People have a right to get stoned. They have a right to think and explore their own minds. This is as intimate a part of their being as their sexuality. Any culture which mitigates that is clearly afraid of a full and fair and open dialogue about what reality is and what real human values ought to be.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes the importance of individual freedom in exploring one's mind and consciousness.
Terence McKenna argues that the right to explore consciousness, including through the use of substances like cannabis, is an essential aspect of human identity and should be respected. He suggests that societies that suppress such exploration fear open dialogue about reality and human values, implying that a healthy culture embraces the freedom to think deeply and differently.
In practice
During a discussion on personal liberties at a community event.
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.
We should not have a petty regard for God's gifts, though we may and should despise our own imperfections.
I can be jubilant one moment and pensive the next, and a cloud could go by and make that happen.
This is the story of America. Everybody's doing what they think they're supposed to do.
I'm quite disappointed that I'm still the last man on the moon.
I don't like the term 'colour-blind' - because I don't want people to be blind to my colour.
To have and not to give is often worse than to steal.
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