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
Human beings are co-partners with deity in the project of being. This is the basis of all magic.
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.
The mystery is in the body and the way the body works itself into nature.
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.
Although whenever you have intelligent life in the presence of large explosions, a safe bet is that the intelligent life is responsible for the large explosion.
I think ideology is toxic, all ideology. It's not that there are good ones and bad ones. All ideology is toxic, because ideology is a kind of insult to the gift of human free thinking.
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.
I don’t know what life is like without cannabis, I hear there is such a thing.
Right here and now, one quanta away, there is raging a universe of active intelligence that is transhuman, hyperdimensional, and extremely alien... What is driving religious feeling today is a wish for contact with this other universe.