895 Quotes by Terence McKenna

Nature loves courage. You make the commitment and nature will respond to that commitment by removing impossible obstacles. Dream the impossible dream and the world will not grind you under, it will lift you up. This is the trick. This is what all these teachers and philosophers who really counted, who really touched the alchemical gold, this is what they understood. This is the shamanic dance in the waterfall. This is how magic is done. By hurling yourself into the abyss and discovering it’s a feather bed.

The things I encounter that I call elves or gnomes, it’s just a gloss. I mean, they’re small, and they have the archetype. They’re more like leprechauns, and this maybe raises a racial issue.

Just because you have a nut theory it doesn’t mean that you agree with other nut theories. In fact, it often makes you very hostile to them. After all, there’s a limited pool there that we’re all after.

The western mind, because of it’s unique history, is the most sensitive mind to the impact of psychedelics.

Because I believe psychedelics are a kind of higher dimensional sectioning of reality, I think they give the kind of stereoscopic vision necessary to hold the entire hologram of what’s happening in your mind. The old paradigm is gone.

If psychedelics are, on any level, to be taken seriously as catalyzers or expanders of consciousness, then we need them, because it’s an absence of consciousness that is making this historical transition so excruciating.

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.

All of you who have been through high dose psychedelic experiences know that it’s very hard to carry stupid baggage through that keyhole. In fact you’re lucky if you just get your soul and yourselves through and intact.

We don’t have to look far for miracles because they’re all around us. Everything is astonishing. The universe on it’s surface is alive with mystery.