Quote

What we call reality is in fact nothing more than a culturally sanctioned and linguistically reinforced hallucination.

Terence McKenna

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Terence McKenna
Age: 53 †
Born: 1946
Born: November 16
Died: 2000
Died: April 3
Anthropologist
Ethnobotanist
Philosopher
Writer
Paonia
Colorado
Terence Kemp McKenna
Hallucination
Hallucinations
Culturally
Call
Fact
Facts
Linguistically
Reality
Sanctioned
Nothing
Reinforced

More quotes by Terence McKenna

Image
Psychedelics can carry you farther and faster than most people care to go. Once you get to psychedelics, it's no longer a matter of seeking the answer, you have found the answer. Now the issue changes dramatically, you must face the answer.
Terence McKenna
Image
What I've observed, and I think it's fair to give credit to the psychedelic experience for this, what I've observed is that nature builds on previously established levels of complexity.
Terence McKenna
Image
A history-stopping archetype is being released into the skies of this planet, and if we are not careful it will halt all intellectual inquiry in the same way that the Christos archetype halted intellectual inquiry in the Hellenistic Age.
Terence McKenna
Image
The mind is a far bigger domain than we ever imagined.
Terence McKenna
Image
I believe that great weirdness stalks the universe. That's not the issue with me, but it is not tacky. It is not tacky.
Terence McKenna
Image
We are reaping the fruits of ten thousand, fifty thousand years of sowing of the fields of mind. And it is being dropped into our laps for us to create human-machine interfacing, control of genetic material, redefinition of social reality, re engineering of languages, revisioning of the planetary ecology, all these things fall upon us.
Terence McKenna
Image
Within the context of the alchemical vocabulary, the psychedelic experience, as brought to us through plants long in the possession of Aboriginal people, appears to be the identical phenomena.
Terence McKenna
Image
I started out in psychedelic drugs, and people said it was a flight from reality. It still is a flight from reality, but I think reality is now a bit more scary than the drugs we used to fly from it, so long ago.
Terence McKenna
Image
The quality of rhetoric emanating from the psychedelic community must improve radically. If it does not, we will forfeit the reclamation of our birthright and all opportunity for exploring the psychedelic dimension will be closed off.
Terence McKenna
Image
To date, the enterprise of thinking has moved us radically away from understanding anything.
Terence McKenna
Image
When we look within ourselves with psilocybin, we discover that we do not have to look outward toward the futile promise of life that circles distant stars in order to still our cosmic loneliness. We should look within the paths of the heart lead to nearby universes full of life and affection for humanity.
Terence McKenna
Image
The human imagination, in conjunction with technology, has become a force so potent that it really can no longer be unleashed on the surface of the planet with safety.
Terence McKenna
Image
DMT is the most powerful hallucinogen there is. If it gets stronger than that I don't want to know about it.
Terence McKenna
Image
All psychedelic explorers should be aware of the concept of what is called a cognitive hallucination. The is a much more insidious phenomenon. This is, quite simply, an out-and-out delusion.
Terence McKenna
Image
Well, certainly the Voynich Manuscript is the 'limit text' of Western occultism. No one can read it. It is truly an occult book.
Terence McKenna
Image
We must look to the native healers all over the world and study their methods... Their methods are chemical and personal. It's a combination of care, attention, intention and chemistry that allows consciousness to be made malleable and recast in other forms.
Terence McKenna
Image
Every step into freedom contains within it the potential for greater bondage.
Terence McKenna
Image
By manipulating queuing, by manipulating expectation, you can lead people to a fundamental confrontation, not only with themselves, but with the Other.
Terence McKenna
Image
Having lived long enough to go at least once or twice around the block, I'm noticing that the strangeness is not receding The strangeness seems to be accelerating.
Terence McKenna
Image
It is curious that what these psychedelics do, on a scale of a community, is they release new ideas. . . . And that this is how culture moves forward. That culture is a phenomenon dependent on the generation of ideas, plans, notions, connections. So this is precisely what these compounds are doing.
Terence McKenna