A hallucination is a species of reality, as capable of teaching you as a videotape about Kilimanjaro or anything else that falls through your life. - Terence McKenna

I have been vehemently accused by people who didn’t understand me of not believing in anything. I don’t believe in anything. This is not a statement of existential hopelessness for which you should light a candle for me at night. It’s a strategy for not getting bogged down in some weird trip. After all, what is the basis for believing anything? I mean, you have to understand: You’re a monkey. In some kind of a biological situation where everything has been evolved to serve the economy of survival — this is not a philosophy course. So belief is a curious reaction to the present at hand. It isn’t to be believed, it’s to be dealt with — experienced and modeled.

Take it easy man, but take it.

The psychedelic community has not yet recognized or named itself as a community. We are well behind gays and black people and all those other minorities … we are still trying to figure out if we are a community. And if we are a community, and we have a domain of action, I think where it lies—it's not that we are all supposed to become dope dealers, it's that we are all supposed to become artists; that the transformation of culture through art is the proper understanding of what you can do with psychedelics besides blow your own mind. And I really think, you know, what we need to do is put the art-pedal to the floor, and understand that this is art—we are involved in some kind of enormous piece of performance art called Western civilization, and, you know, it's been a C-minus performance so far … and they are just about to reach out with the hook and drag us offstage, unless we begin pulling rabbits out of the hat pretty furiously.