Terence McKenna

The Psychedelic Society

by Terence McKenna reprinted in the anthology

"Entheogens and The Future of Religion"

edited by Robert Forte

An excerpt:

From page 58 "....A psychedelic society would abandon belief systems for direct exp ience. This is I think much of the problem of the modern dilemma: direct experience has been discounted, an in it's place all kinds of belief systems have been erected.

I maintain that it is pointless to have belief's, because if the universe really is stranger than we suppose, what we need is a return to what in the 16th century was called the Baconian Method; which means not the elaboration of fantastic thought constructs which explain nature, but merely a phenomenological cataloging of what we experience. Computer networks and psychedelic drugs and the increased availability of information in the world have actually made possible the evolution of new information states which never existed before. We are processing these new opportunities at a very slow rate because we are hindered by ideology.

We need a new language, and in order to have a new language we must have a new reality. A new language will make a new reality legitimate and a part of this reality."

"Alien"Courtesy of D.W. Cooper