, a tremendously bloodless notion. Drugs are not comfortable, and anyone who thinks they are comfortable or even escapist should not toy with drugs unless they’re willing to get their noses rubbed in their own stuff.

I think our intelligence is a source of toxicity to nature and discomfort to ourselves unless our values are based on planetary values, are linked to the values of the rest of nature. Intelligence is not a license to trample. The proper role of intelligence in a planetary ecology is that of gardener, caregiver and maintainer of balance.

The social consequence of the psychedelic experience is clear thinking -which trickles down as clear speech. Empowered speech.

I think what's really happening is that a dialogue opens up between the ego and these larger, more integrated parts of the psyche that are normally hidden from view.

I really think that the psychedelic realm is the realm of ideas, and that ideas which change the world come first from that place.

I think that understanding man's place in nature is going to require integration of the psychedelic experience.

This is where I think the psychedelics come in because they are anticipations of the future. They seem to channel information that is not strictly governed by the laws of normal causality. So that there really is a prophetic dimension, a glimpse of the potential of the far centuries of the future through these compounds.

VIEW MORE QUOTES BY Terence McKenna