Quote

Man was not put on this planet to toil in the mud. Or the god who put us on this planet to toil in the mud is no god I want to have any part of. It's some kind of gnostic demon. It's some kind of cannibalistic demiurge that should be thoroughly renounced and rejected.

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
Toil
Rejected
Demon
Planet
Planets
Gnostic
Part
Renounced
Kind
Mud
Men
Thoroughly

More quotes by Terence McKenna

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Information is just simply bootstrapping itself to higher and higher levels of self-reflection and self-coordination using whatever means are necessary.
Terence McKenna
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What they [psychedelics] cause is what I'm advocating, a fundamental revaluation of cultural values, because culture as we're practicing it currently is causing a lot of pain to a lot of people, and animals, and ecosystems, none of whom were ever allowed to vote on whether they wanted this process to go in this direction.
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 race isn't to the swift, it's to the thoughtful.
Terence McKenna
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I would argue that it's almost better to do heroin than to watch TV. At least when you're doing heroin you're responsible for your own reveries and thought processes. When you're mainlining TV what is it but endless messages to fetishize products?
Terence McKenna
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There is no knowledge without risk taking.
Terence McKenna
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Your memories are eroding away. The futures you anticipate, will mostly not come to pass, and the real richness is in the moment. And it's not necessarily some kind of 'Be Here Now' feel-good thing because it doesn't always feel good. But it always feels. It is a domain of feeling. It's primary.
Terence McKenna
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Skywalker is a direct translation of the word shaman out of the Tungusic, which is where Siberian shamanism comes from. So these heroes that are being instilled in the heart of the culture are shamanic heroes. They control a force which is bigger than everybody and holds the galaxy together.
Terence McKenna
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I think it's the sheer power of the hallucinogens that puts people off. You either love them or you hate them, and that's because they dissolve world views. And if you like the experience of having your entire ontological structure disappear out from under you, if you think that's a thrill, you'll probably love psychedelics.
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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The psychedelic inner astronaut sees things which no human being has ever seen before, and no other human being will ever see again. But in fact this has no meaning unless it is possible to carry it back into the collectivity.
Terence McKenna
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It's meanings that we need to coax into our lives.
Terence McKenna
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The culture cannot evolve faster than the language. The language is the flashlight that shows the path.
Terence McKenna
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It doesn't matter what your cultural conditioning is, it falls into question under the influence of the psychedelic. And for most people that's frightening.
Terence McKenna
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Cyberspace is the human transition into a mathematical super space where we as a collectivity become optionally a single point of view.
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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'Drugs' and psychedelics are not two members of a family, they are antithetically opposed to each other. The pro-psychedelic position is an anti-drug position.
Terence McKenna
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The shaman has access to a superhuman dimension and a superhuman condition, and by being able to do that he affirms the potential for transcendence in all people. He is an exemplar, if you will.
Terence McKenna
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We're not mere spectators, or a cosmic accident, or some sideshow, or the Greek chorus to the main event. The human experience IS the main event.
Terence McKenna
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The mind is a far bigger domain than we ever imagined.
Terence McKenna