Guest speaker: Terence McKenna
PROGRAM NOTES:
[NOTE: All quotations are by Terence McKenna.]
“It is not that culture is evolving. The evolution of culture is an epiphenomena attendant upon the evolution of language. Language is the part of man that is evolving. Culture carries along.”
“I think people have a greater sensitivity to the mysteries of human interaction simply because so much LSD was taken in the Sixties.”
“The world is not nearly as chaotic and random as we suppose. We are actually trapped inside a giant organism. And it is not Gaia. That’s a much larger organism. We are trapped inside a large organism which is the human collectivity, and that’s why we are such different monkeys.”
“But really the psychedelic experience is like an intimation of immortality. And at varying distances in time from the point you occupy it shows you ever more vague intimations of the future, but they are there nevertheless.”
“What the psychedelics really do, I think, is release us from cultural machinery.”
“There is a potential for immortality, but it isn’t assured. It is something which comes to the courageous.”
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Everybody hit the streets …truer words have never been spoken !!
YES! T and Leon… This is the time he seemed to be so comfortable with his thoughts.
And, Lorenzo, it’s funny, I’ve listened to every TM talk here several times. I heard this one and found all kinds of new stuff. Turns out I’d heard it before!
Terence NEVER EVER gets old for me. The info is so dense and he delivers it with such pazzaz that it is always new.
Thanks so much (AGAIN!!!!).
I agree, T.
It seems at that period, Terence himself was still excited by the ideas he was propounding.
Many thanks, as always, Lorenzo.
There’s something about 1980s Terence McKenna talks that makes them tend to be my favourites. His range and depth, eloquence and steadiness of speech are mind blowing. Perhaps his tongue and mind were still well oiled from mushroom taking, perhaps the days prior to a busy lecturing circuit allowed him more reading and thinking… Maybe its just me, but he seems to be at the top of his game in this period.
I think this is podcast 215, or 250. Love the woman’s laugh when TM drops the comments about building a bigger bonfire and the Nobel Prize. Those are what stood out in my memory.
[COMMENT by Lorenzo: Oooops! . . . no wonder it sounded so famaliar to me. That’s the second time I’ve done that . . . hmmm, I don’t think it’s age, must be something else causing short term memory issues :-).]