Terence McKenna

Early life

Terence McKenna grew up in Paonia, Colorado.[1] He was introduced to geology through his uncle and developed a hobby of solitary fossil hunting in the arroyos near his home.[2] From this he developed a deep artistic and scientific appreciation of nature.

At age 16, McKenna moved to Los Altos, California to live with family friends for a year. He finished high school in Lancaster, CA.[1] In 1963, McKenna 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 that talked about psychedelics.[1][3]

McKenna claimed that one of his early psychedelic experiences with morning glory seeds showed him "that there was something there worth pursuing."[1] In an audio interview Terence Mckenna claims to have started smoking cannabis regularly during the summer following his 17th birthday.

Studying and traveling

In 1965, McKenna enrolled in the University of California, Berkeley[4] to study art history.[1] In 1967, while in college, he discovered and begun studying shamanism through the study of Tibetan folk religion.[5] That year, which he called his "opium and kabbala phase"[6] he also traveled to Jerusalem, where he met Kathleen Harrison, who would later become his wife.[6]

In 1969, McKenna traveled to Nepal led by his "interest in Tibetan painting and hallucinogenic shamanism."[6] During his time there, he 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 was forced to move to avoid capture by Interpol.[6] He wandered through Southeast Asia viewing ruins, collected butterflies in Indonesia, and worked as an English teacher in Tokyo. He then went back to Berkeley to continue studying biology, which he called "his first love".[6]

After the partial completion of his studies, and his mother's death from cancer in 1971,[7] 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 various forms of ayahuasca, or yagé, and gigantic Psilocybe cubensis which became the new focus of the expedition.[6] In La Chorrera, at the urging of his brother, he was the subject of a psychedelic experiment which he claimed put him in contact with "Logos": an informative, divine voice he believed was universal to visionary religious experience.[6] The voice's reputed revelations and his brother's simultaneous peculiar experience prompted him to explore the structure of an early form of the I Ching, which led to his "Novelty Theory".[6] During their stay in the Amazon, McKenna also became romantically involved with his translator, Ev.[6]

In 1972, McKenna returned to Berkeley to finish his studies.[4] There he decided to switch majors to a Bachelor of Science in ecology and conservation, in a then new experimental section of the same university called the Tussman Experimental College.[1] During his studies, he would also develop techniques for cultivating psilocybin mushrooms with Dennis.[6]

In 1975, he parted with his girlfriend, Ev, when she left him for one of his friends from Berkeley. Their parting left him "tormented with migraines and living alone".[6] He graduated in 1975.[8] That same year, he began a relationship with Kathleen Harrison, whom he had met in Jerusalem.

Soon after graduating, McKenna and Dennis published a book inspired by their Amazon experiences, The Invisible Landscape: Mind, Hallucinogens and the I Ching. He also began lecturing.[4] The brothers' experiences in the Amazon would later play a major role in McKenna's book True Hallucinations, published in 1993.[6] In 1976, the brothers published what they had learned about the cultivation of mushrooms in a book entitled Psilocybin - Magic Mushroom Grower's Guide under the pseudonyms "OT Oss" and "ON Oeric".[9]

Terence McKenna advocated the exploration of altered states of mind via the ingestion of naturally occurring psychedelic substances. For example, and in particular, as facilitated by the ingestion of high doses of psychedelic mushrooms, and DMT, which he believed was the apotheosis of the psychedelic experience. He spoke of the "jeweled, self-dribbling basketballs" or "self-transforming machine elves" that one encounters in that state.

Although he avoided giving his allegiance to any one interpretation (part of his rejection of monotheism), he was open to the idea of psychedelics as being "trans-dimensional travel"; literally, enabling an individual to encounter what could be ancestors, or spirits of earth.[10] He remained opposed to most forms of organized religion or guru-based forms of spiritual awakening.

Either philosophically or religiously, he expressed admiration for Marshall McLuhan, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Gnostic Christianity, Alfred North Whitehead and Alchemy. McKenna always regarded the Greek philosopher Heraclitus as his favorite philosopher.[11]

He also expressed admiration for the works of James Joyce (calling Finnegans Wake "the quintessential work of art, or at least work of literature of the 20th century")[20] and Vladimir Nabokov: McKenna once said that he would have become a Nabokov lecturer if he had never encountered psychedelics.

Influenced by Cybernetics, p. 157 and 159, 166 -  Archaic Revival.

Regarding Terence McKenna, he gets busted for smuggling hashish in around 1971 - and was going back and forth from East Timor, Afghanistan and South America to Berkeley and Colorado.

pertinent quotes from Mckenna’s True Hallucinations):

“…here is an interesting episode regarding McKenna being chased by Interpol and the FBI – from which no conclusion is ever mentioned. As Henk from Europe emailed me after this original article was published:

<blockquote>[Henk] In 1969, McKenna traveled to Nepal led by his “interest in Tibetan painting and hallucinogenic shamanism.”[6] During his time there, he 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.”

True Hallucinations, p. 22ff:

Late in August of 1969 fate turned me from hash smuggler to fugitive when one of my Bombay-to-Aspen shipments fell into the hands of U.S. Customs. I went underground and wandered throughout Southeast Asia and Indonesia, viewing ruins in the former and collecting butterflies in the later. Then came my time in Japan. Whether this gave me an edge on the others in experience seemed unlikely.

</blockquote>

True Hallucinations page 166:

This decision to depart California (Henk:and return to the Amazon) was hailed by my circle in Berkeley. Concern for my mental state was rife among my friends, and rumor had reached us that the FBI was aware that I was somewhere back inside the country and had begun looking for me. The Bombay-to-Aspen hashish blues were catching up with me. It was, as they say, time to make a move.

</blockquote>

True Hallucinations pg. 179

In February of 1970, a year before I arrived at La Chorrera, my fugitive wanderings had taken me to the island of Timor in Eastern Indonesia. Under indictment in the States for the heinous crime of importing hashish, I traveled and lived under the dramatic assumption that international police agencies were combing the globe looking for me. My cover, that of a graduate student in entomology doing field work for a degree—a butterfly collector—had worked well over the previous six months

</blockquote>

True Hallucinations pg. 186

I swallowed hard. He didn’t look like the sort of person who would appreciate my stories of fighting the police at the Berkeley barricades shoulder-to-shoulder with affinity groups like the Persian Fuckers and the Acid Anarchists. Nor did my participation in the Human Be-In or the rolling orgies of the Summer of Love in the Haight-Ashbury seem appropriate to mention. And my recent stint as a hashish smuggler in India and my subsequent move undercover to avoid capture by Interpol also seemed out of place in this particular interview.

I decided to go with the usual half-truth reserved for straight people. “I am an art historian turned biologist. I went to Nepal to study Tibetan but found that I am no linguist when it comes to Asian languages. I have returned to biology, my first love. Specifically, I am an entomologist.

I am collecting butterflies here in Indonesia retracing the route of Alfred Russell Wallace. Wallace was the real discoverer of the theory of natural selection, but Darwin got all the credit. I identify with his underdog status. Wallace was shafted by Victorian science because he was of the wrong class and didn’t know how to play politics the way Darwin did. Wallace explored the Amazon Basin as well and if all goes well, I hope to travel and collect there too. Eventually I will write a monograph on speciation among the butterflies of Amazonas and Eastern Indonesia, which will get me a degree. Then, who knows. Teaching perhaps. Hard to say.

</blockquote>

<blockquote>[Henk] He was forced to move to avoid capture by Interpol. He wandered through Southeast Asia viewing ruins, collected butterflies in Indonesia, and worked as an English teacher in Tokyo. He then went back to Berkeley to continue studying biology, which he called “his first love”.[6]

Note he fled to avoid capture by Interpol but then after a time he casually returns to Berkeley?

First of all, why would Terence friends hail the idea of him returning to the Amazon because they were concerned about his mental state while the cause of his mental state was his prior trip to the Amazon? That’s a contradiction. Why would Terence make up a reason to go back to the Amazon? Him being wanted by the FBI should be plenty reason I think.

</blockquote>

Attempts to get an answer from Terence’s brother, Dennis, regarding the above episode have failed. It seems they want us to believe that Terence just went from being wanted by Interpol and the FBI to just casually lecturing about psychedelics. What happened in the interim? Someone must know the answer.”

We finally have the conclusion to what happened to Terence after the FBI had caught him:

Questioner: I’m real curious about one thing. Why is it important for you to do this?

Terence McKenna: I wonder myself. You mean am I the alien ambassador whether I like it or not? [laughs]. Well, often when asked this question, I’ve said it beats honest work. I mean, my brother is a PhD in three subjects and works in hard science and yet I don’t think it’s brought him immense happiness. Not that he’s despondent. But I was always kind of a slider. You know?

And certainly when I reached La Chorerra in 1971 I had a price on my head by the FBI, I was running out of money, I was at the end of my rope. And then THEY recruited me and said, “you know, with a mouth like yours there’s a place for you in our organization”. And I’ve worked in deep background positions about which the less said the better. And then about 15 years ago they shifted me into public relations and I’ve been there to the present.

I think ideas get me high. And I like the feeling of understanding and I love diversity to the point of weirdness.

Questioner: It seems that there’s more to it than that for you. Because, you know, being tuned in to ideas and turned on by ideas is one thing, but you can keep that just to self. The sharing of it is something else. I think that’s what we’re getting at. [??

Terence: well one thing is, I’m really fascinated… I think of myself as a pretty savvy person, and not easily led into false dogma…

</blockquote>

"That historical shockwave, and the polarization it triggered, were relatively new when Terence arrived in Berkeley, fired up with rebellion, aflame with new ideas, and surrounded by peculiar yet fascinating friends. As I said, he'd been reading Ayn Rand, who ironically is now emblematic of a certain brand of right-wing intellectualism inspired by the "me-first-and-everyone-else-be-damned" philosophy..." p. 100, "Brotherhood of the Screaming Abyss"

See also: 

<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Return-Primitive-Anti-Industrial-Revolution/dp/0452011841/ref=sr_1_sc_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1423610337&sr=8-1-spell&keywords=ayn+rand+primative">http://www.amazon.com/Return-Primitive-Anti-Industrial-Revolution/dp/0452011841/ref=sr_1_sc_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1423610337&sr=8-1-spell&keywords=ayn+rand+primative</a>

--

Bullshit:

>>Terence <a href="http://www.trueactivist.com/mckenna-we-have-the-power-to-create-paradise-on-earth/" target="_blank" >McKenna</a>, self-styled ‘psychonaut’, ethnobotanist, writer, lecturer, freedom fighter and culture-doubting intellectual, was arguably one of the greatest minds who ever lived.

The celebrated English writer Aldous <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aldous_Huxley" target="blank" >Huxley</a> was a huge fan of psychedelics and wrote about his experiences with mescaline in the fascinating book The Doors Of Perception. <a href="http://www.trueactivist.com/so-youve-read-orwells-1984-but-this-dark-prophetic-novel-is-just-as-important/" target="blank" >Huxley</a>, an intellectual and aristocrat, found such comfort and delight in the psychedelic experience that his wife even administered LSD to him while he lay on his deathbed in 1963.

Read More: <a href="http://www.trueactivist.com/heres-how-psychedelic-drugs-could-radically-change-society-for-the-better/">http://www.trueactivist.com/heres-how-psychedelic-drugs-could-radically-change-society-for-the-better/</a>

Terence McKenna...

"There are logical razors and rules of evidence that can be brought to bear on any situation... it's very important to hone intuition and logical razors so that reasonable questions may be asked."

<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZqx0rNMyt0">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZqx0rNMyt0</a>

The CIA's mind control experiments under the Human Ecology Fund were replaced by groups such as the Human Potential Foundation funded by Laurence Rockefeller. Laurence also funds UFO research. In 1999 the New York Daily News ran a report about Laurence's UFO funding. "Michael Luckman, director of the New York Center for UFO Research, says the Rockefeller report entitled 'The Best Available Evidence,' "features testimony from former military officials and astronauts that contradicts Air Force denials of an alien landing." 25 

Laurence has funded "Dr. John Mack, the Harvard psychiatrist famous for his book on so-called 'alien abductions'."

"Greens and Greys [Linking Alien Presence to Environmentalism] "... intelligences of the highest power are absolutely appalled that this one species is so out of control, so insensitive to the living ecosystem of the earth..." -- Dr. John Mack, Harvard Psychiatrist....Mack's bridge between UFOs and ecology is evident in a recent book of articles compiled by the Sierra Club. Entitled Ecopsychology, Mack asks: "How do we invent a new psychology of our relationship to the earth?"

Critics accuse Mack of founding a new religion in the "green politics" of the aliens. His response that he "cannot help it if this is the communication coming through,"....Laurence Rockefeller also funds the Green Earth Foundation headed by Terence McKenna. McKenna scouts the globe collecting psychoactive plants, which he is permitted to cultivate in Hawaii. One of McKenna's theories is that psychoactive substances used by native cultures in religious ceremonies induce telepathic links with alien cultures. He believes the patriarchal "dominator" cultures of the past few thousand years have failed us and the earth, and calls for an "archaic revival", which requires a return to humanity's last "sane" moment 15,000 years ago on the plains of Africa "rocked in the cradle of the great horned mushroom goddess."

Human Potential Foundation [Global Mind - Change Potential] The Human Potential Foundation (HPF), founded by U.S. Senator Claiborne Pell and based in Falls Church, Virginia, is another project funded primarily by Laurence Rockefeller.

According to Dick Farley, who worked for the organisation for about three years, Rockefeller's interest in HPF seemed to be the promotion of "alternative religious and psychiatric/psychological paradigms, including so-called 'UFOs' and 'abductions,' having 'Global Mind Change' potentials. Rockefeller put more than $700,000 through the 'HPF' from 1991 to 1994, as Common Cause Magazine recently reported." 26 

The Complementary & Alternative Medicine Program At Stanford (CAMPS) 27 program at Stanford sports a ying/yang symbol. It's database project is worth noting.

"CAMPS Database Project: CAMPS in conjunction with Vicus.com, Inc. will launch a subscription-only database that will house citations, abstracts and articles that were donated in 1997 by Esalen Institute co-founder Michael Murphy and Laurence Rockefeller...." 28

The Rockefellers supported Esalen and it's "Esalen Soviet-American Exchange Program." Esalen is involved in paraspychology, self-actualization, self-hypnosis, with similar techniques of manipulation and mind-control as Tavistock. Esalen's activities include psychological manipulation to solve political problems. 29

Here <a href="http://www.seekgod.ca/rockefeller.htm" title="http://www.seekgod.ca/rockefeller.htmCtrl+Click or tap to follow the link" id="LPlnk365346">http://www.seekgod.ca/rockefeller.htm</a>

The Rockefellers supported Esalen and it's "Esalen Soviet-American Exchange Program."

Terence McKenna

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