Spores of Consciousness: Terence McKenna's Living Legacy

When I think of how I became aware of Terence and Dennis McKenna I cannot escape the process of shamanic initiation described by Lewis Carroll in Alice in Wonderland. Down the rabbit hole. Much of the reason this analogy persists in my mind is that nearly every person I have met or read about whose ears perk up at the sound of “McKenna” have each gone down their own rabbit hole or shamanic journey. Though Terence has gained iconic status in esoteric circles, his legacy is little known in the mainstream American culture. As with nearly all of the most treasured facets of life, the quest for wisdom and pursuit of mysteries require stepping off the beaten intellectual path. In my case, and I suspect for others as well, the path to Terence was carved by a yearning to understand mysteries of all dimensions, guided by entheogens such as cannabis and psilocybin, and lavishly decorated in synchronistic events.

Though my personal journey into the world of the esoteric is perhaps intriguing; my pertinent interest is in understanding the unique role and relevance that Terence McKenna maintains in the world that he parted from more than a decade ago. Fittingly Terence’s relevance in the world today mimics his beloved mushroom. He talked at length about how mushrooms represented a higher form of conscious development in that they created a symbiosis with the environment in which they live and that their mycelial networks represented a form of consciousness mirroring in complexity the human brain. An analogy of mycelium and the fruiting mushroom are well suited to describe Terence’s role in the vast multidisciplinary category of knowledge regarding the 2012 phenomenon. Much like these complex fields, his breadth of knowledge was staggering and highlighted the interdisciplinary nature of wisdom. Terence continues to act as an inoculator of consciousness to many, though certainly not the only one. This mycelial network of wisdom taps experts and amateurs in all fields and a frequent common denominator is that Terence and Dennis’ books have a place in their libraries.

His legacy represents the fruit bore out of that complex network of knowledge. Each time someone connects with his work and infuses the ideas into their life, they receive spores of consciousness which they can pass along. It is my hope, as I would imagine that it was also Terence’s that these spores will span the global population and that eventually reach a critical mass of conscious awareness, an eschatological event, if you will.

Though I may be young, naïve and eager to venture into realms of knowledge not easily understood; I restrain my opinion on what this event will be. I can, however, say that regardless of the details of such an event, when human consciousness at large evolves to a point of symbiosis with our natural environment, Terence McKenna will have played a key role in facilitating it by enabling and empowering each of us to spread the spores of consciousness.