Terence McKenna: "Linear Societies, Nonlinear Drugs"

In the photo below you can see the white chairs where we sat while Terence was speaking.

This was my second podcast from the Psychedelic Salon. I posted it on April 19, 2005, and if I were you I would skip the first three minutes and forty seconds, which is my introduction of this program. At the time that I made this podcast I was still just playing around with the technology, trying to figure out how it worked. On top of that, I had no idea of how to be a podcast host. It took several hundred more podcasts before I even came close to getting as comfortable with hosting a podcast as I am today.

The talk that I played in this podcast was one of the last ones that Terence McKenna ever gave at one of the now-legendary Palenque Entheobotany Seminars. These seminars took place at the Chan-Kah Hotel near the Palenque, Mexico ruins and featured such psychedelic luminaries as Sasha and Ann Shulgin, Manuel and Donna Torres, Giorgio Samorini, Christian Raetsch, Claudia Muller-Ebeling, Jonathan Ott, and many more.

For almost a decade these seminars were held over a two week period, usually in January when the weather wasn't quite so hot. Attendees at these seminars would sign up for either the first week or for the second week, in which the previous week's sessions were repeated. On Friday morning the all of the presenters and attendees would gather around the pool for an all morning Q & A session.

Friday Morning Q & A Session

As it turned out, the day after this talk by Terence, I stayed home from the trip that everyone else took to the ruins, and I ate 16 large fresh mushrooms that I had just bought from a young Mexican man on the road up to the ruins. Back then I was kind of anal when taking psychedelics, and so I took some notes right after I ate the mushrooms. At first I was worried that they weren't strong enough because they were taking so long to come on. But as these notes to myself went on, my handwriting was becoming more difficult to read. The final entries in my note book read:

Don't forget: Ask the mushroom What next? What path should I choose to lead me to the proper conclusion of the last half of this trip . . . gotta go inside and lay down

That's the end of my notes, but that particular mushroom trip became a turning point in my life. I remember many details from it. Six months later, just a week before my 57th birthday, I quit my job, moved from Florida to California, and became engaged to a woman that I had met at that magical conference in Palenque. We're still married.

I have a lot more stories from those Palenque conferences. In time I may tell a few more :-).

The following are my original program notes from this podcast:

On Saturday night, January 16, 1999, Terence McKenna gave one of his last lectures at the legendary Entheobotany Series by the foot of the pool at the Chan-Kha Hotel near the Mayan ruins at Palenque, Mexico. There were about 100 people sitting in the moonlight, listening to the lowing of cattle in the distance and the occasional chatter of the howler monkeys in the trees nearby. This was Terence doing what he did best, which was to challenge all of us to stretch our minds to their far limits and then expand them once again.

This recording was made by my dear friend Noah who recorded most of the talks at this and many other conferences. Later he gave me this copy of the recording. Noah wouldn't take any money for the copy he gave me, in fact, he wouldn't even take anything to pay for his cost in duplicating the tape. He just said, "I want as many people as possible to hear what Terence has to say. Please pass it around." Sadly for us, Noah has moved on to another dimension. But wherever you are, Noah, you will be remembered every time someone listens to these wonderful recordings you made.