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
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.
The psychedelic viewpoint is becoming more and more legitimate, but psychedelic drugs are not. That's the odd paradox of it.
The entire drug phenomenon of the 1960s happened without the concept of shamanism to help it along.
I'm not an advocate of drugs. I'm an advocate of psychedelics.
The sine qua non for obtaining a psychedelic experience is humbling yourself to the point where you admit that you must submit to the experience of the plant or the drug. This act of surrender is the major technical function you will be called upon to perform during the psychedelic trip.
The terror of drugs is a terror of giving up control. This is what people are most alarmed about by psychedelics, is the giving up control.
Television, while chemically non-invasive, nevertheless is every bit as addicting and physiologically damaging as any other drug.
This is in fact what shamanism is all about, what the end of history is all about, what psychedelic drugs are all about, we are edge-walking on an ontological transformation of what it means to be human.
Television is, to my mind, the most insidious drug that the 20th Century has had to deal with.
The drugs of the future will be computers. The computers of the future will be drugs.
The danger is [in using psychedelic drugs], just to put it out there, is madness.
What foods are, essentially, are idea-neutral drugs.
In 1948, television was introduced, and millions and millions of people lead larval, low-awareness, warehoused lives mainlining an electronic drug straight into their brains.
An interesting thing about drugs is often, when a new drug is discovered, it takes a long time to figure out how do you do it.