I think really what unites psychedelic people is the faith in the power of the imagination.
Terence McKennaAnd what is the primary datum? It's the felt presence of immediate experience. In other words, being here now is the primary datum.
Terence McKennaMy normal lectures deal with the psychedelic experience as a generalized and historical phenomenon, but this effort at communication is slightly more personal in that it's an effort to impart [just] one idea that came out of an involvement with psychedelic substances.
Terence McKennaIt [culture] invites people to diminish themselves, and dehumanize themselves by behaving like machines, meme processors of memes passed down from Madison Avenue, and Hollywood, and what have you.
Terence McKennaAnything which must be understood by millions of people is so hopelessly divorced from how it is that it becomes a form of fiction.
Terence McKennaModernity is a desert, and we are jungle monkeys. And so new evolutionary selective pressures are coming to bear upon the human situation, new ideas are coming to the fore. Psilocybin is a selective filter for this. The wish to go to space is a selective filter for this. Just the wish to know your own mind is a selective filter for this.
Terence McKenna