Terence McKenna 1956 - 2000

"What psychedelics do is dissolve boundaries, and in the presence of dissolved boundaries one cannot continue to close ones eyes to the ruination of the earth, the poisoning of the seas, the consequences of 2000 years of unchallenged dominator culture, based on monotheism, hatred of nature, suppression of the female and so on."

On the 3rd April 2000 the author and psychedelic explorer Terence McKenna died in Hawaii, aged 54. He had been suffering from brain cancer for some time.

Terence McKenna's main area of interest and writing was ethnobotany, the study of folkloric and religious uses of plants. He was particularly interested in the ritual use of hallucinogens by tribal shamans and, with his brother Dennis, spent many years on experiential field-trips in Central America and in Asia.

McKenna was probably best known in Britain for his Timewave Zero theory, which predicted the end of time on the winter solstice 2012, a date derived from an ancient Mayan calendar system.

During the 1990s recordings of his lectures were much sampled on Trance mixes, most notably by The Shamen and Psychic TV.

Although he was popularly accepted as one of the foremost authorities on expanded consciousness, and was often referred to as the "altered statesman", his writings have rarely been published in the UK.

He is quoted as saying A person is a focused illusion of being; death occurs when the illusion of being is no longer sustained.