Terence McKenna

1946 – 2000

Filosof, författare och etnobotaniker.

Terence McKenna var en av de populäraste psykedeliska personligheterna på 1900-talet. Många kan relatera till hans teorier. Populariteten har lett till att hans röst bl.a blivit samplad av en mängd artister, bl.a Sphongle.

Aldous Huxleys böcker skapade intresset för psykedeliska droger hos Terence McKenna. Han fick sitt psykedeliska genombrott genom att äta flera förpackningar Morning Glory, under sin studietid blev han senare introducerad till Cannabis och LSD. Åkte på 70-talet tillsammans med sin bror Dennis McKenna samt några andra personer till Amazonas för att leta efter DMT-växter. McKenna har skrivit flera böcker om sina filosofiska teorier om utomjordingar, psykedeliska droger som bidragande faktor i människornas intellektuella evolution, teorier om 2012, etc.

Terence McKenna dog år 2000 av hjärncancer. Ett litet citat från Terence själv ang. sin förestående bortgång:

"The irony of it for me is incredible. I always made my living as a brain guy, thinking. That was my department. Perturbing the brain physically, with drugs, ideas, and so forth. And I offered these doctors the chance to scold me. So what about it? A lifetime of recreational experimental drug taking, you wanna hammer on me about that? They said, Oh no, absolutely not. Well how about a lifetime of daily cannabis smoking? Oh no, look, we have data here, cannabis may actually retract tumors. I said, Listen, if cannabis retracts tumors, we would not be having this conversation. I am a study of one that can be considered definitive.

I always thought death would come on the freeway in a few horrifying moments, so you'd have no time to sort it out. Having months and months to look at it and think about it and talk to people and hear what they have to say, its a kind of blessing. Its certainly an opportunity to grow up and get a grip and sort it all out. Just being told by an unsmiling guy in a white coat that your going to be dead in four months definitely turns on the lights.

It makes life rich and poignant. When it first happened, and I got these diagnoses, I could see the light of eternity, a la William Blake, shining through every leaf. I mean, a bug walking across the ground moved me to tears.

Nothing lasts. That's one thing I think you learn from life, psychedelics, or just paying attention. Very little lasts." Källa

Böcker av Terence McKenna

The Invisible Landscape (tillsammans med Dennis McKenna, 1975)
Psilocybin - Magic Mushroom Grower's Guide (1976), tillsammans med Dennis McKenna
The Archaic Revival (1991)
Food of the Gods (1992)
Synesthesia (tillsammans med Tim Ely, 1992)
Trialogues at the Edge of the West (1992, tillsammans med Ralph Abraham och Rupert Sheldrake. Uppdaterad Revision kallad: Chaos, Creativity, and Cosmic Consciousness, 2001)
True Hallucinations (1993)
The evolutionary mind : Trialogues at the edge of the unthinkable (1998, tillsammans med Ralph Abraham och Rupert Sheldrake. Uppdaterad edition: The evolutionary mind: Trialogues on Science, Spirit & Psychedelics, 2005)
Robert Venosa: Illuminatus (1999, tillsammans med Robert Venosa)