Psychedelics are illegal not because a loving government is concerned that you may jump out of a third story window. Psychedelics are illegal because they dissolve opinion structures and culturally laid down models of behaviour and information processing. They open you up to the possibility that everything you know is wrong.
Interpretation
Psychedelics challenge societal norms and perspectives, leading to profound personal insights.
In this quote, Terence McKenna reflects on the real reason behind the illegality of psychedelics, suggesting that it is not about personal safety but rather a fear of these substances challenging the established beliefs and behaviors that society has constructed. He posits that psychedelics can profoundly alter one’s perceptions, leading to the realization that many accepted truths may be flawed, thereby threatening the status quo.
In practice
During a seminar on consciousness exploration, one might use this quote to highlight the potential of psychedelics to shift perspectives.
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.
Nothing is so wearing as the possession or abuse of liberty.
Today when we say the West we are already referring to the West and to Russia. We could use the word 'modernity' if we exclude Africa, and the Islamic world, and partially China.
And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor, Shall be lifted -- Nevermore!
The shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep's throat, for which the sheep thanks the shepherd as his liberator, while the wolf denounces him for the same act as the destroyer of liberty. Plainly, the sheep and the wolf are not agreed upon a definition of liberty.
For the very reason that we expect things to be good and beautiful, they won't be. In genuine spirituality, we don't look for bliss.
A society that has more justice is a society that needs less charity.
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