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61 " If you don't have a plan, you become part of somebody else's plan. "
― Terence McKenna
62 " We are the inheritors of a million years of striving for the unspeakable. "
63 " It’s pretty simple, the ethical life. It’s just demanding. "
64 " There is no mundane dimension really, if you have the eyes to see it, it is all transcendental. "
65 " It is of the first order of importance to remember this, that the shaman is more than merely a sick man, or a madman; he is a sick man who has healed himself, who is cured, and who must shamanize in order to remain cured. "
66 " What I've done here this evening is just create a string of metaphors to try and pique your interest. Not once did I do justice to the truth of the situation or the depth of the psychedelic experience, because it cannot be told. It cannot be told. My technique is to tell the wildest, strangest story I can think of, claim that's the psychedelic experience, and leave it at that. But you should all know that the journey begins where the words stop. "
67 " I will add a cautionary note. I always feel odd telling people to verify my observations since the sine qua non is the hallucinogenic plant. Experimenters should be very careful. One must build up to the experience. These are bizarre dimensions of extraordinary power and beauty. There is no set rule to avoid being overwhelmed, but move carefully, reflect a great deal, and always try to map experiences back onto the history of the race and the philosophical and religious accomplishments of the species. All the compounds are potentially dangerous, and all compounds, at sufficient doses or repeated over time, involve risks. The library is the first place to go when looking into taking a new compound. "
68 " I think of going to the grave without having a psychedelic experience like going to the grave without ever having sex. It means that you never figured out what it is all about. The mystery is in the body and the way the body works itself into nature. "
69 " The only spirit that ever gave me a name was St. Tammany whom reassured me of my future success early on and kept saying the name Matthew Edward Hall whom i predict will be a prophet or future savior of some sort. I've confirmed St. Tammany to be Tamanend, the only Native American Saint. "
70 " If you cross an onion with a UFO, what you get is a flying saucer that brings tears to your eyes. "
71 " The global triumph of Western values means we, as a species, have wandered into a state of prolonged neurosis because of the absence of a connection to the unconscious. Gaining access to the unconscious through plant hallucinogen use reaffirms our original bond to the living planet. Our estrangement from nature and the unconscious became entrenched roughly two thousand years ago, during the shift from the Age of the Great God Pan to that of Pisces that occurred with the suppression of the pagan mysteries and the rise of Christianity. The psychological shift that ensued left European civilization staring into two millennia of religious mania and persecution, warfare, materialism, and rationalism. The monstrous forces of scientific industrialism and global politics that have been born into modern times were conceived at the time of the shattering of the symbiotic relationships with the plants that had bound us to nature from our dim beginnings. This left each human being frightened, guilt-burdened, and alone. Existential man was "
― Terence McKenna , Food of the Gods: The Search for the Original Tree of Knowledge
72 " We are asked by science to believe that the entire universe sprang from nothingness, and at a single point and for no discernible reason. This notion is the limit case for credulity. In other words, if you can believe this, you can believe anything. "
73 " My faith is with technology and with psychedelics. Politics aren't going to take us much further. We're awakening as a planet to the very good news that all ideology is parochial and culturally defined, like painting yourself blue or scarifying your penis. A culture is a limited enterprise. How could someone be so naive as to imagine that an ideology, a thought system generated by the monkey mind, would be adequate to explain the universe? That's preposterous. It's like meeting a termite who tells you he's a philosopher. What could you do but smile at the very notion. "
74 " I am . . . sure that the answer to all of the mysteries that disequilibrate our view of the world are to be understood by looking within ourselves. When we look within ourselves with psilocybin, we discover that we do not have to look outward toward the futile promise of life that circles distant stars in order to still our cosmic loneliness. We should look within; the paths of the heart lead to nearby universes full of life and affection for humanity. "
75 " 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. "
76 " The cost of sanity in this society, is a certain level of alienation "
77 " If the words 'life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness' don't include the right to experiment with your own consciousness, then the Declaration of Independence isn't worth the hemp it was written on. "
78 " The syntactical nature of reality, the real secret of magic, is that the world is made of words. And if you know the words that the world is made of, you can make of it whatever you wish. "
79 " You have to take seriously the notion that understanding the universe is your responsibility, because the only understanding of the universe that will be useful to you is your own understanding. "
80 " Television is by nature the dominator drug par excellence. Control of content, uniformity of content, repeatability of content make it inevitably a tool of coersion, brainwashing, and manipulation. "