Earth is a place where language has literally become alive. Language has infested matter; it is replicating and defining and building itself. And it is in us.
Interpretation
This quote suggests that language is a living entity that shapes our understanding of reality and ourselves.
Terence McKenna's quote reflects on the profound nature of language, implying that it transcends mere communication to become a dynamic force that infuses our existence. He suggests that language is not only a tool for expression but also a living entity that replicates and evolves, shaping our thoughts, culture, and identity in the process. This perspective invites us to consider how deeply intertwined language is with our reality and our sense of self, highlighting its role in defining who we are and how we relate to the world around us.
In practice
In a speech about the importance of language in cultural identity.
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.
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.
The Scripture abounds in commands and cautions for our utmost diligence in our search and inquiry as to whether we are made partakers of Christ or not, or whether His Spirit dwells in us or not-which argue both the difficulty of attaining an assured confidence herein, as also the danger of our being mistaken, and yet the certainty of a good issue upon the diligent and regular use of means to that purpose.
Little more can reasonably be aimed at with respect to the people at large than to have them properly armed.
Is this a dagger which I see before me, _x000D_ _x000D_ The handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee. _x000D_ _x000D_ I have thee not, and yet I see thee still. _x000D_ _x000D_ Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible _x000D_ _x000D_ To feeling as to sight? or art thou but _x000D_ _x000D_ A dagger of the mind, a false creation, _x000D_ _x000D_ Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain?
Forced to choose between limiting population or trying to increase food production, we chose the latter and ended up with starvation, warfare, and tyranny.
Sympathy will have been increased through natural selection
Understand then all of you, especially the young, that to want to impose an imaginary state of government on others by violence is not only a vulgar superstition, but even a criminal work. Understand that this work, far from assuring the well-being of humanity is only a lie, a more or less unconscious hypocrisy, camouflaging the lowest passions we posses.
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