One of the most influential individuals on my thinking, Terrence McKenna has a very potent repertoire of mind blowing ideas. His scientific skepticism and rational approach never closed off his mind from approaching any topic that I can think of. Being a public speaker in his day, and speaking to diverse audiences, I've been privileged to be able to listen to many of his pithy diatribes and hear all sorts of questions asked of him.
Some of my favourite quotes I can remember off the top of my head:
"If the truth can be told so as to be understood it will be believed."
"There is a spiritual obligation, there is a task to be done. It is not, however, something as simple as following a set of somebody else's rules."
"Life lived in the absence of the psychedelic experience that primordial shamanism is based on is life trivialized, life denied, life enslaved to the ego."
And from wiki-quotes:
"The real secret of magic is that the world is made of words, and that if you know the words that the world is made of you can make of it whatever you wish."
"We are caged by our cultural programming. Culture is a mass hallucination, and when you step outside the mass hallucination you see it for what it's worth."
"What blinds us, or what makes historical progress very difficult, is our lack of awareness of our ignorance. And [I think] that beliefs should be put aside, and that a psychedelic society would abandon belief systems [in favor of] direct experience and this is, I think much, of the problem of the modern dilemma, is that direct experience has been discounted and in its place all kind of belief systems have been erected... If you believe something, you're automatically precluded from believing in the opposite, which means that a degree of your human freedom has been forfeited in the act of this belief."
Great selection of quotes by someone whom I also found myself taken by his poetic displays, thank you.
ReplyDeleteI especially liked this: "If you believe something, you're automatically precluded from believing in the opposite."
ReplyDeleteHey Bert!
ReplyDeletereally glad to see you're keeping up on my latest! That quote there sums up much of what I'm trying to accomplish here, that is, not being committed to any particular beliefs, and instead using those beliefs to achieve particular goals without elevating them to a pre-eminent status. Beliefs are useful, as I've stated here in other places, but are also a double edged sword. Something I found very interesting in Miles' (the previous commenter on this post) videos was that a double edged sword is really word-s with the s moved to a pre-eminent position, s-word. In examining beliefs it is very useful for me to examine the opposites as well, and see if there is any useful information available there too...