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
Closure is a neurotic and infantile demand to make upon reality, other people, or language.
Alchemy is really the secret tradition of the redemption of spirit from matter.
The surface of things is not where attention should rest.
As a society we cannot seem to make peace with nature. As individuals, it's hard for us to be at peace with ourselves.
Nature has an economy, an elegance, a style, that if we could but emulate it we could rise out of the rubble we are making out of the planet
Ideology always paves the way toward atrocity.
How do we fight back? By creating art.
The engineers of the future will be poets.
I don't believe consciousness is generated in the brain any more than television programs are made inside my TV. The box is too small.
It is the imagination that argues for the Divine Spark within human beings. It is literally a decent of the World's Soul into all of us.
Nature is not our enemy, to be raped and conquered. Nature is ourselves, to be cherished and explored.
Language, thought, analysis, art, dance, poetry, mythmaking: these are the things that point the way toward the realm of the eschaton.
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.
Art's task is to save the soul of mankind.. anything less is a dithering while Rome burns.