Food of the Gods: The Search for the Original Tree of Knowledge A Radical History of Plants, Drugs, and Human Evolution
by Terence Mckenna
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Book Summary Information
Author: Terence MckennaEdition: Paperback
Published: 1993-01-01
ISBN: 0553371304
Number of pages: 336
Publisher: Bantam
Book Reviews of Food of the Gods: The Search for the Original Tree of Knowledge A Radical History of Plants, Drugs, and Human Evolution
Book Review: Completely Off the Beam
Summary: 1 Stars
I suppose that McKenna must have been a charismatic individual. He seemed to wander with the crowd of Esalen New Age lecturers and hang out with them. I have read many of his books and discussed them with a number of otherwise judicious individuals who seem to have a good opinion of them.
I, however, do not. I think McKenna missed the target completely. It isn't the first time that some intrepid 'psychonaut' wandered into the wilderness of their own delusions, never to emerge into the clear light of reality again. In many ways, McKenna illustrates a profound lesson in the dangers of the well meaning, the well intended, who undertake to alter their consciousness by brute force--imbibing some concoction or other that must be metabolized and excreted by your own bio-chemistry; plunged into a non-ordinary state before the agents come out the other end.
When Freud descended into the personal unconscious, he carried his theory like a Gorgon's head to turn the Monsters that lived there to stone. Jung described his own theory as a kind of Ariadne's thread into the Labyrinth prowled by Minotaurs. McKenna seems to believe he has discovered a viable alternate reality camping out with these Denizens of the Deep. However, as the Gods seemed to make perfectly clear to him in the bitter end, reality, as the Buddha described, is truly a matrix of suffering, and sickness, of old age and death--not some fanciful nether dimension of elves and fairies and nanospheric dwarves welling up from the collective unconscious.
When the indigenous Americans undertook a vision quest--it was to give meaning to their life--it was to cultivate successful life strategies. It was never intended to detach them from the real world and lose them utterly in the Dreamtime--unable to hunt, fish, or engage an enemy. Fooling around with entheogens is truly dangerous in so many stark and subtle ways that doesn't even begin to be funny. Yes, you may find spiritual healing. Yes you may find personal transformation. But you may also lose your soul, damage your mind, break your compass, and crack your barometer. In other words, you may just end up bat-guano crazy, and act like you have no sense left whatsoever--like some warped and woofed Anti-Zen Master. The only reason anyone would ever subject themselves to those dangers should be to become a better person, a superior person, an Uber Mensch. Divorcing your cognitive framework from the 'real world' and getting lost in grandiose fantasy constructions of your own design is not the pathway to that destination. Ultimately, I regard McKenna as a pathetic figure who serves as a warning to those who would penetrate the heart of Darkness without any knowledge of the dangers that lurk there or strategies to mitigate the hair trigger potential for disaster.
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