I think there's a shamanic temperament, which is a person who craves knowledge, knowledge in the Greek sense of gnosis. In other words, knowledge not of the sort where you subscribe to Scientific American, and it validates what you believe,… — Terence McKenna Copy Share Image
Certainly neo-Platonism, Plotinus and Porphyry and that school are psychedelic philosophers. Their idea of an ascending hierarchy of more and more rarefied states is a sophisticated presentation of the shamanic cosmology, which is the cosmology that one experientially discovers when… — Terence McKenna Copy Share Image
History was an incredibly damaging experience, and now it's over . . . in a sense. — Terence McKenna Copy Share Image
We are somehow the children of the planet, we are somehow its finest hour; we bind time, we bind the past, we anticipate the… — Terence McKenna Copy Share Image
The history of man that you don't know is what your unconscious is made out of. Just as the history of yourself that you… — Terence McKenna Copy Share Image
What is happening here is we are living past the age, by the millions, living past the age where cultural values make any sense… — Terence McKenna Copy Share Image
What history is, essentially, is a careening, out-of-control effort to find our way back to this state of primordial balance. — Terence McKenna Copy Share Image
And what is the primary datum? It's the felt presence of immediate experience. In other words, being here now is the primary datum. — Terence McKenna Copy Share Image
Our culture difinitely takes an egocentric dominator view. The fear of the psychedelic experience is quite literally the fear of losing control. Dominator types… — Terence McKenna Copy Share Image
Every step into freedom contains within it the potential for greater bondage. — Terence McKenna Copy Share Image
This is the message of your life and my life - it’s that nothing lasts. Heraclitus said it: Panta Rhei. All flows, nothing lasts.… — Terence McKenna Copy Share Image
I often like to think that our map of the world is wrong, that where we have centered physics, we should actually place literature… — Terence McKenna Copy Share Image
Knowledge, or verbal facility, is no proof that you know what you're talking about. — Terence McKenna Copy Share Image
