Guest speaker: Terence McKenna

PROGRAM NOTES:

[NOTE: All quotations are by Terence McKenna.]

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

“What I like to talk about, and what I have very little competition in terms of talking about, is the content of the psychedelic experience.”

“I have a skeptical and cranky side, and I'm forever puzzled why people believe the, seeming to me, dumb things that they choose to believe.”

“Psychedelics are actually a kind of miraculous reality that can stand the test of objective examination.”

“Actually, these things [psychedelics] reveal scenarios, modalities hierophanies of emotional and poetic power that are very emotionally moving, and sometimes leave in their wake powerful ideas, ideas as powerful as any of the ideas that have moved and shaped civilization.”

“The good news about psychedelics is that they are incredibly democratic. Even the clueless can be swept along if the dose is sufficient.”

“History, call it 15,000 or 25,000 years of duration, is the story of an animal, some kind of complex animal, becoming conscious.”

“One has attained a very fortunate incarnation, I think, to be in a culture, in a place, in a time when psychedelic knowledge is available.”

“The reason for the emphasis on shamanism and on other techniques is, you will need techniques if you go into the deep water. And they can make your life very simple and save you from unnecessary suffering. Not all suffering is necessary. Maybe no suffering is necessary.”

“The thing that is so powerful about the psychedelics is that they perform on demand, which almost in principle you cannot expect of a mystical experience because that would be essentially man ordering God at man's whim, which is not how it's supposed to work.”

“Part of what the psychedelic point of view represents is living a certain portion of your life without answers. Just accepting that certain dilemmas will never resolve themselves into some kind of a complete answer. That's why psychedelics are so different from any system being sold, from one of the great elder systems like Christianity, to the latest cult out of Los Angeles.”

“So part of what being psychedelic means, I think, is relentlessly living with unanswered questions.”

“Ecstasy is not simply joy. Ecstasy is an emotion of great complexity that hovers almost on the edge of terror sometimes.”

“Once you get to this place on what we might metaphorically call your spiritual quest, once you get to the place where you hear about psychedelics, the issue is no longer then about where is the gas peddle on the spiritual vehicle. The issue suddenly becomes, where is the brake? Because this is the fuel to go where you want to go. This is the power to lift you where you want to be lifted.”

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Terence McKenna and Ralph Abraham discuss

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Podcasts of

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Weekend of June 15-17, 2012

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Bruce Damer and Lorenzo