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= Terence_McKenna =
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Introduction
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Terence Kemp McKenna (November 16, 1946 - April 3, 2000) was an
American ethnobotanist and mystic who advocated for the responsible
use of naturally occurring psychedelic plants and mushrooms. He spoke
and wrote about a variety of subjects, including psychedelic drugs,
plant-based entheogens, shamanism, metaphysics, alchemy, language,
philosophy, culture, technology, ethnomycology, environmentalism, and
the theoretical origins of human consciousness. He was called the
"Timothy Leary of the '90s", "one of the leading authorities on the
ontological foundations of shamanism", and the "intellectual voice of
rave culture". Critical reception of Terence McKenna’s work was deeply
polarized, with critics accusing him of promoting dangerous ideas and
questioning his sanity, while others praised his writing as
groundbreaking, humorous, and intellectually provocative.
Born in Colorado, he developed a fascination with nature, psychology,
and visionary experiences at a young age. His travels through Asia and
South America in the 1960s and ’70s shaped his theories on plant-based
psychedelics, particularly psilocybin mushrooms, which he helped
popularize through cultivation methods and writings. McKenna became a
countercultural icon in the 1980s and ’90s, delivering lectures on
psychedelics, language, and metaphysics while publishing influential
books and co-founding Botanical Dimensions in Hawaii. He died in 2000
from brain cancer.
Terence McKenna was a prominent advocate for the responsible use of
natural psychedelics--particularly psilocybin mushrooms, ayahuasca,
and DMT--which he believed enabled access to profound visionary
experiences, alternate dimensions, and communication with intelligent
entities. He opposed synthetic drugs and organized religion, favoring
shamanic traditions and direct, plant-based spiritual experiences.
McKenna speculated that psilocybin mushrooms might be intelligent
extraterrestrial life and proposed the controversial “stoned ape”
theory, arguing that psychedelics catalyzed human evolution, language,
and culture. His broader philosophy envisioned an “archaic revival” as
a healing response to the ills of modern civilization.
McKenna formulated a concept about the nature of time based on fractal
patterns he claimed to have discovered in the 'I Ching', which he
called novelty theory, proposing that this predicted the end of time,
and a transition of consciousness in the year 2012. His promotion of
novelty theory and its connection to the Maya calendar is credited as
one of the factors leading to the widespread beliefs about the 2012
phenomenon. Novelty theory is considered pseudoscience.
Early life
============
Terence McKenna was born and raised in Paonia, Colorado,
with Irish ancestry on his father's side of the family.
As a youth, McKenna had a hobby of fossil-hunting from which he
acquired a deep scientific appreciation of nature. At the age of 14,
he became interested in psychology after reading Carl Jung's book
'Psychology and Alchemy'. At the age of 14, McKenna first became
aware of magic mushrooms when he read the article "Seeking the Magic
Mushroom" from the May 13, 1957 edition of LIFE magazine. He began
smoking cannabis as a teenager.
At age 16 McKenna moved to Los Altos, California to live with family
friends for a year. He finished high school in Lancaster, California.
In 1963, he was introduced to the literary world of psychedelics
through 'The Doors of Perception' and 'Heaven and Hell' by Aldous
Huxley and certain issues of 'The Village Voice' which published
articles on psychedelics.
McKenna said that one of his early psychedelic experiences with
morning glory seeds showed him "that there was something there worth
pursuing."
Studying and traveling
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In 1965, McKenna enrolled in the University of California, Berkeley
and was accepted into the Tussman Experimental College. While in
college in 1967 he began studying shamanism through the study of
Tibetan folk religion. That same year, which he called his "opium and
kabbala phase", he traveled to Jerusalem where he met Kathleen
Harrison, an ethnobotanist who later became his wife.
In 1969, McKenna traveled to Nepal led by his interest in Tibetan
painting and hallucinogenic shamanism. He sought out shamans of the
Tibetan Bon tradition, trying to learn more about the shamanic use of
visionary plants. During his time there, he also studied the Tibetan
language and worked as a hashish smuggler, until "one of his
Bombay-to-Aspen shipments fell into the hands of U. S. Customs." He
then wandered through southeast Asia viewing ruins, and spent time as
a professional butterfly collector in Indonesia.
After his mother's death from cancer in 1970, McKenna, his brother
Dennis, and three friends traveled to the Colombian Amazon in search
of 'oo-koo-hé', a plant preparation containing dimethyltryptamine
(DMT). Instead of oo-koo-hé they found fields full of gigantic
'Psilocybe cubensis' mushrooms, which became the new focus of the
expedition. In La Chorrera, at the urging of his brother, McKenna was
the subject of a psychedelic experiment in which the brothers
attempted to "bond harmine DNA with their own neural DNA" (harmine is
another psychedelic compound they used synergistically with the
mushrooms), through the use of a set of specific vocal techniques.
They hypothesised this would give them access to the collective memory
of the human species, and would manifest the alchemists' Philosopher's
Stone which they viewed as a "hyperdimensional union of spirit and
matter". McKenna claimed the experiment put him in contact with
"Logos": an informative, divine voice he believed was universal to
visionary religious experience. McKenna also often referred to the
voice as "the mushroom", and "the teaching voice" amongst other names.
The voice's reputed revelations and his brother's simultaneous
peculiar psychedelic experience prompted him to explore the structure
of an early form of the 'I Ching', which led to his "Novelty Theory".
During their stay in the Amazon, McKenna also became romantically
involved with his interpreter, Ev.
In 1972, McKenna returned to U.C. Berkeley to finish his studies and
in 1975, he graduated with a degree in ecology, shamanism, and
conservation of natural resources. In the autumn of 1975, after
parting with his girlfriend Ev earlier in the year, McKenna began a
relationship with his future wife and the mother of his two children,
Kathleen Harrison.
Soon after graduating, McKenna and Dennis published a book inspired by
their Amazon experiences, 'The Invisible Landscape: Mind,
Hallucinogens and the I Ching'. The brothers' experiences in the
Amazon were the main focus of McKenna's book 'True Hallucinations',
published in 1993. McKenna also began lecturing locally around
Berkeley and started appearing on some underground radio stations.
Psilocybin mushroom cultivation
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McKenna, along with his brother Dennis, developed a technique for
cultivating psilocybin mushrooms using spores they brought to America
from the Amazon. In 1976, the brothers published what they had learned
in the book 'Psilocybin: Magic Mushroom Grower's Guide', under the
pseudonyms "O.T. Oss" and "O.N. Oeric". McKenna and his brother were
the first to come up with a reliable method for cultivating psilocybin
mushrooms at home. As ethnobiologist Jonathan Ott explains, "[the]
authors adapted San Antonio's technique (for producing edible
mushrooms by casing mycelial cultures on a rye grain substrate; San
Antonio 1971) to the production of 'Psilocybe [Stropharia] cubensis'.
The new technique involved the use of ordinary kitchen implements, and
for the first time the layperson was able to produce a potent
entheogen in his [or her] own home, without access to sophisticated
technology, equipment, or chemical supplies." When the 1986 revised
edition was published, the 'Magic Mushroom Grower's Guide' had sold
over 100,000 copies.
Public speaking
=================
In the early 1980s, McKenna began to speak publicly on the topic of
psychedelic drugs, becoming one of the pioneers of the psychedelic
movement. His main focus was on the naturally occurring psychedelics
such as psilocybin mushrooms (which were the catalyst for his career),
ayahuasca, cannabis, and the plant derivative DMT. He conducted
lecture tours and workshops promoting natural psychedelics as a way to
explore universal mysteries, stimulate the imagination, and
re-establish a harmonious relationship with nature. Though associated
with the New Age and Human Potential Movements, McKenna himself had
little patience for New Age sensibilities. He repeatedly stressed the
importance and primacy of the "felt presence of direct experience", as
opposed to dogma.
In addition to psychedelic drugs, McKenna spoke on a wide array of
subjects, including shamanism; metaphysics; alchemy; language;
culture; self-empowerment; environmentalism, techno-paganism;
artificial intelligence; evolution; extraterrestrials; science and
scientism; the Web; and virtual reality.
McKenna soon became a fixture of popular counterculture with Timothy
Leary once introducing him as "one of the five or six most important
people on the planet" and with comedian Bill Hicks' referencing him in
his stand-up act and building an entire routine around his ideas.
McKenna also 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. In 1994 he appeared
as a speaker at the Starwood Festival, documented in the book
'Tripping' by Charles Hayes.
McKenna published several books in the early-to-mid-1990s including:
'The Archaic Revival'; 'Food of the Gods'; and 'True Hallucinations'.
Hundreds of hours of McKenna's public lectures were recorded either
professionally or bootlegged and have been produced on cassette tape,
CD and MP3. Segments of his talks have gone on to be sampled by many
musicians and DJ's.
McKenna was a colleague and close friend of chaos mathematician Ralph
Abraham, and author and biologist Rupert Sheldrake. He conducted
several public and many private debates with them from 1982 until his
death. These debates were known as 'trialogues' and some of the
discussions were later published in the books: 'Trialogues at the Edge
of the West' and 'The Evolutionary Mind'.
Botanical Dimensions
======================
In 1985, McKenna founded Botanical Dimensions with his then-wife,
Kathleen Harrison. Botanical Dimensions is a nonprofit ethnobotanical
preserve on the Big Island of Hawaii, established to collect, protect,
propagate, and understand plants of ethno-medical significance and
their lore, and appreciate, study, and educate others about plants and
mushrooms felt to be significant to cultural integrity and spiritual
well-being. The 19 acre botanical garden is a repository containing
thousands of plants that have been used by indigenous people of the
tropical regions, and includes a database of information related to
their purported healing properties. McKenna was involved until 1992,
when he retired from the project, following his and Kathleen's divorce
earlier in the year. Kathleen still manages Botanical Dimensions as
its president and projects director.
After their divorce, McKenna moved to Hawaii permanently, where he
built a modernist house and created a gene bank of rare plants near
his home. Previously, he had split his time between Hawaii and
Occidental, CA.
Death
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McKenna was a longtime sufferer of migraines, but on 22 May 1999 he
began to have unusually extreme and painful headaches. He then
collapsed due to a seizure. McKenna 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. According to 'Wired' magazine,
McKenna was worried that his tumor may have been caused by his
psychedelic drug use, or his 35 years of daily cannabis smoking;
however, his doctors assured him there was no causal relation.
In late 1999, McKenna described his thoughts concerning his impending
death to interviewer Erik Davis:
McKenna died on April 3, 2000, at the age of 53.
Library fire and insect collection
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McKenna's library of over 3,000 rare books and personal notes was
destroyed in a fire in Monterey, California on February 7, 2007. An
index of McKenna's library was preserved by his brother Dennis.
McKenna studied Lepidoptera and entomology in the 1960s, and his
studies included hunting for butterflies, primarily in Colombia and
Indonesia, creating a large collection of insect specimens. After
McKenna's death, his daughter, the artist and photographer Klea
McKenna, preserved his insect collection, turning it into a gallery
installation, then publishing 'The Butterfly Hunter', a book of 122
insect photos from a set of over 2,000 specimens McKenna collected
between 1969 and 1972, alongside maps of his collecting routes through
rainforests in Southeast Asia and South America. McKenna's insect
collection was consistent with his interest in Victorian-era explorers
and naturalists, and his worldview based on close observation of
nature. In the 1970s, when he was still collecting, he became quite
squeamish and guilt-ridden about the necessity of killing butterflies
in order to collect and classify them, according to McKenna's
daughter, this led him to cease his entomological studies.
Psychedelics
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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, ayahuasca, and DMT, which he believed
was the apotheosis of the psychedelic experience.
He was less enthralled with synthetic drugs, stating, "I think drugs
should come from the natural world and be use-tested by shamanically
orientated cultures ... one cannot predict the long-term effects of a
drug produced in a laboratory."
McKenna always stressed the responsible use of psychedelic substances,
saying: "Experimenters should be very careful. One must build up to
the experience. These are bizarre dimensions of extraordinary power
and beauty. There is no set rule to avoid being overwhelmed, but move
carefully, reflect a great deal, and always try to map experiences
back onto the history of the race and the philosophical and religious
accomplishments of the species. All the compounds are potentially
dangerous, and all compounds, at sufficient doses or repeated over
time, involve risks. The library is the first place to go when looking
into taking a new compound."
He also recommended, and often spoke of taking, what he called "heroic
doses", which he defined as five grams of dried psilocybin mushrooms,
taken alone, on an empty stomach, in silent darkness, and with eyes
closed. He believed that when taken this way one could expect a
profound visionary experience, believing it is only when "slain" by
the power of the mushroom that the message becomes clear.
Although McKenna 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". He
proposed that DMT sent one to a "parallel dimension" and that
psychedelics literally enabled an individual to encounter "higher
dimensional entities", or what could be ancestors, or spirits of the
Earth, saying that if you can trust your own perceptions it appears
that you are entering an "ecology of souls". McKenna also put forward
the idea that psychedelics were "doorways into the Gaian mind",
suggesting that "the planet has a kind of intelligence, it can
actually open a channel of communication with an individual human
being" and that the psychedelic plants were the facilitators of this
communication.
Machine elves
===============
McKenna spoke of hallucinations while on DMT in which he met
intelligent entities he described as "self-transforming machine
elves".
Psilocybin panspermia speculation
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In a more radical version of biophysicist Francis Crick's hypothesis
of directed panspermia, McKenna speculated on the idea that psilocybin
mushrooms may be a species of high intelligence, which may have
arrived on this planet as spores migrating through space and which are
attempting to establish a symbiotic relationship with human beings. He
postulated that "intelligence, not life, but intelligence may have
come here [to Earth] in this spore-bearing life form". He said, "I
think that theory will probably be vindicated. I think in a hundred
years if people do biology they will think it quite silly that people
once thought that spores could not be blown from one star system to
another by cosmic radiation pressure," and also believed that "few
people are in a position to judge its extraterrestrial potential,
because few people in the orthodox sciences have ever experienced the
full spectrum of psychedelic effects that are unleashed".
Opposition to organized religion
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McKenna was opposed to Christianity and most forms of organized
religion or guru-based forms of spiritual awakening, favouring
shamanism, which he believed was the broadest spiritual paradigm
available, stating that:
What I think happened is that in the world of prehistory all religion
was experiential, and it was based on the pursuit of ecstasy through
plants. And at some time, very early, a group interposed itself
between people and direct experience of the 'Other.' This created
hierarchies, priesthoods, theological systems, castes, ritual, taboos.
Shamanism, on the other hand, is an experiential science that deals
with an area where we know nothing. It is important to remember that
our epistemological tools have developed very unevenly in the West. We
know a tremendous amount about what is going on in the heart of the
atom, but we know absolutely nothing about the nature of the mind.
Technological singularity
===========================
During the final years of his life and career, McKenna became very
engaged in the theoretical realm of technology. He was an early
proponent of the technological singularity and in his last recorded
public talk, 'Psychedelics in the age of intelligent machines', he
outlined ties between psychedelics, computation technology, and
humans. He also became enamored with the Internet, calling it "the
birth of [the] global mind", believing it to be a place where
psychedelic culture could flourish.
Admired writers
=================
Either philosophically or religiously, he expressed admiration for
Marshall McLuhan, Alfred North Whitehead, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin,
Carl Jung, Plato, Gnostic Christianity, and Alchemy, while regarding
the Greek philosopher Heraclitus as his favorite philosopher.
McKenna also expressed admiration for the works of writers Aldous
Huxley, James Joyce, whose book 'Finnegans Wake' he called "the
quintessential work of art, or at least work of literature of the 20th
century," science fiction writer Philip K. Dick, who he described as
an "incredible genius", fabulist Jorge Luis Borges, with whom McKenna
shared the belief that "scattered through the ordinary world there are
books and artifacts and perhaps people who are like doorways into
impossible realms, of impossible and contradictory truth" and Vladimir
Nabokov. McKenna once said that he would have become a Nabokov
lecturer if he had never encountered psychedelics.
==="Stoned ape" theory of human evolution ===
McKenna's hypothesis concerning the influence of psilocybin mushrooms
on human evolution is known as "the 'stoned ape' theory."
In his 1992 book 'Food of the Gods', McKenna proposed that the
transformation from humans' early ancestors 'Homo erectus' to the
species 'Homo sapiens' mainly involved the addition of the mushroom
'Psilocybe cubensis' in the diet, an event that according to his
theory took place about 100,000 BCE (when he believed humans diverged
from the genus 'Homo'). McKenna based his theory on the effects, or
alleged effects, produced by the mushroom while citing studies by
Roland Fischer et al. from the late 1960s to early 1970s.
McKenna stated that, due to the desertification of the African
continent at that time, human forerunners were forced from the
shrinking tropical canopy into search of new food sources. He believed
they would have been following large herds of wild cattle whose dung
harbored the insects that, he proposed, were undoubtedly part of their
new diet, and would have spotted and started eating 'Psilocybe
cubensis', a dung-loving mushroom often found growing out of cowpats.
McKenna's hypothesis was that low doses of psilocybin improve visual
acuity, particularly edge detection, meaning that the presence of
psilocybin in the diet of early pack hunting primates caused the
individuals who were consuming psilocybin mushrooms to be better
hunters than those who were not, resulting in an increased food supply
and in turn a higher rate of reproductive success. Then at slightly
higher doses, he contended, the mushroom acts to sexually arouse,
leading to a higher level of attention, more energy in the organism,
and potential erection in the males, rendering it even more
evolutionarily beneficial, as it would result in more offspring. At
even higher doses, McKenna proposed that the mushroom would have acted
to "dissolve boundaries", promoting community bonding and group sexual
activities. Consequently, there would be a mixing of genes, greater
genetic diversity, and a communal sense of responsibility for the
group offspring. At these higher doses, McKenna also argued that
psilocybin would be triggering activity in the "language-forming
region of the brain", manifesting as music and visions, thus
catalyzing the emergence of language in early hominids by expanding
"their arboreally evolved repertoire of troop signals". He also
pointed out that psilocybin would dissolve the ego and "religious
concerns would be at the forefront of the tribe's consciousness,
simply because of the power and strangeness of the experience itself."
According to McKenna, access to and ingestion of mushrooms was an
evolutionary advantage to humans' omnivorous hunter-gatherer
ancestors, also providing humanity's first religious impulse. He
believed that psilocybin mushrooms were the "evolutionary catalyst"
from which language, projective imagination, the arts, religion,
philosophy, science, and all of human culture sprang.
Criticism
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McKenna's "stoned ape" theory has not received attention from the
scientific community and has been criticized for a relative lack of
citation to any of the paleoanthropological evidence informing our
understanding of human origins. His ideas regarding psilocybin and
visual acuity have been criticized as misrepresentations of Fischer et
al.'s findings, who published studies of visual perception parameters
other than acuity. Criticism has also noted a separate study on
psilocybin-induced transformation of visual space, wherein Fischer et
al. stated that psilocybin "may not be conducive to the survival of
the organism". There is a lack of scientific evidence that psilocybin
increases sexual arousal, and even if it does, it would not
necessarily entail an evolutionary advantage. Others have pointed to
civilizations such as the Aztecs, who used psychedelic mushrooms (at
least among the Priestly class), that did not reflect McKenna's model
of how psychedelic-using cultures would behave, for example, by
carrying out human sacrifice. There are also examples of Amazonian
tribes such as the Jivaro and the Yanomami who use ayahuasca
ceremoniously and who are known to engage in violent behaviour. This,
it has been argued, indicates the use of psychedelic plants does not
necessarily suppress the ego and create harmonious societies.
Archaic revival
=================
One of the main themes running through McKenna's work, and the title
of his second book, was the idea that Western civilization was
undergoing what he called an "archaic revival".
His hypothesis was that Western society has become "sick" and is
undergoing a "healing process": In the same way that the human body
begins to produce antibodies when it feels itself to be sick, humanity
as a collective whole (in the Jungian sense) was creating "strategies
for overcoming the condition of disease" and trying to cure itself, by
what he termed as "a reversion to archaic values". McKenna pointed to
phenomena including surrealism, abstract expressionism, body piercing
and tattooing, psychedelic drug use, sexual permissiveness, jazz,
experimental dance, rave culture, rock and roll and catastrophe
theory, amongst others, as his evidence that this process was
underway. This idea is linked to McKenna's "stoned ape" theory of
human evolution, with him viewing the "archaic revival" as an impulse
to return to the symbiotic and blissful relationship he believed
humanity once had with the psilocybin mushroom.
In differentiating his idea from the "New Age", a term that he felt
trivialized the significance of the next phase in human evolution,
McKenna stated that: "The New Age is essentially humanistic psychology
'80s-style, with the addition of neo-shamanism, channeling, crystal
and herbal healing. The archaic revival is a much larger, more global
phenomenon that assumes that we are recovering the social forms of the
late neolithic, and reaches far back in the 20th century to Freud, to
surrealism, to abstract expressionism, even to a phenomenon like
National Socialism which is a negative force. But the stress on
ritual, on organized activity, on race/ancestor-consciousness - these
are themes that have been worked out throughout the entire 20th
century, and the archaic revival is an expression of that."
Novelty theory and Timewave Zero
==================================
Novelty theory is a pseudoscientific idea that purports to predict the
ebb and flow of novelty in the universe as an inherent quality of
time, proposing that time is not a constant but has various qualities
tending toward either "habit" or "novelty". Habit, in this context,
can be thought of as entropic, repetitious, or conservative; and
novelty as creative, disjunctive, or progressive phenomena. McKenna's
idea was that the universe is an engine designed for the production
and conservation of novelty and that as novelty increases, so does
complexity. With each level of complexity achieved becoming the
platform for a further ascent into complexity.
The basis of the theory was conceived in the mid-1970s after McKenna's
experiences with psilocybin mushrooms at La Chorrera in the Amazon led
him to closely study the King Wen sequence of the 'I Ching'.
In Asian Taoist philosophy, opposing phenomena are represented by the
yin and yang. Both are always present in everything, yet the amount of
influence of each varies over time. The individual lines of the 'I
Ching' are made up of both Yin (broken lines) and Yang (solid lines).
When examining the King Wen sequence of 64 hexagrams, McKenna noticed
a pattern. He analysed the "degree of difference" between the
hexagrams in each successive pair and claimed he found a statistical
anomaly, which he believed suggested that the King Wen sequence was
intentionally constructed, with the sequence of hexagrams ordered in a
highly structured and artificial way, and that this pattern codified
the nature of time's flow in the world. With the degrees of difference
as numerical values, McKenna worked out a mathematical wave form based
on the 384 lines of change that make up the 64 hexagrams. He was able
to graph the data and this became the 'Novelty Time Wave'.
Peter J. Meyer (Peter Johann Gustav Meyer), in collaboration with
McKenna, studied and developed novelty theory, working out a
mathematical formula and developing the 'Timewave Zero' software (the
original version of which was completed by July 1987), enabling them
to graph and explore its dynamics on a computer. The graph was
fractal: It exhibited a pattern in which a given small section of the
wave was found to be identical in form to a larger section of the
wave. McKenna called this fractal modeling of time "temporal
resonance", proposing it implied that larger intervals, occurring long
ago, contained the same amount of information as shorter, more recent,
intervals. He suggested the up-and-down oscillation of the wave shows
an ongoing wavering between habit and novelty respectively. With each
successive iteration trending, at an increasing level, towards
infinite novelty. So according to novelty theory, the pattern of time
itself is speeding up, with a requirement of the theory being that
infinite novelty will be reached on a specific date.
McKenna believed that events in history could be identified that would
help him locate the time wave end date and attempted to find the
best-fit of the graph to the data field of human history. The last
harmonic of the wave has a duration of 67.29 years. Population growth,
peak oil, and pollution statistics were some of the factors that
pointed him to an early twenty-first century end date and when looking
for a particularly novel event in human history as a signal that the
final phase had begun McKenna picked the dropping of the atomic bomb
on Hiroshima. This adjusted his graph to reach zero in mid-November
2012. When he later discovered that the end of the 13th baktun in the
Maya calendar had been correlated by Western Maya scholars as December
21, 2012, he adopted their end date instead.
McKenna saw the universe, in relation to novelty theory, as having a
teleological attractor at the end of time, which increases
interconnectedness and would eventually reach a singularity of
infinite complexity. He also frequently referred to this as "the
transcendental object at the end of time." When describing this model
of the universe he stated that: "The universe is not being pushed from
behind. The universe is being pulled from the future toward a goal
that is as inevitable as a marble reaching the bottom of a bowl when
you release it up near the rim. If you do that, you know the marble
will roll down the side of the bowl, down, down, down - until
eventually it comes to rest at the lowest energy state, which is the
bottom of the bowl. That's precisely my model of human history. I'm
suggesting that the universe is pulled toward a complex attractor that
exists ahead of us in time, and that our ever-accelerating speed
through the phenomenal world of connectivity and novelty is based on
the fact that we are now very, very close to the attractor."
Therefore, according to McKenna's final interpretation of the data and
positioning of the graph, on December 21, 2012, we would have been in
the unique position in time where maximum novelty would be
experienced. An event he described as a "concrescence", a "tightening
'gyre'" with everything flowing together. Speculating that "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...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."
Novelty theory is considered to be pseudoscience. Among the criticisms
are the use of numerology to derive dates of important events in world
history, the arbitrary rather than calculated end date of the time
wave and the apparent adjustment of the eschaton from November 2012 to
December 2012 in order to coincide with the Maya calendar. Other
purported dates do not fit the actual time frames: the date claimed
for the emergence of 'Homo sapiens' is inaccurate by 70,000 years, and
the existence of the ancient Sumer and Egyptian civilisations
contradict the date he gave for the beginning of "historical time".
Some projected dates have been criticized for having seemingly
arbitrary labels, such as the "height of the age of mammals" and
McKenna's analysis of historical events has been criticised for having
a eurocentric and cultural bias.
The Watkins Objection
=======================
The British mathematician Matthew Watkins of Exeter University
conducted a mathematical analysis of the 'Time Wave', and claimed
there were mathematical flaws in its construction.
Critical reception
======================================================================
Judy Corman, vice president of the Phoenix House of New York, attacked
McKenna for popularizing "dangerous substances". In a 1993 letter to
'The New York Times', he wrote that: "surely the fact that Terence
McKenna says that the psilocybin mushroom 'is the megaphone used by an
alien, intergalactic Other to communicate with mankind' is enough for
us to wonder if taking LSD has done something to his mental
faculties." The same year, in his 'True Hallucinations' review for
'The New York Times', Peter Conrad wrote: "I suffered hallucinatory
agonies of my own while reading his shrilly ecstatic prose".
Reviewing 'Food of the Gods', Richard Evans Schultes wrote in
'American Scientist' that the book was "a masterpiece of research and
writing" and that it "should be read by every specialist working in
the multifarious fields involved with the use of psychoactive drugs".
Concluding that, "[i]t is, without question, destined to play a major
role in our future considerations of the role of the ancient use of
psychoactive drugs, the historical shaping of our modern concerns
about drugs and perhaps about man's desire for escape from reality
with drugs."
In 1994, Tom Hodgkinson wrote for 'The New Statesman and Society',
that "to write him off as a crazy hippie is a rather lazy approach to
a man not only full of fascinating ideas but also blessed with a sense
of humor and self-parody".
In a 1992 issue of 'Esquire' magazine, Mark Jacobson wrote of 'True
Hallucinations' that, "it would be hard to find a drug narrative more
compellingly perched on a baroquely romantic limb than this passionate
Tom-and-Huck-ride-great-mother-river-saga of brotherly bonding,"
adding "put simply, Terence is a hoot!"
'Wired' called him a "charismatic talking head" who was "brainy,
eloquent, and hilarious", and Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead also
said that he was "the only person who has made a serious effort to
objectify the psychedelic experience".
Spoken word
=============
* 'History Ends in Green: Gaia, Psychedelics and the Archaic Revival',
6 audiocassette set, Mystic Fire audio, 1993, (recorded at the Esalen
Institute, 1989)
* 'TechnoPagans at the End of History' (transcription of rap with Mark
Pesce from 1998)
* 'Psychedelics in the Age of Intelligent Machines' (1999) (DVD)
HPX/SurrealStudio
* '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) (Audio Cassette) ACE
* 'Global Perspectives and Psychedelic Poetics' (1994) (Cassette)
Sound Horizons Audio-Video, Inc.
* 'The Search for the Original Tree of Knowledge' (1992) (Cassette)
Sounds True
* 'The Psychedelic Society' (DVD & Video Cassette) Sound
Photosynthesis
* 'True Hallucinations Workshop' (Audio/Video Cassette) Sound
Photosynthesis
* 'The Vertigo at History's Edge: Who Are We? Where Have We Come From?
Where Are We Going?' (DVD & Video/Audio Cassette) Sound
Photosynthesis
* 'Ethnobotany and Shamanism' (DVD & Video/Audio Cassette) Sound
Photosynthesis
* 'Shamanism, Symbiosis and Psychedelics Workshop' (Audio/Video
Cassette) Sound Photosynthesis
* 'Shamanology' (Audio Cassette) Sound Photosynthesis
* 'Shamanology of the Amazon (w/ Nicole Maxwell)' (Audio/Video
Cassette) Sound Photosynthesis
* 'Beyond Psychology' (1983) (Audio Cassette) Sound Photosynthesis
* 'Understanding & the Imagination in the Light of Nature Parts 1
& 2' (DVD & Video/Audio Cassette) Sound Photosynthesis
* 'Ethnobotany (a complete course given at The California Institute of
Integral Studies)' (Audio Cassette) Sound Photosynthesis
* 'Non-ordinary States of Reality Through Vision Plants' (Audio
Cassette) Sound Photosynthesis
* 'Mind & Time, Spirit & Matter: The Complete Weekend in Santa
Fe' (Audio/Video Cassette) Sound Photosynthesis
* 'Forms and Mysteries: Morphogenetic Fields and Psychedelic
Experiences (w/ Rupert Sheldrake)' (DVD & Video/Audio Cassette)
Sound Photosynthesis
* 'UFO: The Inside Outsider' (DVD & Video/Audio Cassette) Sound
Photosynthesis
* 'A Calendar for The Goddess' (DVD & Video/Audio Cassette) Sound
Photosynthesis
* 'A Magical Journey: Including Hallucinogens and Culture, Time and
The I Ching, and The Human Future' (Video Cassette) TAP/Sound
Photosynthesis
* 'Aliens and Archetypes' (Video Cassette) TAP/Sound Photosynthesis
* 'Angels, Aliens and Archetypes 1987 Symposium: Shamanic Approaches
to the UFO, and Fairmont Banquet Talk' (DVD & Video/Audio
Cassette) Sound Photosynthesis
* 'Botanical Dimensions' (Audio Cassette) Sound Photosynthesis
* 'Conference on Botanical Intelligence (w/ Joan Halifax, Andy Weil,
& Dennis McKenna)' (Audio Cassette) Sound Photosynthesis
* 'Coping With Gaia's Midwife Crisis' (Audio Cassette) Sound
Photosynthesis
* 'Dreaming Awake at the End of Time' (DVD & Video/Audio Cassette)
Sound Photosynthesis
* 'Evolving Times' (DVD, CD & Video/Audio Cassette) Sound
Photosynthesis
* 'Food of the Gods' (Audio/Video Cassette) Sound Photosynthesis
* 'Food of the Gods 2: Drugs, Plants and Destiny' (Video Cassette)
Sound Photosynthesis
* 'Hallucinogens in Shamanism & Anthropology at Bridge Psychedelic
Conf.1991 (w/ Ralph Metzner, Marlene Dobkin De Rios, Allison Kennedy
& Thomas Pinkson)' (Audio Cassette) Sound Photosynthesis
* 'Finale - Bridge Psychedelic Conf.1991' (Audio/Video Cassette) Sound
Photosynthesis
* 'Man and Woman at the End of History (w/ Riane Eisler)' (Audio
Cassette) Sound Photosynthesis
* 'Plants, Consciousness, and Transformation' (1995) (Audio Cassette)
Sound Photosynthesis
* 'Metamorphosis (w/ Rupert Sheldrake & Ralph Abraham)' (1995)
(Video Cassette) Mystic Fire/Sound Photosynthesis
* 'Nature is the Center of the Mandala' (Audio Cassette) Sound
Photosynthesis
* 'Opening the Doors of Creativity' (1990) (DVD & Video/Audio
Cassette) Sound Photosynthesis
* 'Places I Have Been' (CD & Audio Cassette) Sound Photosynthesis
* 'Plants, Visions and History Lecture' (Audio/Video Cassette) Sound
Photosynthesis
* 'Psychedelics Before and After History' (DVD & Video/Audio
Cassette) Sound Photosynthesis
* 'Sacred Plants As Guides: New Dimensions of the Soul (at the Jung
Society Clairemont, California)' (DVD & Video/Audio Cassette)
Sound Photosynthesis
* 'Seeking the Stone' (Video Cassette) Sound Photosynthesis
* 'Shamanism: Before and Beyond History - A Weekend at Ojai (w/ Ralph
Metzner)' (Audio/Video Cassette) Sound Photosynthesis
* 'Shedding the Monkey' (Audio Cassette) Sound Photosynthesis
* 'State of the Stone '95' (Audio Cassette) Sound Photosynthesis
* 'The Ethnobotany of Shamanism Introductory Lecture: The
Philosophical Implications of Psychobotony: Past, Present and Future
(at CIIS)' (Audio/Video Cassette) Sound Photosynthesis
* 'The Ethnobotany of Shamanism Workshop: Psychedelics Before and
After History (at CIIS)' (Audio Cassette) Sound Photosynthesis
* 'The Grammar of Ecstasy - the World Within the Word' (Audio
Cassette) Sound Photosynthesis
* 'The Light at the End of History' (Audio/Video Cassette) Sound
Photosynthesis
* 'The State of the Stone Address: Having Archaic and Eating it Too'
(Audio Cassette) Sound Photosynthesis
* 'The Taxonomy of Illusion (at UC Santa Cruz)' (DVD & Video/Audio
Cassette) Sound Photosynthesis
* 'This World ...and Its Double' (DVD & Video/Audio Cassette)
Sound Photosynthesis
* 'Trialogues at the Edge of the Millennium (w/ Rupert Sheldrake &
Ralph Abraham) (at UC Santa Cruz)' (1998) (Video Cassette) Trialogue
Press
Discography
=============
* 'Re : Evolution' with The Shamen (1992)
* 'Dream Matrix Telemetry' with Zuvuya (1993)
* 'Alien Dreamtime' with Spacetime Continuum & Stephen Kent (2003)
* "Reclaim Your Mind" with Mark Pontius (2020)
Filmography
=============
* 'Experiment at Petaluma' (1990)
* 'Prague Gnosis: Terence McKenna Dialogues' (1992)
* 'The Hemp Revolution' (1995)
* 'Terence McKenna: The Last Word' (1999)
* 'Shamans of the Amazon' (2001)
* 'Alien Dreamtime' (2003)
* '2012: The Odyssey' (2007)
* 'The Alchemical Dream: Rebirth of the Great Work' (2008)
* 'Manifesting the Mind' (2009)
* 'Cognition Factor' (2009)
* 'DMT: The Spirit Molecule' (2010)
* '2012: Time for Change' (2010)
* 'The Terence McKenna OmniBus' (2012)
* 'The Transcendental Object at the End of Time' (2014)
* 'Terence McKenna's True Hallucinations' (2016)
See also
======================================================================
* Benny Shanon
* David E. Nichols
* Jeremy Narby
* Jonathan Ott
* Luis Eduardo Luna
* Omega Point
* Rick Strassman
* Christian Rätsch
External links
======================================================================
*
* [
http://www.botanicaldimensions.org/ Botanical Dimensions]
*
* Erowid's
[
https://www.erowid.org/culture/characters/mckenna_terence/mckenna_terence.shtml
Terence McKenna Vault]
*
* [
https://psychedelicsalon.com/category/people/terence-mckenna/
Psychedelic Salon], Over 100 podcasts of Terence McKenna lectures
* [
https://www.vice.com/series/tao-of-terence Tao of Terence] , a
12-part series of essays on McKenna by Tao Lin at 'Vice'
* [
http://www.terencemckenna.com/tmbib/index.php Terence McKenna
Bibliography] , list of references to books, articles, audio, video,
interviews and translations by and about Terence McKenna
*
[
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8MG5gFtZ3U8&t=3293s&ab_channel=WePlantsAreHappyPlants/
'Terrence McKenna's True Hallucinations'] Documentary by Peter
Bergmann
* [
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aAlaRdrcQcY 'The Transcendental
Object At The End Of Time'] Documentary by Peter Bergmann
License
=========
All content on Gopherpedia comes from Wikipedia, and is licensed under CC-BY-SA
License URL:
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
Original Article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terence_McKenna
