Terence McKenna Quotes

My Aunt Ida at age eighty-three: 'Yeah,' she said, 'I'll be dead pretty soon. And frankly, I don't give a damn.'

The sine qua non for obtaining a psychedelic experience is humbling yourself to the point where you admit that you must submit to the experience of the plant or the drug. This act of surrender is the major technical function you will be called upon to perform during the psychedelic trip.

Lots of different ways to live and lots of different ways to die. But in the end that doesn't make a bit of difference. All that remains is a desert.

Die before you die and find that there is no death.

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

Thus, I always began by assuming the worst; my appeal was dismissed. That meant, of course, I was to die. Sooner than others, obviously. 'But,' I reminded myself, 'it's common knowledge that life isn't worth living, anyhow.' And, on a wide view, I could see that it makes little difference whether one dies at the age of thirty or threescore and ten-- since, in either case, other men will continue living, the world will go on as before. Also, whether I died now or forty years hence, this business of dying had to be got through, inevitably.

I'm not afraid of life and I'm not afraid of death: Dying's the bore.

That's why I always recommend a psychedelic experience because it makes you realize that all you've learned is in fact just learned and not necessarily the truth.

To me, the psychedelic experience is the experience of trying to make sense of reality.

LSD is different. LSD is like psychoanalytical Drano. It's not a personality.

And sure, I know if you eat this way you'll die. So? If you don't eat this way you're still going to die. Why not die happy?

[DMT] raises all the questions in a hurry. It's so intense and so oriented toward the other and the visual and the hallucinogenic that it isn't really like a drug. It's more like an event that you ran into. You just came around a corner and there was the unspeakable.

It doesn't matter what your cultural conditioning is, it falls into question under the influence of the psychedelic. And for most people that's frightening.

Sister, you're trying to keep me alive as an old curiosity, but I'm done, I'm finished, I'm going to die.

Everybody will die, but very few people want to be reminded of that fact.

Where-so-ever beings exist throughout all galaxies, it doesn't make any difference - you are all of them....and when they come into being, that's you coming into being.

I see the psychedelic experience as both the centerpiece of prehistoric life and destined to be the centerpiece of any future that we want to be part of.

The ego's phenomenal existence is transcended when you dive into the source from where the 'I'-thought rises

They're trying to kill me," Yossarian told him calmly. No one's trying to kill you," Clevinger cried. Then why are they shooting at me?" Yossarian asked. They're shooting at everyone," Clevinger answered. "They're trying to kill everyone." And what difference does that make?

I realized that being present for loved ones who are dying or aging is one of the greatest honors and gifts in my life. We are quite small in the big scheme of things.

I'd hate to die twice. It's so boring.

Dying's a boring side effect.

By daily dying, I have come to be.

It takes a lot of doing to die.

If I say, if I talk about, 'I want to be enlightened...' it implies a future. And there isn't any.