It is no coincidence that a rebirth of psychedelic use is occuring as we acquire the technological capability to leave the planet. The mushroom visions and the transformation of the human image precipitated by space exploration are spun together. Nothing less is happening than the emergence of a new human order. A telepathic, humane, universalist kind of human culture is emerging that will make everything that preceded it appear like the stone age.
Interpretation
The quote suggests a connection between the revival of psychedelics and advancements in space exploration, signaling a transformative shift in human consciousness.
Terence McKenna's quote highlights the intertwining of psychedelic experiences and the advancements in technology related to space exploration. He posits that as humanity develops new capabilities to transcend our earthly confines, there is a corresponding spiritual and psychological evolution occurring, leading to the emergence of a new, more enlightened human culture. This transformation, he argues, will contrast sharply with previous eras of human development, suggesting a significant leap in collective consciousness and global understanding.
In practice
During a lecture on the future of human evolution, one might quote McKenna to emphasize the link between technology and consciousness.
We want freedom. We want freedom from the constraints of the cycles of the sun and the moon. We want freedom from drought and weather, freedom from the movement of game, the growth of plants, freedom from control from mendacious popes and kings, freedom from ideology, freedom from want. This idea of freeing ourselves has become the compass of the human journey.
LSD burst over the dreary domain of the constipated bourgeoisie like the angelic herald of a new psychedelic millennium. We have never been the same since, nor will we ever be, for LSD demonstrated, even to skeptics, that the mansions of heaven and gardens of paradise lie within each and all of us.
A hallucination is a species of reality, as capable of teaching you as a videotape about Kilimanjaro or anything else that falls through your life.
Animals are something invented by plants to move seeds around. An extremely yang solution to a peculiar problem which they faced.
If the words 'life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness' don't include the right to experiment with your own consciousness, then the Declaration of Independence isn't worth the hemp it was written on.
The engineers of the future will be poets.
The Old Religion, as we call it, is closer in spirit to Native American traditions or to shamanism of the Arctic. It is not based on dogma or a set of beliefs, nor on scriptures or a sacred book revealed by a great man. Witchcraft takes it's teachings from nature, and reads inspiration in the movements of the sun, moon, and stars, the flight of birds, the slow growth of trees, and the cycles of the seasons.
God has cast our confessed sins into the depths of the sea, and He's even put a 'No Fishing' sign over the spot.
If you will give the matter a moment's thought, you'll see that memory is the highest faculty of the human mind.
What makes the meaning of life is people, so you try to be good to people immediately around you and in your broader community. So a lot of my projects are about how I can affect the world in the hundreds of millions.
The gods confound the man who first found out How to distinguish hours! Confound him, too, Who in this place set up a sun-dial, To cut and hack my days so wretchedly Into small portions.
Does such a thing as "the fatal flaw," that showy dark crack running down the middle of a life, exist outside literature?
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