Terence McKenna Quotes

The tryptamine molecule has this unique property of releasing the structured self into the over-self.

Alcohol make you drunk, man. It don't make you meditate, it just make you drunk. Herb is more a consciousness.

It’s hard to stay away from religion when you mess with acid.

The drunken consciousness is one bit of the mystic consciousness, and our total opinion of it must find its place in our opinion of that larger whole.

Do I need to ease up on the psychedelics, or did LP just recall one of her past lives unprompted at the most crucial juncture ever?

Nature and the imagination seem to be the precursors to involvement in the psychedelic experience.

Mysticism is the art of union with Reality.

For me, what all these years of psychedelic taking came to was a new model of how reality works, a new model of what the world is.

Drugs shouldn't be used for recreation although they can be, but ultimately the point of psychedelics is to put you in touch with the powers of the universe.

There is a very intimate connection between hypnotic phenomena and religion.

Many of us who have experienced psychedelics feel very much that they are sacred tools. They open spiritual awareness.

It is possible to spend one's entire lifetime without ever experiencing the mystical realms or even without being aware of their existence.

Look at what trance means. It means to transcend... it means to become transcendental! So if we get a singular transcendental path of light, that could lead to such great dimensions of consciousness, of revelation, of spirituality, of spiritual power.

We need a new concept of reality and a new set of values for things to change in a positive direction. LSD could help to generate such a new concept.

In the silence, in the darkness, swept away by these alien alkaloids and the plant-mind behind them, you find out a truth that can barely be told. And most of it can't be told.

I think that understanding man's place in nature is going to require integration of the psychedelic experience.

What happens with DMT is you leap over all the barriers in the first few seconds. Unlike mushrooms where over hours and hours on a high dose you might navigate yourself to the center of the mandala, DMT is like being struck by metaphysical lightening.

The power of psychedelics... is that they often reveal, in the span of a few hours, depths of awe and understanding that can otherwise elude us for a lifetime.

What I like to talk about, and what I have very little competition in terms of talking about, is the content of the psychedelic experience.

In consciousness dwells the wondrous, with it man attains the realm beyond the material, and the Peyote tells us, where to find it.

The government could take away all the drugs in the world and people would spin around on their lawns until they fell down and saw God.

I called the world of phenomena an illusion, I called my eyes and my tongue an accident, valueless phenomena. No, that is all over; I have awakened, I have really awakened and I have just been born today.

In this world, there is a fine line between enlightenment and brain damage.

We are eternal. All this pain is an illusion.

I think it's the sheer power of the hallucinogens that puts people off. You either love them or you hate them, and that's because they dissolve world views. And if you like the experience of having your entire ontological structure disappear out from under you, if you think that's a thrill, you'll probably love psychedelics.