Podcast 365 – “Effects of Psychedelics on Society”

Guest speaker: Terence McKenna PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Terence McKenna.] “The psychedelic viewpoint is becoming more and more legitimate, but psychedelic drugs are not. That's the odd paradox of it.” “We are living in a state of constant scientific revolution. There is not a single area that you can name that is now seen as it was seen a hundred years ago. Nothing is left of the world view of one hundred years ago.” “The mind is a far bigger domain than we ever imagined.” “I think really what unites psychedelic people is the faith in the power of the imagination.” “And science, when it examines psychedelics, as it will and must, is going to discover a revolution, I believe, that will put all the previous revolutions in perspective.” “The psychedelics are this immense tool for the inspection of our own nature.” “The entire drug phenomenon of the 1960s happened without the concept of shamanism to help it along.” “I think that understanding man's place in nature is going to require integration of the psychedelic experience.” “Nobody should be allowed more than fifty years to get their act together.” “Part of what being involved in the psychedelic experience is about is reclaiming your own experience.” “You could almost describe psychedelics as enzymes for the activity of the imagination.” “We do not birth our children into the world of nature. We birth our children into the world of culture.” “What the psychedelic thing can be seen as, when it's done with plants, as a return to Gaia, an immersion in the feminine.” “The real nature of our predicament is completely opaque to us.” “Ayahuasca, unlike mushrooms and all these other things is only as good as the person who made it. . . . The ayahuasca is a combinatory drug, and so it brings the human interaction and the lore of it into a much more central position.” Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option Palenque Norte Lecture Schedule at the 2013 Burning Man Festival Erowid Extracts (PDF) Erowid Prospectus (PDF)