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Bevat de naam: Dennis J. McKenna

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Mystery School in Hyperspace: A Cultural History of DMT (2015) — Voorwoord — 22 exemplaren
MetaScience Quarterly, Vol. 1, No. 1 (1979) — Medewerker — 1 exemplaar

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If you heard about Terence McKenna, you probably know how weird, and inspiring, his ideas were. If you know Terence McKenna well enough, you also know who Dennis McKenna is and how instrumental Dennis was in Terence’s life. If you know a bit about Terence’s self-proclaimed biography, his experiments at La Chorrera, his predictions and how incredibly weird the whole experience was to Terence and Dennis, you probably want to know a bit more about it from a different perspective.

So this is it. This is that new perspective onto Terence’s life and thought. Well written, engaging at times (for all lives have those meh moments that look like filling-ins to a major thrust of the whole story), and providing new insights onto how McKenna deal with his normal life, relations, and people around him.

If you’re a Terence McKenna’s buff, you won’t be disappointed to read this biography. If you don’t know who he is, you better start elsewhere — probably by Terence’s own works and, more importantly, by his talks (most of them available for free on youtube).
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adsicuidade | 1 andere bespreking | Sep 8, 2018 |
The Invisible landscape: Mind hallucinogens and the I Ching. My review.

The Invisible landscape by Terence and Dennis McKenna is a very original and unusual book. From a daring shamanistic experiment with hallucinogenic compounds they arrived at insights about a holographic temporal wave (called "time wave zero") based on a fractal of cycles which they could derive from the I Ching.

The first part of the book is about the experiment the brothers McKenna undertook in La Chorrera in the Amazon in which they took a mixture of Ayahuasca and hallucinogenic mushrooms. This led to an enhanced perception of the so-called audible effect during such experiences. Interestingly the book attacks the induction based method of science to replace it with a holographic theory of mind and existence. This is a necessary step to come to their speculative theories about how the audible effect could have been generated by intercalation of neurotransmitter-like hallucinogenic tryptamine compounds in DNA or RNA in conjunction with ESR signals thereby generated, which might have been the cause of the sounds.

The second part of the book is about the insights gathered during this experiment in relation to how the I Ching pattern is related to a nested fractal of time waves.

Although the present day understanding how neurotransmitters and their hallucinogenic mimics has shown that these interactions occur via protein based receptors in the synaptic membrane, effects of intercalation in nucleic acids are not to be excluded. Unfortunately as of yet nobody has tested whether the proposed ESR effect does occur in vivo.

The idea of recurrent waves of novelty in a kind of nested time fractal is plausibly explained and demonstrated on the basis of key events in evolution and history. The calibration point of 21-12-2012 as end point of time wave zero apparently seems to have been too much of a wishful thinking association, as our current state of affairs shows that novelty waves are continuing as usual and have not yet culminated in a singularity.

Interestingly, the book shows how hallucinogenic compounds from plants and mushrooms can reveal archetypical information which relays the collective unconscious via the neurological level to the genetic level and vice versa. This strongly reminds me of Leary's "neurogenetic circuit" and the more modern insights disclosed in Tsang's "Fractal Brain Theory".

Finally, not the least important, this book not only speaks about the Eschaton as a universal and fractal morphogenetic field, which unfolds the predispositions of space and time, but also as the Eschatological scheme in which the advent of a final time, a time of concrescence of the density of novelty ingression results in the culmination of the human process resulting in the completion of the perfect artifact in which spirit and matter achieve a perfect union whereby the Transcendent object at the end of time stands revealed as the transcendent subject, which is also the Eschaton, thus implicitly arriving at the union of knower, knowing and known (in my interpretation). A challenging denial of simple materialistic reductionism, in which matter is merely a standing wave form of all-encompassing light of spirit, leading to a visionary apotheosis where matter and spirit/mind are no longer mutually exclusive grounds of existence but different sides of the same coin.

A fascinating journey through the realms of shamanism, showing that the insights of the shaman are not schizophrenic or psychotic rantings but a true mastery, a supra normal level of ability where the adept has conquered the demons of the multiplicity of forms and emerges as a messenger between the realms of spirit and matter.

Insights, which will make you travel through biology, chemistry, physics, general systems theory, psychology, evolution, history, semiotics and semantics.

From insectoid cybernetics to hypercomplex technology showing us a foretaste of the inner divinity we may one day reveal in ourselves.

A book I will not easily forget. Into the concrescence towards the perfect artifact.
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Antonin_Tuynman | 3 andere besprekingen | Oct 13, 2017 |

The Brotherhood of the Screaming Abyss is a strange memoir. I can’t say it’s a fantastic read, and then again, I can’t dismiss it either. A Kickstarter project by Dr. Dennis McKenna, this biography not only explores the lives of Dennis and his more famous brother, Terrence, but also contains a fair amount of philosophy and science. It obviously has a niche audience, people who take and enjoy hallucinogens, and see a potential for consciousness-altering botanicals to be ingested as psychic medicine.
Because of my own novels in the Falcon series deal with a fictionalized psychedelic toxic botanical, I was obviously curious to see what Dr. McKenna had to say about his experiences with mushrooms and the consciousness-altering brew in use in in Brazil (and probably Northern California) called ayahuasca.
This is quite a long book, and I’m sure many readers skipped through the painstaking recollections of Dennis and Terrence’s childhood, and went for the main event: an incident in La Chorrero, in which Dennis and Terrence confabulated complicated theories about the universe while consuming mind-boggling amounts of mushrooms. Not being a fan of Terrence McKenna’s, I was till now unacquainted with the theories this event spawned. I am open to the idea that plants and animals may be influencing our consciousness and evolution in subtle ways, yet the verbiage emerging from La Chorrero seemed way out. I’m also not a confirmed stoner, many of the group’s musings left me scratching my head. I remember from my own days smoking pot with a troubled Vietnam vet, that things often seemed to make sense when stoned though.
What I did like about this book is that Dennis McKenna stayed scrupulously honest. He didn’t try to idolize his brother or profit from his brother’s cult reputation. Dennis spoke with heartfelt regret and mature understanding of the various events of a long and rich life. Often, he digressed into philosophical abstractions I barely understood. Other times, his dry sense of humor made me smile. The book was professionally copy-edited, and the writing completely competent. I loved sentences like “From an early age I was a junkie for proprioceptive novelty.” As an extended biography, it gave me yet another glimpse into the turbulent sixties, and I appreciated that, and its candor.
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AuthorGabrielle | 1 andere bespreking | May 28, 2017 |
This comes awfully close to what Hunter Thompson once called 'bad craziness.' One probably shouldn't use the I Ching to predict the end of the world. (One probably shouldn't predict the end unless one sees a way of possibly avoiding it). Did you ever notice how prophecy (any prophecy) has a disturbing tendency to be self-fulfilling? Nevertheless:
 
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Farree | 3 andere besprekingen | Apr 23, 2014 |

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511
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