Terence McKenna Quotes

All too often, when it comes to our own minds, we are surprisingly mindless. We sail on, blithely unaware of how much we are missing, of how little we grasp of our own thought process - and how much better we could be if only we'd taken the time to understand and to reflect.

I'm in my mind a lot. I live there.

How do you know, right now, that you are aware of being aware, or conscious?

I've always been just kind of consumed by my own thoughts.

There are mighty few people who think what they think they think.

The foolish reject what they see and not what they think; the wise reject what they think and not what they see.

We all know what we know. We experience with our minds and breath.

I find that when I do not think of myself I do not think at all.

Every thought is an afterthought.

Our capacity to think, except in the service of what we are dangerously deluded in supposing is our self-interest and in conformity with common sense, is pitifully limited: our capacity even to see, hear, touch, taste and smell is so shrouded in veils of mystification that an intensive discipline of unlearning is necessary for anyone before one can begin to experience the world afresh, with innocence, truth and love.

Ordinary mind includes eternal perceptions. Notice what you notice. Observe what's vivid. Catch yourself thinking. Vividness is self-selecting. And remember the future.

I tell myself that I know you, and then when I think about it, I realize that I don't.

He thinks he believes only what he sees, but he is much better at believing than at seeing.

It's not what you know, it's what you think you know.

You don't want to know the Truth, you want to know the truth as you understand it. This is the greatest barrier to your enlightenment. You think you already know the truth! You think you already understand how it is. So you agree with everything you see or hear or read that falls into the paradigm of your understanding, and reject everything which does not.

We have been so blinded by thinking and feeling that we have never seen the World.

Watch the things you say you can't believe, and then recall the things you accept without thinking, like your own existence.

We are not conscious of most things until we ask ourselves questions about them.

Thinking is only a small aspect of consciousness. Thought cannot exist without consciousness, but consciousness does not need thought

I'm always kind of in my head thinking.

I did some years of therapy and self-realization, and I just move and think at a slower pace - doesn't make me sound very smart! But really not reacting and doing more listening than talking, and letting people say what they need to say, and then maybe not saying anything at all.

Only the thinking man lives his life, the thoughtless man's life passes him by.

Belief is in ignorance. If you know, you know. And it is good that if you don’t know, know that you don’t know — the belief can deceive you. The belief can create an atmosphere in your mind, where, without knowing, you start thinking that you know. Belief is not trust, and the more strongly you say that you believe totally, the more you are afraid of the doubt within you.

Paradigms power perception and perceptions power emotions. Most emotions are responses to perception - what you think is true about a given situation. If your perception is false, then your emotional response to it will be false too. So check your perceptions, and beyond that check the truthfulness of your paradigms - what you believe. Just because you believe something firmly doesn't make it true. Be willing to reexamine what you believe.

First Sight means you can see what really is there, and Second Thoughts mean thinking about what you are thinking. And in Tiffany's case, there were sometimes Third Thoughts and Fourth Thoughts although these...sometimes led her to walk into doors.