Terence McKenna
Terence McKenna
Terence Kemp McKennawas an American ethnobotanist, mystic, psychonaut, lecturer, author, and an advocate for the responsible use of naturally occurring psychedelic plants. He spoke and wrote about a variety of subjects, including psychedelic drugs, plant-based entheogens, shamanism, metaphysics, alchemy, language, philosophy, culture, technology, environmentalism, and the theoretical origins of human consciousness. He was called the "Timothy Leary of the '90s", "one of the leading authorities on the ontological foundations of shamanism", and the "intellectual voice of rave culture"...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPhilosopher
Date of Birth16 November 1946
CityPaonia, CO
CountryUnited States of America
I think really what unites psychedelic people is the faith in the power of the imagination.
You are some kind of a mystery suspended between two eternities. And in that moment, when a mind looks out at a world and asks the question, ‘What is it?’ In that moment art can be created.
'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.
It's possible to see the whole human growth movement of the 1970s as a wish to continue the inward quest without having to put yourself on the line in the way you had to when you took 250 gamma of LSD. And I think all these other methods are efficacious, but I think it's the sheer power of the hallucinogens that puts people off.
What blinds us, or what makes historical progress very difficult, is our lack of awareness of our ignorance.
It puts people who are into this psychedelic thing in an entirely different stance from all other spiritual seekers, because all other spiritual seekers are furiously seeking. Psychedelic people are holding it back with all their power, because they are in the presence of the mystery. And then the trick is to get a spigot on it so that it can be turned on and off rather than coming at you like a tidal wave a mile high and twenty miles wide.
The psychedelics are this immense tool for the inspection of our own nature.
We are led by the least among us - the least intelligent, the least noble, the least visionary. We are led by the least among us and we do not fight back against the dehumanizing values that are handed down as control icons.
There's something in the Western mind that gets very nervous when you try to talk about the bedrock of ontology.
What blinds us, or makes historical progress very difficult, is our lack of awareness that our beliefs have grown obsolete and should be put aside.... This is I think much of the problem of the modern dilemma: Direct experience has been discounted, and in its place all kinds of belief systems have been erected.... If you believe something, you are automatically precluded from believing its opposite; which means that a degree of your human freedom has been forfeited in the act of committing yourself to this belief.
It's as though a certain level of intoxication with the mushroom is the precondition for being able to communicate, but is not itself enough.
What the psychedelics are for us as a species, rather than for each one of us as an individual, what they are for us as a species is an enzyme that catalyzes the language-making capacity.
I see the psychedelic experience as a birthright, and we can't have a free society until people are free to explore their own mind.
The psychedelic species of visual beauty is something we don't see in our furniture styles and our architecture. It seems to be coming in, literally, from another dimension, and yet it is undeniably moving. It's beautiful.