I think the experience over the past thousand years is that ideology is poisonous. . . . The world seen through the lens of ideology is a very limited world. Terence McKenna More Quotes by Terence McKenna More Quotes From Terence McKenna All time is is how much change you can pack into a second. Terence McKenna packsall-time I see the psychedelic experience as both the centerpiece of prehistoric life and destined to be the centerpiece of any future that we want to be part of. Terence McKenna centerpiecespsychedelicwant Our theories are the weakest part of what we say. What we're working from is the fact of an experience which we need to make sense of. Terence McKenna theoryfactsneeds 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 momentsseareality The entire drug phenomenon of the 1960s happened without the concept of shamanism to help it along. Terence McKenna shamanismdrughelping What I'm talking about is actually is the Mystery of Being as existential fact. That there is something that haunts this world that can take apart and reduce every single one of us to a mixture of terror and ecstasy, fear and trembling. It is not an idea, that's the primary thing to bear in mind. It's an experience. Terence McKenna mindtalkingideas History, call it 15,000 or 25,000 years of duration, is the story of an animal, some kind of complex animal, becoming conscious. Terence McKenna storiesanimalyears What blinds us, or what makes historical progress very difficult, is our lack of awareness of our ignorance. Terence McKenna progresshistoricalignorance '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 psychedelicdrugtwo This is the nature of going forward into being: A series of self-transforming ascents of level. Terence McKenna ascentlevelsself We are creatures of information and the imagination. The monkey we are already beginning to transform and shed. We don't look like the other monkeys, and we look less like them all the time. Terence McKenna monkeysimaginationlooks Cultural conditioning is like bad software. Over and over it's diddled with and re-written so that it can just run on the next attempt. But there is cultural hardware, and it's that cultural hardware, otherwise known as authentic being, that we are propelled toward by the example of the shaman and the techniques of the shaman. ... Shamanism therefore is a call to authenticity. Terence McKenna techniqueexamplerunning The 20th century mind is nostalgic for the paradise that once existed on the mushroom dotted plains of Africa where the plant-human symbiosis occurred that pulled us out of the animal body and into the tool-using, culture-making, imagination-exploring creature that we are. And why does this matter? It matters because it shows that the way out is back and that the future is a forward escape into the past. This is what the psychedelic experience means. Its a doorway out of history and into the wiring under the board in eternity. Terence McKenna animalmeanpast Psychedelic telepathy is you 'see' what I mean. Terence McKenna telepathypsychedelicmean 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 human-experienceeventsgreek There is no hierarchy of elder knowledge in my social region of things. There are only people learning and sharing in a very complex environment. Terence McKenna hierarchyenvironmentpeople Biology seems to be a chemical strategy for amplifying quantum mechanical indeterminacy so that it leaves the subatomic realm and can be present in a hundred and forty five pound block of meat. Terence McKenna blockmeatpounds Belief is a form of infantilism. There is no ground for believing anything. Terence McKenna formbeliefbelieve It seems to me that information is the thing which uses matter, uses light, uses spirit, uses whatever it can put its hands on to organize itself into higher and higher levels of self-reflection. Terence McKenna reflectionselfhands The numinous depth of the mystery that seems to have called us out of the animal mind is completely impenetrable to modern analysis. Terence McKenna depthmindanimal
