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Terence McKenna
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
For the Canadian documentary filmmaker, see Terence McKenna (film producer). This article may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards. Please improve this article if you can. The talk page may contain suggestions. (November 2010)
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Terence Kemp McKennaFull name Terence Kemp McKenna
Born November 16, 1946
Paonia, Colorado, United States
Died April 3, 2000 (aged 53)
San Rafael, California, United States
Era 20th century philosophy
Region Western Philosophy
School Metaphysics, phenomenology
Main interests shamanism, ethnobotany, metaphysics, psychedelic drugs and plants, futurism, primitivism, environmentalism, consciousness, phenomenology, historical revisionism, evolution, ontology, Mind at Large, virtual reality, dominator culture, criticizing science, the Logos
Notable ideas novelty theory, "stoned ape" hypothesis, Machine elf, psychedelic exopheromones, the "felt presence of direct experience"
Influenced by[show]
Terence Kemp McKenna (November 16, 1946 April 3, 2000) was an American writer mainly on the subject of psychedelic drugs and their role in society, and existence beyond the physical body. He was also a public speaker, psychonaut, ethnobotanist, art historian, and self-described anarchist, anti-materialist, environmentalist, feminist, Platonist and skeptic.[1] During his lifetime he was noted for his knowledge of psychedelics, metaphysics, plant-based entheogens, shamanism, mysticism, Hermeticism, Neoplatonism, biology, geology, physics, phenomenology, and his concept of novelty theory.[2]Contents [hide]
1 Biography
1.1 Early life
1.2 Adult life
1.3 Last interview
1.4 Death
1.5 The library fire
2 Ideas
2.1 The "Stoned Ape" hypothesis of human evolution
2.2 Novelty theory
3 Bibliography
4 Spoken word
5 Discography
6 See also
7 References
8 External links
8.1 Writings online
8.2 Audio and video resources
[edit]
Biography
[edit]
Early life
Terence McKenna grew up in Paonia, Colorado.[3] He was introduced to geology through his uncle and developed a hobby of solitary fossil hunting in the arroyos near his home.[4] From this he developed a deep artistic and scientific appreciation of nature.
At age 16, McKenna moved to, and attended high school in, Los Altos, California.[3] He lived with family friends because his parents in Colorado wished him to have the benefit of highly rated California public schools. He was introduced to psychedelics through The Doors of Perception by Aldous Huxley[3] and the Village Voice.[5]
One of his early experiences with them came through morning glory seeds (containing LSA), which he claimed showed him "that there was something there worth pursuing."[3]
In 1964, circumstances required McKenna to move to Lancaster, California, to live with a different set of family friends. In 1965, he graduated from Antelope Valley High School.
McKenna then enrolled in U.C. Berkeley. He moved to San Francisco during the summer of 1965 before his classes began, was introduced that year to cannabis by Barry Melton[6] and tried LSD soon after.
As a freshman at U.C. Berkeley McKenna participated in the Tussman Experimental College, a short-lived two-year program on the Berkeley campus. He graduated in 1969 with a Bachelor of Science degree in Ecology and Conservation.
[edit]
Adult life
He spent the years after his graduation teaching English in Japan, traveling through India and South Asia collecting butterflies for biological supply companies.[7]
Following the death of his mother in 1971, Terence, his brother Dennis, and three friends traveled to the Colombian Amazon in search of oo-koo-hé, a plant preparation containing DMT. Instead of oo-koo-hé they found various forms of ayahuasca (also known as "yagé") and gigantic psilocybe cubensis which became the new focus of the expedition.[7] In La Chorrera, at the urging of his brother, he allowed himself to be the subject of a psychedelic experiment which he claimed put him in contact with Logos: an informative, divine voice he believed was universal to visionary religious experience.[7] The revelations of this voice, and his brother's peculiar experience during the experiment, prompted him to explore the structure of an early form of the I Ching, which led to his "Novelty Theory".[7] These ideas were explored extensively by Terence and Dennis in their 1975 book The Invisible Landscape - Mind Hallucinogens and The I Ching.
In the early 1980s, McKenna began to speak publicly on the topic of psychedelic drugs, lecturing extensively and conducting weekend workshops. Though somewhat associated with the New Age or human potential movement, McKenna himself had little patience for New Age sensibilities, repeatedly stressing the importance and primacy of felt experience as opposed to dogmatic ideologies.[8] Timothy Leary once introduced him as "one of the five or six most important people on the planet".[9]" It's clearly a crisis of two things: of consciousness and conditioning. These are the two things that the psychedelics attack. We have the technological power, the engineering skills to save our planet, to cure disease, to feed the hungry, to end war; But we lack the intellectual vision, the ability to change our minds. We must decondition ourselves from 10,000 years of bad behavior. And, it's not easy. "
Terence McKenna, "This World...and Its Double", [10]
He soon became a fixture of popular counterculture, and his popularity continued to grow, culminating in the early to mid 1990's with the publication of several books such as True Hallucinations (which relates the tale of his 1971 experience at La Chorrera), Food of the Gods and The Archaic Revival. He became a popular personality in the psychedelic rave/dance scene of the early 1990s, with frequent spoken word performances at raves and contributions to psychedelic and goa trance albums by The Shamen, Spacetime Continuum, Alien Project, Capsula, Entheogenic, Zuvuya, Shpongle, and Shakti Twins. His speeches were (and continue to be) sampled by many others. In 1994 he appeared as a speaker at the Starwood Festival, which was documented in the book Tripping by Charles Hayes (his lectures were produced on both cassette tape and CD).[11]
McKenna was a contemporary and colleague of chaos mathematician Ralph Abraham and biologist Rupert Sheldrake (creator of the theory of "morphogenetic fields", not to be confused with the mainstream usage of the same term), and conducted several public debates known as trialogues with them, from the late 1980s up until his death. Books which contained transcriptions of some of these events were published. He was also a friend and associate of Ralph Metzner, Nicole Maxwell, and Riane Eisler, participating in joint workshops and symposia with them. He was a personal friend of Tom Robbins, and influenced the thought of numerous scientists, writers, artists, and entertainers, including comedian Bill Hicks, whose routines concerning psychedelic drugs drew heavily from McKenna's works. He is also the inspiration for the Twin Peaks character Dr. Jacoby.[12]
In addition to psychedelic drugs, McKenna spoke on the subjects of virtual reality (which he saw as a way to artistically communicate the experience of psychedelics), techno-paganism, artificial intelligence, evolution, extraterrestrials, and aesthetic theory (art/visual experience as information-- representing the significance of hallucinatory visions experienced under the influence of psychedelics).
McKenna also co-founded Botanical Dimensions with Kathleen Harrison (his colleague and wife of 17 years), a non-profit ethnobotanical preserve on the island of Hawaii, where he lived for many years before he died. Before moving to Hawaii permanently, McKenna split his time between Hawaii and a town called Occidental, located in the redwood-studded hills of Sonoma County, California, a town unique for its high concentration of artistic notables, including Tom Waits and Mickey Hart.
[edit]
Last interview
Erik Davis, author of the book TechGnosis, conducted what would be the last interview with McKenna in October and early November 1999. This interview was held in preparation for a profile featured in Wired Magazine in 2000, entitled "Terence McKenna's Last Trip."[13] Erik Davis later published larger excerpts from this interview at his site, techgnosis.com, and the recorded interview has also been released on CD. Commenting on the reality of his own death, McKenna said during the interview:"
I always thought death would come on the freeway in a few horrifying moments, so you'd have no time to sort it out. Having months and months to look at it and think about it and talk to people and hear what they have to say, it's a kind of blessing. It's certainly an opportunity to grow up and get a grip and sort it all out. Just being told by an unsmiling guy in a white coat that you're going to be dead in four months definitely turns on the lights. ... It makes life rich and poignant. When it first happened, and I got these diagnoses, I could see the light of eternity, a la William Blake, shining through every leaf. I mean, a bug walking across the ground moved me to tears.[14] "
[edit]
Death
A longtime sufferer of migraines, in mid-1999 McKenna returned to his home on the big island of Hawaii after a long lecturing tour. He began to suffer from increasingly painful headaches. This culminated in three brain seizures in one night, which he claimed were the most powerful psychedelic experiences he had ever known. Upon his emergency trip to the hospital on Oahu, Terence was diagnosed with glioblastoma multiforme, a highly aggressive form of brain cancer. For the next several months he underwent various treatments, including experimental gamma knife radiation treatment. He died on April 3, 2000, at the age of 53, with his loved ones at his bedside. He is survived by his brother Dennis, his son Finn, and his daughter Klea.
[edit]
The library fire
On February 7, 2007, McKenna's library of rare books and personal notes was destroyed in a fire which burned offices belonging to Big Sur's Esalen Institute storing the collection. An index maintained by his brother Dennis survives, though little else.
[edit]
Ideas" There are these things, which I call "self transforming machine elves," I also call them self-dribbling basketballs. They are, but they are none of these things. I mean you have to understand: these are metaphors in the truest sense, meaning that they're lies! [...] I name them 'Tykes' because tyke is a word that means to me a small child, ... and when you burst into the DMT space this is the Aeon - it's a child, and it's at play with colored balls, and I am in eternity, apparently, in the presence of this thing. "
Terence McKenna, "Time and Mind", [15]
Terence McKenna advocated the exploration of altered states of mind via the ingestion of naturally occurring psychedelic substances. For example, and in particular, as facilitated by the ingestion of high doses of psychedelic mushrooms, and DMT, which he believed was the apotheosis of the psychedelic experience. He spoke of the "jeweled, self-dribbling basketballs" or "self-transforming machine elves" that one encounters in that state.
Although he avoided giving his allegiance to any one interpretation (part of his rejection of monotheism), he was open to the idea of psychedelics as being "trans-dimensional travel"; literally, enabling an individual to encounter what could be ancestors, or spirits of earth.[8] He remained opposed to most forms of organized religion or guru-based forms of spiritual awakening.
Either philosophically or religiously, he expressed admiration for Marshall McLuhan, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Gnostic Christianity, Alfred North Whitehead and Alchemy.
He also expressed admiration for the works of James Joyce (calling Finnegans Wake "the quintessential work of art, or at least work of literature of the 20th century")[16] and Vladimir Nabokov: McKenna once said that he would have become a Nabokov lecturer if he never met psychedelics.
[edit]
The "Stoned Ape" hypothesis of human evolution
McKenna hypothesized[citation needed] that as the North African jungles receded and gave way to savannas and grasslands near the end of the most recent ice age, a branch of our tree-dwelling primate ancestors left the forest canopy and began to live in the open areas outside of the forest. There they experimented with new varieties of foods as they adapted, physically and mentally, to their new environment. McKenna also called last glacial period hominids "fruit eating" in what he calls a gender-equal "paradise [...] the golden age of humanity" that he dated as ending 10,000 years ago.[17] However, the most recent ice age, also known as the Last glacial period that stretched from 110,000 years ago to 10,000 years ago, when meat-eating, biologically evolved Homo-Sapiens were already in Europe. Capability for language, present in the human FOXP2 gene was already developed.[citation needed]
According to McKenna's hypothesis, among the new food items found in this new environment were psilocybin-containing mushrooms growing near the dung of ungulate herds that occupied the savannas and grasslands at that time. To support this hypothesis, McKenna referenced the research of Roland L. Fisher.[citation needed] The cited work by Fischer does not mention paleo-anthropology, Africa, or the ice ages.[18][19][20][21] Echoing Fisher on the effects of psychedelics, McKenna claimed that enhancement of visual acuity was an effect of psilocybin at low doses, and supposed that this would have conferred an adaptive advantage. He also argued that the effects of slightly larger doses, including sexual arousal, and in still larger doses, ecstatic hallucinations and glossolalia gave selective evolutionary advantages to members of those tribes who partook of it. There were many changes caused by the introduction of this psychoactive mushroom to the primate diet. McKenna hypothesizes, for instance, that synesthesia (the blurring of boundaries between the senses) caused by psilocybin led to the development of spoken language: the ability to form pictures in another person's mind through the use of vocal sounds.
About 12,000 years ago, further climate changes removed psilocybin-containing mushrooms from the human diet.[citation needed] McKenna argued that this event resulted in a new set of profound changes in our species as we reverted to the previous brutal primate social structures that had been modified and/or repressed by frequent consumption of psilocybin.
[edit]
Novelty theory
One of McKenna's favourite topics is Alfred North Whitehead's process philosophy, according to which, the universe progresses from the entropy-dominated state of disorganized complexity to the information-dominated state of organized complexity:[22][23]
...the story of the universe is that information, which I call novelty, is struggling to free itself from habit, which I call entropy... and that this process... is accelerating... It seems as if... the whole cosmos wants to change into information... All points want to become connected... The path of complexity to its goals is through connecting things together... You can imagine that there is an ultimate end-state of that processit's the moment when every point in the universe is connected to every other point in the universe.
McKenna, Terence ♦ A workshop held in the summer of 1998
Entropy (disgregation) is the particle-like aspect of the universe. Information is the universe's wave-like aspect. In its wave-like phase, a quantum does not have a spatial position and exists as an omnipresent momentum identical with time itself:
The imagination is a dimension of nonlocal information.
McKenna, Terence ♦ A Few Conclusions About Life
In sleep, one is released into the real world, of which the world of waking is only the surface in a very literal geometric sense. There is a plenumrecent experiments in quantum physics tend to back this upa holographic plenum of information. All information is everywhere. Information that is not here is nowhere. Information stands outside of time in a kind of eternityan eternity that does not have a temporal existence about which one may say, "It always existed." It does not have temporal duration of any sort. It is eternity. We are not primarily biological, with mind emerging as a kind of iridescence, a kind of epiphenomenon at the higher levels of organization of biology. We are hyperspatial objects of some sort that cast a shadow into matter. The shadow in matter is our physical organism.
McKenna, Terence ♦ New Maps of Hyperspace
The higher the organized complexity of a particle aggregate, the more pronounced its wave-like component:
I've always felt that biology is a strategy, a chemical strategy, for amplifying quantum-mechanical indeterminacy into macrophysical systems called living organisms, and that living organisms somehow work their magic by opening a doorway to the quantum realm through which indeterminacy can come. And I imagine that all nature works like this, with the single exception of human beings, who have been poisoned by language.
McKenna, Terence ♦ Hazelwood House Trialogue
Just like most of us enjoy a much closer relationship with our television sets than we do with our neighbours, parts of the universe become nonlocally interconnected not directly but through the Earth's biosphere, which acts as the informational hub (due to its amplified virtual, wave-like componentinformation). When the Earth's biosphere will have accumulated the critical amount of information, the universe will become sufficiently interconnected to turn into a reality-warping Elysium. The hyperspace of the universe's nonlocal information (the "superconducting Overmind") is, by definition, in a single quantum state; in order to fuse with that single quantum state and attain absolute psychokinetic control over the universe, the human species needs to become genetically singular by being reduced to a single couple of the most imaginative people, whose tantric union is the ultimate goal of the universe's existencethe Eschaton:
What is happening to our world is ingression of novelty toward what Whitehead called "concrescence," a tightening gyre. Everything is flowing together. The "autopoetic lapis," the alchemical stone at the end of time, coalesces when everything flows together. When the laws of physics are obviated, the universe disappears, and what is left is the tightly bound plenum, the monad, able to express itself for itself, rather than only able to cast a shadow into physis as its reflection. I come very close here to classical millenarian and apocalyptic thought in my view of the rate at which change is accelerating. From the way the gyre is tightening, I predict that the concrescence will occur soonaround 2012 AD. It will be the entry of our species into hyperspace, but it will appear to be the end of physical laws accompanied by the release of the mind into the imagination. <...> The transition from earth to space will be a staggeringly tight genetic filter, a much tighter filter than any previous frontier has ever been, including the genetic and demographic filter represented by the colonization of the New World. <...> The object at the end of and beyond history is the human species fused into eternal tantric union with the superconducting Overmind/UFO.
McKenna, Terence ♦ New Maps of Hyperspace
According to McKenna, the final period of the universe's informational evolution began on 6 August 1945 and will end with a point of "maximized novelty" by 22 December 2012:
I've been talking about it since 1971, and what's interesting to me is at the beginning, it was material for hospitalization, now it is a minority viewpoint and everything is on schedule. My career is on schedule, the evolution of cybernetic technology is on schedule, the evolution of a global information network is on schedule. Given this asymptotic curve, I think we'll arrive under budget, on time, December 22, 2012.
McKenna, Terence ♦ Approaching Timewave Zero November 1994
See also:
Omega Point
2012 phenomena
[edit]
Bibliography
1975 - The Invisible Landscape: Mind, Hallucinogens, and the I Ching (with Dennis McKenna) (Seabury; 1st Ed) ISBN 0-8164-9249-2.
1976 - The Invisible Landscape (with Dennis McKenna, and Quinn Taylor) (Scribner) ISBN 0-8264-0122-8
1976 - Psilocybin - Magic Mushroom Grower's Guide (with Dennis McKenna: credited under the pseudonyms OT Oss and ON Oeric) (2nd edition 1986) (And/Or Press) ISBN 0-915904-13-6
1992 - Psilocybin - Magic Mushroom Grower's Guide (with Dennis McKenna: (credited under the pseudonyms OT Oss and ON Oeric) (Quick American Publishing Company; Revised edition) ISBN 0-932551-06-8
1992 - The Archaic Revival (HarperSanFrancisco; 1st edition) ISBN 0-06-250613-7
1992 - Food of the Gods: The Search for the Original Tree of Knowledge - A Radical History of Plants, Drugs, and Human Evolution (Bantam) ISBN 0-553-37130-4
1992 - Synesthesia (with Timothy C. Ely) (Granary Books 1st Ed) ISBN 1-887123-04-0
1992 - Trialogues at the Edge of the West: Chaos, Creativity, and the Resacralization of the World (with Ralph H. Abraham, Rupert Sheldrake and Jean Houston) (Bear & Company Publishing 1st Ed) ISBN 0-939680-97-1
1993 - True Hallucinations: Being an Account of the Author's Extraordinary Adventures in the Devil's Paradise (HarperSanFrancisco 1st Ed) ISBN 0-06-250545-9
1994 - The Invisible Landscape (HarperSanFrancisco; Reprint edition) ISBN 0-06-250635-8
1998 - True Hallucinations & the Archaic Revival: Tales and Speculations About the Mysteries of the Psychedelic Experience (Fine Communications/MJF Books) (Hardbound) ISBN 1-56731-289-6
1998 - The Evolutionary Mind : Trialogues at the Edge of the Unthinkable (with Rupert Sheldrake and Ralph H. Abraham) (Trialogue Press; 1st Ed) ISBN 0-942344-13-8
1999 - Food of the Gods: A Radical History of Plants, Drugs, and Human Evolution (Rider & Co; New edition) ISBN 0-7126-7038-6
1999 - Robert Venosa: Illuminatus (with Robert Venosa, Ernst Fuchs, H. R. Giger, and Mati Klarwein) (Craftsman House) ISBN 90-5703-272-4
2001 - Chaos, Creativity, and Cosmic Consciousness (with Rupert Sheldrake and Ralph H. Abraham) (Park Street Press; revised ed) ISBN 0-89281-977-4 (Revised edition of Trialogues at the Edge of the West)
2005 - The Evolutionary Mind: Trialogues on Science, Spirit & Psychedelics (Monkfish Book Publishing; Revised Ed) ISBN 0-9749359-7-2
[edit]
Spoken word
TechnoPagans at the End of History (transcription of rap with Mark Pesce from 1998)
Psychedelics in the Age of Intelligent Machines (1999) 90 minutes video
Alien Dreamtime with Spacetime Continuum & Stephen Kent (Magic Carpet Media) (CD) video
Conversations on the Edge of Magic (1994) (CD & Cassette) ACE
Rap-Dancing Into the Third Millennium (1994) (Cassette) (Re-issued on CD as The Quintessential Hallucinogen) ACE
Packing For the Long Strange Trip (1994) (Cassette) ACE
Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell, broadcast on May 22, 1997, Five hour interview covering various topics
Global Perspectives and Psychedelic Poetics (1994) (Cassette) Sound Horizons Audio-Video, Inc.
The Search for the Original Tree of Knowledge (1992) (Cassette) Sounds True
[edit]
Discography
Re : Evolution with The Shamen (1992)
Alien Dreamtime with Spacetime Continuum & Stephen Kent (Magic Carpet Media) (DVD)
2009 - Cognition Factor (2009)
[edit]
See also
Dominator culture
Ethnomycology
Exopheromone
List of notable brain tumor patients
Machine Elf
Wade Davis
[edit]
References
^ McKenna, Terrence (1992). The Archaic Revival. Harper Collins Publishers. p. 12. ISBN 9780062506149.
^ Watkins, Matthew. "Autopsy for a Mathematical Hallucination?".
^ a b c d Terence McKenna Interview, Part 1. Tripzine.com. Accessed on April 26, 2007.
^ McKenna, Terence. "Under The Teaching Tree" Ojai Foundation, Upper Ojai, California (Unknown (1985)).
^ Erowid Terence McKenna Vault: The High Times Interview. Accessed on April 26, 2007.
^ "Terence McKenna, 53, Dies; Patron of Psychedelics". Cannabis News. 2000-04-09.
^ a b c d True Hallucinations: Being an Account of the Author's Extraordinary Adventures in the Devil's Paradise. Terence McKenna, 1993.
^ a b "The Invisible Landscape (lecture)". Terence Mckenna.
^ Introduction by Timothy Leary to "Unfolding the Stone" lecture by Terence McKenna
^ Terence McKenna. (1993-09-11). This World...and Its Double. Mill Valley, California: Sound Photosynthesis.
^ Tripping: An Anthology of True-Life Psychedelic Adventures by Charles Hayes. Accessed on April 26, 2007.
^ "Twin Peaks (1990) - Trivia". IMDB.
^ Wired 8.05: Terence McKenna's Last Trip
^ Terence McKenna Vs. the Black Hole: by Erik Davis
^ McKenna, Terence (May 1990). "Time and Mind". - Partial transcription of a taped workshop held in New Mexico. The Deoxyribonucleic Hyperdimension (deoxy.org).
^ "Surfing Finnegans Wake". Terence Mckenna.
^ Stoned Ape Theory Part One of Two Lecture Audio
^ Fischer, Roland & Richard M. Hill - "Interpretation of visual space under drug-induced ergotropic and trophotropic arousal" - Journal: Inflammation Research Issue Volume 2, Number 3 / November, 1971 (Publisher Birkhäuser Basel) ISSN 1023-3830 (Print) 1420-908X (Online), PDF
^ Fischer, Roland & R. Hill, K. Thatcher & J. Scheib - "Psilocybin-induced contraction of nearby visual space" - Journal Inflammation Research Issue, Volume 1, Number 4 / August, 1970 (Publisher Birkhäuser Basel) ISSN 1023-3830 (Print) 1420-908X (Online) PDF
^ Fischer, Roland L. (Ph.D.) "The Realities of Hallucinogenic Drugs: A Compendium" - Criminology, Volume 4 Issue 3 Page 2-15, November 1966 (Blackwell Publishing Ltd) PDF
^ Fischer, Roland L. (Ph.D.) - "A Cartography of the Ecstatic and Meditative States" - Science, November 26th, 1971 link PDF
^ Whitehead, Alfred North ♦ Process and Reality Simon and Schuster, 1979, p. 21
^ Novelty & Concrescence A page from Terence McKenna's website ♦ "I have elaborated Whitehead's notion of novelty into a formal mathematical speculation concerning the fundamental architecture of time."
[edit]
External links Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Terence McKenna
Novelty theory
Terence McKenna Land at Deoxy.org
Terence McKenna at Levity.com
Terence McKenna Bibliography
Erowid's Terence McKenna Vault
Orichalcum Workshop (hun)
Botanical Dimensions
Rotten.com bio
FloatingWorldWeb's McKenna Pages
Terence McKenna's Last Trip 2000 Wired Magazine article by Erik Davis
"Mind contagions" (2001) at disinfo.com
Psychedelics, Evolution & Fun 2008 essay by Patrick Lundborg
McKenna's Timewave Zero analysis in R-Environment by Mariano Tomatis
Machine Elves 101, or Why Terence McKenna Matters - Reallity Sandwish by Daniel Moler
[edit]
Writings online
DataChurch Library of McKenna Media (click on People >Terence McKenna)
[edit]
Audio and video resources
Audio and video archive at Deoxy.org
Terence McKenna media archive at EROCx1.com
Terence McKenna Audio Archive - Lectures and Public Talks
FutureHi.net MP3 Downloads - Terence McKenna, Albert Hoffman, Robert Anton Wilson, and more
McKenna at the 1999 Entheobotany Seminar - Audio Podcast
Psychedelics in the Age of Intelligent Machines - Video samples from the 1999 DVD
McKenna Video on FloatingWorldWeb - McKenna Video Portal
Over 100 podcasts of Terence McKenna talks - Audio Podcast
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
For the Canadian documentary filmmaker, see Terence McKenna (film producer). This article may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards. Please improve this article if you can. The talk page may contain suggestions. (November 2010)
This article includes a list of references, but its sources remain unclear because it has insufficient inline citations.
Please help to improve this article by introducing more precise citations where appropriate. (November 2010)
Terence Kemp McKennaFull name Terence Kemp McKenna
Born November 16, 1946
Paonia, Colorado, United States
Died April 3, 2000 (aged 53)
San Rafael, California, United States
Era 20th century philosophy
Region Western Philosophy
School Metaphysics, phenomenology
Main interests shamanism, ethnobotany, metaphysics, psychedelic drugs and plants, futurism, primitivism, environmentalism, consciousness, phenomenology, historical revisionism, evolution, ontology, Mind at Large, virtual reality, dominator culture, criticizing science, the Logos
Notable ideas novelty theory, "stoned ape" hypothesis, Machine elf, psychedelic exopheromones, the "felt presence of direct experience"
Influenced by[show]
Terence Kemp McKenna (November 16, 1946 April 3, 2000) was an American writer mainly on the subject of psychedelic drugs and their role in society, and existence beyond the physical body. He was also a public speaker, psychonaut, ethnobotanist, art historian, and self-described anarchist, anti-materialist, environmentalist, feminist, Platonist and skeptic.[1] During his lifetime he was noted for his knowledge of psychedelics, metaphysics, plant-based entheogens, shamanism, mysticism, Hermeticism, Neoplatonism, biology, geology, physics, phenomenology, and his concept of novelty theory.[2]Contents [hide]
1 Biography
1.1 Early life
1.2 Adult life
1.3 Last interview
1.4 Death
1.5 The library fire
2 Ideas
2.1 The "Stoned Ape" hypothesis of human evolution
2.2 Novelty theory
3 Bibliography
4 Spoken word
5 Discography
6 See also
7 References
8 External links
8.1 Writings online
8.2 Audio and video resources
[edit]
Biography
[edit]
Early life
Terence McKenna grew up in Paonia, Colorado.[3] He was introduced to geology through his uncle and developed a hobby of solitary fossil hunting in the arroyos near his home.[4] From this he developed a deep artistic and scientific appreciation of nature.
At age 16, McKenna moved to, and attended high school in, Los Altos, California.[3] He lived with family friends because his parents in Colorado wished him to have the benefit of highly rated California public schools. He was introduced to psychedelics through The Doors of Perception by Aldous Huxley[3] and the Village Voice.[5]
One of his early experiences with them came through morning glory seeds (containing LSA), which he claimed showed him "that there was something there worth pursuing."[3]
In 1964, circumstances required McKenna to move to Lancaster, California, to live with a different set of family friends. In 1965, he graduated from Antelope Valley High School.
McKenna then enrolled in U.C. Berkeley. He moved to San Francisco during the summer of 1965 before his classes began, was introduced that year to cannabis by Barry Melton[6] and tried LSD soon after.
As a freshman at U.C. Berkeley McKenna participated in the Tussman Experimental College, a short-lived two-year program on the Berkeley campus. He graduated in 1969 with a Bachelor of Science degree in Ecology and Conservation.
[edit]
Adult life
He spent the years after his graduation teaching English in Japan, traveling through India and South Asia collecting butterflies for biological supply companies.[7]
Following the death of his mother in 1971, Terence, his brother Dennis, and three friends traveled to the Colombian Amazon in search of oo-koo-hé, a plant preparation containing DMT. Instead of oo-koo-hé they found various forms of ayahuasca (also known as "yagé") and gigantic psilocybe cubensis which became the new focus of the expedition.[7] In La Chorrera, at the urging of his brother, he allowed himself to be the subject of a psychedelic experiment which he claimed put him in contact with Logos: an informative, divine voice he believed was universal to visionary religious experience.[7] The revelations of this voice, and his brother's peculiar experience during the experiment, prompted him to explore the structure of an early form of the I Ching, which led to his "Novelty Theory".[7] These ideas were explored extensively by Terence and Dennis in their 1975 book The Invisible Landscape - Mind Hallucinogens and The I Ching.
In the early 1980s, McKenna began to speak publicly on the topic of psychedelic drugs, lecturing extensively and conducting weekend workshops. Though somewhat associated with the New Age or human potential movement, McKenna himself had little patience for New Age sensibilities, repeatedly stressing the importance and primacy of felt experience as opposed to dogmatic ideologies.[8] Timothy Leary once introduced him as "one of the five or six most important people on the planet".[9]" It's clearly a crisis of two things: of consciousness and conditioning. These are the two things that the psychedelics attack. We have the technological power, the engineering skills to save our planet, to cure disease, to feed the hungry, to end war; But we lack the intellectual vision, the ability to change our minds. We must decondition ourselves from 10,000 years of bad behavior. And, it's not easy. "
Terence McKenna, "This World...and Its Double", [10]
He soon became a fixture of popular counterculture, and his popularity continued to grow, culminating in the early to mid 1990's with the publication of several books such as True Hallucinations (which relates the tale of his 1971 experience at La Chorrera), Food of the Gods and The Archaic Revival. He became a popular personality in the psychedelic rave/dance scene of the early 1990s, with frequent spoken word performances at raves and contributions to psychedelic and goa trance albums by The Shamen, Spacetime Continuum, Alien Project, Capsula, Entheogenic, Zuvuya, Shpongle, and Shakti Twins. His speeches were (and continue to be) sampled by many others. In 1994 he appeared as a speaker at the Starwood Festival, which was documented in the book Tripping by Charles Hayes (his lectures were produced on both cassette tape and CD).[11]
McKenna was a contemporary and colleague of chaos mathematician Ralph Abraham and biologist Rupert Sheldrake (creator of the theory of "morphogenetic fields", not to be confused with the mainstream usage of the same term), and conducted several public debates known as trialogues with them, from the late 1980s up until his death. Books which contained transcriptions of some of these events were published. He was also a friend and associate of Ralph Metzner, Nicole Maxwell, and Riane Eisler, participating in joint workshops and symposia with them. He was a personal friend of Tom Robbins, and influenced the thought of numerous scientists, writers, artists, and entertainers, including comedian Bill Hicks, whose routines concerning psychedelic drugs drew heavily from McKenna's works. He is also the inspiration for the Twin Peaks character Dr. Jacoby.[12]
In addition to psychedelic drugs, McKenna spoke on the subjects of virtual reality (which he saw as a way to artistically communicate the experience of psychedelics), techno-paganism, artificial intelligence, evolution, extraterrestrials, and aesthetic theory (art/visual experience as information-- representing the significance of hallucinatory visions experienced under the influence of psychedelics).
McKenna also co-founded Botanical Dimensions with Kathleen Harrison (his colleague and wife of 17 years), a non-profit ethnobotanical preserve on the island of Hawaii, where he lived for many years before he died. Before moving to Hawaii permanently, McKenna split his time between Hawaii and a town called Occidental, located in the redwood-studded hills of Sonoma County, California, a town unique for its high concentration of artistic notables, including Tom Waits and Mickey Hart.
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Last interview
Erik Davis, author of the book TechGnosis, conducted what would be the last interview with McKenna in October and early November 1999. This interview was held in preparation for a profile featured in Wired Magazine in 2000, entitled "Terence McKenna's Last Trip."[13] Erik Davis later published larger excerpts from this interview at his site, techgnosis.com, and the recorded interview has also been released on CD. Commenting on the reality of his own death, McKenna said during the interview:"
I always thought death would come on the freeway in a few horrifying moments, so you'd have no time to sort it out. Having months and months to look at it and think about it and talk to people and hear what they have to say, it's a kind of blessing. It's certainly an opportunity to grow up and get a grip and sort it all out. Just being told by an unsmiling guy in a white coat that you're going to be dead in four months definitely turns on the lights. ... It makes life rich and poignant. When it first happened, and I got these diagnoses, I could see the light of eternity, a la William Blake, shining through every leaf. I mean, a bug walking across the ground moved me to tears.[14] "
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Death
A longtime sufferer of migraines, in mid-1999 McKenna returned to his home on the big island of Hawaii after a long lecturing tour. He began to suffer from increasingly painful headaches. This culminated in three brain seizures in one night, which he claimed were the most powerful psychedelic experiences he had ever known. Upon his emergency trip to the hospital on Oahu, Terence was diagnosed with glioblastoma multiforme, a highly aggressive form of brain cancer. For the next several months he underwent various treatments, including experimental gamma knife radiation treatment. He died on April 3, 2000, at the age of 53, with his loved ones at his bedside. He is survived by his brother Dennis, his son Finn, and his daughter Klea.
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The library fire
On February 7, 2007, McKenna's library of rare books and personal notes was destroyed in a fire which burned offices belonging to Big Sur's Esalen Institute storing the collection. An index maintained by his brother Dennis survives, though little else.
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Ideas" There are these things, which I call "self transforming machine elves," I also call them self-dribbling basketballs. They are, but they are none of these things. I mean you have to understand: these are metaphors in the truest sense, meaning that they're lies! [...] I name them 'Tykes' because tyke is a word that means to me a small child, ... and when you burst into the DMT space this is the Aeon - it's a child, and it's at play with colored balls, and I am in eternity, apparently, in the presence of this thing. "
Terence McKenna, "Time and Mind", [15]
Terence McKenna advocated the exploration of altered states of mind via the ingestion of naturally occurring psychedelic substances. For example, and in particular, as facilitated by the ingestion of high doses of psychedelic mushrooms, and DMT, which he believed was the apotheosis of the psychedelic experience. He spoke of the "jeweled, self-dribbling basketballs" or "self-transforming machine elves" that one encounters in that state.
Although he avoided giving his allegiance to any one interpretation (part of his rejection of monotheism), he was open to the idea of psychedelics as being "trans-dimensional travel"; literally, enabling an individual to encounter what could be ancestors, or spirits of earth.[8] He remained opposed to most forms of organized religion or guru-based forms of spiritual awakening.
Either philosophically or religiously, he expressed admiration for Marshall McLuhan, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Gnostic Christianity, Alfred North Whitehead and Alchemy.
He also expressed admiration for the works of James Joyce (calling Finnegans Wake "the quintessential work of art, or at least work of literature of the 20th century")[16] and Vladimir Nabokov: McKenna once said that he would have become a Nabokov lecturer if he never met psychedelics.
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The "Stoned Ape" hypothesis of human evolution
McKenna hypothesized[citation needed] that as the North African jungles receded and gave way to savannas and grasslands near the end of the most recent ice age, a branch of our tree-dwelling primate ancestors left the forest canopy and began to live in the open areas outside of the forest. There they experimented with new varieties of foods as they adapted, physically and mentally, to their new environment. McKenna also called last glacial period hominids "fruit eating" in what he calls a gender-equal "paradise [...] the golden age of humanity" that he dated as ending 10,000 years ago.[17] However, the most recent ice age, also known as the Last glacial period that stretched from 110,000 years ago to 10,000 years ago, when meat-eating, biologically evolved Homo-Sapiens were already in Europe. Capability for language, present in the human FOXP2 gene was already developed.[citation needed]
According to McKenna's hypothesis, among the new food items found in this new environment were psilocybin-containing mushrooms growing near the dung of ungulate herds that occupied the savannas and grasslands at that time. To support this hypothesis, McKenna referenced the research of Roland L. Fisher.[citation needed] The cited work by Fischer does not mention paleo-anthropology, Africa, or the ice ages.[18][19][20][21] Echoing Fisher on the effects of psychedelics, McKenna claimed that enhancement of visual acuity was an effect of psilocybin at low doses, and supposed that this would have conferred an adaptive advantage. He also argued that the effects of slightly larger doses, including sexual arousal, and in still larger doses, ecstatic hallucinations and glossolalia gave selective evolutionary advantages to members of those tribes who partook of it. There were many changes caused by the introduction of this psychoactive mushroom to the primate diet. McKenna hypothesizes, for instance, that synesthesia (the blurring of boundaries between the senses) caused by psilocybin led to the development of spoken language: the ability to form pictures in another person's mind through the use of vocal sounds.
About 12,000 years ago, further climate changes removed psilocybin-containing mushrooms from the human diet.[citation needed] McKenna argued that this event resulted in a new set of profound changes in our species as we reverted to the previous brutal primate social structures that had been modified and/or repressed by frequent consumption of psilocybin.
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Novelty theory
One of McKenna's favourite topics is Alfred North Whitehead's process philosophy, according to which, the universe progresses from the entropy-dominated state of disorganized complexity to the information-dominated state of organized complexity:[22][23]
...the story of the universe is that information, which I call novelty, is struggling to free itself from habit, which I call entropy... and that this process... is accelerating... It seems as if... the whole cosmos wants to change into information... All points want to become connected... The path of complexity to its goals is through connecting things together... You can imagine that there is an ultimate end-state of that processit's the moment when every point in the universe is connected to every other point in the universe.
McKenna, Terence ♦ A workshop held in the summer of 1998
Entropy (disgregation) is the particle-like aspect of the universe. Information is the universe's wave-like aspect. In its wave-like phase, a quantum does not have a spatial position and exists as an omnipresent momentum identical with time itself:
The imagination is a dimension of nonlocal information.
McKenna, Terence ♦ A Few Conclusions About Life
In sleep, one is released into the real world, of which the world of waking is only the surface in a very literal geometric sense. There is a plenumrecent experiments in quantum physics tend to back this upa holographic plenum of information. All information is everywhere. Information that is not here is nowhere. Information stands outside of time in a kind of eternityan eternity that does not have a temporal existence about which one may say, "It always existed." It does not have temporal duration of any sort. It is eternity. We are not primarily biological, with mind emerging as a kind of iridescence, a kind of epiphenomenon at the higher levels of organization of biology. We are hyperspatial objects of some sort that cast a shadow into matter. The shadow in matter is our physical organism.
McKenna, Terence ♦ New Maps of Hyperspace
The higher the organized complexity of a particle aggregate, the more pronounced its wave-like component:
I've always felt that biology is a strategy, a chemical strategy, for amplifying quantum-mechanical indeterminacy into macrophysical systems called living organisms, and that living organisms somehow work their magic by opening a doorway to the quantum realm through which indeterminacy can come. And I imagine that all nature works like this, with the single exception of human beings, who have been poisoned by language.
McKenna, Terence ♦ Hazelwood House Trialogue
Just like most of us enjoy a much closer relationship with our television sets than we do with our neighbours, parts of the universe become nonlocally interconnected not directly but through the Earth's biosphere, which acts as the informational hub (due to its amplified virtual, wave-like componentinformation). When the Earth's biosphere will have accumulated the critical amount of information, the universe will become sufficiently interconnected to turn into a reality-warping Elysium. The hyperspace of the universe's nonlocal information (the "superconducting Overmind") is, by definition, in a single quantum state; in order to fuse with that single quantum state and attain absolute psychokinetic control over the universe, the human species needs to become genetically singular by being reduced to a single couple of the most imaginative people, whose tantric union is the ultimate goal of the universe's existencethe Eschaton:
What is happening to our world is ingression of novelty toward what Whitehead called "concrescence," a tightening gyre. Everything is flowing together. The "autopoetic lapis," the alchemical stone at the end of time, coalesces when everything flows together. When the laws of physics are obviated, the universe disappears, and what is left is the tightly bound plenum, the monad, able to express itself for itself, rather than only able to cast a shadow into physis as its reflection. I come very close here to classical millenarian and apocalyptic thought in my view of the rate at which change is accelerating. From the way the gyre is tightening, I predict that the concrescence will occur soonaround 2012 AD. It will be the entry of our species into hyperspace, but it will appear to be the end of physical laws accompanied by the release of the mind into the imagination. <...> The transition from earth to space will be a staggeringly tight genetic filter, a much tighter filter than any previous frontier has ever been, including the genetic and demographic filter represented by the colonization of the New World. <...> The object at the end of and beyond history is the human species fused into eternal tantric union with the superconducting Overmind/UFO.
McKenna, Terence ♦ New Maps of Hyperspace
According to McKenna, the final period of the universe's informational evolution began on 6 August 1945 and will end with a point of "maximized novelty" by 22 December 2012:
I've been talking about it since 1971, and what's interesting to me is at the beginning, it was material for hospitalization, now it is a minority viewpoint and everything is on schedule. My career is on schedule, the evolution of cybernetic technology is on schedule, the evolution of a global information network is on schedule. Given this asymptotic curve, I think we'll arrive under budget, on time, December 22, 2012.
McKenna, Terence ♦ Approaching Timewave Zero November 1994
See also:
Omega Point
2012 phenomena
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Bibliography
1975 - The Invisible Landscape: Mind, Hallucinogens, and the I Ching (with Dennis McKenna) (Seabury; 1st Ed) ISBN 0-8164-9249-2.
1976 - The Invisible Landscape (with Dennis McKenna, and Quinn Taylor) (Scribner) ISBN 0-8264-0122-8
1976 - Psilocybin - Magic Mushroom Grower's Guide (with Dennis McKenna: credited under the pseudonyms OT Oss and ON Oeric) (2nd edition 1986) (And/Or Press) ISBN 0-915904-13-6
1992 - Psilocybin - Magic Mushroom Grower's Guide (with Dennis McKenna: (credited under the pseudonyms OT Oss and ON Oeric) (Quick American Publishing Company; Revised edition) ISBN 0-932551-06-8
1992 - The Archaic Revival (HarperSanFrancisco; 1st edition) ISBN 0-06-250613-7
1992 - Food of the Gods: The Search for the Original Tree of Knowledge - A Radical History of Plants, Drugs, and Human Evolution (Bantam) ISBN 0-553-37130-4
1992 - Synesthesia (with Timothy C. Ely) (Granary Books 1st Ed) ISBN 1-887123-04-0
1992 - Trialogues at the Edge of the West: Chaos, Creativity, and the Resacralization of the World (with Ralph H. Abraham, Rupert Sheldrake and Jean Houston) (Bear & Company Publishing 1st Ed) ISBN 0-939680-97-1
1993 - True Hallucinations: Being an Account of the Author's Extraordinary Adventures in the Devil's Paradise (HarperSanFrancisco 1st Ed) ISBN 0-06-250545-9
1994 - The Invisible Landscape (HarperSanFrancisco; Reprint edition) ISBN 0-06-250635-8
1998 - True Hallucinations & the Archaic Revival: Tales and Speculations About the Mysteries of the Psychedelic Experience (Fine Communications/MJF Books) (Hardbound) ISBN 1-56731-289-6
1998 - The Evolutionary Mind : Trialogues at the Edge of the Unthinkable (with Rupert Sheldrake and Ralph H. Abraham) (Trialogue Press; 1st Ed) ISBN 0-942344-13-8
1999 - Food of the Gods: A Radical History of Plants, Drugs, and Human Evolution (Rider & Co; New edition) ISBN 0-7126-7038-6
1999 - Robert Venosa: Illuminatus (with Robert Venosa, Ernst Fuchs, H. R. Giger, and Mati Klarwein) (Craftsman House) ISBN 90-5703-272-4
2001 - Chaos, Creativity, and Cosmic Consciousness (with Rupert Sheldrake and Ralph H. Abraham) (Park Street Press; revised ed) ISBN 0-89281-977-4 (Revised edition of Trialogues at the Edge of the West)
2005 - The Evolutionary Mind: Trialogues on Science, Spirit & Psychedelics (Monkfish Book Publishing; Revised Ed) ISBN 0-9749359-7-2
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Spoken word
TechnoPagans at the End of History (transcription of rap with Mark Pesce from 1998)
Psychedelics in the Age of Intelligent Machines (1999) 90 minutes video
Alien Dreamtime with Spacetime Continuum & Stephen Kent (Magic Carpet Media) (CD) video
Conversations on the Edge of Magic (1994) (CD & Cassette) ACE
Rap-Dancing Into the Third Millennium (1994) (Cassette) (Re-issued on CD as The Quintessential Hallucinogen) ACE
Packing For the Long Strange Trip (1994) (Cassette) ACE
Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell, broadcast on May 22, 1997, Five hour interview covering various topics
Global Perspectives and Psychedelic Poetics (1994) (Cassette) Sound Horizons Audio-Video, Inc.
The Search for the Original Tree of Knowledge (1992) (Cassette) Sounds True
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Discography
Re : Evolution with The Shamen (1992)
Alien Dreamtime with Spacetime Continuum & Stephen Kent (Magic Carpet Media) (DVD)
2009 - Cognition Factor (2009)
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See also
Dominator culture
Ethnomycology
Exopheromone
List of notable brain tumor patients
Machine Elf
Wade Davis
[edit]
References
^ McKenna, Terrence (1992). The Archaic Revival. Harper Collins Publishers. p. 12. ISBN 9780062506149.
^ Watkins, Matthew. "Autopsy for a Mathematical Hallucination?".
^ a b c d Terence McKenna Interview, Part 1. Tripzine.com. Accessed on April 26, 2007.
^ McKenna, Terence. "Under The Teaching Tree" Ojai Foundation, Upper Ojai, California (Unknown (1985)).
^ Erowid Terence McKenna Vault: The High Times Interview. Accessed on April 26, 2007.
^ "Terence McKenna, 53, Dies; Patron of Psychedelics". Cannabis News. 2000-04-09.
^ a b c d True Hallucinations: Being an Account of the Author's Extraordinary Adventures in the Devil's Paradise. Terence McKenna, 1993.
^ a b "The Invisible Landscape (lecture)". Terence Mckenna.
^ Introduction by Timothy Leary to "Unfolding the Stone" lecture by Terence McKenna
^ Terence McKenna. (1993-09-11). This World...and Its Double. Mill Valley, California: Sound Photosynthesis.
^ Tripping: An Anthology of True-Life Psychedelic Adventures by Charles Hayes. Accessed on April 26, 2007.
^ "Twin Peaks (1990) - Trivia". IMDB.
^ Wired 8.05: Terence McKenna's Last Trip
^ Terence McKenna Vs. the Black Hole: by Erik Davis
^ McKenna, Terence (May 1990). "Time and Mind". - Partial transcription of a taped workshop held in New Mexico. The Deoxyribonucleic Hyperdimension (deoxy.org).
^ "Surfing Finnegans Wake". Terence Mckenna.
^ Stoned Ape Theory Part One of Two Lecture Audio
^ Fischer, Roland & Richard M. Hill - "Interpretation of visual space under drug-induced ergotropic and trophotropic arousal" - Journal: Inflammation Research Issue Volume 2, Number 3 / November, 1971 (Publisher Birkhäuser Basel) ISSN 1023-3830 (Print) 1420-908X (Online), PDF
^ Fischer, Roland & R. Hill, K. Thatcher & J. Scheib - "Psilocybin-induced contraction of nearby visual space" - Journal Inflammation Research Issue, Volume 1, Number 4 / August, 1970 (Publisher Birkhäuser Basel) ISSN 1023-3830 (Print) 1420-908X (Online) PDF
^ Fischer, Roland L. (Ph.D.) "The Realities of Hallucinogenic Drugs: A Compendium" - Criminology, Volume 4 Issue 3 Page 2-15, November 1966 (Blackwell Publishing Ltd) PDF
^ Fischer, Roland L. (Ph.D.) - "A Cartography of the Ecstatic and Meditative States" - Science, November 26th, 1971 link PDF
^ Whitehead, Alfred North ♦ Process and Reality Simon and Schuster, 1979, p. 21
^ Novelty & Concrescence A page from Terence McKenna's website ♦ "I have elaborated Whitehead's notion of novelty into a formal mathematical speculation concerning the fundamental architecture of time."
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External links Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Terence McKenna
Novelty theory
Terence McKenna Land at Deoxy.org
Terence McKenna at Levity.com
Terence McKenna Bibliography
Erowid's Terence McKenna Vault
Orichalcum Workshop (hun)
Botanical Dimensions
Rotten.com bio
FloatingWorldWeb's McKenna Pages
Terence McKenna's Last Trip 2000 Wired Magazine article by Erik Davis
"Mind contagions" (2001) at disinfo.com
Psychedelics, Evolution & Fun 2008 essay by Patrick Lundborg
McKenna's Timewave Zero analysis in R-Environment by Mariano Tomatis
Machine Elves 101, or Why Terence McKenna Matters - Reallity Sandwish by Daniel Moler
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Writings online
DataChurch Library of McKenna Media (click on People >Terence McKenna)
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Audio and video resources
Audio and video archive at Deoxy.org
Terence McKenna media archive at EROCx1.com
Terence McKenna Audio Archive - Lectures and Public Talks
FutureHi.net MP3 Downloads - Terence McKenna, Albert Hoffman, Robert Anton Wilson, and more
McKenna at the 1999 Entheobotany Seminar - Audio Podcast
Psychedelics in the Age of Intelligent Machines - Video samples from the 1999 DVD
McKenna Video on FloatingWorldWeb - McKenna Video Portal
Over 100 podcasts of Terence McKenna talks - Audio Podcast
"Let me issue and control a nation's money and I care not who writes the laws. - Mayer Rothschild
"Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience! People are obedient in the face of poverty, starvation, stupidity, war, and cruelty. Our problem is that grand thieves are running the country. That's our problem!" - Howard Zinn
"If there is no struggle there is no progress. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and never will" - Frederick Douglass
"Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience! People are obedient in the face of poverty, starvation, stupidity, war, and cruelty. Our problem is that grand thieves are running the country. That's our problem!" - Howard Zinn
"If there is no struggle there is no progress. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and never will" - Frederick Douglass