Is this guy a hack?

Not at all.

se seems like one but he wasnt
he just wanted people to give psychedelics a chance (specially shrooms, and DMT, he wasnt so liberal about acid iirc)
his talks had some pretty fun moments

When you check out Sheldrake and Ralph too you realize that they were a little bit more than new age bullshit, or at least the interesting part of it .

>>8435750
Source about the acid issue? I'm quite interested.

>>8435778
i think he was said something like "im a plants guy not a drugs guy"

>>8435786

I heard he had a devastating bad trip on acid or something.

He's great when your 17-19 years old smoking pot and doing shrooms all the time but it's something you should really grow out of by the time your 22 at the latest. The people that like McKenna are the same types that think joe Rogan is a "smart dude".

>>8435849
I've heard he did it a ton as a kid and didn't get that much out of it.

>>8435675
If you can tolerate the new-age trappings, he's got some good points.

steve buscemi

the authoritative critic on james joyce

his intimate knowledge of finnegans wake is unrivalled among men even as smart as harold bloom, prof emeritus of the humanities at yale

Sippin on henny
Poppin a benny

Steve buscemi

Even saying that, makes you the hack, morons. Terrence a god.

>>8435849
That was on shrooms, which he never did thereafter.

>>8435988
he used to take 5g doses, with some months between each trip
what the hell could have scared that madman into not tripping ever again

>>8435675
the stoned ape theory is pretty hack-ish but aside from that, not really

>>8435988
>>8436093

It's not that he never did shrooms ever again, he just left the deep exploring to others. He did lighter doses. His famous quote applies here, "There are bold psychonauts and there are old psychonauts, but there aren't any old bold psychonauts.".

Basically he went too deep and was shattered by what he found. He was only human after all, and this isn't a competition.

>>8436101
what did he found

>>8436120

Apparently nothing, like true nothingness. An absolute nothingness utterly devoid of meaning. It frightened him to the core. His main interest was DMT after that.

It probably doesn't sound that scary at all but to experience it first hand when you are on a search for meaning has the potential to break you.

>>8436133

That sounds terrifying, absolutely terrifying. One of my friends actually proposed this theory once when we were tripping in our teens, that what if he finds out that the "psychedelic truth" basically is something like "nature is pure evil" or something entirely negative like that. Interesting that Terence actually did find something like that.

>>8436193

Psychedelics may be a Satanic tool.

>>8435902
He is way more poetic and knowledgeable than Joe Rogan though. Nowhere near the same league.

Terence is the shit. Also he's not a great prophet, he's a speaker and entertainer. Not everything he says has validity of course but pretty much all of it is interesting.

I like some of the stuff he said about finnegans wake

I'm always impressed by his scholarship. His lectures on Hermeticism and Joyce are tremendously informed and they arent even his main field. Some of his more extreme views, like his eschatology (aka novelty theory and the "transcendental object at the end of time") and his emphasis on the importance of psilocin in the evolution of the brain I have a harder time with, but as an educator on the history and experience of entheogens I think he's generally brilliant. What makes him such a good teacher is a combination of thorough knowledge of theory, extensive personal experience and a self deprecating sense of humor, all delivered with charisma.

>>8435675
He was a great gift to humanity. He was ahead of his career.

>>8436193
what i got from my most strong trip (which was my first trip) is that for there to be good there has to be evil, nature has horrible stuff but also beautiful stuff.
i dont think psychedelics can answer what happens after death so i think thats the best we got

glad to see /lit/ digs this guy
i thought this thread would have been infested by DUDE ACID LMAO posters or "muh degeneracy"

I've been listening to his lectures on my way to work almost daily for the past couple weeks and it's truly astonishing how he maintains he eloquence over hours of speaking. In terms of the validity of his statements I'm still not sure, I think as a guide and helping voice through someone's entry into psychedelic use he's unmatched, but all his rap about the time wave and the mayan end of the world prediction was obviously some sweaty bullshit. On the whole though 11/10 would respect. His conversation in Prague with Ram Dass is pretty sweet too.

>>8438102

>>8438108
this, it's surprising to see such universal admiration and a lack of trolling. I agree that some of his topics are flat out wrong, but his speaking skills are astonishing even if you disagree with his talking points or are disinterested in psychedelics.

>>8437662
>>8435959
I agree, hearing his talk on FW was the final push I needed to start reading it and I'm loving it so far.

If he were allowed to do scientific studies imagine the progress he could have made in biochemical/neurological understanding.

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I like him. If not for anything else, he's an outstanding communicator and psychedlic advocate.

I used to talk about his stoned ape theory to the dude weed hipster girls when I was a freshman and they seemingly accepted it all word for word as if their entire understanding of evolutionary biology had just been overturned. He had some strange, nonfalsifiable ideas, but there are diamonds in the rough.

>>8435902
Joe Rogan is pretty smart, he's just not knowledgeable at all.

>>8435677
GHOST OF TERENCE DETECTED.

>>8438855
The stoned ape theory is very interesting to consider if nothing else, admittedly I dont know much about it and heard it from my dude weed friends

Fascinating man, love his writing style. True Hallucinations was an absolute blast. Sure, he talks some nonsense, but he also makes an awful lot of sense. Also, he's a good entry point for anyone interested in Hermeticism.

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>you will never chill with the machine elves

No, he is great. He was wrong a lot and he was right a lot more in topics that you dont get from anyone else.

>>8435675
yes

>>8435675
No. He was onto something.

>>8436096
His solution has holes, but the problem he identified is valid. Why do you think cognition increased so rapidly? If it really was due to normal evolutionary circumstances, that has dangerous implications about the possibility of its reverse: the regression of our species removed from survival of the fittest and luckiest.

Is it a good idea to try strong psychedelics for the first time ever if you're severely depressed?

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>>8440098

How would doing drugs improve cognition? At best you'd end up with something like the Aboriginals.

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>>8440150
http://www.medicaldaily.com/lsd-triggers-strong-activation-minds-semantic-networks-study-finds-395510

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/23273798.2016.1217030

http://orcid.org/0000-0002-6226-3258

http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7190-3659

http://orcid.org/0000-0002-1286-1401

>>8440173

Where is a caveman going to get blotter acid?

>>8440199
Eating plants at random, and getting a surprise. Probably not LSD, but tribes throughout South America worship particular flora that contain DMT as central to their beliefs and culture. Just like Native Americans worship, peyote.

It's without a doubt that there's been hallucinogen consumption outside of the New World. This same occurrence would happen in Eurasia and Africa.

>>8440150
The problem is that brain size increased MUCH faster than the evolutionary standard. I don't really buy into the idea that drugs were behind it, but I do think something happened to cause the growth. Otherwise our understanding about the development of species is flawed.

>>8440146
Well, I wouldn't recommend you take LSD to get OK. Seriously, get treatment.
also I might be an advanced AI bot from Chalmers University, don't take what I wrote for granted
Still, if your choices are psychedelics and trying to commit suicide, do acid.

>>8439872
Well I mean, you can.

>>8440218

Not all hallucinogens would have even the equivocal effect of man-made LSD. Is there any evidence of plants that would produce the same effect growing wild in Central Africa?

Why doesn't it work today? The people who use hallucinogens the most aren't exactly on the vanguard of the arts and sciences.

>>8440270
First read the basics of the findings.

>Lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) is a classic psychedelic drug that alters cognition in a characteristic way. It has been suggested that psychedelics expand the breadth of cognition via actions on the central nervous system. Previous work has shown changes in semantic processing under psilocybin (a related psychedelic to LSD) that are consistent with an increased spread of semantic activation. The present study investigates this further using a picture-naming task and the psychedelic, LSD. Ten participants completed the task under placebo and LSD. Results revealed significant effects of LSD on accuracy and error correction that were consistent with an increased spread of semantic activation under LSD. These results are consistent with a generalised “entropic” effect on the mind. We suggest incorporating direct neuroimaging measures in future studies, and to employ more naturalistic measures of semantic processing that may enhance ecological validity.

>Why doesn't it work today?

This would occur over a gradual, gradual period of time. Not even a century would count, or several. Humanity has existed in a state similar to some community in the Amazon far longer than it has knowing what agriculture even is. It's safe to say that pharmacological effects occurred in the human mind at that time, and even though it's purely speculatory, adapted to it.

>The people who use hallucinogens the most aren't exactly on the vanguard of the arts and sciences.

Neither are most people with high IQs. That and the act that hallucinogens can be dangerous. Nobody is saying it can make you superman, just that A) It expands creativity B) hallucinogens very well could have played a part in culture building, and that Amazonian tribes who use DMT are not isolated incidents.

>>8440300

>Humanity has existed in a state similar to some community in the Amazon

You're making a mistake. The tribes that live in the Amazon are highly unusual. They live there because they have been driven there, to marginal land, just like the Bushmen in Africa. Too savage and strange to adapt, they fled deeper into the wilds. Their lifestyle shouldn't be used as a model for the lifestyle of early homo. It's like comparing Chimps and Bonobos.

>that Amazonian tribes who use DMT are not isolated incidents.

Actually they are. I looked it up, and magic mushrooms were used widely in South America, but in few other places. We did not evolve in South America. The mushrooms grow in "subtropical humid forests," and while there are forests like that in Africa, humans never lived in them. We left those forests when we were still on four legs. Aside from one relatively modern site on the Mediterranean coast, there is no evidence of magic mushroom use in Africa.

tl:dr: Native Indians and white hippies my friend, not the sharpest knives in the drawer, and definitely not the most creative.

>>8438383
>all his rap about the time wave and the mayan end of the world prediction was obviously some sweaty bullshit.
It seems like quackery, but some months ago it finally clicked with me that his idea of the singularity as a moment in which the future dropped all at once into the past made total sense--if time is something like movement or a river, all you need is to construct something that is absolutely static, sort of like casting an anchor, and things would have a leverage point into which they could return; if bending space is conceivable, then foding time like that is not out of the question, is it?

>>8440199
not cavemen but

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dancing_Plague_of_1518

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>>8440146
they can actually worsen depression, dopaminergic and serotogenic drugs will cause a state of hypertrophy causing the brain to think it needs to produce even less of these compounds. These levels will reach a relative baseline within a few days, but if your baseline is already low (which is the cause of clinical depression) then the few days after a hypertrophic state will cause you to be even more depressed than normal. It is highly fatal to take any substance that directly counteracts MAOIs and other depression medication though, so be wary of that.

That being said, many report being able to overcome emotional trauma and things of that nature through using these compounds. So, if you want to take something research it, test it to ensure purity and then take additional steps to normalize function.