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In Praise of Psychedelics Rumbling up from the '60S Comes One Gifted Irishman with the Message

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In Praise of Psychedelics Rumbling up from the '60S Comes One Gifted Irishman with the Message ____ ____ --- ~~0~~~ '~~ ~0~~~~ ~°~~~.~'~~~~~~"~~~~~~~~~~ .~~=~~_"~~~m~~~~~w~~nw~~»~~m~mmmnnm~~~~~m~~mmvmm~m~a .~~°, Terence McKenna In Praise of Psychedelics Rumbling up from the '60s comes one gifted Irishman with the message: The human race cannot afford to give up all drugs. BY JAY LEVIN rice upon a time, while "housennfe-mother" in a small, largely fun- hallucinogens and will not advance past its DMT, which is a natural plant compound on one of my rare excur- damentalist Colorado town, Paonina, current primitivism and reach new dimensions that's been synthesized sions into in the laboratory, is hvpercon- McKenna recalls that the book left him of evolved consciousness without further use of the most powerful of the psychedelics and sciousnesr (on this "completely rwepr away . I remember follow- these narun-given means of expanded aware- is extremely short-acting . After one expo- occasion via mescaline), ing my mother around our kitchen, telling her ness. According to McKenna, no fan of the sure to it, 1 said : "This isn't a is someone played for drug, this me a Terence McKenna that if one-tenth of what this guy was saying pop drugs - crack, smack, et al . - or pop magic! This is a dimension to reality that tape. I was transfixed. McKenna was one of was true, then this was what l want to do with drug use, this pharmacology should be entrust- most people the loveliest never even suppose exists ." speakers I'd ever heard, with a my life . " lF7iat in fact he has done u spend 20 ed to specially trained psychotherapy profes- It was really the DMT that empowered lush Irish gift the gab of and an extraordinary years studying the philosophical foundations of sionals - the potential shamans of postmodern my commitment to the psychedelic experi- ability to turn difficult intellectual concepts shamanism, the use of hallucinogens in spiri- culture - and he is a happy crusader for the ence. DMT was into verbal so much more powerful, poetry. That his subject matter was tual transformation, and the enormous impact expanded legalisation of the use of such so much more alien, raising all the evolution the kinds of of consciousness of the human and potential of natural hallucinogens an our materials by the profession. issues about what is reality, what is lan . species, and particularly the role psychedel- evolving of planetary culture and emerging These days, when not out lecturing or guage, what is the self, what is three. ics in that evolution, made the tape a particu- "metaconsciousncss. " searching for new larly natural hallucinogens in the dimensional space and time, all the engaging experience in my elevated state. McKenna took hit first psychedelic - LSD --fan= of the world, McKenna spends his But questions I because involved with over the what truly converted me into a McKen- - in the '60s at Berkeley, when he was a stu- tune between his home in Mann and his So. next 20 years or so . na fan wear the levels on which he explored dent activist in the free-speech and ant-war tanieal Dunennow garden rift in Hawaii - a Arid what had been for some time I saw the psychedelic experience as one of the major movements. An an history major at first, he non-profit effort at preserving the natural me- recovering our birthright. The number of strains in my own thinking. that history, as toe participated vi a special prvgrom for gifted dictnal and prychotropic plants of the earth people and cultures have know and that gone to u define it it ending, 77th was an students in which "the literature, am science, from the mrarer of civilisation. He lectures maturity and then to death without an ink- awareness I'd arrived at early in ny joronalis- mathematics, what have you " of different his- frequently to psychotherapists, and is a per- ling of tic toner while this is to me the most shocking researching a magazine amgn- torical periods were studied in depth. This laid sonal consultant to some of them. His books, thing about the human situation . Because ment on the new psychotherapies. a On mart the groundwork for what he calls his "broad- Psilocybin : Magic Mushroom Grower's you are not a fully matured human being in scale, were people able w break free from the brush" approach to exploring the history of Guide (written with his brother Demns) and touch with the potential of reality unless psychologital patterns and deadarks of his- human consciousness. True Hallucinations, at well as tapes his you have tory, I of had a psychedelic experience. reasoned, then all our views of human Halfway through college, harassed by Rea- remarkable lecturer and computer programs of You don't have to embrace or affairs change and it - abuse it would history at we'd gan's cops because of his barricades-sryle polit- his "time wow" theories, are available from - but you have to know it exists. And learned it - the baffles of nation states, the ical actirnsrn in the student strike of 1967, Lax Planers, 1140 Shattuck Are ., Box 2196, there's only one way snuggles to know it exists, and between classes, the endless fight for McKenna decided a sabbatical was in order Berkeley, CA 94704 . that's to have it . human equality - world in fact become men and vent off to work as an art historian in What occasions this interview is McKenna's WEEKLr Tim Leary was saving much the same foomow in the annals of the species. It seemed Nepal, where he tried to "integrate the psyche- impending Tune 5 public appearance at the thing in the '60s, and it go him into trouble. only a matter of a couple of centuria. delic experience into a Buddhist model. " This nearby Ojat Foundation, when he will give a What's the difference with you? To this view McKenna resonated in with led him to the study of Tibetan shamanism. seminar entitled "The Return to Eden. " One MCKENIU: You know, I very extrapolanorts am much at from molecular chemistry, phys- Both cultures, he discovered, used psychoac- day earlier, on June 4, he will co-lecture with variance with the wisdom of hindsight in ics, emhnobotany, anthropology, the "marke- rroe drugs in their psychic explorations - Riane Eisler. author of The Chalice and the looking back at how Leary and Alpert and maticr of chaos, " Jung, McLuhan and much hathish and a local herb called Datura. Thus Blade, ', the ground-breaking anthropological Metzner handled it in the '60s . But to try more. And what made his talk`mon compel- began his investigation into the true nature of study of male-fenwle partnering, on Tech- to launch a "children's crusade," to try to ling, at least during my own mescaline medita- shamanism. He later finished his degree at the nologies of Liberation. " From June 3-5 the co-opt the destiny of the children tums, of the was his argument that the species' Department of Conservation of Natural Re- two will also conduct a seminar entitled "Man middle class using the media as your ad- ability (eventually) to transcend our own tusk sources at San Francisco State, when, he and Woman at the End of History. " Contact vance man, was a very risky business history . Arid stems chiefly from the impact, throrigh- says, he was a "selforgansaed major in sha- the Ojai Fonndaton at P. O . Box 1620, it rebounded, I think, badly . out history, what of McKem s called "botani- manism . " Ojai, CA 93023 (805-646-8343) . Those who I think Huxley's approach was much cal shamanism . " In other words, God's owe Apart from his wide knowledge, what know and enjoy Joseph Campbell's work unit more intelligent - not to try to reach the given psychedelics - mushrooms, peyote, aya- makes McKenna fascinating it that he has almost certainly appreciate McKenna. largest number of people, but to try to huafra, morning glory, et al. himself experienced virtually every form of reach the most important and influential McKenna, as it turns out, has never met psychedelic and pyschotropw known to or people : the poets, the architects, the Tim Leary, whom, it seems, he is about to re- dewed by man, and yet, throughout all these WEEIL1 : You've implied that LSD is not truly politicans, the research scientists and, es. place as the culture's foremast spokesperson for experiences, has managed to retain the keen- "shamanistic "; that ir, that it doesn't induce pecially, the psychotherapists . Because the psychedelic experience . When Mary was eyed, scientific, intellectual observer part of his the higherfonts of "hallucenarsom "or wionr what we're talking about is the greatest brilliant and original in both his experimenta- consciousness which, after the experience, is or consciousness available from natural prod- boon to psychotherapy since Freud . I often and his tion salesmanship, bfcKema it bril- able to describe its nature in the most extraor- ucu like pslocybin mushrooms. Hour do you make the metaphor that psychedelics are to liant, scholarly and priestly (n the best sense dinarily lucid decal. He has thus experienced compare a w other psychedelics? psychology what telescopes in the 16th of the last word). In fact, though a child of the levels of awareness described by some of the MCKEIKk Wben 1 was young, I would take century were to astronomy. If a person is '60s, the 41 yearold McKenna came to his gnat mvstus of the past, but unlike most of LSD once a month or so, but I wasn't that not willing to look through the telescope, fascination with "ethnopharmaeology, " as he them can relate his experiences to the cultural crazy about it .
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