Terence McKenna citáty

strana 4

„Příroda miluje odvahu. Vy se odhodláte a příroda na tento závazek zareaguje odstraněním nemožných překážek. Sněte nesplnitelný sen a svět vás nesemele, ale pozvedne. V tom je ten trik. Tohle pochopili všichni ti učitelé a filozofové, na kterých skutečně záleželo, kteří se skutečně dotkli alchymistického zlata. To je šamanský tanec ve vodopádu. Tak se dělá magie. Tím, že se vrhnete do propasti a zjistíte, že je to peřina.“

„Žádná epidemie, návykové poblouznění nebo náboženská hysterie se nerozšířila rychleji a nezískala tolik konvertitů v tak krátké době jako televize. Nejbližší analogickou drogou srovnatelnou s návykovostí televize a se změnou hodnot v životě jejího silného konzumenta je zřejmě heroin. Stejně jako televize i heroin zplošťuje obraz světa, s heroinem nejsou věci horké ani studené, feťák se dívá na svět a je si jistý, že ať je to cokoliv, je to stejně jedno… Televize, podobně jako drogy nebo alkohol, dovoluje účastníkovi vypnout vnímání opravdového světa a vstoupit do příjemného a pasivního mentálního stavu. Televizní program vytlačuje starosti a problémy reality stejně účinně, jako tomu je v případě tripu, vyvolaného alkoholem nebo drogami. Návyk na televizi smývá ponětí o čase. Ostatní zážitky se stávají matné, zvláštním způsobem nereálné, zatímco televize je jaksi opravdovější.“

„Pokrok lidské civilizace v oblasti definování lidské svobody se neděje shora dolů. Žádný král, žádný parlament, žádná vláda nikdy nedala lidem více práv, než na kterých lidé trvali.“

„Příroda není náš nepřítel, kterého bychom měli znásilňovat a dobývat. Příroda jsme my sami, musíme ji chránit a zkoumat.“

„Televize je od přírody drogou par excellence. Kontrola obsahu, jednotnost obsahu, opakovatelnost obsahu z ní nevyhnutelně činí nástroj nátlaku, vymývání mozků a manipulace.“

„Myslím, že lidé nerozumí. Jak říkali Firesign Theater: "Všechno, co víte, je špatně." Ale to je velmi osvobozující pochopení, protože pokud je všechno, co víte, špatně, pak všechny problémy, které jste považovali za neřešitelné, můžete formulovat jinak.“

„Existuje duchovní povinnost, úkol, který je třeba udělat. Není to však něco tak jednoduchého, jako dodržovat soubor pravidel někoho jiného.“

„Nemůžeme očekávat, že duhový most přejdeme na základě dobrého skutku pokání; to nebude stačit. Musíme chápat.“

„Byli jsme na Měsíci, zmapovali jsme hlubiny oceánu i srdce atomu, ale máme strach podívat se do svého nitra, protože cítíme, že tam se všechny protiklady splynou.“

„Musíte brát vážně představu, že porozumění vesmíru je vaší odpovědností, protože jediné porozumění vesmíru, které vám bude užitečné, je vaše vlastní porozumění.“

„Civilizace je 6 miliard lidí, kteří se snaží být šťastní tím, že si navzájem stoupají na ramena a vyrážejí si zuby. Není to nic příjemného.“

„Ideologie vždy dláždí cestu ke zvěrstvu.“

„Šaman není jen nemocný člověk nebo šílenec, je to nemocný člověk, který se vyléčil.“

„Pokud něčemu věříte, je vám automaticky znemožněno věřit v opak, což znamená, že aktem této víry ztrácíte určitou část své lidské svobody.“

„Pokud nemáte plán, stanete se součástí plánu někoho jiného.“

„Západní civilizace je nabitá zbraň namířená na hlavu této planety.“

„Svět, který vnímáme, je nepatrným zlomkem světa, který můžeme vnímat, což je nepatrný zlomek vnímatelného světa.“

„Máme tendenci zbavovat se moci. Máme tendenci věřit, že na nás nezáleží. A tím, že si tuto myšlenku přisvojíme, odevzdáváme všechno někomu jinému, něčemu jinému.“

„To, co nás zaslepuje nebo co velmi ztěžuje historický pokrok, je naše nedostatečné uvědomění si vlastní nevědomosti.“

„Musíme začít vysílat ideologické vize, a ne být jejich konzumenty.“

„Není snadné změřit oceán, ale můžeme se jím nechat změřit, čelit mu a být v něm.“

“First of all, why a descent into novelty rather than an ascent? It was my thing to do as I wanted to do it, and it seemed to me—the way I thought of time was I thought of it like a river. And so I thought of it as flowing toward its lowest level. And I thought of history as a river and Eternity as the ocean. So naturally history flows downhill to reach Eternity. I also like the fact that when the descent in elevation is rapid, the river runs faster, and when the landscape is almost flat, the river broadens out and meanders. So it was to preserve this idea of time as a fluid. The other reason is a mathematical reason. It has to do with the fact that if we have novelty moving downward, then the maximum of novelty is zero.”

“If the truth can be told so as to be understood, it will be believed.”

“I've been thinking like this since 1968, talking about it like this since 1980, but I never knew what… how it would come or what it would be. In the last few years, with the rise of a technological, a cultural artefact like the internet, I now see how it will make its way into the world. We are building the nervous system of the human oversoul. We are individual units operating under social rules that are pushing us ever closer toward dissolving our societies… societies—human groups run by rules—into telepathic collectivities of some sort. … We have come to the end of our sojourn in matter. We have come to the end of our separateness.”

“We operate on a very narrow slice based on cultural conventions. So the important thing, if synergizing progress is the notion to be maximized (and I think it's the notion to be maximized), is to try and locate the blind spot in the culture -- the place where the culture isn't looking, because it dare not -- because if it were to look there, its previous values would dissolve, you see.”

“Yet science is going to tell you that the only things worth describing are those phenomena that can be repeatedly triggered. This is being these are the only phenomena that science can describe and that's the name of the game as far as they are concerned. But we, to claim our freedom, to take advantage of the tiny moment between immense abysses of unknowability, perhaps death, perhaps other reincarnations, perhaps transitions into other life forms, these things we don't know, but in the moment of being human we have the unique opportunity to figure things out. And I have the faith that it is possible, sometime, somewhere, to have a conversation, perhaps no progress will be made until the ninth hour, but to have a conversation in which reality could be literally pulled to pieces, beyond the point of reconstructing.”

“For approximately 500 years [science's] argument for its pre-eminence was that it could create beautiful toys: aircraft, railroads, global economies, television, spacecraft. But that is a fool’s argument for truth! I mean, that’s after all how a medicine show operates, you know: the juggler is so good, the medicine must be even better! This is not an entirely rational way to proceed.”

“Novelty is density of connection. … We are in the grip of some kind of an attractor, and when we look back at history, we can have a sense, I think, that we have never been here before. But we are so accustomed to causal thought, that we assume we have been pushed here, pushed here by historical necessity, by bad political decisions, by the vicissitudes of evolution (cultural and otherwise). I don’t think so. I think we have been pulled here, that we are under the aegis of a kind of an attractor. Some people would call it a “destiny”, but what it is is a dream that is pulling us deeper and deeper into the adventure of existential becoming. And faster and faster—that’s the other thing. Deeper and deeper, faster and faster, so that the rate of change that people were accustomed to before the Industrial Revolution, for example—we can barely conceive of such slow-moving, stately, meta-stable societies. On the other hand, within the 20th Century, the acceleration has been even more intense, and continues to accelerate.”

“It is now very clear that techniques of machine-human interfacing, pharmacology of the synthetic variety, all kinds of manipulative techniques, all kinds of data storage, imaging and retrieval techniques– all of this is coalescing toward the potential of a truly demonic or angelic kind of self-imaging of our culture… And the people who are on the demonic side are fully aware of this and hurrying full-tilt forward with their plans to capture everyone as a 100% believing consumer inside some kind of a beige furnished fascism that won't even raise a ripple.”

“The nightmare of every government on earth is a million people assembled in the town square of your capital city, demanding that you pack up to Switzerland. no body can say No to a million people on the streets.”

“if we are all god's children than why have we rigged the earth with dynamite and are flipping coins to see gets to set it off”

“To my mind this makes psychedelics central to any political reconstruction, because these are the only force in nature that actually dissolve linguistics structures; lets the mechanics of syntax to be visible, allows the possibility for rapid introduction and spread of new concepts; gives permission for new ways of seeing; and this is what we have to do, we have to change our minds.”

“What we call imagination is actually the universal library of what’s real. You couldn’t imagine it if it weren’t real somewhere, sometime.”

“History is a set of nested resonances with each epoch being shorter than the one that preceded it. This event horizon is like a series of ghost horizons, and once you enter into history, you enter into the outer shell of the temporal field of the attractor or the concrescence.”

“People had group values, because the children were group-owned. and that made a tremendous difference in the way the society imaged it self. people lived for the group, and in the core of the group were the children, and people always put them first. So everyone identified with the children, everybody was willing to face risk to preserve the younger gene pool. This concern for male paternity is really a poisonous factor…”

“The psychedelic community has not yet recognized or named itself as a community. We are well behind gays and black people and all those other mi-… we are still trying to figure out if we are a community. And if we are a community, and we have a domain of action, I think where it lies - it's not that we are all supposed to become dope dealers, it's that we are all supposed to become artists; that the transformation of culture through art is the proper understanding of what you can do with psychedelics besides blow your own mind. And I really think, you know, what we need to do is put the art-pedal to the floor, and understand that this is art - we are involved in some kind of enormous piece of performance art called Western civilization and, you know, it's been a C-minus performance so far… And they are just about to reach out with the hook and drag us offstage, unless we begin pulling rabbits out of the hat pretty furiously.”

“I'm not trying to sign people up to a creed, I'm much more interested in the people that disagree. These ideas are powerful but this isn't mysticism in the ordinary sense to be protected by mumblings about faith and all that. This is the real thing.”

“One exists in eternity, one has become eternal … One is then apart from the moving image; one exists in the completion of eternity. ”

“You simply have to turn your back on a culture that has gone sterile and dead and get with the program of a living world and the imagination. ”

“Who is to say what is real and what is not? «Real» is a distinction of a naïve mind, I think. We're getting beyond that. ”

“The reason we feel alienated is because the society is infantile, trivial, and stupid. So the cost of sanity in this society is a certain level of alienation. I grapple with this because I’m a parent. And I think anybody who has children, you come to this realization, you know—what’ll it be? Alienated, cynical intellectual? Or slack-jawed, half-wit consumer of the horseshit being handed down from on high? There is not much choice in there, you see. And we all want our children to be well adjusted; unfortunately, there’s nothing to be well adjusted to!”