Ethnobotanist, mystic and philosopher Terence Mackenna spoke and wrote on various topics, including enterogenic plants and psychedelic drugs, shamanism and philosophy, culture and metaphysics, alchemy and technology. He was called the "intellectual voice of a culture of bliss", "the leading specialist in the basics of shamanism" and "Timothy Leary of the 90s."
Biography
Terence Mackenna was born on November 16, 1946 in Paony, Colorado. Poor vision and poor health limited communication with peers. The boy spent a lot of time alone, enthusiastically exploring the nearest ravines and beams in search of minerals. Uncle shared his knowledge of geology with Terence, and interest in further study of nature arose in the child.
At the age of ten, the boy became interested in psychology and read the book by K. Jung, “Psychology and Alchemy”. Parents wanted to give him a better education, so they sent him at the age of sixteen to California, to Los Altos, to his friends, 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 the books of Aldous Huxley's Doors of Perception, Heaven and Hell. In an interview, Terence McKenna said that his first psychedelic experience with morning glory seeds “Morning Blue” showed that in nature there are plants that need to be studied in many ways.
Travels
In the summer of 1965, Terence moved to San Francisco and entered the University of Berkeley. In the same year, McKenna wrote about himself, he tried marijuana and LSD. Terence, as a freshman, was admitted to the Tussman Experimental College, which he graduated in 1969 with a bachelor of ecology. After studying, Mackenna goes to Japan, where he has been teaching English for several years.
Terence travels to South Asia, and in 1969 he arrives in Kathmandu, where he studies Tibetan languages ​​and folk shamanism. In the same year, in Bombay, he smuggled hash. One of the parties was detained by customs and the FBI put Terence on the wanted list. He hurriedly leaves for Southeast Asia. Terence Mackenna recalled how he roamed 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, in search of plant psychedelics, went on a journey through the Colombian Amazon. In La Chorrere, he allowed himself to experiment with plants containing psilobicin, began to propagate plant hallucinogens, and became a popular figure. A proponent of archaic rebirth, which is based on the intuitive use of psychoactive plants, he has attracted attention with his pioneering work.
Consciousness and Psychedelics
The first book that Terence co-wrote with his brother Dennis is perhaps comparable to the alchemical text. As science and magic were closely connected in the seventeenth century, so in the book “Invisible Landscape” the author, relying on studies of 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 include the same organic process.
Given that Dennis is a scientist, doctor of psychopharmacology, and Terence is a philosopher, you can understand the writing style: one fragment is presented in a simple, understandable language, and the other is accessible only to a person with a scientific degree. The book begins with philosophical postulates, on the basis of which, the brothers set about their research, and ends with the fact that they managed to make a final conclusion, express it in a mathematical model and create a computer program.
In general, the book is interesting and in some ways unique. It describes the adventures of their small expedition to the upper reaches of the Amazon and wonderfully intertwines modern science and ancient magic. Much new has been written about the emergence of shamanism, about how access to the "unconscious" is opened, about the art of healing in the world of Aboriginal people, 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. Mackenn suggests that plant psychedelics have taken place in world history and have had a direct impact on human formation. They have the property of accelerating the thought process, which ultimately led to the development of consciousness, speech and the formation of culture.
In support of his original idea, the author gives examples that plants “expanding consciousness” have been used since ancient times - Indian tribes used Ayahuascu to “communicate with spirits”, and 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 conceived by nature itself for the human body. Terence goes on to drugs that enslave consciousness. He includes 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 passes through the prism of substances destroying the mind - opium wars, slavery on sugar plantations - is very curious.
In general, the historical and biological parts of the book are very entertaining. Only the author’s practical suggestions, the return of intimacy with nature, are likely to cause difficulties. Humanity has gone too far, and it is unlikely to turn back to its original state. Even the legalization of psychedelics will not change anything.
Other jobs
- “True hallucinations” is, rather, a detailed chronology of the experiment in La Chorrera. The author writes in the preface that something amazing happened in those places. The mushrooms that he met there prophesied a prophecy about a general change in consciousness. Under the influence of “talkative mushrooms," the original thinker saw everything that happened to him twenty years before, but learned more about the future. What was it - collective insanity or schizophrenia? Psychosis resulting from 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 Mackenna co-authored with his brother. The book was published in the early seventies, therefore, in the first edition, the technology for growing “magic mushrooms” is captured in black and white photographs. In 1992, Mackenna made corrections to the manual, supplementing with more modern cultivation methods.
- Synesthesia - a book co-written by Timothy Leary and published in 1992.
- In 1992, the book Trialogues at the Edge of the West, written by Mackenn in collaboration with mathematician Ralph Abraham and biologist Rupert Sheldrake, was also published. In 2001, the edition was amended and supplemented.
- In the same composition, three great minds published in 1998 the book The Evolutionary Mind. In 2005, a revised edition was published.
Botanical Garden
The main project in the life of Terence McKenna was the Botanical Dimensions, which they founded in 1985 with brother Dennis and wife Kat. A non-profit organization collects and studies plants used for food, treatment, and clothing. Much attention is paid to ethnomedical plants, that is, those that are used to treat or prevent the disease.
Plants 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 the study and conservation of plants. They maintain the same garden in Peru, provide educational functions in California, maintain a database, and publish a PlantWise newsletter.
In principle, the collection of Botanical Dimensions plants and the knowledge gained about them have no analogues. The American philosopher Terence Kemp Mackenna and himself, to some extent, the only one who hypothesized, is one more original than the other. An ardent opponent of narcotic substances, he devoted his whole life to the study of psychedelic plants. Even when he was diagnosed with glioblastoma multiforme, he was worried whether it was caused by the use of psychedelics.
Mackenna spent the last years in an ethno-reserve in Hawaii, where he died of a brain tumor on April 3, 2000, at fifty-three.