McKenna, Terence

An Earlier Edition of This Book Was Catalogued As Follows McKenna, Terence K. 

I. Hallucinations and illusions—Miscellanea. 2. Psilocybe cubensis—Psychic aspects. 3. Psilocybin. 4. McKenna, Terence K.—Journeys. 5. La Chorrera (Amazonas,... 

McKenna, Terence. The Archaic Revival. San Francisco Harper SanFrancisco, 1992. 

McKenna, Terence, The Archaic Revival Speculations on Psychedelic Mushrooms, the Amazon, Virtual Reality, UFOs and More (Harper SanFrancisco, 1992), 64. 

McKenna, Terence, Food of the Gods The Search for the Original Tree of Knowledge, A Radical History of Plants, Drugs, and Human Evolution (New York Bantam, 1993). 

McKenna, Terence, True Hallucinations Being an Account of the Author s Extraordinary Adventures in the Devil s Paradise (San F rancisco HarperSanFrancisco reprint edition, 1994). 

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data McKenna, Terence K., 1946-... 

McKenna, Terence (1991)."Sacred Plants and Mystic Realities," in The Archaic Revival, Harper, San Francisco, p. 250. 

TRUE HALLUCINATIONS. Copyright 1993 by Terence McKenna. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information address HarperCollins Publishers, 10 East 53rd Street, New York, NY 10022. 

True hallucinations being an account of the author s extraordinary adventures in the devil s paradise / Terence McKenna.—1st ed. 

See Terence McKenna and Dennis McKenna, The Invisible Landscape (New York The Seabury Press, 1975), chapter six.]... 

I walked on toward the river. As I walked, I did some experiments. I said "Terence. Terence." It was very much like talking to myself Then I said "Dennis," and the thing was instantly there, ready to do business. Then I said "McKenna, McKenna," and it was still there. I realized that I couldn t reach it with my first name, but I could reach it with my last name. I felt simultaneously enlightened and bewildered, I could not understand what was going on. 

Abraham, Ralph, Terence McKenna, and Rupert Sheldrake. Tria-logues at the Edge of the West. Albuquerque Bear Co., 1992. 

TERENCE MCKENNA is the author of Food of the Gods and The Archaic Revival and the coauthor, with Dennis McKenna, of The Invisible Landscape Mind, Hallucinogens, and the I Ching. 

I then put the same question to Dennis McKenna, an ethnopharmacologist who has studied plant hallucinogens for more than 20 years. In 1975, he co-authored the book Invisible Landscape with his brother Terence McKenna. The book detailed his investigations of Amazonian hallucinogens. He wrote to me ... 

Everyone seems to have their own perspectives on the DMT beings. Anthropologist Michael Harner met bird-headed people who explained that they were the true gods of our reality. Various Amazonian tribes like the Secoya drink ayahuasca in a deliberate attempt to communicate with heavenly beings. Rick Strassman suggested that the DMT entities actually dwell in the parallel realities posited by modern theories of physics. Terence McKenna called the beings that he frequently encountered selftransforming machine elves. Like Strassman, McKenna speculated that DMT opens a portal to a parallel reality inhabited by these alien creatures. 

James Kent wrote to me about his own feelings regarding DMT. Kent is the former editor of Psychedelic Illumination magazine, former publisher of Trip Magazine, and is now curator of tripzine.com. He told me that he has frequently experimented with DMT in the past, has interviewed and spent time with the late Terence McKenna, is friends... 

On the other hand, this difficulty of achieving mystical states has led people like Terence McKenna to conclude that DMT provides a faster and more reliable route. He says, Psychedelics are democratic. They work for Joe Ordinary. I can t go and sweep the ashram for eighteen years or some rigmarole like that. ... 

Terence McKenna, quoted in Breaking Open the Head ... 

Terence McKenna in The Archaic Revival thought that we should even have a deputized minority—a shamanistic professional class— whose job is to bring ideas out of the deep, black water and show them off to the rest of us. Such people would perform for our culture some of the cultural functions that shamans performed in preliterate cultures. In short, he believed that we need to cultivate a sense of mystery. Perhaps we can make use of McKenna s discovery that his dreams in which he smokes DMT allowed him to be transported to the DMTverse. This is extremely interesting because it suggests that one does not have to smoke DMT to have the experience. You only have to convince your brain that you have done this, and it then delivers this staggering altered state. ... 

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