McKenna lays out the Stoned Ape hypothesis -- that psilocybin ingestion shaped early human evolution by suppressing dominance hierarchies, strengthening communal bonds and sharpening hunting -- and describes Food of the Gods as a Trojan horse left on the doorstep of anthropology. Released from Esalen's archive as an EXCERPT of a longer August 1992 Esalen talk.

We all know the difference between being alive and feeling alive. The state of the world has many of us struggling with threat and uncertainty, both of which immediately constrict our imagination and our ability to face the unknown with curiosity and discovery. Join Esther Perel for a live conversat

NOTE: All quotations are by Terence McKenna.] “The world that we are living in is not at all as the linguistic structures we have inherited would have us have it. We are actually living inside some kind of…

�What I think is going on is that probably language was entertainment long before it was meaning. It�s a kind of tuneless singing.� �Sometime in the last 50,000 years, before 12,000 years ago, a kind of paradise came into existence, a situation�