Terence McKenna, a visionary thinker and author of Archaic Revival: Speculations on Psychedelic Mushrooms, the Amazon, Virtual Reality, UFOs, Evolution, Shamanism, the Rebirth of the Goddess, and the End of History (now how’s that for a title?!), died in 2000, two days after April Fool’s Day.
While hanging around a bit at one of Terence McKenna’s stomping grounds, the hallowed land of the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California, some of the folks there informed me that McKenna, the narrator of this video, a man whose ideas and words were incredibly provocative and luminous, a man, who, after all of his amazing and forward thinking ideas, died, ironically, of a brain tumor. On contemplating his own demise, McKenna wrote to his confidants in the Big Sur area (and I paraphrase as I haven’t seen the letters myself), “While I have seen amazing aspects of the mind, I have failed to integrate what I have learned into my heart.”
Wisdom, the source of insight and innovation, is essential to creativity. But wisdom without compassion is lacking. In the case of Terence McKenna, it was fatal. The goal of being human is to integrate both the insights of the mind, both the big Mind and the fruits of the intellect, with the compassion and the worldliness of the heart. I love the ideas of this man, Terence McKenna, and sincerely hope that that next generation can take his vision and begin to integrate it into the rock meets bone practices of the heart.