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We're not going to save the monkey unless we can shed the monkey. And the greatest impetus, the greatest inspiration to the expression of our higher selves comes in the confrontation with psyche that occurs in the psychedelic experience.

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
Greatest
Occurs
Comes
Monkeys
Experience
Shed
Impetus
Self
Save
Monkey
Going
Unless
Psyche
Expression
Psychedelic
Higher
Confrontation
Inspiration
Selves

More quotes by Terence McKenna

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And psychedelics now, as we de-condition ourselves from the post-medieval world, they are present to hand as tools.
Terence McKenna
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The intellectual tension that seems to work its way through this society almost like fat through meat is the tension between scientific reductionism and the deeply felt intuition of most people that there is a spiritual dimension, or a hidden dimension, or a transcendental dimension.
Terence McKenna
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I believe reality is a marvelous joke staged for my edification and amusement and everybody is working very hard to make me happy.
Terence McKenna
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We can will the perfect future into being by becoming microcosms of the perfect future.
Terence McKenna
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Reality is, you know, the tip of an iceberg of irrationality that we've managed to drag ourselves up onto for a few panting moments before we slip back into the sea of the unreal.
Terence McKenna
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I think what we have to do is convince people that matter is tacky.
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?
Terence McKenna
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We are consciousness. We may not always be monkeys.
Terence McKenna
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The central figure in the archaic revival is the shaman.
Terence McKenna
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My normal lectures deal with the psychedelic experience as a generalized and historical phenomenon, but this effort at communication is slightly more personal in that it's an effort to impart [just] one idea that came out of an involvement with psychedelic substances.
Terence McKenna
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Television is, to my mind, the most insidious drug that the 20th Century has had to deal with.
Terence McKenna
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I think institutions will inevitably substitute a rite or a ritual for the authentic, for the real McCoy, because then priests can control the pipeline to god, and the parishioner can approach with offerings. But if everybody can have a pipeline to deity, why then the whole priest scam is put out of business.
Terence McKenna
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We are like coral animals embedded in a technological reef of extruded psychic objects...All our tool-making implies our belief in an ultimate tool.
Terence McKenna
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I believe that the place to search for extraterrestrials is in the psychic dimension.
Terence McKenna
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History is the in-rushing toward what the Buddhists call the realm of the densely packed, a transformational realm where the opposites are unified.
Terence McKenna
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The western mind, because of it's unique history, is the most sensitive mind to the impact of psychedelics.
Terence McKenna
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Certainly the central Platonic idea, which is the idea of the ideas, these archetypal forms which stand outside of time is one which is confirmed by the psychedelic experience.
Terence McKenna
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Worrying is betting against yourself.
Terence McKenna
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No one knows enough to worry.
Terence McKenna
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It's a relationship like to a crusty Zen master, or something like that. And it is really like another entity because you cannot predict the answers.
Terence McKenna