Uploaded July 2017 | Updated September 2026, 12 hours ago
This is the whole quote that the "Reclaim Your Mind" video leaves out.
Film based on the work of Terence McKenna "The Archaic Revival: Paradise Regained" - youtu.be/iS50cGbrsms
Best of Terence McKenna Playlist - youtube.com/playlist?list=PLv3AEPj7GZIkiIfmFXRq84vdPBcdeopS1
In Response to a question at the end of his talk "Eros and the Eschaton."
"I think that we are caged by our cultural programming, and that this is the most powerful imprisoning factor in our lives. That if we could train ourselves, simply to remember our dreams, psychedelics would become obsolete. If we could train ourselves simply to pay attention to our ordinary states of consciousness as we live through our days and nights.
Culture is a mass hallucination, and when you step outside the mass hallucination, you see it for what it’s worth.
Language is partially the key here. We cannot move into a reality that we cannot describe. If we can’t describe a world, we can’t be there (collectively). An interesting place to be is at the cutting edge of language...
...Once there is a word, then that word is like a stepping stone out into the fog. And as long as we let the establishment set the language agenda we will be imprisoned in the tiny, rather pedestrian world of consumerism and schloko values that the establishment has prepared for us. The way I think of these psychedelics, or a different way, is that they are catalysts for the imagination.
Catalysts to say what has never been said, to see what has never been seen. To draw, paint, sing, sculpt, dance and act what has never before been done. To push the envelope of creativity and language and whats really important is, I call it, the felt presence of direct experience which is a fancy term which just simply means we have to stop consuming our culture. We have to create culture.
Don’t watch TV, don’t read magazines, don’t even listen to NPR. Create your own roadshow. The nexus of space and time, where you are now, is the most immediate sector of your universe and if you’re worrying about Michael Jackson or Bill Clinton or somebody else, then you are disempowered. You are giving it all away to icons, icons which are maintained by an electronic media, so that you want to dress like X or have lips like Y or something. This is shit-brained, this kind of thinking.
That is all cultural diversion and what is real is you and your friends and your associations, your highs, your orgasms, your hopes, your plans, and your fears… and we are told no, we’re unimportant, we’re peripheral, “get a degree,” “get a job”, get a this, get a that, and then you’re a player. You don’t even want to play in that game. You want to reclaim your mind and get it out of the hands of the cultural engineers who want to turn you into a half-baked moron consuming all this trash that’s being manufactured out of the bones of a dying world."
This is the whole quote that the "Reclaim Your Mind" video leaves out.
Film based on the work of Terence McKenna "The Archaic Revival: Paradise Regained" - youtu.be/iS50cGbrsms
Best of Terence McKenna Playlist - youtube.com/playlist?list=PLv3AEPj7GZIkiIfmFXRq84vdPBcdeopS1
In Response to a question at the end of his talk "Eros and the Eschaton."
"I think that we are caged by our cultural programming, and that this is the most powerful imprisoning factor in our lives. That if we could train ourselves, simply to remember our dreams, psychedelics would become obsolete. If we could train ourselves simply to pay attention to our ordinary states of consciousness as we live through our days and nights.
Culture is a mass hallucination, and when you step outside the mass hallucination, you see it for what it’s worth.
Language is partially the key here. We cannot move into a reality that we cannot describe. If we can’t describe a world, we can’t be there (collectively). An interesting place to be is at the cutting edge of language...
...Once there is a word, then that word is like a stepping stone out into the fog. And as long as we let the establishment set the language agenda we will be imprisoned in the tiny, rather pedestrian world of consumerism and schloko values that the establishment has prepared for us. The way I think of these psychedelics, or a different way, is that they are catalysts for the imagination.
Catalysts to say what has never been said, to see what has never been seen. To draw, paint, sing, sculpt, dance and act what has never before been done. To push the envelope of creativity and language and whats really important is, I call it, the felt presence of direct experience which is a fancy term which just simply means we have to stop consuming our culture. We have to create culture.
Don’t watch TV, don’t read magazines, don’t even listen to NPR. Create your own roadshow. The nexus of space and time, where you are now, is the most immediate sector of your universe and if you’re worrying about Michael Jackson or Bill Clinton or somebody else, then you are disempowered. You are giving it all away to icons, icons which are maintained by an electronic media, so that you want to dress like X or have lips like Y or something. This is shit-brained, this kind of thinking.
That is all cultural diversion and what is real is you and your friends and your associations, your highs, your orgasms, your hopes, your plans, and your fears… and we are told no, we’re unimportant, we’re peripheral, “get a degree,” “get a job”, get a this, get a that, and then you’re a player. You don’t even want to play in that game. You want to reclaim your mind and get it out of the hands of the cultural engineers who want to turn you into a half-baked moron consuming all this trash that’s being manufactured out of the bones of a dying world."
