[.ca] Food of the Gods: The Search for the Original Tree of ... (ISBN 0553371304)

human-plant symbiosis:
a highly original, powerful work of revolutionary thinking designed to heal the planet and our own minds. The author was a brilliant man who vouchsafed to us some of the most amusing and enlightening ideas ever transmitted. This work is full of brainstorming wonder!

McKenna:
The late Terence McKenna, God/dess bless, considered Amanita muscaria as not the Soma of the Rig Veda, based on his experience with the mushroom. As it turns out, it probably is. He considers entheogens to have probably expanded the size of the human brain. Did the large-brained cetaceans take psychedelics, way before us? At any rate, the bard has bestowed a thought provoking read.

McKenna has a brilliant explanation for consciousness.:
This man is a genius! In Food of the Gods, McKenna postulates that monkeys on a diet of mushrooms, or dipping for insects in mushrooms, ate psychoactive chemicals that eventually played a major part in the evolution of human consciousness. He then goes on to examine mushroom spores and there ability to leave the planet and travel intergalacticly in deep space frozen hibernation before landing on another planet. He describes the mushroom as the perfect vehicle for intergalactic travel and the spreading of consciousness. SPACE MUSHROOMS! The rest of the book is all about mankind's evolution with psychoactive plants by his side. Although he did get some things wrong in this book it was still cutting edge for its time and remains one of the most important thoughts on the topic to date. The world will also miss the man after his recently passing into that higher realm of consciousness. Take this trip with Terence McKenna and expand your IQ.

Good Ethnogen Info, Bad History:
I'm a bit flabbergasted by all the accolades here about McKenna's "solid research." Well, partially flabbergasted. His research into the properties of ethnogens is unrivaled. But his research into history is awful. For instance, he simply takes for granted such things as the Great Mother Goddess theory, without apparently considering that this was never accepted by serious scholars in the first place - with the exception of Gimbutas - and is now accepted only in the popular imagination. (Read Ronald Hutton's "Triumph of the Moon" for more info on how this theory took hold of popular consciousness.) And he routinely presents various conspiracy theories (the CIA destroyed the "New Left", etc.) as complete fact without stopping to even consider that alternative viewpoints and interpretations may exist. That is not good scholarship. McKenna was an important countercultural figure and his work has great value, but don't take him as authoritative on purely historical issues. Read him for his unique point of view and for his first-hand experiences with the various substances he writes about.

Best book I have read in a long time:
This is a beautiful, new and refreshing walk through on human evolution, I recommend this to everyone intersted in human life. I feel that McKenna has created a very interesting, expansive and easy to understand thesis on our lives and history, in which the most important point McKenna seems to be making is the need to "Change our Minds". The implications on dominator/ego socity, drugs, philosophy, psychology and science is what has given me a huge respect for one of the greatest thinkers of the 20th century. This is such a good book I feel it is a must read.