Terence McKenna - A Message to the Psychedelic Community lyrics

I don't feel that this is unusual what we're doing here. Am I crazy? Could be. It would seem to me, knowing what I know which is no more than a thousand other people know, I couldn't live with myself if I didn't talk about these things because our problem is we're dis-empowered, unhappy and disconnected from ourselves and each other. Here's the solution. It's a political obligation, or it's a moral obligation to try and at least inform people. They don't have to take it but they should at least have the facts of the matter in front of them as they live their lives. So I just do it because I couldn't do it any other way and I'm puzzled that nobody else feels this imperative because the people I talk to... You know, a thousand people have told me psychedelics were the most important thing that ever happened to them but not one of those thousand people ever said "And I've scheduled a speaking tour to do the same thing that you're doing." So I don't know... Questioner: "You know there's a fear and a paranoia, I hear there are people that were afraid to come to this for revealing their interests..." Wow, well either I'm crazy or they are, I don't know. See, I think that you know how if you confront certain, well bu*terflies or deer... There are certain kinds of animals that if you move slowly enough they can't tell you're there because they're set up for edge detection and if you move slowly enough they don't register the edge transiting so you can actually walk right up to them and grab them if you know how to do it. Lizards are like this, cats. So I think that if by moving with stealth rather than going to Harvard or Berkeley and inviting the freshmen cla** to pour into the street and smash bank windows that we can actually slip this thing along. I think that eventually such desperation is going to strike straight institutions that they will come to us and ask. They're going to try everything when the going gets rough and when they finally decide to drop all their pretension we'll be perfectly willing to have a dialogue. I'm sorry to hear that people felt that paranoid about it. I don't think the political climate is that repressive, I think people are doing the work of The Man FOR The Man by being that paranoid. Questioner: [inaudible] Well (?) book was banned in Florida but for crying out loud look at the Russians. They were able to toss out the Communist party, now that's a pretty scary thing to go up against. We don't have anything comparable to that, in terms of its depth penetration into our lives and yet they were able to do that. I think there's more to life than hiding out. You've got to make the grand gesture at a certain point and then let the chips fall where they may. Brave words, oh boy. Questioner: "Do you have something for your audiences? Like an organization or something that they can support in raising consciousness and changing legislation?" Basically I think people should see these kinds of meetings as a tremendous opportunity to form local alliances. The last thing on earth we want here is a Terence McKenna cult. That would just be the stupidest resolution of the whole thing. The whole message is you don't need me, or Tim, or anybody else. Just take a little metaphysical responsibility for yourself. Realize you are the microcosm of the macrocosm and then get with like-minded people and proceed. I mean this is how political revolutions are made, by people just ignoring as irrelevant outmoded social forms and structures and insisting on their own authenticity. Questioner: [inaudible] Oh it might help, how would it help? Strength in numbers? I think people should support psychedelic communities, archival projects, legalization moves. Yes, but mainly I think what we all need to do is get more loaded. You know, deeper trips. Higher doses. See, it's not that we want to convert the entire planet to taking mushrooms, it's that we just want to be left alone to do what we want to do. The mushroom, if its as great as I say it is, then it doesn't need a mob clearing the way for it it's perfectly able to advance its own agenda. The thing is just not to yield to fear, because as I said, if you yield to fear you do The Man's work FOR The Man and that makes you The Man. So what have you to do is just say "Well, this is what we do" and eventually it will change. I mean, gay people is a good example. In our lifetimes we've seen this go from an unspeakable crime against nature which decent people took care to not even be informed of to a political subculture with its own agenda and its own press and its own political clout. Well, we are not as under the thumb as gay people were say in the early '50s or something. If they can do it, we can do it. If black people can go from slavery to a legitimate claim on full social integration into the body politics, then we can do it too. In America nobody gets nothing unless they demand it, so as long as we bow our heads and hide our stash and are looking over our shoulder well then they've got us on the run. But we just have to say "Look! This is it. This is who I am. If this doesn't jive with your political agenda, adjust your political agenda, because this is who we are."