Essentially billed as a recollection of the La Chorrera experiment, with a brief explanation of Terence’s Timewave theory, True Hallucinations is an impressive piece of work. It is definitely the clearest writing of Terence’s that I have sampled so far.

After the death of his mother in 1971, Terence, his brother Dennis, and three friends found themselves in the Colombian Amazon in search of oo-koo-hé, a psychoactive plant concoction containing DMT. At Dennis’ insistence, Terence and one of their companions found themselves involved in a psychedelic experiment in an effort to contact Logos. This involved the use of psilocybin mushrooms and a vocal technique which Dennis developed to attempt DNA alteration during a psychedelic experience. Rather than altering his DNA, Terence and Dennis found themselves in various forms of shamanic initiation for two weeks. While Terence found himself communicating with a divine voice, Dennis underwent a more dramatic psychological breakdown of sorts. The three friends that accompanied them on the journey did not experience this mental shift, but the two McKenna brothers were simultaneously being taken on some sort of shamanic initiation.

Taken from Daniel Pinchbeck’s Breaking Open The Head web site, here is an explanation of a typical shamanic initiation:

Shamanic initiation often takes the form of a sickness - the cure is the discovery of the vocation. Eliade describes a famous Yakut shaman who had been ill as a young man: "he needed to shamanize; if he went for a long time without doing so, he did not feel well." Shamans often become sick when they are young. During their illness, they may see visions of spirits or meet the ghosts of their ancestors. Shamanism can also be inherited through a family line.

True Hallucinations is a great piece of work. Other sources explain that The Invisible Landscape, co-authored by the McKenna brothers, focuses even more on the experiment at La Chorrera, so I will be checking that out sometime soon. However, True Hallucinations has the benefit of twenty years of reflection, while The Invisible Landscape was written less than five years after the experiment. This time serves True Hallucinations well, as Terence is able to more objectively assess what happened to the Amazonian travelers.

Published 1993. 237 pages. 5/5 Stars.