T Mckenna Quotes & Sayings

But a mature humanity could get into a place where we no longer required these metaphysical spankings from messiahs and flying saucers that come along every thousand years or so to mess up the mess that has been created and try and send people off on another tack. And the way to do this is to look at the abysses that confront man as species and individuals and try to unify them. And I think that psilocybin offers a way out because it allows a dialogue with the over-mind. You won't read about it in "Scientific American" or anywhere else. You will carry it out. — Terence McKenna

I have a really nasty temper, and no restraint. I've basically got no impulse control, so I do whatever I feel like, the second I feel it. I'm also into really fucked-up sex."
I blinked. "Oh."
"Plus, since I got no impulse control, I tell girls I just met that I'm into really fucked-up sex."
"You don't say."
"I'm a fucking mess," he said, with the delivery of someone remarking about the weather, like, shrug, What can you do? — C.M. McKenna

His sharp eyes scanned everything, but they didn't dart. Nothing about him promised sudden movement ... — Cara McKenna

The smart people who are straight are involved in simply the media management of what has turned into a slow apocalypse, spreading starvation, exacerbated class differences, toxified agriculture, so forth and so on. I don't believe the Establishment thinks there are solutions. Their policy is basically the management of panic, which is hardly a forward moving approach to the adventure of human civilization. — Terence McKenna

Round 5: Telling him I felt bad about the puppy-shirt thing, I told him
we could go pick out a dog at the pound now that we had a yard for it.
Instead, I took him to the dentist. Winner: Bear "Rock Star" McKenna. — T.J. Klune

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. — Terence McKenna

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. — Terence McKenna

Don't worry. You don't know enough to worry ... Who do you think you are that you should worry, for cryin' out loud. It's a total waste of time. It presupposes such a knowledge of the situation that it is, in fact, a form of hubris. — Terence McKenna

It was likely that no one had been surprised, however, as it was clear that Aline and McKenna belonged together. There was something invisible and yet irrefutable that made them a couple. Perhaps it was the way both of them stole quick glances at each other when one though the other wasn't looking ... glances of wonder and hunger. — Lisa Kleypas

We have the tools, the intellect, the will to create a caring global culture. It isn't going to come without a recognition of the power of the psychedelic experience. The psychedelic experience is the birth right of every human being on the planet. It is as much a basic part of each and every one of us as our sexuality, our national identity, our consciousness of self. And any society which attempts to hold back or impede this dimension of self-expression, when the history of that society is written, it will be called barbarous. — Terence McKenna

Belief is a toxic and dangerous attitude toward reality. After all, if it's there it doesn't require your belief- and if it's not there why should you believe in it? — Terence McKenna

The Internet is light at the end of the tunnel. I don't care if it's being used to peddle pornography, I don't care if it's being trivialized in a thousand ways. Anything can be trivialized. The important point is that it is leveling the playing field of global society. It is creating de-facto an entirely new set of political realities. None of the constipated, oligarchic structures that are resisting this were ever asked. Their greed betrayed them into investing in this in the first place without ever fully grasping what the implications of it were for their larger agenda. — Terence McKenna

I do not think that the government, under the guise of some phony, alarmist, pseudo-scientific rhetoric, should attempt to control the evolution of consciousness. After all, if these things truly are consciousness-expanding, it doesn't take too much intelligence to realize that it is the absence of consciousness that is causing our flirtation with extinction and planetary disaster. — Terence McKenna

Scary as this was ... telling her these things was like a bloodletting. The initial cut hurt like hell, but with it done he could feel the toxins escaping, making room for relief. And all at once he wanted to give in. With a blinding bolt of understanding, he realized he'd had it all wrong, blaming his fetish all this time, thinking of it as some twisted, fucked-up force that lived inside him. A thing to be drowned in liquor, glass by glass, night by night, year after year. It wasn't his desire that had poisoned him. It was his shame. — Cara McKenna

Nobody's fucked me that good in ages."
I laughed. "I didn't even get you off."
"You will. Unless you broke your hip or something. — Cara McKenna

All I knew was that I couldn't have him right now. It was impossible. Could I have him in a year? Two years? Five years? Ten years? I didn't know. All I knew was that although the universe was pushing us together, it was also pushing us apart. — Lily Paradis

Once you start seeing this place for the madhouse it is, you can't stop seeing it that way. It's everywhere, everyone. It doesn't make any sense. That's not life. It can't be. I don't know what it is, but it's not life. — Jed McKenna

And I realized something I never had before. Deep down, I want to be seen as an object too. I want to be coveted and sought after. I want to be taken apart and understood, reassembled, filed away in Didier's cabinet. I don't even need to be pretty to have this. I only have to allow him to open me up. — Cara McKenna

The you that you think of as you (and that thinks of you as you, and so on) is not you, it's just the character that the underlying truth of you is dreaming into existence. Enlightenment isn't in the character, it's in the underlying truth. — Jed McKenna

Sean was stung. "I do not fuck everything that has a pulse," he said haughtily. "I have my standards. I limit myself to endoskeletal organisms. I always go for vertebrates. And I dont't do reptiles. Ever. — Shannon McKenna

He was the best lover I'd ever had. So far ahead of the competition, I couldn't even recall their names or faces. — Cara McKenna

We slip into the lives that are laid out for us the way children slip into the clothes their mother lays out for them in the morning. No one decides. We don't live our lives by choice, but by default. — Jed McKenna

Let's get one thing clear between us, Shiloh. I would never laugh at you. I might tease the dickens out of you, but I would never, ever make fun of you. That's not who I am. I don't believe in humiliating another person. It's not in my DNA. — Lindsay McKenna

I have never felt that the primary use of these things was to cure what is called in modern parlance neurosis, what I call unhappiness. It isn't for that. — Terence McKenna

What we drug people have, that you don't, is repeatability. — Terence McKenna

Lovers do things together! They rent videos, they ride Ferris wheels, they go out for pizza, they play Scrabble. They ... they talk!'
'Talk?' He lifted his head and frowned, his eyes puzzled. 'We talk all the time, Raine. I've never had such talkative sex.'
'That's just it!' She wiggled, flailed, but couldn't budge him. 'Two minutes alone with you, and I'm flat on my back. Every single time!'
A slow, knowing grin spread over his face. 'Is this your way of telling me you want to be on top? — Shannon McKenna

All the accoutrements that distinguish us from animal existence were put in place when we had a different kind of mind than we have now. We didn't have a mind that favored role specialization, and male dominance, and anxiety over female sexual activity related to feelings of male ownership. That all came later. — Terence McKenna

Elephants are living treasures. Nature's gardeners. Nature's great teachers. Tragically some people don't give a damn. They prefer the dead treasure to the living one. The ivory. We must challenge this so-called 'trade' with all our might and shame on those who would condone it. — Virginia McKenna

DMT is the most powerful hallucinogen there is. If it gets stronger than that I don't want to know about it. — Terence McKenna

I don't see it as my role to save or rescue anybody any more than regular people feel the need to rescue each other from sleeping and dreaming. — Jed McKenna

I see the psychedelic experience as a birthright, and we can't have a free society until people are free to explore their own mind. — Terence McKenna

This is what they have suppressed so long. This is why they are so afraid of the psychedelics, because they understand that once you touch the inner core of your own and someone else's being you can't be led into thing-fetishes and consumerism. The message of psychedelics is that culture can be re-engineered as a set of emotional values rather than products. This is terrifying news. — Terence McKenna

You don't go on bended-knee to petition the official culture for your rights. You have to take them. — Terence McKenna

I can't think of a society on Earth where people don't take drugs that any of us would want anything to do with. — Terence McKenna

You saved me, you moron!" she yelled. "You're being deliberately stupid and dense about this! My God, you ask a lot of yourself!"
He touched his forehead to hers. "I can't help it," he blurted. "I love you. — Shannon McKenna

I'd waited for this opportunity with Claudia for a long time - ever since elementary school when I tried to impress her on the monkey bars and woo her with my crayon drawings. But I couldn't have been with her any sooner. You can't expect someone to love a shadow. — Suzanne McKenna Link

He must have screwed hundreds of girls in his effort to get that chick out of his system. Hadn't worked so far, but hey. He was nothing if not persistent. — Shannon McKenna

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. — Terence McKenna

It takes practice to stand with others facing pain of death, and it helps if you don't have to do it all alone. We should practice on the small stuff so that we will be better able to stand together for what we believe and for what we love, who may someday need our support. — Megan McKenna

I don't think that mass drug taking is a good idea. But I think that we must have a deputized minority, a shamanic professional class if you will, whose job is to bring ideas out of the deep black water and show them off to the rest of us and perform for our culture some of the cultural functions that shaman perform in pre-literate cultures. — Terence McKenna

We are creatures of information and the imagination. The monkey we are already beginning to transform and shed. We don't look like the other monkeys, and we look less like them all the time. — Terence McKenna

Our culture difinitely takes an egocentric dominator view. The fear of the psychedelic experience is quite literally the fear of losing control. Dominator types today don't understand that it's not important to maintain control if you are not in control in the first place. — Terence McKenna

You can't just plain die. You got to do it by the book. — Richard McKenna

The psychedelic species of visual beauty is something we don't see in our furniture styles and our architecture. It seems to be coming in, literally, from another dimension, and yet it is undeniably moving. It's beautiful. — Terence McKenna

Ultimately what we're touching is the invisible, all-pervasive intelligence that surrounds us and penetrates us. It is grooming us to be able to tolerate its splendor. It can't just reveal itself openly because we would be forfeited; we'd never know what hit us. — Terence McKenna

What we call imagination is actually the universal library of what's real. You couldn't imagine it if it weren't real somewhere, sometime. — Terence McKenna

If you sit down with a person, or a watermelon for that matter, when you're stoned and sing into it, the quality of the hallucination is such that there is a way of thinking about it where you could say, 'This is an acoustical hologram of the interior of their body.'" I don't say that.I just say, "My goodness isn't it strange that I seem to be able to see inside of the watermelon when I'm doing this.' — Terence McKenna

No wonder psychedelics are threatening to an authoritarian religious hierarchy. You don't need faith to benefit from a psychedelic experience, let alone a priest or even a shaman to interpret it. What you need is courage - courage to drink the brew, eat the mushroom, or whatever it is, and then to pay attention, and make of it what you will. Suddenly, the tools for direct contact with the transcendent other (whether you call it God or something else) is taken from the hands of an anointed elite and given to the individual seeker. — Dennis McKenna

My daughter McKenna thought I sang with the Everly Brothers ... I said, 'no I was one of the Righteous Brothers' and she said 'didn't they invent the airplane?' — Bill Medley

The thing that seemed to me so important about the psychedelic experience was that it happened to me. I wasn't reading John Chrysostom or Meister Eckhart. And so I assumed that I am a very ordinary person, therefore, if it happened to me it could happen to anyone. — Terence McKenna

The race isn't to the swift, it's to the thoughtful. — Terence McKenna

There is this persistent theme in all of these notions that death is made more easy, whatever that means, if you've learned the territory before you get there. And you know, in the Mahayana Buddhist situation it even becomes as extreme as saying; 'life is essentially a preparation for death, a studying of the maps of a learning of the skills a packing of your picnic basket so that when you get out there and demons are sniffing you up one side and down the other you don't bungle your mantras'. — Terence McKenna

One reaches through to the continents and oceans of the imagination, worlds able to sustain anyone who will but play, and then lets the play deepen and deepen until it is a reality that few would even dare to entertain ... The human imagination is the holographic organ of the human body, and we don't 'imagine' anything. We simply see things so far away that there is no possibility of validating or invalidating their existence. — Terence McKenna

You aren't an object. You're a process of some sort. — Terence McKenna

We can't sell short the spiritual power of cannabis, especially when eaten. — Terence McKenna

Alcoholism isn't a disease. It's a failure of self-image. — Terence McKenna

You don't want to become so open minded that the wind whistles between your ears. — Terence McKenna

And I don't mean this metaphorically. I want to be taken seriously as proposing that the ennui of modernity is the consequence of a disruptive symbiotic relationship between ourselves and vegetable nature. — Terence McKenna

Why should she have to feel unsafe? Didn't this world belong to her as much as it belonged to any man? Yes it did. McKenna refused to let them make her feel unsafe, either by cornering her, or by making her feel like she needed one to protect her — Marina Gessner

And I'll tell you now, I won't be calling you tomorrow or the next day or the day after that, so don't get in a stink when I don't. None of the normal dating rules apply to this. — Cara McKenna

Schizophrenia is just a catch-all term for forms of mental behaviour that we don't understand. In the nineteenth century there was a term, melancholia, which we would now call bipolar depression ... but all forms of sadness, unhappiness, maladaptation, were poured into this label melancholia ... Now, schizophrenia is a similar thing ... A book about schizophrenia [says that] the typical schizophrenic lives in a world of twilight imagining. Marginal to his society, incapable of holding a regular job, these people live on the fringes content to drift in their own self-created value system. I said, that's it! That's it! Now I understand! — Terence McKenna

You see, a secret is not something untold. It's something which can't be told. — Terence McKenna

In the silence, in the darkness, swept away by these alien alkaloids and the plant-mind behind them, you find out a truth that can barely be told. And most of it can't be told. — Terence McKenna

There is nobody who is so enlightened that they don't need to work on themselves. — Terence McKenna

On these matters of specific fact, like is the mushroom an extraterrestrial and that sort of thing, I haven't the faintest idea. The mushroom itself is such a mercurial, elusive, Zen sort of personality that I never believe a word it says. I simply entertain its notions and try and sort through them, and I found that to be the most enriching approach to it. — Terence McKenna

We tend to disempower ourselves. We tend to believe that we don't matter. And in the act of taking that idea to ourselves we give everything away to somebody else, to something else. — Terence McKenna

I don't believe that shamanism without hallucinogens is authentic shamanism or comfortable shamanism. — Terence McKenna

Are you part of the BDSM scene or whatever?" Laurel asked.
He made an exasperated noise. "I can't stand that shit. They make everything so fucking complicated. You might as well be one of those Civil-fucking-War ... " He twirled his hand, searching for the word.
"Reenactors?"
He snapped his fingers at her. "Three points. — Cara McKenna

Emma looked up at him, expectant, and he shot her a quick wink. McKenna seemed intent on looking anywhere but at him, which only increased his patience. And his hopes. Finally, McKenna scraped together what looked like the remnants of a smile and met his gaze. And he knew her answer. "I'm certain Marshal Caradon's responsibilities keep him very busy, Emma." She addressed the child, yet aimed the words at him. "He's got an important job to do, and he has to get up very early in the morning to leave again. We don't want to interfere with his plans." In all his years of marshaling, he'd never been shot down so fast. — Tamera Alexander

I don't believe consciousness is generated in the brain any more than television programs are made inside my TV. The box is too small. — Terence McKenna

It is now very clear that techniques of machine-human interfacing, pharmacology of the synthetic variety, all kinds of manipulative techniques, all kinds of data storage, imaging and retrieval techniques- all of this is coalescing toward the potential of a truly demonic or angelic kind of self-imaging of our culture ... And the people who are on the demonic side are fully aware of this and hurrying full-tilt forward with their plans to capture everyone as a 100% believing consumer inside some kind of a beige furnished fascism that won't even raise a ripple. — Terence McKenna

We are going through the eye of the needle; make sure you leave what you don't need behind — Terence McKenna

It's the only hallucinogen I know, where if it's made right, the next day, or the day after the experience, you actually feel better than if you hadn't done it. — Terence McKenna

The Truth doesn't need your cooperation to exist. All forms of cult, all forms of hype, all forms of delusion do require your participation in order to exist. I've looked into marginal areas of human experience -historical and otherwise- with a rational mind, and what I've found is that doorways into the miraculous are far fewer than the publicists of the New Age would have us believe. On the other hand, they are not as rare as the proponents of radical reductionism and materialism would have us believe. There are doorways out of the mundane ... — Terence McKenna

Psychedelics are not flashlights into the chaos of the Freudian unconscious, they are tools for mathematically unpacking your mind into a higher dimensional space. In the Newtonian and print created space that we are walking around in you, are like a self extracting archive, that hasn't self extracted itself yet. — Terence McKenna

Hope and fear are two sides of the same coin ...
She didn't want to give up hope, so she was just going to have to live with the fear. — Shannon McKenna

Peter's denial was not just a personal weakness. He was in a leadership position, honored as the one who spoke for the group, and was second in command (when Jesus wasn't around). But his choice to publicly deny his place in the community at the side of Jesus had massive repercussions for the other disciples. They ran and hid, and from this point on in the Way of the Cross there is no mention of the disciples again in the Passion narrative. The sheep are scattered, routed, and demoralized. Peter's sin tore open the seems that held them together. — Megan McKenna

Oh, shut the fuck up," Sean snapped. "I love you, man, OK? I missed you. Is that so hard to take? Does that scare you so damn bad?"
Kev looked away. "No," he said quietly. "It doesn't scare me. I missed you, too. All of you. It was a really long eighteen year."
Bruno looked at all four men in turn. Seconds passed. Nothing.
His disbelief grew. That was it? That was all? Oh, for the love of Christ. These guys were emotional retards, every last one of them. — Shannon McKenna

Your memories are eroding away. The futures you anticipate, will mostly not come to pass, and the real richness is in the moment. And it's not necessarily some kind of 'Be Here Now' feel-good thing because it doesn't always feel good. But it always feels. It is a domain of feeling. It's primary. — Terence McKenna

Enlightenment isn't when you go there; it's when there comes here. — Jed McKenna

This is the key. If you get into deep water with these substances, this is true of psilocybin as well, you don't want to clench, you don't want to assume the fetal position and stop breathing. You want to sit up straight and breathe, and sing, and sing it back, and it will step back. You can take control of your situation ... most of the time. — Terence McKenna

Like I say, I'm always writing and if something sticks, it sticks. I get to write with great songwriters in town. Lori McKenna is one of my all-time favorite singer-songwriters who's ever walked the planet. I get to write with her. The Warren Brothers are friends of mine and I write with them all the time. Lance Miller is a great songwriter. Tom Douglas - you can't get any better than that. I write a lot of stuff but it's got to stick. — Tim McGraw

A long long time ago I took an oath to tell all secrets that came my way. Don't tell me a secret, I won't keep it. I'm against secrets, I'm against hierarchies, lineages, all assumption of special knowledge on the part of anyone in the presence of anyone else is abhorrent to me. I mean, I am a true anarchist first and foremost. — Terence McKenna

She set the coffee down beside him with a thud that made the liquid slosh over the rim and sat down a couple of stairs behind him.
He reached for the cup and took a swallow without acknowledging her. She waited. Nothing.
"You're, uh, welcome," she prompted.
He didn't speak. He didn't nod. Wow. Breathtaking. It took balls to be that rude. — Shannon McKenna

It's getting funnier because everybody's categories are disintegrating, and the cult of political correctness dictates that we never point out that other people don't make sense. — Terence McKenna

My technique is don't believe anything. If you believe in something, you are automatically precluded from believing its opposite. — Terence McKenna

The trouble with happiness is people don't practice it. — Paul McKenna

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. — Terence McKenna

The intensity echoed through her, the same excitement he felt. He knew what she wanted
he'd sensed it. He could please her.
She wants your voice, as well as your body. And he didn't even need to think to find the right words to say. He simply let them fall from his lips to her ears. "I can't believe you're here," he murmured. "That you're real. — Cara McKenna

Go 'head mouth off to me some mo'. I buzz you with my buzzer." Bennett lowered the paper to the table. "For the last time, it's not a 'buzzer.' It's not like one of those party tricks that gives somebody a little zap. It's a Taser. It's for self-defense, not for smacking someone you can't reach, and not for frying the brains out of the neighbor's dog. — Dawn Lee McKenna

What is needed is a spirit of boundary dissolution, between individuals, between classes, sexual orientations, rich and poor, man and woman, intellectual and feeling toned types. If this can happen, then we will make a new world. And if this doesn't happen, nature is fairly pitiless and has a place for us in the shale of this planet, where so many have preceded us. — Terence McKenna

She smiled sweetly. "I bet you jack off with your pinkie stuck up in the air, don't you?"
His smirking lips twitched, faint and quick as a flea sneezing. "Picture it however you like. — Cara McKenna

The truth for sure,
when it arrives,
will make you smile.
If it doesn't,
you should seek
a deeper truth. — Terence McKenna

The idea of psychedelic societies is something new. And it doesn't necessarily mean that everyone takes the drug. It merely means that the complexity and the mysteriousness of mind are centered in the consciousness of the civilization as the mystery which it comes from and which it must relate to in order to be relevant. — Terence McKenna

Think for yourself, and believe in yourself. Keep your skeptical antennae tuned in and in good working order at all times. We are free to develop our own hypotheses, which should be based in available evidence. When it comes to faith, have faith in yourself. And don't forget to love, laugh, be kind to each other. Don't take things so seriously, especially yourself. If the universe is a cosmic joke, remember to giggle. And remember to be astonished. — Dennis McKenna

Don't be stupid, privacy is an illusion in today's electronic world. And i always investigate the people who interest me — Shannon McKenna

The history of man that you don't know is what your unconscious is made out of. — Terence McKenna

I'm not an abuser. It takes me a long time to assimilate each experience. And I never have lost my respect for it. I mean I really feel dread. It is one of the emotions I always feel as I approach it, because I have no faith that my sails won't be ripped this time. — Terence McKenna

I'm not trying to sign people up to a creed, I'm much more interested in the people that disagree. These ideas are powerful but this isn't mysticism in the ordinary sense to be protected by mumblings about faith and all that. This is the real thing. — Terence McKenna

The world is mental in some way that we do not yet understand, but that which we're edging toward understanding. And the world is made of language. I can't say that enough. Whenever we get into these discussions about reality, or effects in space and time, we are operating outside this assumption that the world is made of language. — Terence McKenna