Our theories are the weakest part of what we say. What we're working from is the fact of an experience which we need to make sense of.
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 McKennaCertainly 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 they involve themselves with psychedelics.
Terence McKennaI'm not an abuser. It takes me a long time to assimilate each experience. And I never have lost my respect for it. I mean I really feel dread. It is one of the emotions I always feel as I approach it, because I have no faith that my sails won't be ripped this time.
Terence McKenna