Since the very beginning of culture, what we seem to be are animals which take in raw material and excrete it imprinted with ideas.
Terence McKennaIf you go to Paris you know more about reality than people who don't. If you smoke DMT you know more about reality than people who don't.
Terence McKennaThe terror of drugs is a terror of giving up control. This is what people are most alarmed about by psychedelics, is the giving up control.
Terence McKennaSo the conclusion that I reach, visa vie the individual and civilization, is this: Culture is not our friend. Culture is not your friend. It's not my friend. It's a very uncomfortable set of accommodations that have been hammered out over time for the convenience of institutions.
Terence McKennaWhat blinds us, or makes historical progress very difficult, is our lack of awareness that our beliefs have grown obsolete and should be put aside.... This is I think much of the problem of the modern dilemma: Direct experience has been discounted, and in its place all kinds of belief systems have been erected.... If you believe something, you are automatically precluded from believing its opposite; which means that a degree of your human freedom has been forfeited in the act of committing yourself to this belief.
Terence McKenna