Psychonauts

A Psychonaut is a person who uses psychoactive entheogens as guides, or means, to achieve inward spiritual experiences, and who reflects upon these experiences and applies them to their own life in a positive way, with the intent of bettering themselves.

The word entheogen is a modern term derived from two Ancient Greek words entheos and genesthai. Entheos means literally ‘in God', more freely translated ‘inspired'. The Greeks used it as a term of praise for poets and other artists. Genesthai means ‘to cause to be'.  So an entheogen is ‘that which causes (a person) to be in God'.

“At one point consciousness-altering devices like the microscope and telescope were criminalized for exactly the same reasons that psychedelic plants were banned in later years. They allow us to peer into bits and zones of Chaos.”

Timothy Leary

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“Psychedelic experience is only a glimpse of genuine mystical insight, but a glimpse which can be matured and deepened by the various ways of meditation in which drugs are no longer necessary or useful. If you get the message, hang up the phone. For psychedelic drugs are simply instruments, like microscopes, telescopes, and telephones. The biologist does not sit with eye permanently glued to the microscope, he goes away and works on what he has seen…”

Alan Watts

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“People use the word ‘natural'… what is natural to me are these botanical species which interact directly with the nervous system. What I consider artificial is 4 years at Harvard, and the Bible, and Saint Patrick's cathedral, and the sunday school teachings.”

Timothy Leary

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“Let us declare nature to be legitimate. All plants should be declared legal, and all animals for that matter. The notion of illegal plants and animals is obnoxious and ridiculous.”

Terence McKenna

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“Don't just eat a mushroom stem and see colors, eat the whole bag and see God one time in your life! A real God! Not some storybook bullshit God that's been fucking kicked in your head for the last 2000 years that you just accept with no logic what so ever, a real God that works for you. Everytime you deny your own logic, deny your own instincts, you deny your own God you fucking moron.”

Doug Stanhope

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“The White Man goes into his church and talks about Jesus. The Indian goes into his Tipi and talks with Jesus.”

Comanche Quanah Parker

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“The fungi were placed on a table by the pool, I picked on up, it tasted even worse than it looked: bitter, stringy. I began to feel strange, mildly nausious, detached. Everything was quivering with life, even inanimate objects. I gave way to the light and discovered a sea of possibilities, other realities. By that swimming pool I learned more about the mind than I had in 15 years as a diligent psychologist.”

Timothy Leary

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“I think any reasonable person can conclude that the redemption of the world, if it's to be achieved, can only be achieved through magic. It's too late for science. It's too late for hortatory politics.”

Terence McKenna