Terence Mckenna quote!!!

[ovenbakedskittles]

Hi Bluelight,

This doesnt have to do with harm reduction. Just a quick question. I was just curious about one Terence Mckennas quotes. I was looking at some of his quotes on the internet and one of them is "Half the time you think youre thinking youre actually listening." ...what does that mean??? what was he saying???

 

[roi]

Context?

 

[ovenbakedskittles]

Dont know... It was a quote along with a bunch of other quotes that he said... I figured someone might have heard the speech his said this on. Or if he even said this lol

 

[MainStream]

I believe that it means that half the time you're thinking you're actually listening to something greater than yourself. Something that usually can't be heard, but because you are thinking you can hear the slightest mumble. Either that or you're listening to your true self.

 

[Sandbwoy]

Definitely sounds like something Mckenna would have said although I don't remember hearing this one. There are lots of his lectures available to listen to on youtube, all very interesting stuff, I could listen to his ideas and experiences all day.

I think what he might be saying in that quote is that when you believe you are thinking of something, you are actually listening to your own brain subconsciously as it teaches you things from deep within the psyche. Like your brain is actually speaking to you, rather than you thinking those thoughts.

 

[Tranced]

"Half the time you think you're thinking you're actually listening"

I think it's almost certain that he's referring to what he frequently referred to as 'the logos', which I believe he basically meant to be the voice which communicated to him on mushrooms, using his own voice in his mind, but seemingly coming from some kind of 'other'.

I've experienced this, and it's pretty much unanimously common on psychedelics. Like the universe/infinity/whatever using your own mind to channel messages to yourself. I guess that makes sense if we're all basically the same thing.

I'm fairly certain this is exactly what he's referring to. As per Terence, the quote might have a couple of metaphorical twists, but I reckon this is the crux of it.

 

[transitionsynth]

Hi Bluelight,

This doesnt have to do with harm reduction. Just a quick question. I was just curious about one Terence Mckennas quotes. I was looking at some of his quotes on the internet and one of them is "Half the time you think youre thinking youre actually listening." ...what does that mean??? what was he saying???

With all due respect, if you want to know what he's talking about, try reading his books. That might help.

 

[Ismene]

Don't recognise the quote.

Apparantly Terence stopped tripping in 1989 because he had an uncomfortable mushroom trip.

 

[max_freakout]

Apparantly Terence stopped tripping in 1989 because he had an uncomfortable mushroom trip.

That ^ was just a big publicity stunt lie to help dennis mckenna sell more copies of his crap autobiography, and it worked.

The whole claim about Mckenna's shroom abstinence turned out to be total BS, for example there is a talk Mckenna gave in Hawaii in 96 on youtube where he clearly refers to a mushroom trip he had taken a few days before. Also several friends of his have said they tripped with him during the 90s (including the guy who made the 'cognition factor' videos who was a good friend of Terence). So the idea that Terence never tripped during this period is entirely unsubstantiated, and disproved by a number of sources.

Also the person who originally made the claim about Mckenna's alleged abstinence (his brother Dennis, via a rumour from terence's ex wife kathleen who didnt even know terence during the 90s after they got divorced) has since retracted the claim and he now refuses to say anything about it.

it just goes to show that on the internet people will believe any old bullshit without checking facts

 

[lovepsychadelics]

Quote "ouch that penis envy really shouldn't be rectally administered... feels pretty good though... oh yeah baby, harder faster." T McKenna while tripping balls at some point in his life time... Maybe that was the uncomfortable trip that made him stop tripping.

 

[Ismene]

That ^ was just a big publicity stunt lie to help dennis mckenna sell more copies of his crap autobiography, and it worked.

Maybe.

for example there is a talk Mckenna gave in Hawaii in 96 on youtube where he clearly refers to a mushroom trip he had taken a few days before

That's Terence tho - presumably he didn't want to make it public he wasn't tripping anymore.

Also several friends of his have said they tripped with him during the 90s

I can only find that film maker who says he tripped with him once in 1996 and a friend who says he was put off tripping in the 80s but broke the rules a few times in the 90s and did trip.

has since retracted the claim and he now refuses to say anything about it.

I think other people than Dennis have mentioned the bad trip he had in the 80s tho.


it just goes to show that on the internet people will believe any old bullshit

It's not any old bullshit is it tho - it's the word of his brother. That makes it worthy of consideration.

 

[DDDyyy]

I've been keeping track of TM's bad trip reports. He knew how to deal with bad trips and i dont think a bad trip turned him off.

In "True Hallucinations" he talks about poltergeist experiences he was having in Hawaii with his wife. They had a close call one night with a ufo/mantis entity.

In one lecture he says that when his trips go south he ends up in a place he calls "the meat locker" which he describes as the morgue in a crime scene investigation lab.

He was quite familiar with bad trips and in fact mellowed his usage over the years. Back when he was younger he would trip acid and smoke DMT on top to launch. He later described that as "it was nuts. Its all nuts, but that was like super-charged nuts!"

He does say repeatedly in his lectures that he's lucky if he can steel himself for DMT a few times a year.

Finally, he does reference "after parties" in his lectures. Im sure he participated.

 

[Ismene]

Strange thing for his brother to make up tho. Why put a date on the bad trip of the 80s if there were all these alleged trips he did in the 90s - why not date it to the late 90s if you were going to make it up?

Must admit I've never seen a mantis on DMT - perhaps Terence had let his imagination run away with him to such an extent that was all he saw. Amusing if his wife "saw" the same thing - maybe Terence was so panicked he harshed her mellow too.

 

[theacidtest]

Must admit I've never seen a mantis on DMT - perhaps Terence had let his imagination run away with him to such an extent that was all he saw. Amusing if his wife "saw" the same thing - maybe Terence was so panicked he harshed her mellow too.

For whatever reason, a close friend of mine has also encountered a mantis entity while on DMT. Perhaps it's just an archetypal thing many people see, like the "Salvia goddess" that I and many others have met.

 

[max_freakout]

Strange thing for his brother to make up tho.

The lie about Terence's shroom abstinence never came from his brother, it came from his ex-wife Kathleen Harrison, who couldnt possibly have known what her ex husband terence was doing every day for the rest of his life after they got divorced in the late 80s

the 'bad trip' story wasnt made up (Terence himself spoke frequently about his terrifying experiences), but the 'extended shroom abstinence' story was a pure fabrication.

The whole thing is obvious bullshit, given the sheer weight of evidence to the contrary. I think most of the people who actually believe such an obvious lie are just projecting their own insecurities and disappointments onto Terence, that is very clearly the case with Bruce Damer and Dennis Mckenna who are both utterly unoriginal people who have based their careers on making feeble imitations of the late Terence. It cannot be easy for Dennis to have lived most of his life in the shadows of his dead brother.

 

[max_freakout]

That's Terence tho - presumably he didn't want to make it public he wasn't tripping anymore.

Terence was always very open and honest about the fact that he only tripped rarely (like a few times a year) and that he was deeply terrified of the psychedelic experience. It is strange to accuse him and his close friends of lying, on the basis of a retracted claim from a deleted podcast that came from a woman who did not even know Terence during the period in question.

This seems to be how people get their "facts" in the internet age - ie: "someone on the internet said it, therefore it MUST be true, nevermind fact-checking, or basic logic and critical thinking".

It seems that people want the lie about Terence's abstinence to be true (regardless of whether it is actually true or not), because it makes them feel better about their own feelings of inadequacy, and having been let down by the failure of the whole 2012 prophecy.

I think other people than Dennis have mentioned the bad trip he had in the 80s tho.

Not even Dennis knew anything about it, the claim came from a half-forgotten quote by terence's ex wife Kathleen alone and nobody else has said anything about it.

It is one thing to say that Terence had a bad trip (you dont need Kathleen to tell you that, Terence himself spoke in great detail about various terrifying bad trips he had)

It is a very different thing to claim on the basis of that one bad trip that Terence never again took mushrooms for the rest of his life, and lied to everyone about it for the rest of his life. This second claim is contradicted by several people including close friends of Terence, and also by Terence himself who talked about trips that he had during the 90s, including shortly before he died.

It's not any old bullshit is it tho - it's the word of his brother. That makes it worthy of consideration.

It is not the word of his brother, it is the word of his ex wife Kathleen who was not with Terence during the 90s when the alleged shroom abstinence is supposed to have happened (Terence remarried to another woman for the last part of his life).

Furthermore according to Dennis' autobiography, he and Terence had very little relationship with each other apart from the time they spent together in la chorrera.

 

[Ismene]

So your idea is that this was all some kind of plot to somehow discredit him by his ex-wife? Why didn't the wife just come out and say it at the time? Surely that would've done much more damage rather than waiting for his brothers book 14 years after Terence was dead. If you're a bitter ex-wife that's a helluva long time to wait.

Dennis said:

"Terence's pivotal existential crisis came abruptly. Sometime in '88 or '89. Everything that happened after that event was fallout. I don't know exactly when it happened and I don't know exactly what happened. I am piecing it together from what Kat has told me and she has volunteered few details and I am reluctant to probe. It happened when they were living for a time on the Big Island and it was a mushroom trip they shared that was absolutely terrifying for Terence. It was terrifying because, for some reason, the mushroom turned on him. The gentle, wise, humorous mushroom spirit that he had come to know and trust as an ally and teacher ripped back the facade to reveal an abyss of utter existential despair. Terence kept saying, so Kat told me, that it was, "a lack of all meaning, a lack of all meaning." And this induced panic in Terence and probably, I speculate, a feeling that he was going mad. He couldn't deal with it. Kat's efforts to reassure him were fruitless. After that experience, he never again took mushrooms and he took other psychedelics such as DMT and Ayahuasca only on rare occasions and with great reluctance."

 

[Ismene]

For whatever reason, a close friend of mine has also encountered a mantis entity while on DMT. Perhaps it's just an archetypal thing many people see, like the "Salvia goddess" that I and many others have met.

Could be. Might also be that when you've been told often enough that you'll see a mantis your imagination provides you with one.

 

[bees_knees]

I hope it's worth considering but I took this quote literally and figured McKenna was just making an observation about how our minds work, that most of the time we think we're thinking, ie. we're starting to muster brain power to think something through, we're actually just sitting there listening, that thoughts are more sparse than we think.

 

[max_freakout]

So your idea is that this was all some kind of plot to somehow discredit him by his ex-wife?

this ^ has no relation to what i said. It was a "plot" to sell many copies of a book, and it worked. Many people bought the book just because they wanted to hear about Terence's alleged mushroom abstinence, and were disappointed to discover that it is not mentioned anywhere in the book. Other than that, the book is just a very uninteresting autobiography of Terence's brother Dennis, who doesnt seem to have had any kind of close relationship with Terence during the later years of Terence's life and who has nothing new or interesting to say about the various psychedelic issues that Terence is famous for talking about. Dennis' entire career as an 'ethnobotanist' is just riding on the success of his brother.

My point was that this whole story came from Terence's ex wife Kathleen, not from his brother Dennis. There is no way Kathleen could have known that Terence would never again take mushrooms for the rest of his life.

It isnt remotely novel or interesting to claim that Terence Mckenna had at least one bad trip, he put a very heavy emphasis on the importance of high doses and terrifying experience in his talks and lectures, and he frequently referred to his own terrifying experiences (he had a specific term for it - "the meatlocker").

It is a completely separate claim to say he never again took mushrooms, that is what the lie is, it contradicts what Terence himself and people who knew him closely have said. And furthermore, nobody has actually put their name to this lie, it is not mentioned in Dennis' book, and the podcast where it appeared was rapidly retracted from the website shortly after it was released.