The largest collection of talks by Terence McKenna — visionary ethnobotanist and advocate for the mindful use of natural psychedelics.
The largest collection of talks by Alan Watts — the British-American philosopher who made Eastern wisdom accessible through witty and profound teachings.
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Two-part Esalen lecture from August 1992. Nominally on politics and ethos, it ranges over psychedelic ontologies, modernity, language, reason, religion and freedom in part one, then shamanism, synesthesia, paranormal phenomena, climatology, astronomy, Renaissance humanism and telepathy in part two. Released from Esalen's own archive.
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.
Terence McKenna performing with the band Lost At Last on Maui.
Complete twelve-tape participant recording of Terence McKenna's multi-day Esalen workshop on the I Ching, the Tao and the Timewave -- roughly fifteen hours of unedited sessions. Circulated as a participant tape set; the source upload dates it to November 1988 while the Terence McKenna Archives bibliography lists a 1991 Esalen workshop under the title "The Time Wave, the Tao, and Novelty".
