Terence McKenna: Encyclopedia II - Terence McKenna - Biography

Terence McKenna - Biography

Terence McKenna received a B.S. in Ecology and Conservation from the Tussman Experimental College, a short-lived outgrowth of UC Berkeley, in 1969. He spent the months after his graduation traveling through India and other Asian countries, alternately smuggling hashish and collecting butterflies for biological supply companies.

In 1971 Terence McKenna, his brother Dennis, and three others traveled to the Colombian Amazon in search of oo-koo-hé, a plant preparation containing DMT. At La Chorrera, at the urging of his brother, he allowed himself to be the subject of a psychedelic experiment which he claimed put him in contact with The Logos: an informative, hallucinatory voice nearly universal to the visionary experience. The revelations of this voice prompted him to undertake his investigations into the structure of the I Ching, which eventually led him to his Novelty Theory.

For most of the 1970s McKenna maintained a low profile, living in a nondescript suburban home, supporting his lifestyle with the royalties from the Magic Mushroom Growers Guide, and the cultivation and sale of psilocybin mushrooms. He said that he was frightened out of this line of work, and into public speaking by the harsh penalties the war on drugs exacted from his colleagues. He himself was once wanted by Interpol for drug trafficking.

McKenna was a contemporary and colleague of Ralph Abraham, Rupert Sheldrake, and Riane Eisler and participated in joint workshops and symposiums with them. He was a personal friend of Tom Robbins, and influenced the thought of numerous scientists, writers, artists, and entertainers.

He became a fixture of popular counterculture in his later years. Timothy Leary once introduced him as “the real Tim Leary”. He contributed to psychedelic and goa trance albums by The Shamen, Spacetime Continuum, Zuvuya and Shpongle, and his speeches were sampled by many others. He was a skilled orator, and admired by his fans for his eloquence. While some of his presentations included verbatim repetitions of the same catch phrases, his gift for extemporaneous speech allowed him to weave them into seamless performances that varied audience to audience. His responses to novel questions were often as sophisticated as his prepared material.

McKenna also co-founded Botanical Dimensions with Kathleen Harrison (his collegue and wife of 17 years), a non-profit ethnobotanical preserve on the Island of Hawaii, where he lived for several years prior to his death. Before moving to Hawaii full time, McKenna split his time between Hawaii and a town called Occidental, located in the redwood studded hills of western Sonoma County, California (a town unique for its high concentration of visionaries and famous artists, including Tom Waits and Mickey Hart). He died of glioblastoma multiforme, a type of brain cancer. He was 53 years old. He is survived by his brother Dennis, his son Finn, and his daughter Klea.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Biography", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki