On Drugs

HEN TERENCE NICKENNA HEARS TODAY'S then let them decide." What about those too desperate to all-out antidrug rhetoric, he just says make a sound choice: "In a caring society there would not vwhoa. Via seminars, taped lectures, and be this tremendous desire to dull ourselves." - t,,vo books, McKenna stakes out the pro- Which leads to McKenna's big claim: Psychedelics can 18psychedelic position: "What people object to enable us to create a caring society by "dissolving bound- about drugs is that they cause an unexamined, obsessive, aries" in our minds, thereby freeing us from "male domi- and destructive behavior. This is precisely what psyche- nance and rationalism." Drug and computer delics mitigate against. Thev dissolve behavioral patterns, will merge in the next few decades, says the 41-year-old bring habits and His eyes have seen unexamined attitudes forward in sometime hacker. "It will lead to computers that you place the to be looked at." We need to under your tongue." Will that lead to mind control or better the coming of a define "drug," McKenna argues. Until then, mind expansion% McKenna won't bet vet: "Thar's why "a relatively harmless substance like marijuana is drug education is so key." Meanwhile, he offers his own inveighed new psychedelic against, while extremely insidious drugs drug test: "Does it occur in nature- Is it alreadv close to like television, alcohol, and cocaine have been al- compounds naturally present in the brain' Does it lowed to . take over the American psyche." Better, he have a history of human usage for thousands of years: says, to fully inform kids about each drug, "and Mushrooms do. Mescaline does. LSD and Ecstasy don't." -Kathnw Ohrey

Photograph by Howard Rosenberg MOTHER IONES 9

TERENCE K. McKENNA An Interview by & Rebecca McClen

IRENCE K. IACKENNA, author lengths, one must assign an end point to and explorer, echnobotanist and shamanolo- Terence: The is essentialiv hu- the novelty wave, so rti- end of time is gist, u a silver-tongued rapper, and when he manistic psychology Eighties style, with nothing more than t. _)inc on the his- speaks, all are held spellbound by the the addition of neo-, channel. torical continuum that is assigned as the hypnotically poetic stream ofwords that roll ing, crystal and herbal healing, and this end point of the novelty wave. Novelty is off his tongue. We like Terence because he's sort of thing. The archaic revival is a something which has been slowly maxi- hip, scholarly, surrealistically imaginative, much larger, more global phenomenon mised through the life of the , and a wonderful story reller . Creator ofthe that assumes that we are recovering the something which reaches infinite density, interactive computer software program social forms of the late , and the or infinite contraction at the point from Timewave Zero, and co-author (with his archaic revival reaches far back in the which the wave is generated. Trying to brother Dennis) of The Invisible Landscape, 20th century to Freud, to , to imagine what time would be like near the True Hallucinations, and : The , even to a phe. temporal singularity is difficult Magic Mushroom Grower's Guide, because we nontenon like National Socialism which is are far from it, in another Terence is heard regularly on late-night radio domain of physi- cal law. There need to be more shows talking about new maps of hyper-space, facts in play, before we will be able to communicating with elves and extraterrestri- correctly envisage the end of time, but what als, psychedelics, the nature of time, and we can say concerning the singularity is this: it is regularly gives lectures and workshops at new the obviation of life in three age mating grounds like Esalen and Ojai. dimensional space, everything that is familiar comes to Terence has spent the last twenty years re- an end, everything that can be searching the ontological foundations of sha- described in Euclidian space is superseded by modes manism and the erhno-pharmacology of of being which require a more complicated spiritual transformation . After graduating description than is currently available. from the University of at Berkeley with a distributed major in Ecology, Resource David: Terence, you're recognized by many Conservation, and Shamanism, he traveled as one of the great explorers the twentieth extensively in the Asian and New World of century. You've trekked through the Tropics, becoming specialized in the shaman- Amazonian jungles and soared through the ism and erhno-medicine of the . uncharted regions of the brain, but perhaps He currently lives in Hawaii and California, your ultimate voyages he in the future, when and is the founder of Botanical dimensions, a humanity has mastered space technology and tax-exempt, non-profit, research-oriented rime travel . What possibilities for travel in botanical garden and gene bank devoted to the these two areas do you foresee, and how do collection and propagation ofplants ofecltno- Terence McKerrc you think these new pharmacological interest . technologies will affect the future The following interview of the human ' is an edited ver- a negative force. But the stress on . sion of the original interview. We chose to use on organi :ed activity, on race/ancestor Terence: Some question. I suppose most excerpts that dealt with this special issue consciousness; these are themes that have people believe space travel is right around theme. The interview will be published in its been worked out throughout the entire the comer. I certainly hope so. I think we entirety in a soon-co-be-published work by Twentieth Centurv, and the archaic should all learn Russian in anticipation of DavidJay Brown and Rebecca McClen revival is an expression of char. it, because apparently the U.S. govern- entitled Voices of Vision . DavidJ. Broom is ment is incapable ofsustaining a space the author of Brainchild, reviewed in this David : According co your time-ware model, program. The time travel question is more issue. novelty reaches its peak expression and hisum interesting. Possibly the world is experi- appears to come to a close in the year 2C 12 . . encing a compression of technological Can you explain what you mean.by this, and novelty that is going to lead to develop- Rebecca: You have said that the term "New what the glubai or ecoiutionary implications ments that are very much like what we Age" trivializes the significance of the next are ofwhat you refer to as the "end of time"' would imagine time travel to be. We mat phase in human evolution and have referred be closing in on the ability to transmit . instead to the emergence ofan archaic revival. Terence: What I mean is this; the theory information forward into the How do you differentiate between future, and these two describes time %eith «hat are called co expressions create an informational domain of com- novelty waves. Because wave, have wavc- munication between various points in 58 / Critique: A Journal Exposing Consertsus Reality time. How this will be dune is difficult to Thernnolynanucs. and at that point it runs imagine, but things and very long lived in their functioning. like mathemat . down; its specific character disappears into ics, Now let's think aK)ut what machines are superconductivity, and nanotechnul- the general character of the world around made of, in the light of Sheldrake's mor- ogy offer new and novel approaches to re- it. It has returned then to the void/ple- phogenetic tield theory. Machines are alization of these old dreams. We num. made of metal, glass. gold, silicon, and shouldn't assume time travel is impossible plastic; they are simply because it hasn't been done. made of what the is David: What ifyou don't have children.' made of. Now wouldn't There's plenty oflatitude in the laws of it be strange if biology were a way for earth to alchemi. quantum physics to allow for moving Terence: Well then you flow backward tally transform itself into a self-reflecting information through time in various ways. into the past, into your parents, and their thing. In which case Apparently you can move information then, what we're parents, and their parents, and eventually headed for through time, as long as inevitably, what we are in fact you don't move it all life, and back into the primal protozoa. through time creating is a world run by machines. And faster than light. Now it's a hand thing to face, but from the once these machines are in place, they can long term point of view of nature, you be expected to manage our economies, David: Why is that! have no relevance for the future whatso- , social aspirations, and so forth, ever, unless you procreate. It's very in such a way that we stop killing each Terence: I haven't the faintest idea. interesting that in the celebration of the other, stop starving each other, stop (laughter) What am I, Einstein? (laughter) , when they took the destroying land, and so forth. Actually the sacrament, what the god said was, fear of being David: Well Terence, now I'm ruled by machines is the male wondering "Procreate, procreate." It is uncanny the what you think the ego's fear of relinquishing control of the ultimate goal of human way history is determined by who sleeps planet to the maternal matrix ofGaia. Ha. evolution is? with whom, who gets born, what lines are That's it. Just a thought. (laughter). drawn forward, what tendencies are accel- Terence: Oh, a good party. (laughter) erated. Most people experience what they Rebecca: It seems that human is call magic only in the dimension of mate. David: Do you have evolving at a much slower rate than is the any thoughts on what seeking, and this is where even the happens dullest ability of human consciousness to navigate to human consciousness after biologi- people have astonishing cal coincidences, and more complex and more profound levels of death? unbelievable things go on; it's almost as reality. How do you see language developing though hidden strings were being pulled. and evolving so as to become a Terence: I've thought about it. When I more sensitive There's an esoteric tradition, that the transceicing device think about it I feel like I'm for sharing conscious on my own. genes, the matings are where it's all being experience The doesn't .' want to help here. The run from. It is how I think a super-extra. logos has nothing to say to me on the terrestrial would intervene. It wouldn't Terence subject of biological : Actually consciousness can't death. What I intervene at all. it would make us who imagine it evolve any faster than language. The rate happens is that for the self time wanted us to be by controlling synchron. at which language evolves determines how begins to flow backwards. Even before icily and coincidence around mate fast consciousness evolves, otherwise death, the act of dying is the act of choosing. you're just lost in what Wittgenstein reliving an entire life, and at the end of called the unspeakable the dying process consciousness . You can feel it, divides David: Do you think that there's anv rela- but you into the consciousness can't speak of it, so it's an entirely ofones parents and tionship between the self-transforming ones private reality. Notice how we have very children, and then it moves through machine elves that you've encountered on few words for emotions .' 1 love you, I hate these modalities, and then divides again. your shamanic voyages and the solid state you, and then basically we tun a dial It's moving forward into the future endues that John Lilly has contacted in his between those. I love you a lot, I through the people who come after you, hate you inwrdimensional travels? a lot. (laughter) and backwards into the past through your ancestors. The further away from the Terence: I don't think there is much con. Rebecca: How do you moment ofdeath it is, the feel.' Fine. faster it moves, gruence. The solid state entities that he so that after a period of time, the Tibetans contacted seem to make him quite say upset. Terence: Yes, how do you feel, fine, and 42 days, one is reconnected to The elf machine entities that 1 encounter yet we have thousands and thousands of everything that ever lived, and the are the embodiment of merriment and words about rugs, and widgets, and this previous ego pointed existence is defo- humor, but I have had a thought about and that, so we need to create a much cused, and one is returned to the ocean, this recently which I will tell you. One of richer language of emotion. There are the morphogenetic field, or the One of the science fiction fantasies that haunts times, and this would be a great study for Plotinus, you choose your term. A person the collective unconscious is expressed in somebody to do, there have been periods is a focused illusion of being, and death the phrase "a world run by machines," in in English when there were emotions occurs when the illusion of being can be the 1950s this was first articulated in the which don't exist anymore, because the sustained no longer. Then everything notion, "perhaps the future will be a words have been lost. This is getting very flows out, and away from this disequili- terrible place where the world is run by close to this business of how realitv is brium state, that life is. It is a state of machines." Well now, let's think about made by language. Can we recover a lost disequilibrium, and it is maintained for machines for a moment. They are emotion, by creating a word for it' There decades, but finally, like all disequilibrium extremely impartial, very predictable, not are colors which don't exist any more states, it must yield to the Second Law of subject to moral suasion, value neutral, because the words have been lost. I'm

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thinking of the word jacinth . Thi. 1 .,j perspectives \n that hurnantt-i is able to learn religious tundamentalism. retreat into certain kind oforange. Once v"u know /roan its experiences without hetng bound by closed communities by certain segments of the word jacinth. you alway, can recognt_e the habas of history! the society, feudal warfare among minor it, but if you don't have it, all you can "av states, and this sort of thing. But l think it is it's a little darker orange than,omerhing Terence: The two are antithetical . You will give way in the late Nineties to the else. We've never tried to consciou,ly must not be hound by the habits of history actual global future that we're all yearning evolve our language . we've just let it if you want to learn from your experience . fr- 'ind then there will be basically a evolve, but now we have this level of It was Ludwig yon Bertallanfy, the I n year period where all these things awareness, and this level of cultural need inventor of general systems theory, who are drawn together with progressively where we really must plan where the new made the famous statement that "people greater and greater sophistication, words should be generated. There are much in areas are not machines, but in all situations the way that modern where words should be science and gotten rid of that where they are given the opportunity, they empower politi- has grown with greater and will act like ma- greater cally wrong sophistication in a single direction chines," so you have since the Renaissance, thinking. The What the are and that sometime in fact creating to keep disturbing around propagandists for the end of 2012 all of this will be is a tvorld them, 'cause they boiled the fascists already run by machines. down into a kind ofalchemical dis- always settle down tillation understand this ; And once of the historical experience that these machines into a routine. So, will be they understand a doorway into the life of the are in place, historical patterns are imagination. that if you make they canbe largely cyclical, but something unsay. expected to manage our. not entirely; there is Rebecca: 's able, you've made morphic reso- economiesi ultimately a highest nance, Ralph Abraham's it unthinkable. So languages,' social , and level of the pattern, your time it doesn't plague aspiradons, wave model all appear to contain :andso forth, in,' which does not complimentary you anymore. So patterns which operate on such. repeat, and that's the similar planned evolution a way that-we:stop underlying principles-that energy part which is respon- systems store of language is the killingeach information until a certan level other, stop sible for the advance is reached way to speed it and The information is then starving into true novelty. rransduced toward expressing each other stop ._ ., into a largerframe ofreference, like water in the frontier ofcon- destroying land..: a tiered fountain . Have you Actually Rebecca: The pare that worked these sciousness. theories into an all encompassing the fear of being ruled by doesn't repeat. Hmm. metatheory ofhow the universe functions and The positive futurists operates.' Rebecca: Future machines, is the male ego's . tend tofall into two predictions are often fear groups . Some visualize based upon the of relinquishing control Terence: No, but we're working on it. the future as becoming study ofprevious of the planet to the (Laughter) Well, it is true that the three maternal progressively brighter of us, and I would patterns and Trends add Frank Ban in there, matrix every day and that who is less well which are then of . known, but has a piece of global illumination will the puz:le as extended like the well, we're all complimen- occur as a result of this tary. Rupert's theory is, at this point, a hy- contours of a map to extrapolate the shape of progression; others envision a period ofactual pothesis. There are no equations, there's things to come. The future can also be seen as devolution- a dark age- through which human no predictive machinery, it's a way of an on-going dynamic creative interaction consciousness must pass, before more speaking about experimental approaches. between the past and the present-the current adtanced stages are reached. Which scenario My time wave thing is like an extremely interpretation of past events actively serves to do you see as being the most likely to emerge, formal and specific example of what he's formulate These future patterns and trends . and uhv do you hold this view? talking about in a general way. And then Have you been able to reconcile these Two what Ralph's doing is providing a bridge Terence: I guess from the kind ofthings Rupert and I are WORD lv1AC7 C I'm a soft Dark doing back into the frontier branch of The public and private musings of Ager. (Laughter) ordinary mathematics called dynamic Terence I think there will modeling. And Frank is an expert in the McKenna be a mild dark This exceptional post-modern repetition of fractal process. He can show thinker threads age; I don't think you the same thing philosophy and humor through happening on many the eye of history, it will be any- many levels, in many many different inspired by a lifetime of psychedelic investi- thing like the expressions. So I have named us Compres- gation and a deep love of language. An dark ages which sionists, or Psychedelic extraordinary Compressionisms. A speaker, available now on single lasted a thousand Compressionism holds that the world audio-cassettes is or as The Collected Talks. years. I think it growing more and more complex, com- Send for a free catalog of mind-stretching tapes, will last more like pressed, knitted together, and therefore books, video and software from: five years, and holographically complete at every point, Lux -916atura, 2140 will be a time of and that's basically where the four of us ShattuckAve ., economic V#2196-C, Berkeley, stand, I think, but from different points of CA 94704 retraction, view.

60 / Critique: ,A Journal Exhosina Cm;znszu Reality