Psychonaut ethnobotanist Terence McKenna captures the journey along a ghostly trail into the Colombian Amazon Forest, the descent of the Rio Putumayo, and his stumbling upon the “starborn magic mushroom,” activated by psilocybin. Watch Peter Bergmann’s experimental documentary.
Terence McKenna’s True Hallucinations is an experimental documentary about the chaos at La Chorrera, the imagination, time, the Logos, belief, hope, madness, and doubt. Created by Peter Bergmann, this project is an expansion of ideas first presented in “The Transcendental Object At The End Of Time.”
A Brush with the Other in the Colombian Rainforest
“Plants are the missing link in the search to understand the human mind and its place in nature.” — Terence McKenna
From Peter Bergmann: In 1971, Terence McKenna (1946-2000), along with his brother Dennis and three other companions, ventured by plane, boat, and foot to the “paradisical” Colombian mission town of La Chorrera, where they hoped to encounter the elusive psychedelic oo-koo-hé. Fate would have it otherwise. Their attention soon turned to the large numbers of Stropharia Cubensis that they lucked upon, and before long, Terence and especially Dennis were formulating the psychopharmacological “experiment at La Chorrera” which would eventually give rise to Terence’s expanded Jungian notion of the UFO as human oversoul, and his I Ching based TimeWave Theory which holds, among other things, that history as we know it is accelerating and, in fact, will come to a major concrescence.
“Our self discoveries make us each a microcosm of the larger pattern of history. The inertia of introspection leads toward recollection, for only through memory is the past recaptured and understood. In the fact of experiencing and making the present, we are all actors.” — Terence McKenna, True Hallucinations, 1993
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“When we look within ourselves with psilocybin, we discover that we do not have to look outward toward the futile promise of life that circles distant stars in order to still our cosmic loneliness. We should look within; the paths of the heart lead to nearby universes full of life and affection for humanity.” — Terence McKenna, True Hallucinations
At Mission La Chorrera, they found (and ate) Stropharia cubensis, or, as McKenna would later call it, “the starborn magic mushroom.” Psilocybin, McKenna discovered, allowed him to dialogue with a seemingly alien entity he called, among other names, “the mushroom,” “the teaching voice,” and “the Logos.”
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“The ultimate singularity is the Big Bang, which physicists believe was responsible for the birth of the universe. We are asked by science to believe that the entire universe sprang from nothingness, at a single point and for no discernible reason. This notion is the limit case for credulity. In other words, if you can believe this, you can believe anything. It is a notion that is, in fact, utterly absurd, yet terribly important. Those so-called rational assumptions flow from this initial impossible situation. Western religion has its own singularity in the form of the apocalypse, an event placed not at the beginning of the universe but at its end. This seems a more logical position than that of science. If singularities exist at all it seems easier to suppose that they might arise out of an ancient and highly complexified cosmos, such as our own, than out of a featureless and dimensionless mega-void.” — Terence McKenna, True Hallucinations
From Peter Bergmann on the film: Special Thanks to Dennis McKenna, Klea McKenna, Kathleen Harrison and Stephanie Schmitz, as their help and contributions were crucial in making this film a reality.
Consider supporting the movies:
Through iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/artist/we-pl… (purchase any song or album)
On Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/5BqIQ…
Thank You!
Stream the soundtrack for the movie on Spotify:
https://open.spotify.com/user/wpahp/p…
VISUALS BY
Hakan Hisim, Titan, hArDyTRSi, XX, Epoch, Cabbibo,
Nuance, Kyklop, SQNY, Calcifer, cocoon, quite,
Coronoid, Traction, Ovnimoon, TAS, PharaOM,
Luke Brown, Myztico Campo
Terence McKenna’s True Hallucinations
Opening Titles 10:09
The Experiment at La Chorrera 30:52
5DGISD 1:00:20
The Stone 1:06:33
The TimeWave 1:09:26
Lisbon Interlude 1:38:30
The Iridule 1:47:48
The Mushroom Speaks 1:56:38
Terence and The Howling Tao 2:11:50
UFOs 2:19:55
No Conclusions 2:30:20
Keep The Faith 2:38:14
Butterflies 2:44:40
Terence McKenna on Facebook:
https://facebook.com/LanguageEvolution
H-T: McKennite
Updated 31 January 2024
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