Guest speaker: Terence McKenna
PROGRAM NOTES:
[NOTE: All quotations are by Terence McKenna.]
“One of the most puzzling things about DMT is that it does not affect your mind. It simply replaces the world 100% with something completely unexpected. But your relationship to that unexpected thing is not one of exaggerated fear, or exaggerated acceptance, as in ‘Oh great, the world has just been replaced by elf machinery. Your reaction is exactly what it would be if it happened to you without DMT. You’re appalled!”
“[DMT] is a secret of such magnitude that it’s inconceivable how it has ever been kept.”
“When you get to DMT you have hit the main vein.”
“It has to do with your own intelligence. Truly stupid people aren’t interested in psychedelics because they can’t figure out what the point of it is. It feeds off intelligence. It’s a consciousness-expanding drug. If you don’t have any consciousness you can’t expand it.”
“The less intelligent you are, the less challenging the psychedelic experience becomes because the less capable of entertaining the implications you are.”
“A hallucination is a species of reality.”
“The world is like a novel. It’s a novel in which you are a character.”
“And then I got crossed up with this mushroom, and immediately life became art.”
“If what we’re embedded in is a novel, or some work of art like a novel, then what you want to do is figure out who in the novel you are.”
“We are trying to find a doorway into a new world for the spirit.”
“And I really think that when we dissolve all the boundaries this is what we will discover, is an unconditional caring, an unconditional affection that flows through all life and all matter and gives it meaning.”
“You don’t have to wait for the end of the world to get this news. You can just short circuit the collective march toward that realization by accelerating your own microcosm of spirituality through the use of these hallucinogens They are the doorway that the Gaian mind has installed in the historical process to let anybody out, any time they want to, provided they have the courage to turn the knob and walk through the door.”
“Let those who talk to the elves find each other and band together.”
“We are now in a position to actually make something of ourselves. Extend the design process to human destiny and produce something that will redeem 10,000 years of pogroms, and migrations, and attempted genocides, and pointless wars, and stupid religions that make people hate themselves, and all the rest of it. If we’re going to redeem that legacy then we have to do something quite spectacular.”
“A concrescence is a local state of unusually high complexity.”
“Organized religion is as concerned with controlling social groups as organized politics is.”
“The cost of sanity in this society is a certain level of alienation.”
“We all want our children to be well-adjusted, unfortunately there is nothing to be well-adjusted too. So that’s a real problem.”
“The reason shamans can do their magic is because they are outside the belief system.”
“I think alienation, extra-environmentalism, shamanism, whatever you want to call it, is simply individualism, in the context of cultures that don’t value individualism, and cultures don’t.”
“It’s said nature acts to preserve the species. Cultures act to preserve the illusions of the population.”
“There are old psychedelicists and bold psychedelicists, but there are no old, bold psychedelicists.”
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Best Quote (Thanx, Steve):
“You can get a lot rowdier than you are. You can make a lot more waves. There’s been too much… parlor etiquette exercised recently by the counter culture. It’s perfectly all right to mix things up. It’s perfectly all right to try and accelerate the plot. This will move your character nearer and nearer to the center of the action.”
This is my favorite quote from this,
“All of us are beginning to take textual control of our lives. And be able to write the plot. You see if what we’re imbedded in is a novel, or some work of art like a novel, then what you want to do is figure out who in the novel you are. If your name is Joe Blow, is the name of this novel The Lives and Worlds of Joe Blow, or do you get to draw a bath for someone on page 230 and never been seen again. Now as a character, the more conscious you become the more you have free will within the context of the plot.
You can get a lot rowdier than you are. You can make a lot more waves. There’s been too much… parlor etiquette exercised recently by the counter culture. It’s perfectly all right to mix things up. It’s perfectly all right to try and accelerate the plot. This will move your character nearer and nearer to the center of the action.
Is the goal to make the novel about yourself? I don’t think so. The goal is to become the author of the novel. Then you can write any damn ending you want for your character or any other. It’s empowering, it’s self-control.”
Hi Lorenzo,
I have quite a few TM talks I downloaded over the years from mckenna.psychedelic-library.org, deoxy.org, and other sites. Some you’ve used, but there are many others (several are series) although there might be copyright issues with some.
I’ve made screen captures of the titles listed on my pc and put them in a ‘McKenna’ folder on my Dropbox, where I could add any files you may be interested in. Just email me and I’ll share the folder with you.
Thanks so much for the Salon and all you do to maintain it!
Dave
Lorenzo— I’ve at least got one or two additional McKenna talks that you haven’t used yet.
How should I send them to you?
Keith
[COMMENT by Lorenzo: If you want to mail them, my address is:
Lorenzo Hagerty
P.O. Box 131133
Carlsbad, CA 92013
Otherwise, DropBox or one of those services will also work. . . . and thanks for thinking of the salon.]
We are being sucked into the body of eternity.
Tax 100%.
Hi Lorenzo— I think I have a few more McKenna talks in my own archive that I’ve not heard on the Salon, in fact it might be some of my favorites. So, I’ll check and cross-reference to make sure, and get back to you…
Also, boingboinig.net has been posting some great stuff as part of their Robert Anton Wilson week, and many here might find those pieces interesting http://boingboing.net/tag/raw-week
The RU Sirius piece there connected rather nicely with a recent piece he had on his own site, interview with Marc Franklin http://www.acceler8or.com/2011/12/psychedelic-transpersonal-photography-high-frontiers-mondo-2000-an-interview-with-marc-franklin/
Keith