Product Description

This mesmerizing, surreal account of the bizarre adventures of Terence McKenna, his brother Dennis, and a small band of their friends, is a wild ride of exotic experience and scientific inquiry. Exploring the Amazon Basin in search of mythical shamanic hallucinogens, they encounter a host of unusual characters -- including a mushroom, a flying saucer, pirate Mantids from outer space, an appearance by James and Nora Joyce in the guise of poultry, and translinguistic matter -- and discover the missing link in the development of human consciousness and language.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #34267 in Books
• Published on: 1994-04-22
• Released on: 1994-04-22
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 256 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780062506528
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
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From Publishers Weekly
In 1971 ethnobotanist McKenna ( The Archaic Revival ), his brother Dennis and three friends boated to a town in Amazonian Colombia, seeking a hallucinogenic plant that enables the Witoto tribe to talk to elf-like "little men." In psychedelicized ravings interspersed with diary excerpts, McKenna records their experiences after ingesting mind-altering mushrooms and other psychoactive plants. A flying saucer slowly flew over McKenna's head; he calls it a "holographic mirage" of a future technology. Dennis had a revelation about a "psychofluid" that pervades the universe. McKenna flashes forward to Hawaii in 1975 where mantis-like creatures from hyperspace attack his lover, and flashes back to his tantric lovemaking in Tibet and to Indonesia where unrepentant Nazi scientists tried to recruit him in 1970. He posits the existence of a particle of time, the chronon , which conditions matter. A bizarre book.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Unlike McKenna's last book, the preposterous Food of the Gods ( LJ 2/15/92), this work is more an adventure story than an anthropological treatise. It is the chronicle of the author's 1971 trip to the Amazon jungle in search of secret tribal hallucinogens. While his band of hippie adventurers never do find the fabled hallucinogen "oo-koo-he," they do manage to ingest an incredible amount of native psilocybin mushrooms, which trigger mystical and psychic experiences. It is hard to accept McKenna's conclusion that something unexplainable really did happen in the Amazon. Instead, his book reads like an account of an especially chaotic drug experience. Pseudoscientific ramblings concerning the nature of time serve only to move this book farther out toward the fringes. McKenna's story will be of interest to certain subcultures, but the appeal will not extend to most general readers. An optional purchase for public libraries.
- Eric Hinsdale, Trinity Univ. Lib., San Antonio
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews
Readers of Food of the Gods (1992) will recall McKenna's diverting claim that the ingestion in ancient times of hallucinogenic mushrooms spurred human consciousness into wakefulness and sophistication. Here, this consummate storyteller tells of his first life-changing encounter with magic mushrooms, in 1971 in the Colombian Amazon. Veteran of the Berkeley riots of the 1960's and of a self- imposed exile in India and Indonesia--during which he smoked pot, studied alternative religions, collected butterflies, and steered clear of the FBI--McKenna was inspired in 1971 to journey to La Chorrera, Colombia, in search of the psychedelic brew ayahuasca and any plants containing the hallucinogenic drug DMT. Joined by his devoted 18-year-old brother, Dennis, and by several other Americans, McKenna reached the Putumayo River only to be sidetracked by a chance ingestion of some magic mushrooms growing in a field. One mushroom led to another, and soon the wildly philosophizing Dennis had devised an experiment to determine whether the production of a cicada-like noise could bind the wisdom of the mushroom with his own DNA. The local Indians may have laughed as the Americans stumbled through the rain forest chasing flying saucers and talking to themselves, but McKenna's newfound conviction that the mushroom showed the way to higher consciousness determined the very uneven course of his future life and career. Now, 20 years later--on the brink of divorce from a woman the mushroom told him was his destiny, and pressed to earn money for their two kids--McKenna relates his journey of psychedelic self- discovery and study with refreshing candor, humor, and occasional rue. All of which makes this, if hardly a convincing scientific treatise (``My dear young friend, these ideas are not even fallacious,'' said Gunther Stent, a molecular geneticist at Berkeley), certainly a captivating, all-too-human tale. Here's one man who proudly--even passionately--inhaled. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Customer Reviews

Very entertaining
This book is an adventurer's tale; a gripping account of the harrowing experiences of a group of hippie thrill-seekers. This book is a real page-turner. It reads like a good novel, and there is never a dull moment. It is simply a blow-by-blow account of the author's drug-induced experiences in the Amazon jungle, a cross between an episode of National Geographic Explorer and an article out of High Times. Some Terrance Mckenna enthusiasts might be somewhat dissapointed, however, because _True Hallucinations_ is not a potent philosophical work like his other books. It is not an attempt to root out the meaning of existence or discover the origins of the universe, but is instead just an entertaining romp through the jungle. It is also a cautionary tale detailing the dangers involved when somebody eats too many shrooms; the reader should take note that Dennis Mckenna, Terrance's brother, didn't quite come back from this trip!

The greatest misterys come in stranges ways
I have experienced similar things like McKenna, but i am just in the begining of my personal experience. Read this book is like wake and understand that the experience whit the mushroom is deeper than any religion because it explores your own subconscience and your own spirit. McKenna is being the voice to the people who don't fall in the material hoax that this century have. Is good to see a book that can involve you in a new world full whit lots of posibilities, and is good to see a man who can dig without fear.

Very Funny and Provocative
Even if Mckenna didn't have the remarkable theories (whether you believe them or not) to go along with his adventures, this would remain a great read. Mckenna has an exemplary control of the language and his wit is untouchable. Of the three books by him I have read, this remains my favorite, and I think it is the one most suited for the non-specialist. One of my favorite books.