Guest speaker: Terence McKenna
[NOTE: All quotations are by Terence McKenna.]
“The psychedelic viewpoint is becoming more and more legitimate, but psychedelic drugs are not. That’s the odd paradox of it.”
“We are living in a state of constant scientific revolution. There is not a single area that you can name that is now seen as it was seen a hundred years ago. Nothing is left of the world view of one hundred years ago.”
“The mind is a far bigger domain than we ever imagined.”
“I think really what unites psychedelic people is the faith in the power of the imagination.”
“And science, when it examines psychedelics, as it will and must, is going to discover a revolution, I believe, that will put all the previous revolutions in perspective.”
“The psychedelics are this immense tool for the inspection of our own nature.”
“The entire drug phenomenon of the 1960s happened without the concept of shamanism to help it along.”
“I think that understanding man’s place in nature is going to require integration of the psychedelic experience.”
“Nobody should be allowed more than fifty years to get their act together.”
“Part of what being involved in the psychedelic experience is about is reclaiming your own experience.”
“You could almost describe psychedelics as enzymes for the activity of the imagination.”
“We do not birth our children into the world of nature. We birth our children into the world of culture.”
“What the psychedelic thing can be seen as, when it’s done with plants, as a return to Gaia, an immersion in the feminine.”
“The real nature of our predicament is completely opaque to us.”
“Ayahuasca, unlike mushrooms and all these other things is only as good as the person who made it. . . . The ayahuasca is a combinatory drug, and so it brings the human interaction and the lore of it into a much more central position.”
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Corny graphics like this (and the previously posted smiling mushrooms) make me hesitate in sharing these talks on social networks. I would be happy to offer up some different graphics. So much of what is said in these talks is so profound and important that a crudely clipped image of Terrence pasted on top of swirling colors will deter new-comers and critical thinkers from engaging. That’s my two cents.
hello saloners! i’ve been looking around for this McKenna talk which doesn’t seem to be on the net (maybe one of you has digitalized it?):
“A Calendar for The Goddess”
Oct 3, 1987 (Shared Visions Bookstore, Berkeley, CA.)
“Join Terence McKenna, author, explorer, and philosopher for a think-along discussion of concepts of the lunar cycle based calendar. With his characteristic candor, hope and humor, Terence McKenna examines: the time when the Goddess was caretaker, the prehistory mysteries, the nature of language, the techniques of ecstasy, the evolution of human cultures, the foundations of calendrics in general based on the phases of the Moon. Terence’s think-along discussion is cleverly paced to include didactic, syncretic, challenging, eclectic, irreverent, intellectual tripping-the-light-fantastic with the agenda of a person whose feet are made of clay. A very full evening awaits you!”
[COMMENT by Lorenzo: That is one of the talks that Sound Photosynthisis claims to own and sells for around $40. According to Dennis McKenna, they haven’t paid any royalties to the McKenna family in over a decade. Hopefully some brave sould will post it on the Net one day. I’ve already been threatened by them once, and since I can’t afford a lawyer to fight them I’m just ignoring these small minded business people.]
Thanks for the Erowid Extracts link! That info on n-bombs was rather titillating but not enough so that I’d venture to try it out while depending on a less than accurate milligram scale.
I wonder what Mr. Shulgin would have to say about this?