"We have gone sick by following a path of untrammeled rationalism, male dominance, attention to the visible surface of things, practicality, and bottomlineism.
We have gone very, very sick.
And the body politic, like any body when it feels itself to be sick, it begins to produce antibodies or strategies for over coming the condition of dis-ease.
The 20th century is an enormous effort at self-healing. Phenomenon as diverse as surrealism, body piercing, psychedelic drug use, sexual permissiveness, jazz, experimental dance, rave culture, tattooing. The list is endless.
What do all these things have in common?
They represent various styles of rejection of linear values.
The society is trying to cure itself by an archaic revival. By a reversion to arachaic values.
When I see people manifesting sexual ambiguity, or scarifying themselves, or showing a lot of flesh, or dancing to synopicated music, or getting loaded, or violating ordinary cannons of sexual behavior, I applaud all of this.
Because it’s an impulse to return to what is felt by the body.
What is authentic.
What is archaic.
When you tease apart these archaic impulses at the very center of all these impulses is the desire to return to a world of magical empowerment of feeling.
At the center of that impulse is the shaman. Stoned. Intoxicated on plants. Speaking with the spirit helpers. Dancing in the moonlight. Vivifying and evoking a world of conscious living mystery. That's what the world is.
The world is not an unsolved problem for scientists or sociologists.
The world is a living mystery.
Our birth, our death, our being in the moment. These are mysteries. They are doorways, opening on to unimaginable vistas of self-exploration, empowerment, and hope for the human enterprise.
Our culture has killed that. Taken it away from us. Made us consumers of shoddy products and shoddier ideals. We have to get away from that. And the way to get away from it is by a return to the authentic experience of the body. And that means sexually empowering ourselves. And it means getting loaded. Exploring the mind as a tool for personal and social transformation.
The hour is late. The clock is ticking.
We will be judged very harshly if we fumble the ball. We are the inheritors of millions and millions of years of successfully lived lives and successful adaptations to changing conditions in the natural world. Now that challenge passes to us: the living.
That the yet to be born may have a place to put their feet and a sky to walk under. That is what the psychedelic experience is about. Is caring for, empowering, and building a future that honors the past, honors the planet, honors the power of the human imagination.
There is nothing as powerful and as capable of transforming itself and the planet as the human imagination.
Let's not sell it straight. Lets not whore ourselves to nit wit ideologies.
Lets not give our control over to the least among us.
Rather, claim your place in the sun and go forward into the light.
The tools are there.
The path is known.
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 an reempowerment of the imagination."
Terence McKenna -
Eros and the Eschaton (MP3 27.2 MB)
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