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We are alienated, so alienated that the self must disguise itself as an extraterrestrial in order not to alarm us with the truly bizarre dimensions that it encompasses.

Terence McKenna

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Terence McKenna
Age: 53 †
Born: 1946
Born: November 16
Died: 2000
Died: April 3
Anthropologist
Ethnobotanist
Philosopher
Writer
Paonia
Colorado
Terence Kemp McKenna
Psychedelic
Bizarre
Disguise
Hallucinogens
Dimensions
Encompasses
Truly
Extraterrestrial
Order
Alienated
Self
Alarm
Must
Alarms

More quotes by Terence McKenna

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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?
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I have never felt that the primary use of these things was to cure what is called in modern parlance neurosis, what I call unhappiness. It isn't for that.
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In our own time, through integrative sciences like ecology and animal behavior and psychology we have re-understood what was forgotten during the reduction centuries of modern science. We've re-understood that the world is one thing, and it's a living thing. It's a thing with an intent and a spirit within it, and this is the key concept.
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An interesting thing about drugs is often, when a new drug is discovered, it takes a long time to figure out how do you do it.
Terence McKenna
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I connect the psychedelic dimension to the dimension of inspiration and dream.
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Even as the nineteenth century had to come to grips with the notion of human descent from apes, we must now come to terms with the fact that those apes were stoned apes.
Terence McKenna
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That's what a god is. Somebody who knows more than you do about whatever you're dealing with.
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There is a spiritual obligation, there is a task to be done. It is not, however, something as simple as following a set of somebody else's rules
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We do not birth our children into the world of nature. We birth our children into the world of culture.
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One has attained a very fortunate incarnation, I think, to be in a culture, in a place, in a time when psychedelic knowledge is available.
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Our assumptions are the edges of our worlds.
Terence McKenna
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Without sounding too cliché, the Internet really is the birth of some kind of global mind.
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The sine qua non for obtaining a psychedelic experience is humbling yourself to the point where you admit that you must submit to the experience of the plant or the drug. This act of surrender is the major technical function you will be called upon to perform during the psychedelic trip.
Terence McKenna
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Our destiny is to become what we think, to have our thoughts become our bodies and our bodies become our thoughts.
Terence McKenna
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Astonishment is the proper response to reality.
Terence McKenna
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The only frontier now left to exploit is not a frontier in space but a frontier in time. We steal the future from our children by plunging massively deeper and deeper into debt.
Terence McKenna
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I'm not an advocate of drugs. I'm an advocate of psychedelics.
Terence McKenna
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In a sense, sexuality is the built-in psychedelic experience that only a very few people manage to evade.
Terence McKenna
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For unknown reasons, there is a tremendous concentration of psychoactive plants on the South American continent. The South American continent has more known hallucinogens than the rest of the planet combined.
Terence McKenna
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What is happening here is we are living past the age, by the millions, living past the age where cultural values make any sense at all.
Terence McKenna