This is the one track of audio to rule them all. In it, bard and sage and storyteller and author Terence McKenna speaks on the origin of human consciousness in a talk titled, Evolving Times.

Terence McKenna has had a tremendous influence on the way I’ve developed since I first discovered him back in 2004. One of my first books to buy was a print copy of his trialogues with Ralph Abraham and Rupert Sheldrake. But even if you aren’t familiar with him or his ideas, you don’t have to be because I’ve discovered the one two hour podcast that will absolutely blow your mind and introduce you to him. This is the best talk I’ve ever heard by Terence McKenna.

If you truly devote two hours of your attention to this piece of audio, it has the potential to change the way you think about everything.

Even if Terence’s description of human brain development clashes with your ideology too much to even conceive it possible, the topics he covers will get you to re-think the most basic ways you approach your brain and society.

This isn’t to say that I believe wholeheartedly everything he says. Quite the contrary. In fact, doing so would be an insult to his legacy. But what I do think is that Terence gives a plausible description for something we have no feasible explanation for: the origin of human consciousness. And if you this narrative is crazy or off the mark, you can easily do some of your own research.

I’ve listened to this podcast several times now and below are the notes I’ve taken, in which I broke Terence’s thesis into several pieces. Thanks to Lorenzo at the Psychedelic Salon for putting this track out and for putting audio out on a regular basis.

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Notes on Terence McKenna’s Evolving Times

The Origin of Consciousness

1. The commonly accepted notions of human evolution can explain many aspects of our world but humans emerged too quickly and our brain grew too fast
2. Lumholtz called this, “the most dramatic transformation in the history of life”
3. Evolution can’t explain us, the creatures that created the theory in the first place
4. Consciousness appeared in a creature that had reached an evolutionary climax, we were monkeys living the canopy and we made out pretty well
5. The best scientific explanation for consciousness: our need to throw led to a bigger brain with more capabilities (and from this complexity and number of connections consciousness emerged?)
6. Evidence is strong: our ancestors developed in Africa
7. Very little of biology pushes forward
8. Strife/environmental changes catalyze species change
9. Africa has been slowly drying
10. Simple animals die of starvation
11. Complex animals try new things
12. The drying of Africa led to our ancestors leaving the canopy to try new food sources
13. This was the era of knuckle walking, etc…
14. A recent paper said that monkeys leave the canopy for one thing only: mushrooms
15. Our ancestors tried eating everything, sometimes to terrible consequences
16. In the act of eating everything, they certainly encountered mushrooms containing psilocybin
17. Psilocybin can perhaps explain the rapid growth of the simian brain at a rate 10x faster than evolution seems to allow

Effects of Psilocybin

1. Can psilocybin explain human development? Let’s look at its effects.
2. Our ancestors would have certainly encountered psilocybin mushrooms, the ones that grew in Africa are big and shiny and attractive
3. At low doses: edge detection is improved; a highly competitive grassland environment selects for this, can avoid predators
4. At a higher dose: the primate gains an urge to reproduce in, “successful instances of copulation”
5. Thus from the above two points, monkeys that eat psilocybin are outbreeding their counterparts that may be allergic to it, don’t want it, etc…
6. At even higher doses, something happens that we can’t explain: a full blown “psychedelic experience”
7. Language like behaviour is common at this stage, glossolalia, i.e. speaking in tongues
8. Lingustics spontaneously organize
9. Language would have been entertainment before it had meaning
10. Eventually, an enterprising creature connected the “words” and meaning

Social Structure of a Society Like This

1. A dynamic balance likely emerged between land and creature
2. A mushroom that was widely available eventually became scarce
3. These creatures likely tried to preserve, probably did so in honey
4. Honey preservation forms alcohol
5. Alcohol promotes a different set of social values
6. All monkeys develop a set of heirarchy of dominant modes
7. Psilocybin inocculated against against male dominanted heirarchies and dissolved boundaries towards monogamy
8. Likely, group mushroom parties that “got out of hand… regularly”, mardi gras is a modern example
9. Orgiastic style dissolved lines of paternity and led to collectivist behavior
10. Men began thinking of “our children” instead of “my children”
11. During this stage, all the things that make us humans were developed
12. But as the mushroom went away, we had language and social structures
13. When the mushroom went away, we lost a sense of who we are and gained a sense of “why can’t we be as we weren’t were”
14. To replace this utopia, humans addict
15. We addict to everything: ideology, other humans, substances
16. Knowledge of the mushrooms were lost to all humanity except for remote groups in other areas
17. Was rediscovered in Mexico in 1955 and was outlawed by 1966; they are dangerous to our society
18. Science didn’t explore this and then move on; its never been there; we don’t know what it is

Consequences for our Social Structure

1. We structure our society so that people can get their thrills jumping out of planes and off bridges
2. In general: psychedelics dissolve boundaries
3. All societies are about boundaries
4. Anything that introduces questioning of boundaries is threatening
5. Our society is just the current download of the linguistic enterprise
6. We need our ego to ensure that at a restaurant we put food in our mouth, and not just our guest
7. However, the ego becomes like a cist or tumor that keeps going and becomes chronic; its incurable except…
8. Except for the use of non-perscription drugs; psychedelics dissolve this ego
9. They promote values other than the bottom line and value acquisition
10. This theory outlined above, ends up having tremendous social consequences; a political debate
11. What society should we build if its all arbitrary?
12. We are addicted to things
13. Not enough petroleum, heavy metals, etc.. too keep giving things to the ‘thing addicts’
14. We’ll have to accept major catastrophe or re-order society
15. We simply do not know what the psychedelic experience is
16. It connects you to nature
17. Nature only sees us as a giant gene swarm
18. The earth is a thermostatic, self-regulator
19. A kind of mind
20. The early humans worshipped the feminine b/c they connected to an intelligence they felt as feminine
21. Our intelligence is harmful to the world if we don’t acknowledge this
22. Our social creative space is incredibly impoverished
23. We can create more art in 20 minutes with our brain
24. There are no political solutions, only technological ones
25. All ideology is toxic b/c it is an insult to human free thinking
26. Technology is an extension of man
27. The difference between psychedelics and computers is that computers are too big to swallow
28. The old paradigm cannot continue; as the old paradigm changes we must act as sitters for society; spreading calm