Culture Is Your Operating System

"There is a spiritual obligation, there is a task to be done. It is not, however, something as simple as following a set of somebody else's rules."

Terence McKenna was an American ethnobotanist, mystic, psychonaut, lecturer, author, and an advocate for the responsible use of naturally occurring psychedelic plants. He spoke and wrote about a variety of subjects, including psychedelic drugs, plant-based entheogens, shamanism, metaphysics, alchemy, language, philosophy, culture, technology, environmentalism, and the theoretical origins of human consciousness. He was called the "Timothy Leary of the '90s", "one of the leading authorities on the ontological foundations of shamanism", and the "intellectual voice of rave culture".

''If psychedelics don't ready you for the great beyond, then I don't know what really does,'' Mr. McKenna said in one of his last public speeches, at the Esalen Institute. Death, he said then, felt close.

Mr. McKenna combined a leprechaun's wit with a poet's sensibility to brew a New Age stew with ingredients including flying saucers, elves and the I Ching. The essential seasoning was the psychedelic mushrooms that transformed his life and that he recommended -- in ''heroic doses'' -- for virtually everyone.