That's the core puzzling experience, when you meet the Other organized as a speaking mind. Terence McKenna More Quotes by Terence McKenna More Quotes From Terence McKenna There is an angel within the monkey struggling to get free, and this is what the historical crisis is all about. Terence McKenna angelhistoricalstruggle Our world is endangered by the absence of good ideas Terence McKenna dmtour-worldideas Apparently there is a great discovery or insight which our culture is deliberately designed to suppress, distort, and ignore. That is that nature is some kind of minded entity. That nature is not simply the random flight of atoms through electromagnetic fields. Nature is not the empty, despiritualized , lumpen matter that we inherit from modern physics. But it is instead a kind of intelligence, a kind of mind. Terence McKenna atomsminddiscovery It's clearly a crisis of two things: of consciousness and conditioning. We have the technological power, the engineering skills to save our planet, to cure disease, to feed the hungry, to end war; But we lack the intellectual vision, the ability to change our minds. We must decondition ourselves from 10,000 years of bad behavior. And, it's not easy. Terence McKenna engineeringwaryears No one knows enough to worry. Terence McKenna enoughknowsworry We cannot evolve faster than our language. The edge of being is the edge of meaning, and somehow we have to push the edge of meaning. We have to extend it. Terence McKenna fasterevolvelanguage The question is being asked, 'Are we alone?' And though we now focus on that question we need to think beyond that to what if we're not alone? Then what becomes the next imperative question? Terence McKenna what-iffocusthinking Nothing comes unannounced, but many can miss the announcement. So it's very important to actually listen to your own intuition rather than driving through it. Terence McKenna missinginspirationallife You're immortal as long as you live. Terence McKenna immortallong Nobody is smarter than you are. And what if they are? What good is their understanding doing you? Terence McKenna what-ifsmartunderstanding You are the cutting edge of a thirteen billion year old process of defining novelty. Your acts matter. Your thoughts matter. Your purpose? To add to the complexity. Your enemy? Disorder, entropy, stupidity, and tastelessness. Terence McKenna stupiditycuttingyears Mind conjures miracles out of time. Terence McKenna miraclemind To my mind this makes psychedelics central to any political reconstruction, because these are the only force in nature that actually dissolve linguistics structures; lets the mechanics of syntax to be visible, allows the possibility for rapid introduction and spread of new concepts; gives permission for new ways of seeing; and this is what we have to do, we have to change our minds. Terence McKenna politicalmindgiving Time will perfect matter. Terence McKenna matterperfect People have a right to get stoned. They have a right to think and explore their own minds. This is as intimate a part of their being as their sexuality. Any culture which mitigates that is clearly afraid of a full and fair and open dialogue about what reality is and what real human values ought to be. Terence McKenna realpeoplethinking Nature is not our enemy, to be raped and conquered. Nature Terence McKenna understandingteachingexpression The pro-psychedelic plant position is clearly an antidrugs position. Drug dependencies are the result of habitual, unexamined, and obsessive behavior; these are precisely the tendencies in our psychological makup that the psychedelics mitigate. The plant hallucinogens dissolve habits and hold motivations up to inspection by a wider, less egocentric, and more grounded point of view within the individual. Terence McKenna drugmotivationviews Chaos is roving through the system and able to undo, at any point, the best laid plans. Terence McKenna best-laid-plansrovingable Human beings are co-partners with deity in the project of being. This is the basis of all magic. Terence McKenna paganismmagiclife So what needs to be done is to spread the idea that anxiety is inappropriate. It's sort of like we who are psychedelic have to function as sitters for society, because society is going to thrash, and resist, and think it's dying, and be deluded, and regurgitate unconscious material, and so forth and so on. And the role then, I think, for psychedelic people is to try and spread calm. Terence McKenna peopleideasthinking