"Because the fact is, what blinds us to the presence of alien intelligence is linguistic and cultural bias operating on ourselves. The world which we perceive is a tiny fraction of the world which we can perceive, which is a tiny fraction of the perceivable world, you see. We operate on a very narrow slice based on cultural conventions. So the important thing, if synergizing progress is the notion to be maximized (and I think it's the notion to be maximized), is to try and locate the blind spot in the culture — the place where the culture isn't looking, because it dare not — because if it were to look there, its previous values would dissolve, you see. For Western Civilization that place is the psychedelic experience as it emerges out of nature."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Understanding and Imagination in the Light of Nature
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Terence_McKenna
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Terence McKenna
Terence Kemp McKenna (November 16, 1946 – April 3, 2000) was an American writer, philosopher, and ethnobotanist, who advocated paths of shamanism, and the use of hallucinogenic substances (primarily plant-based psychedelics) as a means of increasing many forms of human awareness. His ideas often revolve around his novelty theory of the universe.
56 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Terence McKenna →
Related Quotes
"synergizing progress is the notion to be maximized ..."
"There is a spiritual obligation, there is a task to be done. It is not, however, something as simple as following a s…"
"The alternative physics is a physics of light. Light is composed of photons, which have no antiparticle. This means t…"
"What we call imagination is actually the universal library of what’s real. You couldn’t imagine it if it weren’t real…"
"History is a set of nested resonances with each epoch being shorter than the one that preceded it. This event horizon…"
"I've been thinking like this since 1968, talking about it like this since 1980, but I never knew what... how it would…"
"For approximately 500 years [science's] argument for its pre-eminence was that it could create beautiful toys: aircra…"
"We are being sucked into the body of eternity."
"My notion of what the psychedelic experience is, for us, that we each must become like fishermen, and go out on to th…"
"History is the in-rushing toward what the Buddhists call the realm of the densely packed, a transformational realm wh…"