Terence McKenna is known for his research into plant-induced altered states of consciousness and his opinions about our society's use of psychedelics. Here, he shares his perspectives on present-day social and governmental views of their use.
The Monthly Aspectarian: Terence, I usually like to start by letting people tell how they came to be who they are.
Terence McKenna: How did I come to be who I am? I don't know! I was always interested in nature, which means rocks, butterflies and fossils. And I guess sooner or later that's what led me to discover psychedelic plants. Basically, it was an interest in nature and the so-called mysteries of nature that led me into psychedelics, and that's where I found there really are mysteries of nature. That's not a metaphor! And that was the bridge for me back into the human world, the world of anthropology, archeology, social psychology.
When I was about fourteen, I had been very interested in mysticism and the classical Western mystics, and that was when I became aware of Aldous Huxley's book, The Doors of Perception. Here was somebody saying that these states or similar states of mind could be obtained through the use of plants; he was writing about mescaline and peyote. After I left high school, I went to college at the University of California. This was in 1965, and so it was that all these things that had been such private esoteric concerns of mine turned into a cultural obsession right before my eyes. Then I went to Asia looking at the Eastern religion angle and what they had to say about psychedelics -- which I concluded was less than I hoped. Eventually I got a degree in ecology back at Cal. Through [the '60s and '70s] I wrote books about psychedelics that over the '80s and '90s have come into a wider audience.
TMA: What do you say to those who say that psychedelic spiritual experience is not real or valid?
TMcK: Well, I assume they've had the real thing, and I haven't. So I really don't have much to say to them. I don't know whether it's real or valid or not. It's as real as I can handle. They may have a different standard.
I think there's a lot of ignorance and prejudice and people pontificating from a position of not really having done their homework. The reason for this is that because this is a very highly charged issue for the Western mind, the issue of alteration of our consciousness and what does it mean about the soul and the state -- and it seems to cross the entire spectrum of the areas that we're nervous about. So it's a sensitive issue for people. But my own experience, looking at yoga and other techniques of that sort, is to conclude that psychedelics are an effective, safe and accessible way of reaching these spiritual dimensions for an ordinary person who has obligations in the ordinary secular world.
When I was a kid I was very interested in all of this, and I prayed, and I hiked in the wilderness. Later I became interested in yoga and meditation. As my experience with these things deepened and my acquaintance with accomplished people in these areas grew . . . I'm not even sure it's the same ball park. The mystical states tend toward a vocabulary of unity: the white light, the dissolving oneness, the All beyond multiplicity. These are not psychedelic description. This is not what psychedelics do. Psychedelics carry us into, if anything, a more complicated universe from the one we're living in, a universe with more dimensions, more colors, more feelings, more impressions.
I've never claimed that psychedelics were to be equated with the moral life. I think the moral life is a little more straightforward. The moral life is clothe the naked, bury the dead, visit the sick, comfort the afflicted; it's pretty simple stuff. Psychedelics are an alternative to the hallucination of culture. That's what they are, and that's what makes them so politically charged. They somehow dissolve our linguistic and cultural programming and return us to what the psychologist William James called "the blooming, buzzing confusion of infancy and innocence." So I think the people most interesting to talk to about these issues are people who have had psychedelic experiences, have done spiritual practices and have lived lives of self-examination. I've found myself in agreement with those kinds of people -- experienced, sophisticated people on both sides of the boundary.
TMA: What do you make of the loss of Timothy Leary recently?
TMcK: Well, I guess Tim Leary is mortal like everybody else. He certainly made a major contribution to the dialogue on these questions. I didn't know him well, but I certainly found him pleasant and engaging and an amusing guy to spend time with. I think in the broader context, the psychedelic issue is now part of the countercultural agenda largely because of Leary and the people around him, and that it will remain so now for the rest of recorded history, however long that may be.
TMA: The drug warriors don't seem to understand that it's human nature to change consciousness.
TMcK: Well, there are two issues here. I talk to the issue of psychedelic drugs, which are a very small part of the drug warriors' rhetoric and agenda. Psychedelics, meaning LSD, mescaline, psilocybin, DMT -- these things don't make anybody fortunes, they don't promote international criminal syndicates and they're generally pretty small potatoes as a criminal enterprise. The great drugs of history, the heroin, the cocaine, the tobacco -- governments are so spun into and co-opted by them that for all practical purposes any effort to suppress these drugs is just a charade.
The psychedelics are vehemently suppressed because of the fear that they affect lifestyles . . . I think it's true that they actually are a source of social discontent and dissent. I think psychedelics, for all of their lack of impact on the criminal economy, do cause people to question their traditional upbringing, traditional political values and so forth . . . and every culture is in the business of maintaining those very values. So whether you're a socialist state, a Marxist state, a pseudo-democracy, you can all get together on the ideal that it's a terrible thing for people to sit around thinking under the influence of strange substances.
TMA: At this point, what do you think about the issue of illegality of psychedelics?
TMcK: I think the culture is sort of like the Republican Party on abortion. Most of them are for it, but their platform is against it. Most people use drugs, and once you get tobacco, sugar and alcohol in the picture, everybody uses drugs. We're just learning that tobacco is as virulent and deadly and destructive a drug as ever compounded by mankind. But unlike heroin, morphine, crack cocaine and so forth, things which are criminalized and driven underground, tobacco's peddled freely. Clearly, we have a very schizophrenic attitude toward these things. I think it's one of the major things, if not the major thing causing people to regard governments as hypocritical and situational in their ethics and completely sold out to gangsters, capitalism and consumerism. Either all drugs should be legal and we should just simply inform people of the risks, or drugs should be made illegal based on some reasonable and scientific assessment of the cost to society and the harm to the individual.
On that basis, tobacco certainly would replace heroin as the number one drug to be suppressed with police measures. Alcohol would follow. Television might have to be looked at . . . so obviously, we're not going to do this. Instead, we should, I think, recognize that civilization is a complex and messy enterprise. Not everyone's religion, style of dress, sexual preference, diet or whatever is going to agree with everybody else's. So rather than legislate morality, with the large amounts of scientific and medical ignorance thrown into the moral picture, let's just educate our children about the real risks, the real options, and assume, like all the generations of people who preceded them, that they will have the good sense and intelligence, if given the facts, to sort things out in a reasonable and rational manner.
TMA: What do you hear about the quality of the LSD and the DMT that's available these days?
TMcK: I think this is still a problem. This is why I've always been a strong advocate of plants, because with a plant, you sort of know who your dealer is. Mushrooms . . . it clearly must physically look like a mushroom. The likelihood of pure, well made, safely distributed drugs is questionable. You're dealing with white powders sold in the underground by criminal syndicates under pressure placed on them by the police agencies. There are hundreds of species of plants scattered throughout the world that can be grown and prepared to provide mind-altering experiences. This breaks the loop of dependence on criminal conspiracies; it involves a certain amount of self-education and responsibility.
People should not think, when they want an altered state, Where can I go buy it? They should think, How can I obtain it by interacting with nature? So that is there to be done. People have to be broken of a lot of bad habits, drugs being only one of them. Such habits as consumer capitalism and infantilism and reliance on mass media to inform yourself and form your decisions. We're producing a population of infantilized, manipulated larval creatures. And drugs are not what's causing it. It's knee deep in capitalism and political manipulation.
TMA: What do you see in the near future, culturally?
TMcK: I think up until the turn of the century, the voice of the seventeen percent not-so-right-wing Christian Coalition types are going to be heard very loud in the land. I don't know if they can regain the presidency -- I doubt it -- and I imagine, actually, their political moment of ascendancy may have peaked. I think until well beyond the turn of the century, we're going to have something pretty much like business as usual. Beyond the turn of the century, the social problems that are accumulating will exceed the power of propagandists and spin doctors and image makers to control. And then we'll probably have to really talk turkey about who's going to be thrown from the lifeboat and who's not. At the moment, people talk apocalypse -- but this is not the apocalypse; this is the long garden party on a golden afternoon before the apocalypse.
TMA: Where are you with all of this now?
TMcK: In the present time, I'm mixed up a lot with high technology and the Internet and trying to build a kind of virtual, on-line alternative culture to the sold out, suburbanized, sort of white-bread culture of the mainstream. Psychedelics are a part of that, but I see them as simply one of the pieces of the puzzle . . . the rise of the Internet, the rise of cultural alienation among the youth, the obvious bankruptcy of the middle class ideals.
For example, take the current presidential campaign. All of this makes me think that we're ripe for a major phase shift in how we run this civilization. I live out here in Hawaii where I can get the whole thing in one view, and I write about it and I study culture, and I try and maintain a large website on the Internet, and I promote consciousness of plants. My rap is -- I guess you'd call it futuristic archaism or something like that. In other words, I think that in a sense, history has been a very stressful and for most people, a very unhappy experience and we're trying to get back to a simpler way of living. But it doesn't exist by going back to the past. We can't steer toward that, but what we can do is try for something like a forward escape through technology.
I'm very interested in these so-called "immersive technologies" which would be, I suppose, psychedelics, pharmacology and virtual reality as ways of creating a broader bandwidth of communication between people; pseudo-telepathy, near-telepathy, someday maybe real telepathy; using art and cultural criticism and the new information technologies to inform people of the options outside the cultural and political playpen. And that means psychedelics, empowering technologies, and unfettered free thought.
Terence McKenna is the author of The Invisible Landscape: Mind, Hallucinogens and the I Ching; The Archaic Revival; Food of the Gods; Trialogues at the Edge of the West (w/Ralph Abraham); True Hallucinations; Psilocybin: Magic Mushroom Growers Guide. His website address is: http:\\www.levity.com\eschaton\.