Tryptamine Hallucinogens and Consciousness
by Terence McKenna
A talk given at the Lilly/Goswami Conference on Consciousness and Quantum Physics at Esalen, December 1983. It was to be the first of many lectures at Esalen Institute on the Big Sur Coast of California. (Included as written word because this edited transcription appears in print as part of his book The Archaic Revival - dimitri)
There is a very circumscribed place in organic nature that has, I think, important implications for students of human nature. I refer to the tryptophan-derived hallucinogens dimethyltryptamine (DMT), psilocybin, and a hybrid drug that is in aboriginal use in the rain forests of South America, ayahuasca. This latter is a combination of dimethyltryptamine and a monoamine oxidase inhibitor that is taken orally. It seems appropriate to talk about these drugs when we discuss the nature of consciousness; it is also appropriate when we discuss quantum physics.
It is my interpretation that the major quantum mechanical phenomena that we all experience, aside from waking consciousness itself, are dreams and hallucinations. These states, at least in the restricted sense that I am concerned with, occur when the large amounts of various sorts of radiation conveyed into the body by the senses are restricted. Then we see interior images and interior processes that are psychophysical. These processes definitely arise at the quantum mechanical level. It's been shown by John Smythies, Alexander Shulgin, and others that there are quantum mechanical correlates to hallucinogenesis. In other words, if one atom on the molecular ring of an inactive compound is moved, the compound becomes highly active. To me this is a perfect proof of the dynamic linkage at the formative level between quantum mechanically described matter and mind.
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High Times Interviews Terence McKenna
Did hallucinogens play a crucial role in human evolution? Terence McKenna has devoted most of his life to exploring this question. A specialist in the ethnomedicine of the Amazon Basin, McKenna along with his partner Kat Harrison McKenna founded Botanical Dimensions, a nonprofit foundation devoted to rescuing Amazonian plants that have a history of shamanic uses. They move the plants to a 19-acre site in Hawaii and preserve the details of the plant's uses by storing the information in a computer database. In addition to preserving these important plants, as a nonprofit organization, Botanical Dimensions solicits donations to publish a newsletter and to aid in carrying out the preservation of the folk knowledge of the peoples native to the Amazon area. The combination of McKenna's academic approach -- he has a BS from the University of California at Berkeley with a distributed degree in ecology, resource conservation and shamanism -- his vast travel experiences, and uniquely visionary perspective, combine to make him a most sought-after speaker and author. His newest books include Food of the Gods (Bantam) and The Archaic Revival (Harper/ San Francisco) -- in which an abridged version of this interview appears. A slightly different version of this interview will also appear in a soon-to-be-published book by David Jay Brown and Rebecca McClen called Voices of Vision.
by David Jay Brown and Rebecca McClen
High Times Magazine, April 1992
HIGH TIMES: Tell us how you became interested in shamanism and the exploration of consciousness.
Terence McKenna: I discovered shamanism through an interest in Tibetan folk religion. Bon, the pre-Buddhist religion of Tibet, is a kind of shamanism. In going from the particular to the general with that concern, I studied shamanism as a general phenomenon. It all started out as an art historical interest in the pre-Buddhist iconography of thankas.
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