Dennis McKenna, Brotherhood of the Screaming Abyss: My Life with Terence McKenna, North Star Press of St. Cloud, 2012
For those who lived through what is sometimes called the Psychedelic Revolution, Terrence McKenna is a legend. Once referred to as "the intellectual's Timothy Leary." Terence attained iconic status as a radical philosopher, futurist, cultural critic, and raconteur. His unorthodox ideas about the evolutionary and cultural impact of psychedelic drugs shocked many and resonated with many others. In 1971, we embarked on an expedition to the Amazon, bent on uncovering the real mystery behind psychedelic experience. Terrence died in 2000, never to learn if his predictions about the end of the world, in his particular sense, were true. As Terence's younger brother and only sibling, I grew up with him in a small town in western Colorado during the fifties and sixties. Traveling together in the Colombian Amazon in 1971 with a few other kindred spirits we called our band "the Brotherhood of the Screaming Abyss." As Terence's brother, I helped him create and develop many of "his" ideas. Terence became the spokesman for the alien dimensions accessed through psychedelics, a philosopher of the unspeakable, a beloved and sometimes reviled bard of the marvels and occasional terrors waiting in the recesses of human consciousness. By choice and inclination, I stayed in the background, pursuing a scientific career in disciplines that ranges from ethnopharmachology and ethnobotany to neuroscience. Since Terence's death, we've witnessed the first decade of a new era that by all early indications will be as strange and disturbing, as full of hope and despair, as any period that humanity has yet endured. I've been drawn to look back at how our personal world began. I wanted to retrace the journey that took us from our childhood to our separate destinies, stopping to revisit the people and ideas that shaped us
Charles Hayes, Terence McKenna, Tripping: An Anthology of True-Life Psychedelic Adventures, Penguin Compass, 2000
Taking a balanced, objective approach, the book depicts a broad spectrum of altered states, from the sublime to the terrifying. Included are fifty narratives about unforgettable psychedelic experiences from an international array of subjects representing all walks of life. Supplemental essays provide a synopsis of the history and culture of psychedelics and a discussion of the kinetics of tripping.
Rupert Sheldrake, Terence McKenna, Ralph Abraham, Chaos, Creativity, and Cosmic Consciousness, Park Street Press, 2001
Three of the most original thinkers of our time explore issues that call into question our current views of reality, morality, and the nature of life. A wide-ranging investigation of the ecology of inner and outer space, the role of chaos theory in the dynamics of human creation, and the rediscovery of traditional wisdom. In this book of "trialogues," the late psychedelic visionary and shamanologist Terence McKenna, acclaimed biologist and originator of the morphogenetic fields theory Rupert Sheldrake, and mathematician and chaos theory scientist Ralph Abraham explore the relationships between chaos and creativity and their connection to cosmic consciousness. Their observations call into question our current views of reality, morality, and the nature of life in the universe. The authors challenge the reader to the deepest levels of thought with wide-ranging investigations of the ecology of inner and outer space, the role of chaos in the dynamics of human creation, and the resacralization of the world. Among the provocative questions the authors raise are: Is Armageddon a self-fulfilling prophecy? Are we humans the imaginers or the imagined? Are the eternal laws of nature still evolving? What is the connection between physical light and the light of consciousness?
Part ceremony, part old-fashioned intellectual discussion, these trialogues are an invitation to a new understanding of what Jean Houston calls "the dreamscapes of our everyday waking life."
McKenna, Terence, Food Of The Gods: the Search for the Original Tree of Knowledge, Ebury Publishing, 2010
A journey is some of the Earth's most endangered people in the remote Upper Amazon. . . . a look at the rituals of the Bwiti cults of Gabon and Zaire. . . . . a field watch on the easting habits of 'stoned' apes and chimpanzees - these adventures are all a part of ethnobotanis t Terence McKenna's extraordinary quest to discover the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. He wonders why, as a species, we are so fascinated by altered states of consciousness. Can you reveal something about our origins as human beings and our place in nature? As an odyssey of mind, body and spirit, Food of the Gods is one of the most fascinating and suprising histories of consciousness ever written And as a daring work of scholarship and exploration, it offers an inspiring vision for individual fulfilment and a humane basis for our interaction which each other and with the natural world. 'Brilliant, provocative, opinionated, poetic and inspiring. . . . . Essential reading for anyone who ever wondered why...
Rupert Sheldrake; Terence McKenna, The Evolutionary Mind: Conversations on Science, Imagination & Spirit, Monkfish Book Publishing, 2013
Stimulating and often startling discussions between three friends, all highly original thinkers: Rupert Sheldrake, controversial biologist, Terence McKenna , psychedelic visionary, and Ralph Abraham , chaos mathematician. Their passion is to break out of paradigms that retard our evolution and to explore new possibilities. Through challenge and synergy they venture where few have gone before, leading their readers on an exciting journey of discovery. Their discussions focus on the evolution of the mind, the role of psychedelics, skepticism, the psychic powers of animals, the structure of time, the life of the heavens, the nature of God, and transformations of consciousness.
Terence McKenna, Dennis McKenna, The Invisible Landscape: Mind, Hallucinogens, and the I Ching, HarperOne, 1994
A thoroughly revised edition of the much-sought-after early work by Terence and Dennis McKenna that looks at shamanism, altered states of consciousness, and the organic unity of the King Wen sequence of the I Ching.
