A collection of Terrence Mckenna videos I made about psychedelics

[DistyBoi]

Figured no better way to get the message out than to create some videos of some of Mckennas better points.

Don't expect anyone to watch them all, unless you really like them, just choose one from the titles and some feedback about how to improve it would be great.

Hope you like!

Terence Mckenna - How to use psychedelics and what they mean



Terence Mckenna - Shamanism of the 21st century

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e2R3-UFiZ3U

Terence Mckenna - We have gone sick - The challenge



Terence Mckenna - The felt presence of direct experience

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6Uv_dWYM90

Joe Rogan Graham Hancock and Terence Mckenna - The stoned ape theory of human evolution

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EG09dR2I_W8

 

[DistyBoi]

Terence Mckenna - Swimming in an invisible sea of consciousness

 

[Engage]

Meh, don't really need th grand poo bah to tell me how to trip.

 

[xx001]

I agree with his point about taking large doses without sensory input being completely different than taking smaller doses at a rave. However, I think that the more manageable doses at a show/club of some sort is still very valuable. It just has a different purpose.

 

[EarthBounded]

I am listening right now I appreciate the collaboration. I am a giant McKenna fan and I will gladly take his advice. I will leave feedback if I feel its necessary.

EDIT: Awesome Work! That had to take a few minutes out of your day! I liked the background music in the second video, however in the first video it was a little distracting and didn't flow as well, however I really liked the visuals you used and material. It would probably generate more hits if you compile it all into one video under 15 Mins.

I appreciate the hard work, what an inspiring logical Man, Radical YES, TRUE..YES!

 

[webbykevin]

My opinion of Terence mckenna varies depending on how long it's been since I last took mushrooms, the longer i leave it the less relevant McKemma seems, but if I'm building up to a high dose or coming down from one I still find him refreshing and entertaining even after all these years.

I used to like his later talks, stuff from the early 90's onwards, but since finding out about his bad trip in 1988 and that he never took mushrooms again after that then I re listened to a lot of his stuff recently and now I think i like his earlier stuff, he seems a lot more energetic and fresh in talks like "Monkeys discover hyperspace" and "Mushrooms, what's so great about them" but in his late 90's talks he is more like just going through the routine and delivering the standard M'cKenna experience that his fan base expected.

over the years though I have enjoyed coming back to listen to Terence again and again, maybe it's because intellectual chauvinism is so rarely celebrated these days and listening to and understanding and truly digging a 4 hour McKenna talk makes me feel grateful that I had a good quality general education.

I've tried turning a few people on to Terence and the main thing that seems to put them off is the grasp of history needed and the big words used lol.

 

[DistyBoi]

I am listening right now I appreciate the collaboration. I am a giant McKenna fan and I will gladly take his advice. I will leave feedback if I feel its necessary.

EDIT: Awesome Work! That had to take a few minutes out of your day! I liked the background music in the second video, however in the first video it was a little distracting and didn't flow as well, however I really liked the visuals you used and material. It would probably generate more hits if you compile it all into one video under 15 Mins.

I appreciate the hard work, what an inspiring logical Man, Radical YES, TRUE..YES!

Thanks mate :D Its ppl that like you that makes me keep making them, they prove unbelievably popular on YouTube and forums after a few months of the high ratings getting noticed. I dont think the 'drugs are bad' propaganda even works on the general population now, out of 200 votes on my vids no one negative one And im lucky, I make all the music myself as im a digital producer, if you use other peoples songs then youtube can give you a copyright strike.

I made probably my favorite one today. It's not from Mckenna, but Graham Hancock was just talking about him before he made these comments on the Joe Rogan show.

How the War on Drugs became a war on Consciousness - Graham Hancock



We have had a mind-programming exercise, called "the war on drugs" for the last 40 years, which has been designed to create an internal enemy in our societies and convince people that there are these evil, wicked groups who are doing these terrible, sinful things, smoking these drugs and doing this and that. A very dark image has been created around this and people get very upset irrationally about this whole issue. As Huxley said "LSD is a drug that can cause psychosis in people who have never taken it".


By all means some drugs are bad and toxic, to society and the individual, and their recreational use should not be entertained, it's lack of accurate education of the science in this field in the face of cultural pressures that cause the addiction issue we see rampant around the world. Societies with massive underground drug addictions that simply don't know any better, as they never differentiated between a dose of mushrooms and a dose of crystal meth.


And actually what's been forgotten in all of this, is that when the state sends us to prison for essentially exploring our own consciousness this is an grotesque abuse of human rights. It's a fundamental wrong. If I as an adult am not sovereign over my own consciousness then I'm absolutely not sovereign over anything. I can't claim any kind of freedom at all, and what has happened over the last 40 or 50 years under the disguise of the war on drugs, is that we have been persuaded to hand over the keys of our consciousness to the state. The most precious, the most intimate, the most sapient part of ourselves, the state now has the key ... and furthermore they have persuaded us that that's in our interests! This is a dangerous situation, we are giving power over to the least among us.

 

[xx001]

My opinion of Terence mckenna varies depending on how long it's been since I last took mushrooms, the longer i leave it the less relevant McKemma seems, but if I'm building up to a high dose or coming down from one I still find him refreshing and entertaining even after all these years.

I used to like his later talks, stuff from the early 90's onwards, but since finding out about his bad trip in 1988 and that he never took mushrooms again after that then I re listened to a lot of his stuff recently and now I think i like his earlier stuff, he seems a lot more energetic and fresh in talks like "Monkeys discover hyperspace" and "Mushrooms, what's so great about them" but in his late 90's talks he is more like just going through the routine and delivering the standard M'cKenna experience that his fan base expected.

over the years though I have enjoyed coming back to listen to Terence again and again, maybe it's because intellectual chauvinism is so rarely celebrated these days and listening to and understanding and truly digging a 4 hour McKenna talk makes me feel grateful that I had a good quality general education.

I've tried turning a few people on to Terence and the main thing that seems to put them off is the grasp of history needed and the big words used lol.

I disagree. I think the best talks were the ones he gave closer to the end of his life. You could tell that his worldview had changed from what is was in the 80's. He came to accept a much more rational epistemology and viewed modern science with high regard. This is surely in no small part due to the emergence of the internet and the rapid expansion of knowledge that it made possible. The exponential growth of computer power and the technologies that relied on it were fit in well with his "novelty theory". He began talking about artificial intelligence, brain-computer interfaces, virtual reality, and other radical new technologies that were coming down the pike. I think that had he survived to current time, he would have certainly solidified his beliefs after seing the great growth of new technologies and sciences in the early part of this millennium.

Recently I watched a video of him at a conference talking about how all of the mysticism and woo-woo of the New Age spiritualists was harmful to the psychedelic movement and that people were too eager to believe in things without scientific evidence. In a way, he seems to be condemning some of the less logically sound views that he espoused earlier in his career.

This is the video I was referring to:


Here is another video about science that makes some similar points:




A third thing is his acceptance of, or perhaps a different perspective on, capitalism and economic development. It seems that he stopped associating capitalism with governments, materialism, consumerism and the like. He often used the terminology of capitalism to refer to the problems of these things but it does seem that he developed a different opinion of economic ideas that isn't so much of the "growth is bad" kind of thing. The idea is that capitalism is just the system of giving the people what they want. The problem is that people want stupid things. I think he realized that science needed the proper economic support of a free system of human interaction. Its to bad that he suffered such an early death. He seemed just as intriguing as he was 15-20 years prior.

Perhaps I am seeing what I want to see in his lectures, but it does seem that he became more critical of his own views and took a more logically careful approach to investigating the world as he got older. This was certainly a much different man to the one who went into the Amazon in 1971.

Another thing about Terrence is acknowledging that a significant portion of his talks were an act. You can see that he occasionally goes off on tangents where he is saying something meaningless or contradicting himself just to give himself an opportunity to express his great skill of the English language. His brother, Dennis, had a good bit about this in several of his recent interviews about his new book.

His interview with Alexander Shulgin was also very good:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sU2Umaw004c

 

[DistyBoi]

I disagree. I think the best talks were the ones he gave closer to the end of his life. You could tell that his worldview had changed from what is was in the 80's. He came to accept a much more rational epistemology and viewed modern science with high regard. This is surely in no small part due to the emergence of the internet and the rapid expansion of knowledge that it made possible. The exponential growth of computer power and the technologies that relied on it were fit in well with his "novelty theory". He began talking about artificial intelligence, brain-computer interfaces, virtual reality, and other radical new technologies that were coming down the pike. I think that had he survived to current time, he would have certainly solidified his beliefs after seing the great growth of new technologies and sciences in the early part of this millennium.

I completely agree with this. His later talks were amazingly well informed and knowledgeable compared to some of his earlier ones. He started out with some pretty far out ideas he used to promote but over time he dropped them for, as you say, a far more rational and scientific position on things.

One of the best long talks he ever gave (this is the talk half of my videos use audio from) was this one in 1998 entitled "Eros And The Eschaton 'What Science Forgot'". The audience applauds him over 20 times during it, and all hes doing is sharing ideas, he just makes so much sense they love it.

His interview with Alexander Shulgin was also very good:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sU2Umaw004c

The amount of respect I have for both these people makes this an awesome video, I haven't even watched it yet, cheers for the heads up :D

 

[webbykevin]

I like the talk he gave at the ufo conference, that was classic Terence at his very best.

 

[DistyBoi]

This might be my final production. I'm not sure I have much else to say or share from Mckenna after this one.

 

[DistyBoi]

Oh and this excerpt from his audio book true hallucinations should provide some giggles too :D

"Taken from his audiobook 'true hallucinations' he had just returned from Brazil and was staying in London for a while. He meets up with a man and woman to try datura, the man soon leaves, and both of them decide to also do some DMT ... ONTOP of the Datura (probably two of the most potent psychedelics!)... with bizarre, freaky yet hilarious results!"

 

[xx001]

Oh and this excerpt from his audio book true hallucinations should provide some giggles too :D

"Taken from his audiobook 'true hallucinations' he had just returned from Brazil and was staying in London for a while. He meets up with a man and woman to try datura, the man soon leaves, and both of them decide to also do some DMT ... ONTOP of the Datura (probably two of the most potent psychedelics!)... with bizarre, freaky yet hilarious results!"

Yes. I love this part of the book!

 

[DistyBoi]

Yes. I love this part of the book!

Yeah its my second favorite part of the audio book. The whole thing drags on a bit, but is definitely worth listening to if you have a long journey planned.

My first favorite excerpt from the audiobook my mate revolutionloveevolve has already made an awesome video too :D

"A message from the psilocybin containing mushroom transcribed and recited by Terence McKenna taken from the audio book True Hallucinations."

 

[DistyBoi]

Terence Mckenna - The main reason why psychedelics are illegal



The ego is a late arriving, very tenuous, highly uncertain of itself, social structure, that has taken root in the human psyche like a tumor, like a growth of some sort. It is the leftover of this primate dominance complex and the way it manifests itself is by the establishment of boundaries. First of all, this is my body, do not touch it. Second of all, these are my weapons and agricultural tools, do not touch them, this is my woman, these are my children, I hunt there, so forth and so on. It’s this division of the world which allows the illusion of the ego to come into existence. Now, what do psychedelics do and why are they such social dynamite?

The answer is, it’s not a health issue, it’s not an addiction issue, I mean, that’s preposterous, it’s about boundary dissolution. Every society from the classic Maya to Fujiwara, Japan, to the France of the Bourbons, every society establishes a set of boundaries which it then calls reality and woe betide you if you go across the boundary, because then you are outcast, outclassed, outlandish, and the full fury of the community can be turned against you.

So, I believe that the ego is a dysfunctional psychic invader. And that it will continue and strengthen to perpetuate itself as long as we do not institute either as groups or within our relationships or as individuals a regular ritual encounter with the forces which dissolve these boundaries. And the only force I know that works are these plants. And as I say, I’m not interested in arguing whether there are other methods or not, God I would hope so, but anything I ever looked into, and I shopped the spiritual supermarket from stem to stern, was horse shit as far as I could see, [laughter, applause] Now, I am not a sensitive, let me say that, people said, "Well, but what about Ramana Maharshi, what about Jaka Berma" – hey, it’s great for those folks. I applaud avatars and so forth and so on, but what I’m interested in is democratic ecstasis. It should be for the most lumpen among us.

It is not to be attained by an act of dietary control,sexual abstinence or, you know, whatever. It is a human birthright. Perhaps the most important aspect of our birthright, these substances will deliver. It's the confoundment of psychology and science generally, and that's why it's so touchy for cultural institutions, but you are not a cultural institution, you are a free and independent human being and these things have your name written on them in big gold letter. [audience applauds]

 

[lovepsychadelics]

What about his brother, you know the scientist? Dennis McKenna the ethnopharmacologist?

 

[DistyBoi]

What about his brother, you know the scientist? Dennis McKenna the ethnopharmacologist?

Dennis and Terence share pretty much the same world views about these things. Just dennis was not a very good public speaker whereas Terence was. All of
Terences later views are pretty much in line with his brothers views, and Dennis was in fact the main inspiration for most of Mckennas ideas that he lectured about. Both brilliant minds.

 

[Tranced]

Terence Mckenna - We have gone sick - The challenge

Half way through this - expertly delivered. Love the visuals & flows well. Cheers

 

[lovepsychadelics]

Dennis and Terence share pretty much the same world views about these things. Just dennis was not a very good public speaker whereas Terence was. All of
Terences later views are pretty much in line with his brothers views, and Dennis was in fact the main inspiration for most of Mckennas ideas that he lectured about. Both brilliant minds.

He sure is. A brilliant scientist and did a heap of work with yage or whatever you want to call DMT + MAOI extracted from jungle plants. I think Dennis distanced himself a little more from the interstellar mushroom theory. Dennis was credited by Terrence as being a massive help developing mushroom cultivation. Personally I find the views a little typical of the psychedelic 60's/70's and find a lot of cliche's in Terrence's spoken word tours. Perhaps these cliche's originated with them and their experiments lol but they have become cliche's non the less. Interesting but best taken with a grain of salt like most urban shamans belief systems. I think exploring spirituality/theology without a culturally significant background and belief system is grasping at straws a little. Some of the stuff is observation analysis and very accurate at that. Some a little more esoteric and based almost 100% on personal application of beliefs learnt in part from other shamanic cultures and part delusional thought process bought about during the psychedelic state.

As an example Datura was used as a birth control measure among my ancestors (from what little knowledge of plant medicine we have left) and is not something to be used as a hallucinogen. Culturally specific. That said certain fish species ie Ichthyoallyeinotoxism and some fungi were consumed for ceremonial occasions. I really enjoyed watching neuro-soup girl whine about the native american church and their legal use of peyote. A Native American of a different nation put it plainly in response to this pathetic diatribe from neuro-soup girl : I would never use peyote as peyote is a medicine for the peyote people not my people and is not something to be abused/used to get high.

Personally I find psychedelics enjoyable, they enhance intamacy, can allow greater analysis/understanding of life issues and can enhance your own culturally specific belief system. I guess these day's UFO's could be argued to be a culturally specific element of western society so intergalactic consciousness and telepathic communication with aliens may be an appropriate cultural/spiritual belief system but using words like Giaia derived from ancient Roman mythology is a little off, that and the view of fairies as the romantic 19th century Victorian little people with wings at the end of the garden is pure bullshit.

Fairies were as often bloodthirsty demonic hell sprites as they were threshers of wheat or milkers of cows. Some tricked people into their deaths, others ate human flesh, some were good and helpful while others malicious and dark. These views depended on which part of the UK/Europe you originated from. These were pagan nature spirits/gods and Christianity is what drove these beliefs underground and into folk lore. Not that McKenna spoke about this stuff (fairies) he was all about aliens and archetypes...

 

[DistyBoi]

^ Good summary

These other two productions are proving pretty popular. The first is a short minute kinetic typography video, the second a ten minute video about scientific culture, materialism and the effect psilocybin likely had on primates in prehistory and the possible symbiotic relationship it will have in the future to tame peoples egos and create a more cohesive society.



"And every one of us when we go into the psychedelic state, this is what we should be looking for. It's not for your elucidation, it's not part of your self-directed psychotherapy. You are an explorer, and you represent our species, and the greatest good you can do is to bring back a new idea, because our world is in danger by the absence of good ideas. Our world is in crisis because of the absence of consciousness. And so to whatever degree any one of us can bring back a small piece of the picture and contribute it to the building of the new paradigm, then we participate in the redemption of the human spirit, and that after all is what it's really all about."