Terence McKenna is a modern age shaman. He was one of the figure heads birthed by the awakening 60's. He had a grasp of the human language few compare to. Yet language didn't imprison his thoughts, and he had some controversial thoughts. One being the Stoned Ape Theory. This book is his argument in favor of this theory. In his mind, this book traces human history as it evolved side-by-side with plants.
Rating: 9/10
"The psilocybin intoxication is a rapture whose breadth and depth is the despair of prose."
"The collectively designed cultural environment in which we all live is the objectification of our collective linguistic intent."
"An ecstatic experience transcends duality; it is simultaneously terrifying, hilarious, awe-inspiring, familiar, and bizarre."
"Monotheism exhibits what is essentially a pathological personality pattern projected onto the ideal of God: the pattern of the paranoid, possessive, power-obsessed male ego."
"The so-called need to control and dominate others is psychologically a function, not from a feeling of power, but from a feeling of powerlessness."
"The strongest argument for the legalization of any drug is that society has been able to survive the legalization of alcohol. If we can tolerate the legal use of alcohol, what drug cannot be absorbed into the structure of society."
"Men who follow such concerns that are not following the accepted canons of male behavior within the dominator model are often assumed to be homosexual."
"It is this a kind of happy coincidence that the subjected effects of ingesting cannabis and the care and attention needed to produce a good resin strain both conspire to accentuate values that are oriented toward honoring an preserving the feminine."
"Let us be absolutely clear, sugar is entirely unnecessary to the human diet; before the arrival of industrial cane and beet sugar humanity managed well enough without refined sugar, which is nearly pure sucrose. Sugar contributes nothing that cannot be gotten from some other, easily available source. It is a "kick," nothing more. Yet for this kick the dominator culture of Europe was willing to betray the ideals of the Enlightenment by its collusion with slave traders. In 1800 virtually every ton of sugar imported into England had been produced with slave labor."
"This drug was the first of a growing group of high-technology drugs that deliver the user into an alternative reality by acting directly on the user's sensorium, without chemicals being introduced into the nervous system. It was television. No epidemic or addictive craze or religious hysteria has ever moved faster or made as many converts in so short a time. "
"Indeed, we cannot even be certain whether science, the epistemic tool upon which we have come to depend most heavily, is up for this task (Exploring the psyche)."
"The familiar feeling of "fight of flight" is often a feature of the first wave of somatic feelings associated with the hallucinogen. One must discipline the hind brain and simply wait through this turmoil within the animal body."
