Given ages ago, so ahead of his time! 11 September 1993

In this lecture, Terence McKenna talks about the tragic situation we humans have placed ourselves in, and ways in which the boundry dissolution effects of psychedelic medicines can possibly save our species from what appears to be a certain extinction. . . . "What the psychedelic experience does, really, is it stretches the envelope of the imaginable."

"It seems to me that culture, at least this culture, is a shabby lie."

"We have the tools that would allow us to sculpt paradise, but we have the reflexes and value systems of anthropoid apes of some sort. . . . You don't get serial killers in the chipmunk population."

"We live at the end of a thousand year binge on the philosophical position known as materialism, in its many guises. And the basic message of materialism is that world is what it appears to be, a thing composed of
matter, and pretty much confined to its surface."

"We're in, essentially, a tragic situation. A tragic situation is a catastrophe when you know it."

For approximately 500 years [sciences] argument for its pre-eminence was the beautiful toys that it could create: 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.

Images: Oculus, Jones/Ginzel (1998)
Location: Chambers Street/World Trade Center, Park Place

Oculus consists of 301 mosaic panels by artists Kristin Jones, Andrew Ginzel and Rinaldo Piras. The project presents the eyes of three hundred individual New Yorkers translated from a photographic study conducted by Jones/Ginzel into stone mosaic by the classically trained Piras. The centerpiece of the work is an elliptical glass and stone mosaic floor, with a magnificent micro mosaic eye at the center of an ultramarine vortex with the image of the City of New York woven into the picture.

Thanks to terencemckennatube for the description here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vaB5gg...