This is the central concern regarding how we approach cancer, the plague of modern times. Len Richmond’s documentary “What if Cannabis Cured Cancer,” narrated by Emmy award-winning actor Peter Coyote, is a well-researched account of the chemical benefits of the cannabis plant. Interviewing a multitude of doctors and researchers across the world, “What if Cannabis…” explains how certain compounds in cannabis, including THC, attack only cancer cells while actually protecting healthier ones. And here is the real kicker: with incredible results! However, its healing effects are not limited to just cancer. Cannabis contains compounds that work holistically with the entire human body on such conditions as epilepsy, bipolar disorder, glaucoma, Alzheimer’s, multiple sclerosis, neuropathic pain, depression, leukemia, and more.

The documentary also outlines the misinformation campaign by both government and media as to the ill effects of cannabis on users. For instance, it is an eyebrow raising revelation that not a single recorded death has ever been attributed to cannabis, while it remains a Schedule I drug—along with heroin and meth—under the Controlled Substances Act.

But, it’s not just the plant that’s having a tough time in the world. Len Richmond has tried earnestly to get the medical community to be involved in the amazing amount of research he’s uncovered in his film:

“I contacted the John Wayne Cancer Institute,” he says. “To offer researchers a chance to look at my film. The PR guys said I had to write to the individual researchers. So, I got all their information, emailed them, and offered them a free copy of the documentary. There was not a single response. Weeks later, I sent a follow-up email, again offering a free copy of the film and asking “Are you really so sure that you're right that you're not even open to entertaining an alternative point of view?’ Well, then I got a response: ‘Don’t you email us again! We’re not interested!’ It’s crazy! Chemo therapy is hurting people. It makes me angry. It’s a scandal, the way cancer is being treated in this country as a profit-driven industry. “

Despite having sporadic acceptance in the mainstream medical arena, Richmond’s film is gaining an enormous amount of success in the medical marijuana community. People are excited about the evidence contained in his documentary, and with good cause. “What if Cannabis…” creates a convincing argument on how and why marijuana should be seriously considered as a cancer-curing agent. To get a little more to the heart of the issue, I talked to Len from his home in L.A. for an in-depth look at how the film came to be:

Well, I’m a sixties hippie who, among other things, marched against the Vietnam War. I started smoking dope in the sixties, of course. I remember how I first started, I was dating this woman because I was trying to be straight and fit in. On our first date, she held out a joint. I told her I didn’t wanted to do anything that might make me lose control, but she said, ‘This stuff will change your life, it will open your mind! You'll discover things about yourself.’ I thought, ‘What?’ I couldn’t understand the concept at first. But, of course, she was right! A few months later I came out.

I later moved to London to be with a boyfriend and started writing sitcoms for BBC and British television. There was one particular sitcom that I decided to put all of my sixties radicalism in it, marijuana, making fun of religion, and gay liberation. It was called “Agony” because it was about a “Dear Abby”-type of advice columnist who could fix everyone else’s problems but could never fix her own. It was very popular, very funny, and was one of the first shows to depict the main characters smoking marijuana casually and celebrating healthy gay relationships. Later, CBS bought the rights to it and broadcast an American version called “The Lucy Arnaz Show” but it was terrible. The CBS writers took out everything that made Agony so good: the gays, smoking pot, the radicalism, the left wing politics. It was soon after that I got heavily into the Gay Liberation movement. I started promoting gay rights – and getting laid a lot.

My mom was diagnosed with breast cancer and wouldn’t let the doctors do anything to her. Of course, this freaked me out, along with the rest of family. But, she did a lot of research and found various herbs that she felt would help her. So, after four years of treating herself, by focusing on a vegan raw food diet and using anti-cancer herbs like Mistletoe, she had actually shrunk her tumor! I was amazed! So, I got inspired to make the documentary film “Everything Bad is Good: Healing Yourself in a World of Medicine Gone Mad,” where I interviewed people who had cured themselves of cancer with natural remedies. This is when I started to really get into the idea of natural healing outside of the medical world. Through my research on this film, I stumbled onto a few cases where marijuana was used as a curing agent and just dug deeper. As I soon discovered, there was quite a bit of evidence beginning to surface.

Some of the things going through my mind were, ‘Am I going to get attacked? Are people going to want to destroy me because I'm raining on their parade? There is a whole industry and makes a good living off the drug war.’ Well, it’s been exactly the opposite! People are complimenting the research . . . the evidence is there! I've become a bit of a working class hero taking on the establishment. My early hippie dreams of making a better world are coming true!

For instance, just the other day I was emailed an old article titled “Smoking Marijuana Causes Testicular Cancer.” I started investigating the research done on the study and even the doctor was who hired to conduct the study said don’t read too much into it, the results aren’t conclusive, the amount of people in the study were so small it is difficult to even pinpoint a correlation, and of course we don't know if the control group was telling the truth about their past drug use. But that's not the way the press reported it. And, of course, the study was funded by the folks who wanted to prove that pot is bad for you.

The first guy I interviewed for the film, Dr. Jeffrey Hergenrather, started treating patients with cannabis and they started to get better. And what he told me was, whether you smoke marijuana or not you have marijuana-like substances in your body. It is naturally in your body, you are born with it, and it is called the endocannabinoid system. I thought, ‘What? I need to find out more about this!’ Endocannabinoids are found in our nervous and immune systems and have an almost identical structure to cannabinoids found in cannabis. These two compounds act as a sort of lock and key for each other in your body—a chemical reaction—that becomes beneficial, forming into modulators of good health. Endocannabinoids act as tumor regulators, mood regulators, anti-depressants, anti-inflammatories, and the list goes on.

What is being discovered is that some people do not have enough endocannabinoids in their system. You see, you get a massive dose of endocannabinoids in your mother’s milk, if you’re breast fed. It’s one of your immunity boosters as a baby. What Professor Robert Melamede (in the film) believes is that there are endocannabinoid-deprived people and there are endocannabinoid-endowed people. Those that are endocannabinoid-endowed have healthy systems, are more adaptable to change, and therefore are more open-minded. In the same way, those that are endocannabinoid-deprived have weaker systems, therefore more fearful of change to their environment. So, endocannabinoids are not just interesting in how they can heal the body, but are also indicators into how one lives their life! This is a whole new field of information I didn’t even get to touch on in the film. But I will in my next.

Here is the main reason we need cannabis. We are overwhelmed with toxins in our environment: chemicals, pollution, even our own thoughts. The endocannabinoids that we are born with need help. The cannabinoids and endocannabinoids find each other and are like, “Oh . . . Hi bro!” and they hook up and are stronger in fighting diseases. It is a more protective way to survive from all the things that are in an onslaught against us. Cannabis stimulates your survival mechanism. Really, cannabis smokers can be the luckiest, happiest people on Earth!

For one thing, they are mood lifters; they lift you out of depression. When you’re not busy being depressed, it helps you to survive. So, endocannabinoids are all about survival. The threat, I guess, is all the pharmaceuticals we would put out of business. If you can do so many healing things with this one plant, it’s an enormous threat to our pharmacy system. Almost every drug I’ve researched comes with an enormous amount of side-effects, some of them even fatal. You put yourself in the situation of a catch-22. Get rid of such-and-such symptom but accept the risk of a host of others. The only side-effects with marijuana are you may lose a little short-term memory for a while and you may bump into some things while walking around at home.

We have to acknowledge there's a lot of fear out there about cannabis. People are afraid of losing control; particularly religious people. They have to control everything in their life, or the house of cards falls apart. Marijuana is a threat, it’s unpredictable. And, cannabis makes you question why you wouldn’t want to do anything that doesn’t make you happy. It does get you to leave jobs, leave marriages, to make moves and changes in your life that you aren’t usually willing to make.

It’s much more accepted in Spain, than many other countries. It’s not really treated like a criminal offense; they are very liberal about it. Italy, on the other hand, is a whole different story. I have a friend in Italy who has cancer, but can hardly get marijuana at all because he is scared of being arrested. Most of the countries are still treating it like a serious criminal offense. I can say most of the foreign orders I get for my film are from Canada. They are a huge pot-smoking country. I also get a lot of overseas orders from the Netherlands, obviously.

One thing I am going to do is to get copies of my film to members of Congress. I got Americans for Safe Access (ASA) to agree to hand-deliver them to one hundred Congressmen and Congresswomen; they are just waiting for the right time, what with the latest election and change in seats. My hope is that there is a Congress person out there who knows someone with cancer—a relative they love— and it becomes a life or death issue, instead of just an issue about an illegal drug. Basically, I think that if we can get one well-known person who has cancer to treat themselves with cannabis instead of chemo and they survive and prosper, then maybe that will begin to wake the country up. But, you know, it probably has to be a celebrity or nobody will give a damn.

No, because a fair number of pro-marijuana people didn’t want Prop 19 to go into effect. It criminalized some things that weren’t criminal before. Such as, there was a bit in there about having to get written permission from your landlord to smoke cannabis in your rented home. I don’t want to have to ask permission from a landlord to smoke in my own backyard!

Look, I’ve been busted for smoking pot in England. I’ve been arrested, fingerprinted, and photographed. And at that time even the police woman who arrested me said if I wouldn’t have smoked on the street, I wouldn’t have been arrested. ‘Do it in your own home,’ she said. I don’t want a police woman, who has no idea of the benefits of cannabis to tell me how to conduct my medical treatment. The people who are rabidly enforcing cannabis laws are scared little people. Marijuana gives them the perfect excuse because they are fearful of freedom and change and use us as a scapegoat. So, yes, I say please legalize it. It would be nice to have that paranoia gone. I think it will definitely be legalized before too long because a lie can’t live forever.

Yes, because the older generation will soon be gone. And I say this as a member of the older generation. 7 out of every 10 people I know smoke pot. And not just the kind of person who you would think smokes pot, but neighbors, coworkers, normal people. It’s like the gay lib thing . . . come out, come out, wherever you are!

Just using my film. Getting the documentary out there; getting it to lawmakers and the establishment medical community. Now I have a weapon I can use. I’m not really the kind to go out and picket with signs. My film is my weapon I use to affect change.

(or, Why Terence McKenna Matters)

If anyone ever wanted to get to know me (i.e. - what makes Daniel tick) the first thing I would have to tell them is, "Read Terence McKenna." In online forums and real life scenarios alike, I quote McKenna like Jules Winnfield quotes Ezekiel in Pulp Fiction. Passionate. With conviction. My armor and weapon when I'm ready to blast the meandering monotony of day-to-day living. However, most people ask, who is this guy? What exactly is the Terence McKenna circus? And, what makes him so important?

A few weeks ago my friend Michelle suggested I write a "Terence for Dummies" piece. So, since "For Dummies" is under copyright, here's my bent on the McKenna legacy: "Machine Elves 101: Why Terence McKenna Matters."

The Background

Terence Kemp McKenna was born in 1946 under the auspices of a conventional upbringing. His brother, Dennis, shared a penchant for the eccentricities of the fringe. Not unlike most psychopomp aficionados, McKenna's introduction to the realm of psychedelic phenomena came through Aldous Huxley's The Doors of Perception. The seed planted by this classic experiential account never left the McKenna boys in their ever-growing studies in philosophy and the sciences. After attaining his B.S. in Ecology and Conservation at U.C. Berkeley, Terence moved to Japan, eventually travelling throughout Southeast Asia until his mother died from cancer in 1971. A year later, Terence, Dennis, and friends made a long-awaited trek into the lower Putumayo of the Amazon Basin in search of a shamanic plant preparation called oo-koo-hé. The death of their mother, and the trials that came with Western society, was evident in their escape into the wilds of the rainforest. "We are at last freed of our umbilical connection to civilization," wrote Terence in his journal the first day on the river. (1) Dennis makes this sentiment clear as well, in a letter to his brother a year before their expedition: ". . . I have considered that [this journey] may well give us, as living men, willful access to the doorway that the dead pass daily." (2) Though their trip was specific to the exploration of a particular ceremonial medicine, it was indeed part of a larger quest in the spirit of imagination and exploration, to investigate the capacities of psychedelic consciousness.

Settling on the outskirts of the Mission at La Chorrera, it was the events that transpired during this crusade that became the catalyst of McKenna's ideas.

The Experiment

It was here that Terence and his party became acquainted with Stropharia cubensis fungi (now known as Psilocybe cubensis). The psilocybin alkaloid in this particular mushroom is part of the tryptamine class, which bears a structural relationship to serotonin in the human brain. Particularly, the correlation of biochemical functions between tryptamines and serotonin is what inspired them. In their experiments, Terence and Dennis pursued through firsthand experience the "phenomenology of the tryptamine dimension." (3) The study involved Terence and Dennis as guinea pigs, testing out this hypothesis: "Hallucinogens, by effecting the neural matrix, can produce changes in consciousness in the temporal dimension." (4) The temporal phenomena experienced here is not just described as pertaining to the dimension of time, but that of the physical or material world as well.

In essence, you can change reality while tripping on ‘shrooms.

The bread crumbs leading the McKenna brothers to this perspective was in fact the shamanic method. The Amazonian medicine ayahuasca—brewed from the Banisteriopsis caapi vine mixed with shrub leaves containing dimethyltryptamine (DMT)—is used by indigenous ayahuasceros or curanderos (curers) as a sacrament and medicine to heal the sick. Called "The Vine of the Dead," ayahuasca is renowned for giving healers supernatural abilities such as the ability to speak with the dead, with animals, and with plants; telepathic communication; curing physical, emotional, and spiritual ailments of all kinds, including addiction; and finally divination. Terence wrote: "By entering the domain of plant intelligence, the shaman becomes, in a way, privileged to a higher dimensional perspective on experience." (5) These fantastical attributes inspired Terence and his brother to apply the Baconian practice of scientific investigation with shamanic faculty.

Undergoing a lengthy binge in psilocybin mushrooms, they put this hypothesis to the test.


The Result

Time stopped, became tangible. Encounters with a UFO. No sleep for eleven days without any physical strain. These are just some of the phenomenal developments manifested during the experiment at La Chorrera. To summarize their conclusions, Terence and Dennis postulated that "all phenomena are at root constellated by a waveform that is the hierarchical summation of its constituent parts, morphogenetic patterns related to those in DNA." (6) Basically, that time is an objective apparatus acting as a wave (instead of the linear line framework we get from historiography) and that all events and thought forms are the development of that wave's motion. The back and forth motion, or crest and trough, of this wave is represented by critical moments in history they call novelty: the discovery of fire, the birth of agriculture, the creation of the Mona Lisa, the invention of the steam engine, the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, and so on. "Time is a topological manifold over which events must flow subject to the constraints of the manifold [...] by examining time from this point of view we can see when in history great outbreaks of novelty occurred." (7) Within this waveform the brothers found a pattern of novelty, a cycle in which the time spans become shorter and shorter. When this pattern ends it becomes a singularity, a zero point. Using a computer program they wrote, the McKenna brothers traced this zero point to an approximate location on our calendar and found it correlating with the end of the Mayan Calendar on December 22, 2012.

Now, keep in mind this theory was presented in 1975, long before the 2012 hype. Before the 21st Century, the 2012 phenomenon was almost exclusively in the McKenna camp. Most all of the apocalyptic doomsayers saw 2000, Y2K, or maybe even Ronald Reagan's Presidential reign as the cusp of Armageddon. But, did the McKennas really see this as the end of the world?

The Revival

"So historical patterns are largely cyclical, but not entirely—there is ultimately a highest level of the pattern, which does not repeat, and that's the part that is responsible for the advance into true novelty." (8)

Terence McKenna spent a large part of his career after this experiment attending lectures and seminars. He had become an emerging figure of the counter-culture, psychedelic movement, filling a void that had long been empty since the quiet death of the hippie movement in the early 1970s. Through his story-telling prowess, he regularly testified his arduous transition from Platonic philosopher to psychonautic proselytizer. The common pattern found in the majority of his presentations is a deconstruction of the modern, consumerist tendencies that pervade Western society. These tendencies are represented as the "dominator" model: "hierarchical, paternalistic, materialistic, and male dominated." (9) What Terence saw as the zero point at the end of history would actually manifest as the dissemination of the dominator value system. This period would be characterized as the "passing out of one set of laws that are conditioning existence and into another radically different set of laws." (10)

This end point is a chaotic and trying time. Terence recognized this shift in the world around us and did not lack a compass for which he could direct this oncoming transformation. "The last best hope for dissolving the steep walls of cultural inflexibility that appear to be channeling us toward true ruin is a renewed shamanism," he wrote. (11) "In the view of our present cultural impasse, I conclude that the next evolutionary step must involve not only a repudiation of dominator culture but an Archaic Revival." (12)

The Archaic Revival is McKenna's notion of our saving grace. It is a social recovery of the value systems that have been lost since the late Neolithic Age and can be surmised by these three aspects:

· The tribalization of society, reminiscent of the Goddess-worshipping days before agriculture.
· A sense of planetary connectedness as a primary component of all cultural habits and policy.
· Instead of values being imposed from external agencies, they should be discovered in the inner realms through various forms of consciousness expansion.

What this Revival looks like in the McKenna framework is a symphony of imagery described as "energy unbounded by space or time," a "quantum jump," or a "revelation of the interspecies' mind" as an experiential "confrontation with the Jungian 'collective unconscious'." (13). Whatever the result, the role of the tryptamine is vital to this paradigm shift into the Archaic Revival. Simply put, psychedelics of the entheogenic (plant spirit medicine) class are ego-suppressors. This is the cardinal remedy for the dominator problem afflicting us, because "they dissolve boundaries whatever the boundaries are. And as a consequence of this they dissolve cultural programming." (14)



The Elves

“There are forces friendly to our struggle to birth ourselves as an intelligent species.” (15) The elf component is the spice in the Terence McKenna flavor.

It is the supernatural entities encountered during his tryptamine experiences that compose the language of McKenna’s Archaic pulpit. "In the phenomenon of Stropharia cubensis, we are confronted with an intelligent and seemingly alien life-form.” (16) McKenna recounts time and time again the analogous experiences with these entities, what he calls “self-transforming machine elves” which one can make contact with in the psychedelic universe. “Right here and now, one quanta away, there is raging a universe of active intelligence that is transhuman, hyperdimensional, and extremely alien.” (17) What this suggests is that the psilocybin experience opens the pathways to a sort of parallel dimension, where one can speak and interact with otherworldly beings. The intrigue of this lies in its repeatability of these alien forms and the nature of their interactions: “This spectacle of more than Oriental splendor is the characteristic, even unvarying, manner in which this experience presents itself.” (18)

In fact, these elfin beings are a construct of a greater picture. Terence makes it clear the “speaking entity” of the tryptamine realm is an interior manifestation of the Logos, the ultimate source of all knowledge. The machine elves act as a sort of ambassadorship for the Logos, the collective unconscious, Oversoul, or Gaian Mind. It is from this place that Terence received the knowledge of his time wave theory: “Shamans and mystics and psychedelic travelers may be getting a very noisy, low-grade signal about a future event that is somehow built into the structure of space and time.” (19)

Again, the shamanic model makes itself evident. In indigenous societies, the shaman receives all of his/her knowledge from the same type of beings through entheogenic plants; it is integral to the success of their curing methods. “The shaman is able to act as an intermediary between the society and the supernatural, or to put it in Jungian terms, he is an intermediary to the collective unconscious.” (20)

The Gist

“A reinstitution of the shamanic role in modern society might prevent its total estrangement from the collective unconscious, which remains the fountainhead of all human cultures, archaic and modern.” (21)

Terence McKenna evolved to a sort of psychedelic prophet. The Village Voice called him the “Copernicus of consciousness.” The reason I feel he has something to offer society is because he recognizes that the current system is broken. It doesn’t serve the community; rather the community serves the system. McKenna’s approach was to turn the value system of modernism upside down. And although at first glance it may seem Terence was obsessed only with the naked embrace of the natural world, he was not without practicality. Indeed he felt technology was a problem-solving mechanism that would help get us out of this mess. “I think the electronic shaman—the person who pursues the exploration of these spaces—exists to return to tell the rest of us about it.” (22)

Are his ideas totally out there? Absolutely they are! But, that is precisely the point. The McKenna recipe is about finding a new language in which to understand our world. Because our current model of operating is so damaging to our way of life that it might actually end our life, it will take an absolute and agonizing reappraisal of our situation. However, Terence will be the first to admit that he doesn’t have the complete answer to this enigma: “You have to take seriously the notion that understanding the universe is your responsibility, because the only understanding of the universe that will be useful to you is your own understanding.” (23)

In conclusion, Terence McKenna was a scientist turned gypsy spokesperson for the shamanic realms. His claim is that by ingesting certain plants we come into contact with an objective reality that has a message for us. That message is about returning to a way of living that is more conscious of the Earth as personality, rather than a resource to tap. It is Terence’s contention that the plant spirits are trying to tell us this and that it is imperative to tune in to their frequency. “Nature is not our enemy, to be raped and conquered. Nature is ourselves, to be cherished and explored. Shamanism has always known this, and shamanism has always, in its most authentic expressions, taught that the path required allies. These allies are the hallucinogenic plants and the mysterious teaching entities, luminous and transcendental, that reside in that nearby dimension of ecstatic beauty and understanding that we have denied until it is now nearly too late.” (24)

But taking ourselves too seriously is not part of the McKenna formula. The great attractor to Terence McKenna as counter-culture icon was his insistence on having a good time. When asked in an interview by David Brown what the ultimate goal of human evolution was, Terence’s judicious response was plainly: “Oh, a good party.” (25)




.................Terence Kemp McKenna: November 16, 1946 – April 3, 2000.................



Footnotes

1. True Hallucinations, p.23
2. True Hallucinations, p.5
3. The Invisible Landscape, p.98
4. The Invisible Landscape, p.74
5. Food of the Gods, p.8
6. The Invisible Landscape, p.111
7. Chaos, Creativity, and Cosmic Consciousness, p.11
8. The Archaic Revival, p.215
9. The Archaic Revival, p.149
10. True Hallucinations, p.199
11. Food of the Gods, p.98
12. Food of the Gods, p.92
13. The Invisible Landscape, p.176
14. The Archaic Revival, p.243
15. Food of the Gods, p.13
16. True Hallucinations, p.209
17. The Archaic Revival, p.38
18. The Invisible Landscape, p.114
19. Chaos, Creativity, and Cosmic Consciousness, p.156
20. The Invisible Landscape, p.12
21. The Invisible Landscape, p.27
22. The Archaic Revival, p.165
23. The Archaic Revival, p.88
24. Food of the Gods, p.274
25. The Archaic Revival, p.210

Bibliography

Abraham, Ralph, Terence McKenna, and Rupert Sheldrake. Chaos, Creativity, and Cosmic Consciousness. Park Street Press, 2001.

McKenna, Dennis and Terence McKenna. The Invisible Landscape: Mind, Hallucinogens, and the I Ching. San Francisco: Harper Collins, 1993.

McKenna, Terence. The Archaic Revival: Speculations on Psychedelic Mushrooms, the Amazon, Virtual Reality, UFOs, Evolution, Shamanism, the Rebirth of the Goddess, and the End of History. San Francisco: Harper Collins, 1991.

McKenna, Terence. Food of the Gods: The Search for the Original Tree of Knowledge. Bantam, 1993.

McKenna, Terence. True Hallucinations: Being an Account of the Author’s Extraordinary Adventures in the Devil’s Paradise. San Francisco: Harper Collins, 1993.