Terence McKenna Quotes

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.

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.

Until we give up the world manufactured by the ego, never can we enter the kingdom of heaven. None ever did, none ever will.

If you're truly psychedelic the difference between living and dying is quite immaterial. No pun intended.

In terms of the ego, most religions teach in some way that all of us must die before we die, and then we will not be afraid of dying. Suffering of some sort seems to be the only thing strong enough to destabilize our arrogance and our ignorance. I would define suffering very simply as whenever you are not in control.

LSD lets you in on something. When you're tripping, the idea of race disappears; the idea of sex disappears; you don't even know what species you are sometimes. And I don't know of anybody who hasn't come back from that being more humane, more thoughtful, more understanding.

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

Submission is the willingness to give up our right to ourselves, to freely surrender our insistence on having our own way all the time.

I was looking for something and I wasn't sure what it was. [After experimenting with] certain funguses, I had a psychedelic experience where I looked up at the clouds and went, 'Oh!' I realized that we all have our own power, and that whatever I wanted to do, I had to make happen.

By whatever path you go, you will have to lose yourself in the one. Surrender is complete only when you reach the stage 'Thou art all' and 'Thy will be done'.

If 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.

There is no fundamental truth and there's nothing to be connected to: I just believe that [LSD] makes you feel better.

After we have made our requests known to Him, our language should be, "Thy will be done". I would a thousand times rather that Gods' will should be done than my own.

A cap of good acid costs $5, and for that you can hear the Universal Symphony, with God singing solo and the Holy Ghost on drums.

The first time I took LSD, it just blew everything away. I had such an incredible feeling of well-being.

Basically, for me the psychedelic experience was the path to revelation. It actually worked on somebody who thought nothing would work.

The psychedelic universe, whatever it is, is the major datum of experience. It's larger than this planet. Nobody knows how large it is. The further in you go the bigger it gets. We don't know what to make of something like that. It's the reverse of our expectations.

We're not going to save the monkey unless we can shed the monkey. And the greatest impetus, the greatest inspiration to the expression of our higher selves comes in the confrontation with psyche that occurs in the psychedelic experience.

It's only by forgetting yourself that you draw near to God.

We are awakened to the profound realization that the true path to liberation is to let go of everything.

It is only by frequent deaths of ourselves and our self-centered desires that we can come to live more fully.

All troubles come to an end when the ego dies

Surrender is not something that you can do. If you do it, it is not surrender, because the doer is there. Surrender is a great understanding that, "I am not." Surrender is an insight that the ego exists not, that, "I am not separate." Surrender is not an act but an understanding.

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.