, historical revisionism , evolution , ontology , virtual reality

Significant Ideas:

Biography

early years

Terence Kemp McKenna was born in Paonia, Colorado, USA. As a child, he received knowledge of the basics of geology from his uncle, doing as a hobby searching for the remains of fossil animals in ravines and gullies not far from home. Due to poor eyesight and poor health most spent his childhood alone. At the age of 16, he moved to Los Altos, California and entered high school. Lived with family friends because his parents wanted to give him the benefits of an education in highly regarded California public schools.

During this time, McKenna first became aware of psychedelics by reading The Doors of Perception by Aldous Huxley and publishing in The Village Voice. One of his first psychedelic experiences was with morning glory morning glory seeds containing ergine (lysergic acid amide, en:LSA), related to LSD.

As a freshman, McKenna took part in a two-year study program at the Tussman Experimental College project.

adult years

After graduating from college, McKenna taught for several years English language in Japan, traveled throughout India and South Asia, smuggling hashish and collecting butterflies for companies supplying biological products.

Death

In the last years of his life, he worked as the director of a reserve in the Hawaiian Islands, collecting, preserving, studying, promoting and distributing medicinal and shamanic plants. Died of a brain tumor.

Personal archive and library

On February 7, 2007, McKenna's library and his personal archive were lost in a fire that broke out in the office (Big Sur, California) where the collection was kept. The Library and Archives Catalog, maintained by McKenna's brother, Dennis, is partially preserved.

Bibliography

• 1975 - The Invisible Landscape: Mind, Hallucinogens, and the I Ching(co-authored with Dennis McKenna) (Seabury; 1st ed.) ISBN 0-8164-9249-2.
• 1976 - The Invisible Landscape(co-authored with Dennis McKenna and Quinn Taylor) (Scribner) ISBN 0-8264-0122-8
• 1976 - (co-authored with Dennis McKenna: under the pseudonyms OT Oss and ON Oeric respectively) (2nd ed. 1986) (And/Or Press) ISBN 0-915904-13-6
• 1992 - Psilocybin - Magic Mushroom Grower's Guide(co-authored with Dennis McKenna: under the pseudonyms OT Oss and ON Oeric respectively) (Quick American Publishing Company; revised ed.) ISBN 0-932551-06-8
• Terence McKenna. Archaic Revival = The Archaic Revival. - 1st ed. - San Francisco: Harper Collins Publishers, 1992. - ISBN 9780062506149.
• 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(co-authored with Timothy Leary) (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(co-authored 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 ed.) 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(co-authored 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; revised and expanded ed.) ISBN 0-7126-7038-6
• 1999 - Robert Venosa(co-authored 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. Trialogues at the Edge of the West) ISBN 0-89281-977-4
• 2005 - The Evolutionary Mind: Trialogues on Science, Spirit & Psychedelics(Monkfish Book Publishing; revised ed.) ISBN 0-9749359-7-2

Audio recordings

• TechnoPagans at the End history(arranged by Mark Pesce, starting in 1998)
• Psychedelics in the Age of Intelligent Machines ()
• Alien dream time with Spacetime Continuum & Stephen Kent () (CD, )
• Conversations on the Edge of Magic(1994) (CD & audio cassette) (en:Association for Consciousness Exploration)
• Rap Dancing Into the Third Millennium(1994) (audio cassette) (reissued on CD as The Quintessential Hallucinogen) (en:Association for Consciousness Exploration)
• Packing For the Long Strange Trip(1994) (audio cassette) (en:Association for Consciousness Exploration)
• Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell, broadcast May 22, 1997, five-hour interview

Discography

• Re: evolution with The Shamen (1992)
• Alien dream time with Spacetime Continuum & Stephen Kent () (DVD)
• Terence McKenna with Zuvuya
• 2009 -

see also

Write a review on "McKenna, Terence Kemp"

Notes

Links

• Article by Erik Davis in Wired Magazine (May 2000)
• story by Patrick Lundborg ()
• Terence McKenna at the Internet Movie Database
• (English) on the Notable Names Database website

Audio and video resources

• on Deoxy.org
• story) at EROCx1.com
• - Lectures and speeches by Terence McKenna
• (unavailable link from 13-05-2013 (2152 days) - story) — Terence McKenna, Albert Hoffman, Robert Anton Wilson et al.
• (en:Palenque Entheobotany Seminars)
• - Video samples from the 1999 DVD
• - McKenna Video Portal

Main subspecies Varieties Products of use Usage Organizations Personalities Chemistry and biochemistry mass media Literature Cinema

Excerpt characterizing McKenna, Terence Kemp

Pierre, as is most often the case, felt the brunt of the physical hardships and stresses experienced in captivity only when these stresses and hardships ended. After his release from captivity, he arrived in Orel, and on the third day of his arrival, while he was going to Kyiv, he fell ill and lay ill in Orel for three months; he became, as the doctors said, bilious fever. Despite the fact that the doctors treated him, bled him and gave him medicines to drink, he still recovered.
Everything that happened to Pierre from the time of his release to his illness left almost no impression on him. He remembered only gray, gloomy, sometimes rainy, sometimes snowy weather, inner physical anguish, pain in his legs, in his side; remembered the general impression of the misfortunes and sufferings of people; he remembered the curiosity of the officers and generals who questioned him, which disturbed him, his efforts to find a carriage and horses, and, most importantly, he remembered his inability to think and feel at that time. On the day of his release, he saw the corpse of Petya Rostov. On the same day, he learned that Prince Andrei had been alive for more than a month after the Battle of Borodino and had only recently died in Yaroslavl, in the Rostovs' house. And on the same day, Denisov, who reported this news to Pierre, mentioned the death of Helen between conversations, suggesting that Pierre had known this for a long time. All this only seemed strange to Pierre at the time. He felt that he could not understand the meaning of all this news. At that time he was only in a hurry, to leave these places where people were killing each other as soon as possible, to some quiet refuge and there to come to his senses, rest and think over all the strange and new that he had learned during this time. But as soon as he arrived in Orel, he fell ill. Waking up from his illness, Pierre saw around him his two people who had come from Moscow - Terenty and Vaska, and the elder princess, who, living in Yelets, on Pierre's estate, and learning about his release and illness, came to him to walk behind him.
During his recovery, Pierre only gradually weaned from the impressions that had become habitual to him of the last months and got used to the fact that no one would drive him anywhere tomorrow, that no one would take away his warm bed, and that he would probably have lunch, and tea, and supper. But in a dream he saw himself for a long time in the same conditions of captivity. Just as little by little, Pierre understood the news that he learned after his release from captivity: the death of Prince Andrei, the death of his wife, the destruction of the French.
A joyful feeling of freedom - that complete, inalienable, human freedom, the consciousness of which he first experienced at the first halt, when leaving Moscow, filled Pierre's soul during his recovery. He was surprised that this inner freedom, independent of external circumstances, now, as if with excess, with luxury, was furnished and outer freedom. He was alone in a strange city, without acquaintances. Nobody demanded anything from him; they didn't send him anywhere. Everything he wanted he had; The thought of his wife, which had always tormented him before, was no more, since she was no more.
- Oh, how good! How nice! he said to himself when a cleanly laid table with fragrant broth was moved to him, or when he lay down at night on a soft, clean bed, or when he remembered that his wife and the French were no more. - Oh, how good, how nice! - And out of old habit, he asked himself the question: well, then what? What will i do? And at once he answered himself: nothing. I will live. Ah, how nice!
The very thing that he had tormented before, what he was constantly looking for, the purpose of life, now did not exist for him. It was no coincidence that this desired goal of life now did not exist for him only at the present moment, but he felt that it did not exist and could not exist. And this lack of purpose gave him that full, joyful consciousness of freedom, which at that time constituted his happiness.
He could not have a goal, because he now had faith - not faith in any rules, or words, or thoughts, but faith in a living, always felt god. Previously, he had sought it for the purposes he had set for himself. This search for a goal was only a search for God; and suddenly, in his captivity, he recognized, not by words, not by reasoning, but by direct feeling, what his nanny had told him for a long time: that God is here, here, everywhere. In captivity, he learned that God in Karataev is greater, infinite and incomprehensible than in the Architecton of the universe recognized by the Masons. He experienced the feeling of a man who found what he was looking for under his feet, while he strained his eyes, looking far away from him. All his life he looked somewhere, over the heads of the people around him, but he had not to strain his eyes, but only look in front of him.
He was not able to see before the great, incomprehensible and infinite in anything. He only felt that it must be somewhere and looked for it. In everything close, understandable, he saw one thing limited, petty, worldly, meaningless. He armed himself with a mental telescope and looked into the distance, to where this shallow, worldly distance, hiding in the fog, seemed to him great and infinite only because it was not clearly visible. This is how he imagined European life, politics, freemasonry, philosophy, philanthropy. But even then, in those moments that he considered his weakness, his mind penetrated into this distance, and there he saw the same petty, worldly, meaningless. Now, however, he had learned to see the great, eternal, and infinite in everything, and therefore, naturally, in order to see it, to enjoy its contemplation, he threw down the trumpet into which he had looked up to now over the heads of people, and joyfully contemplated around him the ever-changing, eternally great , incomprehensible and endless life. And the closer he looked, the more he was calm and happy. Formerly destroying all his mental buildings terrible question: why? no longer existed for him. Now to this question - why? a simple answer was always ready in his soul: then, that there is a god, that god, without whose will a hair will not fall from a person’s head.

Pierre hardly changed in his outward manners. He looked exactly the same as he had before. Just as before, he was absent-minded and seemed preoccupied not with what was before his eyes, but with something of his own, special. The difference between his former and present state was that before, when he forgot what was in front of him, what he was told, he wrinkled his forehead in pain, as if trying and could not see something far away from him. . Now he also forgot what was said to him, and what was before him; but now, with a barely noticeable, as if mocking, smile, he peered at the very thing that was in front of him, listened to what was being said to him, although he obviously saw and heard something completely different. Formerly he seemed, though a kind man, but unhappy; and therefore involuntarily people moved away from him. Now a smile of the joy of life constantly played around his mouth, and in his eyes there shone concern for people - the question is: are they happy just like he is? And people enjoyed being in his presence.
Before, he talked a lot, got excited when he spoke, and listened little; now he was rarely carried away by conversation and knew how to listen in such a way that people willingly told him their most intimate secrets.
The princess, who never loved Pierre and had a particularly hostile feeling towards him since, after the death of the old count, she felt indebted to Pierre, to her annoyance and surprise, after a short stay in Orel, where she came with the intention of proving to Pierre that, despite his ingratitude, she considers it her duty to follow him, the princess soon felt that she loved him. Pierre did nothing to curry favor with the princess. He just looked at her curiously. Before, the princess felt that in his glance at her there was indifference and mockery, and she, as before other people, shrank before him and showed only her fighting side of life; now, on the contrary, she felt that he seemed to be digging into the most intimate aspects of her life; and she, at first with disbelief, and then with gratitude, showed him her secret good sides of his character.
Most cunning man could not have more skillfully sneaked into the confidence of the princess, evoking her memories of the best time of her youth and showing sympathy for them. Meanwhile, Pierre's whole cunning consisted only in the fact that he was looking for his own pleasure, evoking human feelings in an embittered, cyhoy and proud princess.
Yes, he is very, very kind person when he is under the influence not of bad people, but of people like me, the princess said to herself.
The change that took place in Pierre was noticed in his own way and by his servants - Terenty and Vaska. They found that he was a lot simpler. Terenty often, having undressed the master, with boots and a dress in his hand, having wished good night, hesitated to leave, waiting for the master to join in the conversation. And for the most part Pierre stopped Terenty, noticing that he wanted to talk.
- Well, tell me ... but how did you get your food? he asked. And Terenty began a story about the ruin of Moscow, about the late count, and stood for a long time with his dress, telling, and sometimes listening to Pierre's stories, and, with a pleasant consciousness of the master's closeness to himself and friendliness to him, went into the hall.
The doctor who treated Pierre and visited him every day, despite the fact that, according to the duty of doctors, considered it his duty to look like a person, every minute of which is precious for suffering humanity, sat up for hours with Pierre, telling his favorite stories and observations on the mores of patients in general. and especially ladies.
“Yes, it’s nice to talk with such a person, not like we have in the provinces,” he said.
Several captured French officers lived in Orel, and the doctor brought one of them, a young Italian officer.
This officer began to go to Pierre, and the princess laughed at those tender feelings which the Italian expressed to Pierre.
The Italian, apparently, was happy only when he could come to Pierre and talk and tell him about his past, about his home life, about his love and pour out his indignation at the French, and especially at Napoleon.
- If all Russians are at least a little like you, - he told Pierre, - c "est un sacrilege que de faire la guerre a un peuple comme le votre. [It's blasphemy to fight with people like you.] You who have suffered so much from the French, you don't even have a grudge against them.
And passionate love Pierre now deserved the Italian only by the fact that he evoked in him the best sides of his soul and admired them.
During the last time Pierre was in Orel, his old acquaintance, the Mason, Count of Villarsky, came to him, the same one who introduced him to the lodge in 1807. Villarsky was married to a wealthy Russian who had large estates in Oryol province, and occupied a temporary place in the city for the food part.

Terence Kemp McKenna (11/16/1946 - 04/3/2000) was an American writer, philosopher, ethnobotanist, and also, according to own words, anarchist and skeptic.

Terence Kemp McKenna was born in Paonia, Colorado, USA.

As a child, he received knowledge of the basics of geology from his uncle, doing as a hobby searching for the remains of fossil animals in ravines and gullies not far from home.

McKenna first learned about psychedelics by reading The Doors of Perception by Aldous Huxley and published in The Village Voice. In 1964, circumstances turned out so that McKenna was forced to move to Lancaster, California, where he graduated in 1965 high school Antelope Valley.

In 1965, McKenna entered University of California in Berkeley, in connection with which he moved to San Francisco in the summer of 1965. In the same year, he smoked marijuana for the first time, which was treated to him by Barry Melton (en: Barry Melton), a little later - used LSD.

In 1969 he received a bachelor's degree in ecology and conservation.

For much of the 1970s, McKenna lived out of town on the sale of the Magic Mushroom Grower's Guide, as well as mushrooms containing psilocybin. Fearing persecution by the authorities (for some time he was wanted by Interpol for drug trafficking), he curtailed this activity.

In the last years of his life he worked as the director of the reserve on Hawaiian Islands engaged in the collection, conservation, study, promotion and distribution of medicinal and shamanic plants. Died of brain cancer.

Books (3)

Pure hallucinations

Terence McKenna, an original thinker and visionary, tells in this book - a true "alchemical novel" - the story of an Amazonian expedition in search of mysterious shamanic hallucinogenic potions. The reader will learn about the fantastic experience of the McKenna brothers and witness the birth of amazing insights that, if true, will upend our understanding of time and the nature of reality.

The Invisible Landscape: Consciousness, Psychedelics, the I Ching

Translation: Vilen Galimov

"Invisible Landscape" is a unique encyclopedic work that connects modern knowledge with ancient magic. The author talks about the finiteness of time and the infinity of consciousness.

Food of the gods

This book presents one of the most original versions the origin of a person and everything that is habitually associated with his qualities - language, consciousness, culture. Extravagant, at the edge of refined artistry, originality is an integral facet of the life and work of Terence McKenna.

Reader Comments

Ernest/ 09/26/2016 Well done Terence, probably contemplated God in his visions.

Thanks to/ 08/31/2014 Thank you for the work done. very interesting

Vitaly D. (sound archaeologist)/ 3.11.2013 Thanks for the translation!))

It is a blessing that such rare works can be studied in Russian.
Thank you.

Naftyufka./ 05/20/2013 Can you tell me where you can find these books? I prefer to read real books... Well, you can read the translation on the Internet... But in the summer I'll go to the countryside - there's no wi-fi from the tablet... and reading interesting books is always necessary so that it's not boring...

Castanedian/ 11/23/2012 on the Russian Wikipedia page about Terence McKenna there is a link where you can download my translation of The Invisible Landscape - Terence McKenna's main book

Castanedian/ 11/18/2012 the third one is already ready, now I will just insert the photo sent by Dennis and his special preface for the Russian reader; I will send the book here

George/ 11/17/2012 Thanks to the site for these books, I'm waiting for the third one.

Castanedian/ 8.11.2012 The Invisible Landscape translation is 95% complete, PDF will be ready to be sent here on Terence McKenna's birthday

Guest/ 27.03.2012 great books!!!great theories!!!thank you Terence!!!

Castanedian/ 10/12/2011 McKenna's third book will be added here soon (God loves a trinity); the translation of the Invisible Landscape is almost finished (although there will be no cover - no publisher is taking it yet)

Ethnobotanist, mystic and philosopher Terence McKenna has spoken and written on a variety of topics including enterogenic plants and psychedelic drugs, shamanism and philosophy, culture and metaphysics, and alchemy and technology. He has been called the "intellectual voice of bliss culture", the "mastermind of the foundations of shamanism" and the "Timothy Leary of the 90s".

Biography

Terence McKenna was born on November 16, 1946 in Paonia, Colorado. Poor eyesight and poor health limited communication with peers. The boy spent a lot of time alone, enthusiastically exploring the nearest ravines and gullies in search of fossils. The uncle shared his knowledge of geology with Terence, and an interest in the further study of nature arose in the child.

At the age of ten, the boy became interested in psychology and read the book by C. Jung "Psychology and Alchemy". His parents wanted to give him the best education, so they sent him at the age of sixteen to California, to Los Altos, to their friends, with whom McKenna lived for about a year. He graduated from Antelope Valley High School in Lancaster in 1965.

He became acquainted with the world of psychedelics in 1963 through articles in The Village Voice and Aldous Huxley's books The Doors of Perception, Heaven and Hell. In an interview, Terence McKenna said that his first psychedelic experience with Morning Blue morning glory seeds showed that there are plants in nature that need to be explored in many ways.

Travels

In the summer of 1965, Terence moved to San Francisco and entered the university. In the same year, McKenna wrote about himself, he tried marijuana and LSD. Terence, as a freshman, was admitted to Tussman Experimental College, graduating in 1969 with a bachelor's degree in ecology. After graduation, McKenna goes to Japan, where he teaches English for several years.

Terence travels throughout South Asia, and in 1969 comes to Kathmandu, where he studies Tibetan languages and folk shamanism. In the same year he is smuggling hashish in Bombay. One of the shipments was detained by customs and the FBI put Terence on the wanted list. He hastily leaves for Southeast Asia. Terence McKenna recalled how he wandered in fear through Java, Malaysia, Sumatra, hunted rare butterflies in the jungle, and in his backpack there was always a volume of his beloved Nabokov.

In 1971, Terence travels through the Colombian Amazon in search of herbal psychedelics. In La Chorrera, he allowed experiments on himself with plants containing psilobicine, began to promote plant hallucinogens and became a popular figure. A supporter of the archaic revival, which is based on the intuitive application of psychoactive plants, he attracted attention with his pioneering work.

Consciousness and psychedelics

The first book, which Terence wrote in collaboration with his brother Dennis, is comparable, perhaps, with an alchemical text. Just as in the seventeenth century science and magic were closely connected, so in the book The Invisible Landscape, the author, relying on research in ethnobotany, molecular biology and schizophrenia, thoroughly studies psychedelic philosophy and shamanism.

The ideas and concepts discussed in the pages of Terence McKenna's book are highly specific. This is an attempt by two brothers to understand the psychedelic effects of "mushroom revelations". Dennis was primarily interested in the process itself - molecular and cellular changes. He suggested that the many ways people use to achieve this state involve the same organic process.

Considering that Dennis is a scientist, doctor of psychopharmacology, and Terence is a philosopher, one can understand the style of writing: one fragment is presented in a simple, understandable language for everyone, and the other is accessible only to a person with degree. The book begins with philosophical postulates, based on which the brothers began their research, and ends with the fact that they managed to draw the final conclusion, express it in mathematical model and create a computer program.

On the whole, the book is interesting and, in a sense, unique. It describes the adventures of their small expedition in the upper reaches of the Amazon and wonderfully intertwines modern science and ancient magic. A lot of new things have been written about the emergence of shamanism, about how access to the “unconscious” is opened, about the art of healing in the world of aborigines, about their rituals and traditions.

Revival of the archaic

In the book "Food of the Gods" the author presents his version of the origin of man. McCann suggests that plant psychedelics have taken place in world history and have had a direct impact on the formation of man. They have the ability to accelerate thinking process which ultimately led to the development of consciousness, speech and the formation of culture.

As proof of his original idea the author gives examples that “consciousness-expanding” plants have been used since ancient times - Indian tribes Ayahuasca was used “to communicate with spirits”, the ancient Iranians used haoma for religious rites. The prohibition of laboratory experiments with psychedelics does not allow to fully explore this area, the author regrets.

According to Terence McKenna, plant psychedelics are designed by nature itself for the human body. Terence moves on to drugs that enslave the mind. These include cocaine and heroin, alcohol, tobacco and coffee, chocolate and sugar. In his opinion, sugar is much more harmful than mescaline. The history of mankind, which the author draws through the prism of mind-destroying substances - opium wars, slavery on sugar plantations - is very curious.

In general, the historical and biological parts of the book are very entertaining. Only practical suggestions the author, - the return of intimacy with nature is likely to cause difficulties. Humanity has gone too far, and it is unlikely that it will be possible to turn back to its original state. Even legalizing psychedelics won't change anything.

Other jobs

• "Pure Hallucinations" is rather a detailed chronology of the La Chorrera experiment. The author writes in the preface that something amazing happened in those places. The mushrooms he met there prophesied a general change in consciousness. Under the influence of "talkative mushrooms", the original thinker saw everything that had happened to him twenty years before, but learned even more about the future. What was it - collective madness or schizophrenia? Psychosis caused by psilocybin? In any case, the metamorphoses of consciousness that McKenna describes deserve close attention.
• Psilocybin: Magic Mushroom Grower's Guide - A guide to growing mushrooms McKenna co-wrote with his brother. The book was published in the early seventies, so in the first edition the technology of growing "magic mushrooms" is captured in black and white photographs. In 1992, McKenna revised the manual, adding more modern methods cultivation.
• Synesthesia is a book co-authored with and published in 1992.
• 1992 also saw the publication of Trialogues at the Edge of the West, a book co-authored by McCann with mathematician Ralph Abraham and biologist Rupert Sheldrake. In 2001, the edition was corrected and supplemented.
• In the same composition, three great minds published in 1998 The book Evolutionary Mind. A revised edition was published in 2005.

Botanical Garden

The main project in the life of Terence McKenna was Botanical Dimensions, which they founded in 1985 with their brother Dennis and wife Kat. The non-profit organization collects and studies plants used for food, medicine and clothing. Much attention is paid to ethno-medical plants, that is, those that are used to treat or prevent illness.

Plants that are used in medicine are endangered. The main objective of the Botanical Dimensions project is the protection of wild and cultivated crops. The ethnobotanical garden in Hawaii contains a collection for plant research and conservation. They maintain the same garden in Peru, in California they are educational features, a database is maintained, and a PlantWise Bulletin is published.

In principle, the collection of Botanical Dimensions plants and the knowledge gained about them are unparalleled. The American philosopher Terence Kemp McKenna himself, to some extent, is unique in building hypotheses - one more original than the other. Ardent adversary narcotic substances He devoted his entire life to the study of psychedelic plants. Even when he was diagnosed with glioblastoma multiforme, he was concerned that it was caused by the use of psychedelics.

McKenna spent his last years in an ethnic reserve in Hawaii, where he died of a brain tumor on April 3, 2000, at the age of fifty-three.

Modern science still cannot answer the question of how and why such a noticeable evolutionary leap in development took place. human brain. Famous American writer and psychonaut Terence McKenna lectures 1995 shared his thoughts on how natural psychedelics could give our ancestors an evolutionary advantage and arouse their interest in philosophy. T&P translated the most interesting theses.

The theory of evolution says that we are just more developed species animals, and for the last 150 years science has been engaged in a noble struggle to defend this point of view against all attacks from orthodox religious thought. Yet, after all has been said and done, there is a sense that if we are animals, we are very peculiar, gifted with language and organized planning, not constrained by certain social or sexual behaviors. Human communities are monogamous and polygamous. We have poetry, mathematics, theatre, and we exhibit a range of affects beyond anything found in the animal kingdom. This problem has fascinated me for many years, as it fascinates many, because it is obvious that the greatest shame for the theory of evolution is that it is unable to explain the existence of human consciousness.

The two main factors of evolution, natural selection and mutation, are enough to explain the existence of praying mantises, chipmunks, rainforests, but not ours. And this is due to the fact that we were born too quickly. In two million years, the human brain has doubled in size. Evolutionary biologist Karl Lumholtz called this the most radical transformation seen in a complex organ in the history of life on Earth. What extraordinary set of circumstances could have happened to push a mostly tree-dwelling ape, at its evolutionary peak under the dense canopy of the rainforest for millions of years, on the path to Elvis, the internet, Bill Clinton and other joys?

The story of human self-reflection offered here is a story based on the principle "you are what you eat". Significant changes in climate and a new expansion of the diet, and consequently an increase in its mutagenicity, gave natural selection many opportunities to influence the evolution of the main features of man.

According to many conservative evolutionary theorists, it is hand-eye alignment that has helped us develop additional mental capacity, thanks to which later lined up human civilization. Note that the top of the evolutionary ladder would then have to be the gum-chewing baseball pitcher.

When I first thought about it, I imagined a monumental building of firmly rooted theory that we must enter and blow it up from the inside. Of course, some scientists have tried to stake out this territory and explain human consciousness. But I find even the most successful advances of science into this territory unconvincing. This is what science suggests to us - when you throw an object, you must have an intention (plan, plan), because as soon as you let go of the object that you throw, you lose control over it. Therefore, when we were weak and hunted in packs, we got pretty damn good at throwing various objects at huge mammals of all stripes attacking us. And for this it was necessary to plan the throw. As a consequence, we have developed the mental faculties necessary for such operations and even, beyond that, sufficient to create quantum physics, the Mona Lisa, the phonetic alphabet, philosophy and religion. In other words, it was the hand-eye alignment that many conservative evolutionary theorists believe helped us develop the additional mental abilities that later built human civilization. Note that the top of the evolutionary ladder would then have to be the gum-chewing baseball pitcher. As someone who learned all about sadomasochism in gym class, I'm not ready to accept this theory. It definitely goes against my paradigm. I offer another story that I think answers the question of the origin of consciousness.

The assumption that all theories of evolution must come to terms with is that the protogominids, our distant ape ancestors, lived and developed in Africa. If you adhere to the non-African theory of the origin of man, all data is against you. There is a strong body of evidence to support that whatever took us out of the animal body happened in Africa. All animals and plants, as a rule, reach an evolutionary peak in the niche they occupy and stabilize in it: cockroaches, ants reached this hundreds of millions of years ago and have not changed much since then. Basically, biology is a repeatedly repeated climax in this ecological niche, and not an advance to new radical forms, species. Transformations require a certain destabilization of the environment - a change in the course of a river, or a fall of an asteroid, or a retreat of a glacier - something that creates open space. Over the course of 5-6 million years, the African continent slowly dries up, but as early as 3 million years ago it was covered tropical forests from east to west. That's what they were natural conditions where human ancestors lived. They lived in the crowns of trees, fed on fruits and insects, they had a rather complex signaling repertoire by animal standards. But Africa began to dry up, and they were under serious trophic pressure. Simpler animals, such as insects, do not know how to adapt when their usual food source disappears. More advanced animals, faced with dietary interruptions or the disappearance of their usual food sources, experimented with other food sources in their environment before parting with the specter of habitual diet.

The reason why this usually does not happen and the animals remain conservative in their food choices is to avoid mutational factors in the form of chemical substances, toxins, viruses that may be contained in unusual sources nutrition. In parallel with consciousness, we acquire gastronomy, the perception of taste, an approach to food as an art. Animals just don't like it. They're just trying to get enough protein to keep them going. The concept of taste is counterintuitive to animals, and it has had a somewhat mutagenic effect on us. When our distant ancestors found themselves under the pressure of a changing environment, their familiar world began to shrink, grasslands replaced the rainforests. Their diet, which had previously consisted of fruits and insects, was limited by these changes, and they began to explore a new open area covered with grass cover. Walking on all fours is replaced by bipedalism (walking on two legs), binocular vision coordination appears, and so on.

I came across a recently published article that anticipates my theory. This study focuses on the dryopithecus (tree monkeys), which left the trees only for one specific type stern. They descended to the ground and risked the attack of predators for the sake of harvesting mushrooms. It seems reasonable to assume that during their forays into the pastures, our distant ancestors encountered mushrooms growing in cattle dung and containing psilocybin. Many saprophytic mushrooms produce psilocybin, among them Stropharia Cubensis, one of the largest and most widespread species of such mushrooms. I am sure that our ancestors tried other types of food, they experimented with everything that came to hand. It must have had catastrophic environmental and health consequences.

The history of human genetics is full of stories of fatal encounters with mutagenic factors in environment, most of which were harmful and even lethal. But in some cases, the animals also received benefits, including new products in their food chain. I want to pay attention to psilocybin, because I think that this is the key to the puzzle. We are looking for a factor that caused the human brain to increase in size at a rate ten times faster than the normal rate of evolution. It was definitely something out of the ordinary.

Let's take a closer look at psilocybin. It has some properties that are not directly related to mental activity, making it an excellent candidate for the catalysts for the birth of consciousness in a developed animal. At an early stage of the expansion of protogominids into the meadow niche, they tried psilocybin mushrooms. I've seen plate-sized mushrooms in the Amazon after rain. These silvery, blue and purple mushrooms are instantly eye-catching and attention-grabbing, whether you're aware of their psychoactive properties or not.

The first type of consciousness was the ability to see everything through the eyes of its victim. Predators possessed the highest form of animal consciousness, but were only aware of external world. Psilocybin pushed us beyond such thinking into a world of imagination, reflection

The first quality of psilocybin that is not purely psychic is that in small doses, which can be obtained when consumed with roots, grass and bugs, visual acuity improves, especially contour detection. It is easy to imagine that in conditions of increased competition in open spaces of meadow pastures, characterized by the coexistence of large predators and their potential prey, mainly consisting of small ungulates, a more sensitive perception of the contours of objects in motion can decide the fate of the animal. Animals that included in their diet the type of food that provided this kind of opportunity had a slightly better chance of survival and evolutionary success than members of their group that did not use psilocybin. They were also more successful hunters.

At higher doses in sexually excitable animals such as primates, all alkaloids work as central nervous system stimulants. Arousal means an erection followed by shura-mura, or, as anthropologists and primatologists also call it, successful copulation. This is the second factor contributing to the dominance of psilocybin users in the population. These individuals created epigenetic (supragenetic) rules or cultural forms which allowed them to survive and multiply more intensively than other individuals. Individuals who refrain from consuming mushrooms due to allergies, prejudice, or fear find themselves at the periphery of the population. They are less successful in hunting, hence they get less food for themselves and their offspring. They mate much less often, so they have fewer offspring.

When the dosage approaches 20 milligrams or more, that is, sufficient to cause mental disorders, hunting or sex is no longer out of the question. The only thing you can do is lie on the ground in a state of consciousness, the meaning and consequences of which we cannot describe even now, with all our sophistication, logical positivism and superconducting supercolliders. A full blown psychedelic experience that can only be judged in terms of ordination (mystery of the priesthood), epiphany (theophany), apokatastasis (general restoration), ataraxia (serenity), and other beautiful Greek words. In other words, we like this state, but we do not understand it. This becomes the basis of religion. This three-step process, driven by nothing more than hunger and curiosity, brings our distant primate relatives into confrontation with what Rudolf Otto called ganz Andere, that is, "something else," into an encounter with the sacred, the numinous, the transcendent.

Numinosity (from Latin numen - deity, will of the gods) is a concept introduced by Rudolf Otto, the founder of the Western phenomenology of religion, and characterizing important side religious experience, associated with an intense experience of the mysterious and awesome divine presence.

My own experience (and I have been collecting psychedelic states all my life) allows me to state with certainty that psilocybin in high doses causes glossolalia. Glossolalia is syntactically structured, language-like behavior that makes no sense, "speaking in tongues," as fundamentalist Christians call it. But Christianity does not have a monopoly on this phenomenon. It is as old as the world and occurs in all cultures. In fact, this is a nervous attack, in which some linguistic formation is verbalized. No animal does this. So, it's about people learning the language. I think that language served the function of entertainment long before it got its meaning.

I truly believe that 12,000 years ago a kind of paradise emerged, a situation in which men and women, parents and children, humans and animals, human institutions and nature were in dynamic balance. Not at all in a primitive sense - a language was developed, poetry was at its peak. Dance, magic, poetry, altruism, philosophy - there is no reason to believe that all these things were not practiced as naturally as they are now. All this happened under the influence of psilocybin, which blurs many restrictions. But if everything was so good, then what happened next?

This state of affairs was due to the forces responsible for drying African continent, for climbing down from the trees, changing our diet and incorporating dung fungus into our diet. There were other factors that made us intelligent. The first type of consciousness was the ability to see everything through the eyes of its victim. Predators possessed the highest form of animal consciousness, but were aware only of the outside world. Psilocybin pushed us beyond that kind of thinking into a world of imagination, reflection.

But the climate is changing. Mushrooms, once growing everywhere, become seasonal, move into the rain shadows closer to the mountains, turn into the privilege of a special class of people - shamans, assigned to deal with the hyperspace of myth.

Surely, people have made attempts to preserve less and less common mushrooms. And in a world without refrigeration, the best way to preserve is honey. The problem is that primordial honey was very liquid. He himself turned into a psychoactive substance - alcohol. But alcohol brings with it a completely different set of cultural property and relationships than psilocybin.

You see, this is not just a story about how one intoxicant stimulated the birth of consciousness, then became scarce, so we switched to another intoxicant. Psilocybin had another unusual effect on top of everything I've already said. And it is precisely this “excessive” effect that causes such controversy around my theory and frightens many scientists. He opens a whole Pandora's box. psychoactive substances challenge not only the Christian assumption of invincibility and the special ontological status of the soul, but also modern idea the invincibility of the ego and its controlling structures. In short, encounters with psychedelic plants call into question the whole worldview of our culture - a culture of oppression, a culture of dominance.

All those charms that distinguish us from animals were laid down in a different type of rationality than now. We were not predisposed to role specialization, patriarchy, anxiety about female sexual activity, similar to contemporary feel male property or jealousy. All this came later. We have become people in a world of completely different values ​​and psychological attitudes.

All primates, down to the squirrel monkeys, have formed systems of hierarchical dominance. This means that strong young alpha males controlled everyone around - women, children, the sick, the elderly, homosexuals - everyone was assigned a place in this hierarchy. And we are no different from them. Psilocybin discouraged these primate behaviors, especially the tendency to form monogamous alliances and multi-stage systems of suppression. The chemical stimulation of sexuality with the help of mushrooms was enough to undermine the tendency to monogamy and replace it with orgiastic sexual behavior. Or they coexisted at the same time. Who knows, we weren't there! I imagine little mushroom parties every full moon that regularly just get out of hand. So, monogamous relationships were called into question or were destroyed altogether. This is true of many cultures to this day. In a sense, Mardi Gras is a holiday where the rule is breaking the rules. One of the consequences of orgiastic behavior was that males could no longer trace paternal lines. This creates an incredible social glue, a colossal social cohesive force. Individuals begin to think in terms of "our children" or "children of our group" rather than "my children." Under the influence of such group polymorphic sexual relations, institutions of the extended family and group education of offspring arise. We have created everything that is considered human - art, music, philosophy, respect for each other, drawings on the body, tattoos, piercings. All those charms that distinguish us from animals were laid down in a different type of rationality than now. We were not predisposed to role specialization, patriarchy, anxiety about female sexual activity, similar to modern male ownership or jealousy. All this came later. We have become people in a world of completely different values ​​and psychological attitudes.

The problem was, as I said, that the mushrooms started to disappear. But by this time we were no longer silent symbionts of cattle, unintelligent hunters of the African steppes. By the time the mushroom age ended we had a language social institutions. But we began to lose respect for each other, a sense of love, a sense of community. And, despite the fact that this happened quite a long time ago, it resembles something that we have now - a feeling that people are no good and things are only getting worse. Why can't we be the same as before? I wrote a book, Food of the Gods, in which I share this story. And the conclusion I come to in this book is that history at its core is a powerful, non-stop, uncontrolled movement in an attempt to find a way back to a state of primal balance. Only the restoration of those relations with nature that we had before the beginning of history with the help of psychoactive plants can give us hope for a humane and open-ended future. We have an opportunity to move away from the dark historical nihilism that characterizes the dominance of our purely patriarchal, oppressive culture. We are able to restore the intrinsic value of archaic thinking of an almost symbiotic relationship with psychoactive plants as a source of insight and harmony flowing from the plant world into the human world.