Ask Terence McKenna

...produced for aesthetic effect uh, they are- have intended hearers and so forth and so on. But- and language in human beings is old because we know that we evo...

...ootnote, bibliography, citations that’s impossible to attain book and so forth and so on. [audience laughter] but this is simply to assuage and calm the acade...

...ot believe in the powers of magic words, crystals, healing darts, and so forth and so on. They manipulate these things the way a stage magician manipulates ra...

... then the inevitable disappointment, the reformulation of the fetish, so forth and so on. This is what occupies us. It was William James I think who said, ‘if...

...nto bipedalism. It’s the era of the coordination of binocular vision, so forth and so on. There was a paper published recently which anticipates my point but ...

... insight into yourself, an ability to overcome childhood programming, so forth and so on. And I certainly think, because of the kind of society we are, becaus...

...dneys to fry for breakfast, his chance meeting with his wife’s lover, so forth and so on. A fairly straightforward exposition of the techniques of literature ...

...lean up our Earth, to love one another and grow food from the sea and so forth and so on. It turns out that, no, that isn't it either and as we get closer, th...

...ary, mind is tertiary, causality works from the past into the future, so forth and so on. What psychedelics do in terms of their impact on the physical brain ...

...n input from the world of reason, evidence, induction, deduction, and so forth and so on. And you know my method, if you call something as trivial as what I d...

...our consciousness into it and imagine its motivations, its behaviors, so forth and so on. So Philippe has convinced me on one level, the earliest human consci...

...ales to the levels of property because they have to be controlled and so forth and so on. So, I conclude from that that certainly marriage doesn’t seem to wor...

... forms of coding, which means language, dance, theater, myth-telling, so forth and so on, until that great leap was made, we were as much an animal as any oth...

...there is a dissolving of boundaries of race, class, status, language, so forth and so on; and the whole of the 20th century has seen a massive acceleration of...

...ld – in the world of painting, music composition, performance, dance, so forth and so on, and so this September, 12–17, on the big island of Hawaii, we’re goi...

...ot since Plato talked about uh, shadows on the walls on the cave, and so forth and so on. Well, so, uh, what can psychedelics and the psychedelic experience b...

...g and global electronic forms of media such as network television and so forth and so on. The interesting thing about these forms of media is that they are al...

... about them; if they wrote in English you shouldn’t bother with them; so forth and so on. In the course of sorting out as many peculiar and bizarre possibilit...

...ene, then, uh, still later molecular genetics, the elucidation of DNA so forth and so on. The theory of evolution has been very successful in explaining the s...

...ing the fields, smelting metals, establishing markets, cutting deals, so forth and so on have, in our lifetimes, emerged as self-limiting processes. You know,...

...u know, the complete database of the species on call at a glance, and so forth and so on. This is a reasonable technological goal. If we cared for it as much ...

...tangential to the world bank and the IMF and the host governments and so forth and so on it is tremendously important to preserve this shamanic option if for ...

... would follow this voice [audience laughs] and possess this woman and so forth and so on" which he had done for better or for worse. Well, this kind of thing ...

...eralization, spatial coordination, understanding of natural language, so forth and so on. Are there kinds of minds so different from each other that there is ...

...class of linguistic activity, as in computer language, body language, so forth and so on. And to think clearly about language, we need to have a clear distinc...

...dean Oracles, the Trismegistic Hymns, the library at Nag Hammadi, and so forth and so on. My impulse is to, in the most austere sense, repopularize, reintrodu...

...erson in the foreground is smaller than the person in the background, so forth and so on. These kinds, uh, of illusions and are- are probably fairly trivial e...

... much a part of life as birth, death, making love, eating, conniving, so forth and so on except in this particular kind of culture that has evolved out of Wes...

...wards healing, and these images of the mother goddess as Madonna, and so forth and so on… I mean, these are very powerful constructs out of the unconscious an...

...ole issue of witnessing and media and authenticity of experience, and so forth and so on, was because I was getting a lot of people asking me for my take on a...

...tively about the problem of substances and abuse and availability and so forth and so on. Luc: In the minds of the people, the word ‘drugs’ which was once use...

...ling designed to convey danger and information about food sources and so forth and so on. and there they would ahve remained uh had it not been for the larger...

...ocial relations in tact? Is my behavior falling within acceptable and so forth and so on? Uh, when you take the psychedelics and you dissolve the social confi...

... 25 years of looking at this problem and churning through culture and so forth and so on is not simply a call for individual self-responsibility and a pulling...

... person, a person sensitive to concepts like evidence, causality, uh, so forth and so on. And yet what I have to say is completely unreasonable. I’m a messeng...

...stem of the planet is, uh, plutonium, pesticides, chlorofluorocarbons so forth and so on. An apologist for the human race would say, “But we had so many strik...

...calating" [more laughter]. And then the tact squad would sweep in and so forth and so on, and uh. Finally, finally Christmas vacation ended that, and the next...

... deal of published literature on these things - historical, chemical, so forth and so on. And uh, it’s good to be informed. I know that I often- I use referen...

...propriate - subject to the constraints of time, place and manner. And so forth and so on. And that's enough about the socio-political end of it. What is more ...

...his with meditation and fasting and abandonment in the wilderness and so forth and so on, but the most effective and non invasive way to approach this, everyo...

... are extremely loose, many kinds of sexual activity are tolerated and so forth and so on, so it looks like, in human beings, though how we express ourselves s...

...consulting with Madison Avenue, with politicians, with Hollywood, and so forth and so on. His influence, he died in the early 70s, and his influence died with...

... disappearance of the ozone hole, uh, rising third world expectations so forth and so on. When you propagate all these trends, it seems very clear that busine...

...on: a dimension of regret, a dimension of: how do I make choices? and so forth and so on. Um, there is not a -- I don’t put a- a moral, uh, judgment on this, ...

...te the composition of the atmosphere, the temperatures of the oceans, so forth and so on, and that it is our lack of integration into that system that has pre...

...ol will inevitably sculpt the same organs or attain the same end, and so forth and so on. Well, the optical capacity of octopi is one thing. What interested m...

...psychotic phenomenon, brain origin-uncertain, cultural use-uncertain, so forth and so on. Ralph and I have even toyed with the notion of holding weekends wher...

...ave mania, do I? Did I? Would I? Should I? Could I? Do I want to? And so forth and so on, [more laughter]. ED: You, you didn't have any bit of mania in you be...

...cleverly invisible because our choices in gender expression, fashion, so forth and so on, have, by crypto-osmosis come to dominate the values of the culture, ...

...omething made out of space, time, matter, energy, magnetic fields and so forth and so on; the equations for this and the relativistic transforms and all this ...

...g of atoms, the invention of radio, television, computers, immunology so forth and so on, data has been arriving about the practices of aboriginal cultures al...

...is of reality and any theory of morality and any theory of action and so forth and so on. Psychedelics have traditionally, I now think, played the role of dec...

... of the double-headed queen, the murder of the hermaphrodite dog, and so forth and so on. They had these outlandish images and this outlandish vocabulary beca...

...rybody see who's here once again, who has survived, who's gotten out, so forth and so on. I 'm very bullish about the situation. Fortunately I hold the theory...

...mes sort of like a salamander, then it becomes a primitive mammal and so forth and so on. Well, using that principle to try and anticipate the end state seems...

... Gnosticism, Hermeticism, Chaldean oracularism, Jewish syncretism and so forth and so on. Christianity was just one in the crowd, but, with sharpened elbows a...

...nloading into machines and claiming star system after star system and so forth and so on, somehow that -- the state vector of all those event systems collapse...

...e deck was stacked against you with the fall of man, original sin and so forth and so on. It’s bullshit! It’s absolute bullshit. There is a sort of fair play ...

...of the Vikings, the fall of Catal Huyuk, the melting of the glaciers, so forth and so on. We have been disempowered by a rational tendency to deny our irratio...

... appropriate, and always sensitive to the context of the listener and so forth and so on. In other words, they are great teachers; educators, communicators an...

...usal: attention to incoming detail, slightly elevated blood pressure, so forth and so on. This is a precondition for sexual activity but it is not a true aphr...

...heir designers, but the designers of Madison Avenue, the pentagon and so forth and so on. This is really happening. I mean, it's only a matter of how tight yo...

...thing about the mind. There are a few theories -- Freud, Jung, Reich, so forth and so on -- but these are just guesses tossed into the unknown. And yet in pri...

...esent, brooking no opposition, swift to punish, stern in all demands; so forth and so on. And this shift--and it was a shift--because the pre-pottery neolithi...