True Hallucinations: Being an Account of the Author's Extraordinary Adventures in the Devil's Paradise

«SOMETIME DURING THE EARLY 1980s, while visiting the Esalen Institute, where I had been invited to participate in a conference on shamanism, I realized that my innate Irish ability to rave had been turbo-charged by years of psilocybin mushroom use.» — McKenna abre el Preface fechando en los años ochenta el momento en que dice haber advertido lo que le pasaba al hablar, y lo atribuye al uso continuado del hongo.

«Aided by my devotion to psilocybin and the experiment at La Chorrera that is the subject of this book, I had apparently evolved into a sort of mouthpiece for the incarnate Logos.» — McKenna sostiene, con el grado puesto en apparently, haberse convertido en portavoz de un Logos encarnado por obra de la psilocibina y del experimento que el libro narra.

«It was as though my ordinary, rather humdrum personality had simply been turned off and speaking through me was the voice of another, a voice that was steady, unhesitating, and articulate—a voice seeking to inform others about the power and the promise of psychedelic dimensions.» — McKenna describe la experiencia como la sustitución de su personalidad ordinaria por otra voz, y la mantiene dentro del símil, as though, sin declarar de quién es esa voz.

«These verbal performances seemed to me rather mundane while they were occurring, but relistening to them on audiotape I could see the source of other people's fascination.» — McKenna consigna la distancia entre lo que sentía al hablar y lo que oyó después en la grabación, que es el primer indicio con que arma su caso.

«There is a strange paradox surrounding all of this: my ideas are now in the public arena and an informal plebiscite is being held on them.» — McKenna llama plebiscito informal a la circulación pública de sus ideas y hace de esa circulación la prueba de su valor.

«If they spread, become popular, and function as catalysts of social change then the hope that they may have a special destiny will be sustained. If, on the other hand, they have their moment in the sun and then fade from public notice, my work and my vision will have been judged to be no more than another fleeting facet of our surreal and paranoia-infected culture.» — McKenna enuncia el criterio con que acepta que se lo juzgue, en forma de disyuntiva: o sus ideas cambian algo o habrán sido una faceta pasajera de la cultura.

«I have no idea where these ideas may lead.» — la abstención de McKenna sobre el destino de lo que sostiene, dicha en una frase y sin matizarla.

«I mention all of this not to inform my reader of the less-than-interesting details of my personal effort to feed a family, but because this career of mine is now the only and best evidence that something extraordinary, perhaps something of historical importance, may have happened at La Chorrera.» — McKenna declara para qué cuenta su carrera: la ofrece como la mejor evidencia disponible de que en La Chorrera ocurrió algo extraordinario, y le deja el may.

«For the loquacious mushrooms encountered there have spun a myth and issued a prophecy, in quite specific detail, of a planet-saving global shift of consciousness. They have promised all that has happened in my life over the last twenty years, and they have promised much more for the future.» — la tesis que sostiene el volumen entero: McKenna atribuye a los hongos un mito y una profecía detallada de un cambio global de consciencia, y dice que lo prometido por ellos ya se cumplió en su vida.

«If you read onward you become a part of this tale. Caveat lector.» — McKenna cierra el Preface haciendo al lector parte del relato y advirtiéndole en latín.

«For THOUSANDS OF YEARS the visions imparted by hallucinogenic mushrooms have been sought and revered as a true religious mystery.» — la primera frase del capítulo uno: McKenna sitúa las visiones del hongo alucinógeno en una veneración milenaria y las llama misterio religioso verdadero.

«Much of my thought over the past twenty or more years has been caught up in describing and contemplating this mystery.» — McKenna declara que su obra de veinte años consiste en describir y contemplar ese misterio, no en resolverlo.

«Closely guarded by the chaotically jeweled Angels— "Every angel is terrible," wrote Rilke, and at once sacred and profane—the mushroom has risen in my life much as it may rise at some future point in human history.» — McKenna cita a Rilke sobre lo terrible del ángel para decir que el hongo es a un tiempo sagrado y profano, y propone que lo que le ocurrió a él puede ocurrirle después a la especie.

«I have chosen a literary approach to the telling of this tale.» — McKenna declara la forma del libro: un tratamiento literario, elegido por él y no impuesto por la materia.

«A living mystery could take any shape—it is master of place and space, time and spirit—yet my search for a simple form to convey this mystery brought me to follow tradition: to write a chronological narrative of a story that is both true and extraordinarily bizarre.» — McKenna explica por qué escribe una narración cronológica pese a que el misterio, dice, no tiene forma propia; y califica su propia historia de verdadera y extravagante a la vez.

«Someone more familiar than I with the appearance of the mushroom Stropharia cubensis pointed out a single large specimen standing tall and alone in an old bit of cow manure.» — la escena con que arranca el relato: McKenna no reconoce el hongo, lo reconoce un compañero cuyo nombre no da.

«Impulsively and at my companions' suggestion, I ate the whole mushroom.» — McKenna consigna que el primer hongo lo comió por impulso y a sugerencia ajena, sin propósito ritual.

«The feeling of the bigness of the sky, which I have come to associate with psilocybin, rushed down on me there for the first time.» — McKenna nombra el efecto que asocia a la psilocibina, la grandeza del cielo, y fecha ahí su primera vez.

«Things stood out with a new presence and significance.» — la descripción más breve que da del efecto, en términos de presencia y significado y no de imágenes.

«The eerie sense that some other dimension or scale of being had intersected with the bright tropical day lasted only a few minutes.» — McKenna describe lo ocurrido como el cruce de otra dimensión o escala de ser con el día tropical, y acota su duración a unos minutos.

«I recognized that my experience had been induced» — el troceo corta aquí por cambio de plana: la frase arranca en la plana 12 y se completa en la 13 con by the mushroom.

«We were involved, I imagined, in a deep jungle search for hallucinogens of a different sort: plants containing the orally active drug di-methyltryptamine (or DMT) and the psychedelic brew ayahuasca.» — McKenna fija el objeto declarado de la expedición: plantas con dimetiltriptamina activa por vía oral y la ayahuasca, no el hongo.

«These plants were long associated with telepathic abilities and feats of the paranormal. Yet the patterns of their use, which were unique to the Amazon jungles, had not been fully studied.» — McKenna atribuye a esas plantas una asociación antigua con la telepatía y lo paranormal, y a la vez declara que su uso amazónico estaba sin estudiar.

«Longtime residents of Colombia assured me that the golden-hued Stropharia occurred exclusively on the dung of Zebu cattle, and I assumed that in the jungles of the interior—where I was shortly to be—I could expect no cattle or pasture.» — McKenna cuenta por qué descartó el hongo al entrar a la selva, y nombra la fuente de la creencia sin suscribirla: los residentes antiguos de Colombia.

«Why had a gypsy band such as ours come to the steaming jungles of Amazonian Colombia? We were a party of five, bound by friendship, extravagant imagination, naivete, and a dedication to travel and exotic experience.» — McKenna describe al grupo por lo que lo unía —amistad, imaginación, ingenuidad y afición al viaje— y no por un propósito científico.

«Four months before our descent into the watery underworld of the lower Putumayo, my brother and I had endured the grief of our mother's death.» — McKenna sitúa la muerte de la madre cuatro meses antes del descenso al Putumayo, dato que el libro no vuelve a explotar.

«I deliberately do not say much about any of us. We were mis-educated perhaps, but welleducated certainly. None of us was yet twenty-five years old.» — McKenna declara la reticencia con que retrata al grupo y su edad; la frase parte la palabra en el renglón y el troceo la devuelve unida como miseducated; el troceo une a fin de renglón well-educated y lo devuelve como welleducated, y el impreso trae mis-educated con guion dentro de línea.

«We were refugees from a society that we thought was poisoned by its own self-hatred and inner contradictions. We had sorted through the ideological options, and we had decided to put all of our chips on the psychedelic experience as the shortest path to the millennium, which our politics had inflamed us to hope for.» — McKenna enuncia la apuesta del grupo: la experiencia psicodélica como el camino más corto al milenio que su política les había hecho esperar.

«This data told us where the various hallucinogens were to be sought, but not what to expect when we found them.» — McKenna acota lo que la etnobotánica les daba: el dónde, nunca el qué esperar.

«I have given some thought to how predisposed we might have been to the experiences that would eventually befall us.» — McKenna se plantea él mismo la objeción de la predisposición, y la deja planteada sin resolverla.

«Often our interpretations of events did not agree, as is common among strong personalities or witnesses to an unusual event.» — McKenna consigna que los relatos del grupo no coincidían, y lo pone como cosa común entre testigos de un suceso raro; es su modo de no armonizar las versiones.

«My interest in drugs, magic, and the more obscure backwaters of natural history and theology gave me the interest profile of an eccentric Florentine prince rather than a kid growing up in the heartland of the United States in the late fifties.» — McKenna describe su propio perfil de intereses —drogas, magia, la trastienda de la historia natural y de la teología— con el símil del príncipe florentino.

«For some reason we were odd from the start, chosen by fate for a destiny too strange to imagine.» — McKenna atribuye al destino la rareza compartida con su hermano, en una frase que el libro deja sin fundamentar.

«In a letter written eleven months before our expedition I find that Dennis even then had the clearest conception of what might happen.» — McKenna presenta la carta de 1970 de su hermano Dennis y le adjudica la concepción más clara de lo que iba a pasar; lo que sigue entre estas planas es voz de Dennis.

«As to the central shamanic quest and the idea that its resolution may entail physical death—indeed a sobering thought—I would be interested in hearing just how likely you consider this possibility and why.» — voz de Dennis McKenna en la carta que su hermano reproduce: plantea que la resolución de la búsqueda chamánica pueda implicar la muerte física y le pide a Terence que estime la probabilidad.

«I had not thought of it in terms of death, though I have considered that it may well give us, as living men, willful access to the doorway that the dead pass daily.» — sigue la voz de Dennis: propone que la búsqueda dé a los vivos acceso deliberado a la puerta por la que pasan los muertos.

«This I consider as a kind of hyper-spatial astral projection that allows the hyper-organ, consciousness, to instantly manifest itself at any point in the space-time matrix, or at all points simultaneously.» — la formulación de Dennis según la carta: llama al fenómeno proyección astral hiperespacial y a la consciencia un hiperórgano capaz de manifestarse en cualquier punto del espacio-tiempo.

«A steady diet of science fiction had made his imagination a joy to watch at play, but I wondered, was he serious?» — McKenna sitúa la imaginación de Dennis en la ciencia ficción y deja por escrito su propia duda sobre si el hermano hablaba en serio.

«A UFO is essentially this hyperspatially mobile psychic vortex, and the trip may well involve contact with some race of hyperspatial dwellers.» — voz de Dennis en la carta: define el ovni como vórtice psíquico móvil en el hiperespacio y anuncia el contacto con moradores hiperespaciales.

«similar to a "flying lesson": instruction in the use of the transdimensional stone, how to navigate in hyper-space, and perhaps an introductory course in Cosmic Ecology tending.» — cierre de la cita de Dennis, que imagina el encuentro como una lección de vuelo con instrucción en el uso de la piedra transdimensional.

«He was struggling, as was I, to come to terms with the elf-haunted psychic landscapes revealed by di-methyltryptamine, or DMT.» — McKenna nombra lo que los dos hermanos trataban de asimilar: los paisajes psíquicos poblados de elfos que atribuye a la dimetiltriptamina.

«Once we had encountered DMT, in the heady and surreal atmosphere of Berkeley at the apex of the Summer of Love, it had become the primary mystery, and the most effective tool for the continuance of the quest.» — McKenna data el encuentro con la DMT en el Berkeley del Summer of Love y la declara el misterio primario y la herramienta de la búsqueda.

«Retention of the physical form under such circumstances would be, it seems, a matter of choice rather than necessity; though it could be a matter of indifference, since in the hyperspatial web all existing physical manifestations would be open. I would say that time is not of the essence for the venture except insofar as the culture-deaths of the tribes we are seeking are proceeding at an appalling rate.» — último tramo de la carta de Dennis: hace de la permanencia en el cuerpo una elección, y pone la única urgencia en la desaparición de las tribus que buscan.

«DMT is not an object of common experience, even among psychonauts of inner space, and so a word must be said about it.» — McKenna advierte que la DMT es rara incluso entre quienes él llama psiconautas, y por eso se detiene a describirla.

«In its pure synthetic form, it is a crystalline paste or powder that is smoked in a glass pipe with nothing else. After a few inhalations the onset of the experience is rapid, fifteen seconds to a minute. The hallucinogenic experience that it triggers lasts three to seven minutes and is unambiguously peculiar.» — la descripción técnica que da McKenna de la DMT sintética: forma, modo de administración y duración medida en minutos.

«Yet it is the most common and the most widely distributed of the naturally occurring hallucinogens, and it is the basis, when not the entire component, of most of the hallucinogens used by aboriginal tribes in tropical South America.» — McKenna sostiene que la DMT es el alucinógeno natural más extendido y la base de casi todos los que usan las tribus sudamericanas.

«In nature, as a product of plant metabolism, it never occurs in anything like the concentrations at which it comes from the laboratory. Yet South American shamans, by chemically predisposing themselves to its effects in various ways, do find the same levels of reality-obliterating intensity achievable with pure DMT.» — McKenna señala la diferencia de concentración entre la planta y el laboratorio, y atribuye a los chamanes sudamericanos el llegar por vía química a la misma intensidad.

«Its strangeness and power so exceeded that of other hallucinogens that di-methyltryptamine and its chemical relatives seemed finally to define, for our little circle at any rate, maximum exfoliation—the most radical and flowery unfolding—of the hallucinogenic dimension that can occur without serious risk to psychic and bodily integrity.» — McKenna define la DMT como el despliegue máximo de la dimensión alucinógena sin riesgo serio, y acota la generalización a su propio círculo.

«We thought, therefore, that our phenomenological description of the hallucinogenic dimension should begin by locating a strong DMT-containing aboriginal hallucinogen and then exploring with an open mind the shamanic states that it made accessible.» — McKenna enuncia el método del viaje: localizar un alucinógeno indígena rico en DMT y explorar con mente abierta los estados chamánicos que abriera.

«Ayahuasca is a term in general use throughout the upper Amazon Basin. It refers not only to the prepared hallucinogenic beverage but also to its main ingredient, the woody liana Banisteriopsis caapi. This often gigantic jungle vine is pulverized and boiled with a DMT-containing plant, usually Psychotria viridis, occasionally Diploterus cabrerena. The watery extraction is then concentrated through further boiling. Ayahuasca, also called natema, yage, pilde, is the most widely distributed and used of the equatorial New World shamanic hallucinogens.]» — nota al pie que el troceo imprime dentro del cuerpo entre corchetes: McKenna define ayahuasca como la bebida y como la liana, y da su preparación y sus otros nombres.

«Oo-koo-he is made from the resin of certain trees of the Myris-ticaceous genus Virola mixed with the ashes of other plants and rolled into pellets and swallowed. What was eye-catching about the description of this visionary plant preparation was that the Witoto tribe of the Upper Amazon, who alone knew the secret of making it, used it to talk to "little men" and to gain knowledge from them.» — McKenna describe el oo-koo-hé por su preparación y por su uso declarado entre los witotos: hablar con los hombrecitos y sacarles conocimiento.

«These little people are one bridge between the motifs of alien contact and the more traditional strange doings of woodland elves and fairies. The worldwide tradition of little people is well studied in The Fairy Faith in Celtic Countries by W. E. Evans-Wentz, a pioneering study of Celtic folkways that was influential on UFO researcher Jacques Vallee's quest as well as our own.» — McKenna tiende un puente entre el contacto con alienígenas y las hadas, y nombra el estudio de Evans-Wentz y la búsqueda de Jacques Vallee como antecedentes de la suya.

«The mention of little men rang a bell, since during my own experiences smoking synthesized DMT in Berkeley, I had had the impression of bursting into a space inhabited by merry elfin, self-transforming, machine creatures. Dozens of these friendly fractal entities, looking like self-dribbling Faberge eggs on the rebound, had surrounded me and tried to teach me the lost language of true poetry.» — McKenna cuenta la impresión que dice haber tenido con DMT sintética en Berkeley, y la deja en términos de impresión: entidades fractales que intentan enseñarle una lengua perdida.

«It was the transformation of language that made these experiences so memorable and peculiar. Under the influence of DMT, language was transmuted from a thing heard to a thing seen.» — la tesis que McKenna extrae de esas experiencias y que gobierna el libro entero: bajo DMT el lenguaje pasa de oído a visto.

«Syntax became unambiguously visible. In searching for parallels to this notion I am forced to recall the wonderful scene in the Disney version of Alice in Wonderland, in which Alice encounters the hooka-smoking caterpillar seated on a mushroom.» — McKenna busca paralelo en la escena de la oruga de Alicia en el País de las Maravillas en la versión de Disney.

«There has always been a suspicion of psychedelic sophistication associated with Lewis Carroll and his nineteenth-century story of a self-transforming wonderland.» — McKenna consigna la sospecha corriente sobre Lewis Carroll sin hacerla suya: la da como cosa que siempre se ha dicho.

«Which is not to say that DMT is to be thought of as a stimulus for mere inner cartoons. It is not. The feeling that radiates from the DMT encounter is hair-raisingly bizarre. It is as much as one can stand without the categories of consciousness becoming permanently rewritten.» — McKenna pone el límite a su propia figura: la DMT no produce caricaturas interiores sino algo que roza la reescritura de las categorías de la consciencia.

«I am occasionally asked if DMT is dangerous. The proper answer is that it is only dangerous if you feel threatened by the possibility of death by astonishment.» — la respuesta que McKenna da a la pregunta por el peligro, formulada como boutade y no como dictamen médico.

«So great is the wave of amazement that accompanies the dissolving of the boundary between our world and this other unsuspected continuum that it approaches being a kind of ecstasy in and of itself.» — McKenna describe el efecto como disolución del límite entre este mundo y otro continuo, y lo llama una especie de éxtasis.

«we came eventually to the work of the pioneering ethnobotanist Richard Evans Schultes. Schultes's tenured position as a professor of botany at Harvard had allowed him to dedicate his life to collecting and cataloging the world's psychoactive plants.» — McKenna nombra a Richard Evans Schultes y su puesto en Harvard como el hallazgo bibliográfico que ordenó la expedición.

«His paper on "Virola as an Orally Administered Hallucinogen" was a turning point in our quest. We were fascinated by his description of the use of the resin of Virola theiodora trees as an orally active DMT drug, as well as by the fact that the use of this hallucinogen seemed to be limited to a very small geographical area.» — McKenna declara el artículo de Schultes sobre la Virola punto de inflexión de la búsqueda, y lo que le interesa de él es lo restringido del área de uso.

«Further field work in the original home region of these Indians will be necessary for a full understanding of this interesting hallucinogen» — voz de Schultes citada por McKenna: pide más trabajo de campo para entender el oo-koo-hé; el troceo mete aquí una nota al pie y el tramo se corta antes de ella.

«That a Disney film should be a showcase for this notion is not as surprising as it might first appear. One has only to recall the carefully choreographed dances of Oriental mushrooms in Fantasia to wonder whether some portions of the Disney production group might have been shamanically inspired. After all, Fantasia was a very serious and ambitious effort to make synesthesia a motif for popular entertainment. Rumors persist that many of the European animators whom Disney hired for his extravagant projects were aware of the psychedelic experience. Among the Czech animators who joined the Disney group during this period were some who probably knew of the vision-producing power of peyote and its chemical constituent, mescaline.]» — nota al pie que el troceo imprime dentro del cuerpo entre corchetes: McKenna especula con la inspiración chamánica de los animadores de Fantasia y lo deja en rumores y en un probably; tramo largo releído entero en el crudo.

«hallucinogen does not lie wholly within the bounds of anthropology and ethnobotany. It bears very directly on certain pharmacological matters and, when considered with the other plants with psychotomimetic properties due to trypta-mines, this new oral drug poses problems which must now be faced and, if possible, toxicologically explained.» — sigue la voz de Schultes citada por McKenna: sostiene que el nuevo alucinógeno oral desborda la antropología y la etnobotánica y plantea problemas farmacológicos por explicar; el troceo corta aquí ante la llamada de nota.

«R. E. Schultes, "Virola as an Orally Administered Hallucinogen," in the Botanical Leaflets of Harvard University, vol. 22, no. 6, pp. 229-40.]» — la referencia bibliográfica que el troceo imprime como nota dentro del cuerpo, y que es la única ficha completa que el volumen da del artículo de Schultes.

«Based on Schultes's paper, we decided to abandon our studies and careers and to pay our own way to the Amazon and the vicinity of La Chorrera in search of oo-koo-he.» — McKenna consigna que el grupo dejó estudios y carreras y se pagó el viaje a partir de un solo artículo de Schultes.

«wanted to see if the titan-ically strange dimensions that we had encountered in the DMT trance were even more accessible via the DMT plant combinations that the shamans of the Amazon had developed.» — la hipótesis de trabajo con que McKenna dice haber viajado: que las combinaciones vegetales de los chamanes abrieran más que la DMT sola; el troceo imprime la palabra partida como titan-ically.

«Little did I imagine that soon after our arrival at La Chorrera the search for oo-koo-he would be all but forgotten.» — McKenna declara el vuelco del viaje: lo que buscaban quedó olvidado casi enseguida de llegar.

«The Witoto hallucinogen became totally eclipsed by the discovery of psilocybin mushrooms growing abundantly there and by the strange power that seemed to swirl around the fog-bound emerald pastures in which they were found.» — McKenna atribuye el eclipse del oo-koo-hé a los hongos de psilocibina y a lo que llama el poder extraño que rondaba los pastizales de La Chorrera.

«William Burroughs, who passed this way in his search for ayahuasca in the fifties, described it then as "looking like some place after a flood." By 1971 it had changed little.» — McKenna cita a William Burroughs sobre Puerto Leguízamo y hace de su frase de los años cincuenta la descripción todavía válida en 1971.

«The horror that the rubber boom brought to the Amazon Indians in the early years of this century has lived on, a memory for the oldest people and a terrifying legend for younger Indians.» — McKenna sostiene que el horror del caucho sigue vivo como memoria en los viejos y como leyenda en los jóvenes indígenas.

«In the area surrounding La Chorrera, the Witoto population had been systematically reduced from forty thousand in 1905 to about five thousand in 1970.» — la cifra que McKenna da de la caída demográfica witoto alrededor de La Chorrera; el volumen no nombra la fuente del dato.

«Upon the veranda, smiling and motioning me forward, sat a very thin, very old, much wrinkled black man: John Brown.» — la entrada en escena de John Brown, que McKenna presenta enseguida como leyenda viva.

«Yes," he said, "I am an American." And, "Yes, hell yes, I am old, ninety-three years. Me hee-story, baby, is so long." He laughed dryly, like the rustle of roof thatch when tarantulas stir.» — voz de John Brown según McKenna, que le conserva la pronunciación tal como dice haberla oído.

«The son of a slave, John Brown had left America in 1885, never to return. He had gone to Barbados and then to France, had been a merchant seaman, and had seen Aden and Bombay. Around 1910, he had come to Peru, to Iquitos. There he had been made a work-crew foreman in the notorious House of Arana, which was the main force behind the ruthless exploitation and mass murder of the Indians of Amazonas during the rubber boom.» — la biografía que McKenna da de Brown: hijo de esclavo, marino mercante, y luego capataz en la Casa Arana, a la que adjudica la explotación y el asesinato masivo de indígenas.

«He had been the personal servant of Captain Thomas Whiffen of the Fourteenth Hussars, a British adventurer who explored the La Chorrera area around 1912. Brown, who is described in Whiffin's now rare work, Explorations of the Upper Amazon, was the last person to see the French explorer Eugene Robuchon, who disappeared on the Rio Caqueta in 1913.» — McKenna encadena a Brown con Whiffen y con la desaparición de Robuchon, y da el título del libro raro donde dice que Brown está descrito.

«John Brown spoke Witoto and once had lived with a Witoto woman for many years. He knew the area into which we were going intimately. He had never heard of oo-koo-he, but in 1915 he had taken ayahuasca for the first time—and at La Chorrera.» — el dato que a McKenna le sirve de aliciente: Brown no había oído del oo-koo-hé pero había tomado ayahuasca en 1915 y en La Chorrera misma.

«It was only after I returned from the Amazon that I learned that this was the same John Brown who had exposed the atrocities of the rubber barons along the Putumayo to British authorities. He first spoke to Roger Casement, then the British Consul in Rio de Janiero, who had gone to Peru in July 1910 to investigate the atrocity stories.» — McKenna declara que solo al volver supo que su interlocutor era el mismo Brown que denunció a los barones del caucho ante Roger Casement; el troceo corta aquí ante la llamada de nota.

«Few remember, so strewn with horror is the history of the twentieth century, that before Guernica and Auschwitz the Upper Amazon was used as a rehearsal stage for one of the episodes of» — McKenna sostiene que el Alto Amazonas fue ensayo de la deshumanización mecanizada anterior a Guernica y Auschwitz; el troceo corta la frase por cambio de plana y sigue en la plana 20 con mechanized dehumanization.

«British banks, in collusion with the Arana clan and other laissez-faire operators, financed wholesale use of terror, intimidation, and murder to force the Indians of the deep forest to harvest wild rubber.» — McKenna adjudica a los bancos británicos, en connivencia con el clan Arana, el financiamiento del terror para forzar la cosecha del caucho.

«For details, see W. E. Hardenburg, The Putumayo: The Devil's Paradise (London, 1912). Extracts from Casement's report are reprinted there as well. Also see Michael Taussig's Shamanism, Colonialism and the Wildman (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987).» — la nota al pie que el troceo imprime dentro del cuerpo, con las dos referencias que McKenna da sobre el Putumayo: Hardenburg de 1912, de donde sale el subtítulo del propio volumen, y el Shamanism, Colonialism and the Wildman de Michael Taussig.

«+John Estacion Rivera, a Colombian historian, has told the story differently and implicates Brown in the murders, thus providing the basis for the san-guinero story.]» — la segunda nota al pie: McKenna consigna la versión contraria, que implica a Brown en los asesinatos, y la da como base del rumor de sanguinero sin arbitrar entre las dos.

«a world known to me only from its brief mention in the pages of James Joyce's Ulysses» — McKenna dice que conocía el mundo de Casement solo por la mención de pasada del Ulises de Joyce; es la primera de las muchas remisiones a Joyce del volumen.

«The fever-haunted old town on the lowland across the lake no longer stood, but the dungeons for the Indian slaves could still be seen, crumbling iron rings set deep in sweating basaltic stone.» — la descripción que da McKenna de lo que quedaba de La Chorrera, con los argollas de los calabozos de esclavos todavía visibles.

«In 1911, up to twenty thousand Indians gave their lives to push that trail through the jungle. Indians who refused to work had the bottoms of their feet and their buttocks removed by machete.» — la cifra y el castigo que McKenna atribuye a la apertura de la trocha del caucho.

«And for what? So that, in a surreal act of hubris typical of techno-colonialism, a motorcar could be driven the entire length of the trail in 1915. It was a ride from nowhere to nowhere.» — McKenna cierra el episodio del caucho con el automóvil de 1915 recorriendo la trocha, y llama a eso hibris del tecnocolonialismo.

«Walking those gloomy, empty trails, I seemed often to hear a grumble of voices or the rustle of chained feet.» — McKenna consigna lo que dice haber oído en la trocha, y lo deja en seemed.

«He was the gatekeeper of the Plutonic world downriver from Puerto Leguizamo, and he knew it. I felt like a child before him, and he knew that too.» — McKenna hace de Brown el guardián de la puerta al mundo plutónico río abajo, que es como el libro nombra el territorio al que entra.

«Bye, bye, babies. Bye bye," was his dry farewell.» — la despedida de John Brown, última vez que su voz aparece en el libro.

«DID I SAY WE WERE a party of five? We would be five when we arrived at La Chorrera, but we were six departing from Puerto Leguizamo. Ev and I were living together as much as a couple can live together when they pile off a boat every night with four other people to hang their hammocks in the trees. But he was with us too. Solo Dark.» — McKenna enmienda su propia cuenta al abrir el capítulo dos y así introduce a Solo Dark, el sexto.

«I must explain Solo. He was part of a fringe religion happening in South America, which I had not found in India, called the New Jerusalem. Devotees, who seemed to be primarily fruitarian, were a tribe of mostly Americans who since 1962 or 1963 had been drifting down through Latin America, chiseling on each other, living with each other, hating each other, and weaving intrigues.» — McKenna sitúa a Solo en un grupo religioso al que llama New Jerusalem y describe por su deriva por Latinoamérica desde principios de los sesenta.

«They communicated through Ouija boards with entities they called "Beings of Light." An entire mythology had been constructed around reincarnation. According to them, everyone was a reincarnation.» — McKenna atribuye a ese grupo la comunicación por tabla ouija con entidades que llamaban Beings of Light y una mitología entera de reencarnaciones; lo consigna, no lo suscribe.

«One person assumed himself to be the reincarnation of Rasputin; another, who was a refugee from the inner circles of the Hari Krishna cult and wore white robes and white rubber rain boots, was the reincarnation of Erwin Rommel.» — los ejemplos con que McKenna ilustra esa mitología, dados en boca de sus creyentes.

«He believed that he had been incarnated as several prominent historical personages: Christ, Hitler, Lucifer. It was a gamut both depressing and predictable.» — lo que McKenna atribuye a Solo sobre sí mismo, y el juicio explícito con que lo despacha.

«If Solo did not approve of something you were doing, he would look blank for a moment and then announce that it had been revealed to him that instant, by the Beings of Light, that you shouldn't, for example, peel fruit with metal knives. The tiny minutia of existence were controlled by these hidden forces.» — McKenna describe el modo en que Solo invocaba a los Beings of Light para gobernar los detalles de la vida diaria del grupo.

«I had spent most of the previous three years living either as a hermit scholar studying dead Asian languages or as a lone lepidopterist in the Indonesian outback.» — McKenna da su propia posición de entonces —erudito ermitaño de lenguas asiáticas muertas y lepidopterista solitario— para explicar por qué no supo leer a Solo.

«It was not quite this demented— I exaggerate to give the flavor—but it was clear that in Solo's head it was this loose.» — McKenna se enmienda a sí mismo al describir a Solo y declara que exagera para dar el sabor; la reserva es suya y va dentro de la cita.

«As we put off from Puerto Leguizamo, we were, therefore, six: Vanessa, Dave, Ev, Dennis, and myself. And Solo. Six freaks.» — McKenna cierra la cuenta del grupo que sale de Puerto Leguízamo y lo nombra con la palabra de su tiempo.

«I said to her, "Look, I like this woman, and she speaks Spanish." This was my best argument, appealing as it did to reason. "Are you seriously suggesting that we trek many days into the Amazon Basin with our specious grip on the local language? It makes very good sense that Ev come.» — McKenna reproduce su propio argumento ante Vanessa y lo califica en la misma línea de apelación a la razón.

«Then he went to his room and went into communication with the Beings of Light. He came back two hours later to say, "You can't find it without me.» — según McKenna, Solo consultó a los Beings of Light y volvió con la sentencia que lo dejó en la expedición; la voz es de Solo y la mediación que declara es la de esas entidades.

«By this he meant the oo-koo-he. "You don't know anything about the jungle. I'm a man of the forest.» — la razón que Solo da de sí mismo según McKenna, y que el libro no discute en ese momento.

«At dawn on the appointed morning, all our animals, cameras, the / Ching, butterfly nets, formaldehyde, notebooks, a copy of Finnegans Wake, insect repellent, chloroquine, mosquito nets, hammocks, binoculars, tape recorders, granola, peanut butter, and dope— and all the other things one must have to go into the Amazon Basin—were piled at the river's edge.» — el inventario del equipaje, donde McKenna pone juntos el I Ching y el Finnegans Wake con el formol y las redes; el escaneo imprime el primero como / Ching.

«We were informed that it was six to twelve days to where we wanted to go, "depending on business.» — la única indicación de plazo que reciben, dada por la tripulación y condicionada al negocio del barco.

«A delicious moment—when one has done all that one can for a journey and is at last in motion, no longer responsible, since that burden has been given to pilot or engineer, boatman or ground control. The world one is leaving has been truly broken away from and the destination is still unknown.» — McKenna nombra lo que valora del viaje: el punto en que la responsabilidad pasa a otro y el destino sigue sin saberse.

«The flow of the river was like the rich smoke I inhaled. The flow of smoke, the flow of water, and of time. "All flows," said a beloved Greek.» — McKenna enlaza el humo, el río y el tiempo y cita a Heráclito sin nombrarlo todavía.

«Heraclitus was called the crying philosopher, as if he spoke in desperation. But, why crying? I love what he says—it does not make me cry.» — McKenna objeta el apodo tradicional de Heráclito y dice por qué no lo lee así.

«Rather than interpret pante rhea as "nothing lasts," I had always considered it a Western expression of the idea of Tao.» — McKenna propone leer el todo fluye de Heráclito como formulación del Tao y no como sentencia sobre la fugacidad; el troceo imprime el griego como pante rhea, sic.

«And here we were, going with the Putumayo's flow.» — McKenna aplica esa lectura al viaje mismo, con el río por figura del Tao.

«Mother's death and coincidentally the loss of all of my books and art, which had been collected, carefully shipped back and stored, and then had burned in one of the periodic brushfires that decimate the Berkeley hills. Cancer and Fire. Fire and Cancer.» — McKenna junta la muerte de la madre y el incendio que le quemó libros y arte en Berkeley, y los nombra en pareja.

«Out on the river, the past could enter the stillness and exfoliate before the mind's eye, unfurling a dark fabric of interlocking casuistry. Forces, visible and hidden, stretching back into one's past; migrations; religious conversions—our self discoveries make us each a microcosm of the larger pattern of history.» — McKenna sostiene que el autodescubrimiento hace de cada uno un microcosmos del patrón mayor de la historia, tesis que el libro retomará en el capítulo del opus.

«The inertia of introspection leads toward recollection, for only through memory is the past recaptured and understood.» — McKenna hace de la memoria la única vía de recuperación y entendimiento del pasado.

«But in the lacunae—in the rare moments of sensory deprivation when experience in the present is a minimal thing, as on a long plane ride, or any indolent, self-examining trip—then memory is free to speak and call forth the landscapes of our striving in moments now past.» — McKenna describe la condición en que dice que la memoria se suelta: la privación sensorial de un viaje largo y ocioso.

«Now—the now that is a time beyond the confines of this story, a now in which this story is past—I do not worry the past as I did then.» — McKenna marca los dos tiempos del libro, el del viaje y el de la escritura, y consigna que el pasado ya no lo inquieta igual.

«Two all-inclusive categories emerged for us on the broad river whose distant banks were no more than a dark green line separating river and sky: the familiar and the unfamiliar.» — la pareja de categorías con que McKenna ordena el viaje fluvial.

«The unfamiliar was everywhere forcing us to draw inane analogies in common conversation: The Putumayo is like the Holy Ganga. The jungle evokes Ambon. The sky is similar to the skies of the Serengeti Plain» — McKenna consigna las analogías con que el grupo trataba de orientarse, y las llama inanes en la misma frase.

«The illusion of understanding was a lame way of getting one's bearings. The unfamiliar does not give up its secrets in this game— the Putumayo does not become like the Ganga. The unfamiliar must become known as itself before it is correctly recognized.» — la regla que McKenna saca de ahí, y que gobierna su modo de contar lo de La Chorrera: lo desconocido tiene que conocerse como sí mismo antes de reconocerse bien.

«It is the familiarity of these people that makes them windows in my imagination opening into the past.» — McKenna explica qué papel dan los compañeros al relato: ventanas de su propia memoria más que personajes autónomos.

«Dennis, of course; his is still the time line longest on a track parallel to my own. No need to mention the matter of shared genes. Back our connection goes until lost in primal, unlanguaged feeling.» — McKenna sitúa a su hermano Dennis como la línea de tiempo más larga paralela a la suya, y remonta el vínculo más atrás del lenguaje.

«Unbidden came the thought that I would go with Dennis to South America. Even then, I knew it for a certainty.» — McKenna data en el barco a Bombay el pensamiento no buscado de ir con Dennis a Sudamérica, y dice que ya entonces lo supo con certeza.

«And, in time, it happened. Not immediately, not before much more wandering in the East, but eventually, by February 1971, the prophecy was all round us.» — McKenna llama profecía a aquel pensamiento y declara cumplida en febrero de 1971; es el primero de los cumplimientos retroactivos que el libro consigna.

«I think that he may have seized the angel of Gnosis by the throat and forced the beast to the mat. This idea he has that some hallucinogens work by fitting into the DNA is startling. It has a ring of truth that I just can't ignore.» — voz de McKenna reproduciendo su propia conversación de 1968 con Vanessa: atribuye a su hermano Dennis la idea de que algunos alucinógenos actúan encajando en el ADN, y la sostiene con un may y un ring of truth.

«The political revolution has become too murky a thing to put one's hope in. So far, the most interesting unlikelihood in our lives is DMT, right?» — McKenna declara el relevo que hace de la política por la DMT, en boca de su yo de 1968.

«Reluctant only because the conclusion that it leads to is so extreme. Mainly that we should stop fucking around and go off and grapple with the DMT mystery.» — McKenna reproduce la objeción que le hizo Vanessa y su propia respuesta, y consigna que la conclusión le parecía extrema a él mismo.

«Because, you know, anybody who has studied Western Civ. for ten minutes can readily see that the places this stuff puts you in touch with.... It's some kind of outrage that, properly understood, might—you know that I think it would—have tremendous importance for the historical crisis everybody is in.» — la tesis histórica que McKenna dice haber sostenido ya en 1968: que lo que la DMT muestra, bien entendido, importaría para la crisis de la época; el troceo conserva los puntos suspensivos.

«How about a trip to the Amazon? That's where these psychedelic plants are endemic. And that's where there is, God knows, enough solitude for anyone.» — el origen que McKenna da al viaje, en una conversación de sobremesa en Central Park.

«A Polish count, Ambassador to the Court of Great Elizabeth and friend of my personal idol, Dr. John Dee, brightened his genealogy.» — McKenna nombra a John Dee su ídolo personal al describir la genealogía de su compañero Dave.

«Late in August of 1969 fate turned me from hash smuggler to fugitive when one of my Bombay-to-Aspen shipments fell into the hands of U. S. Customs.» — McKenna consigna su propia condición legal de entonces: contrabandista de hachís convertido en prófugo.

«While I lived in Canada, my mother died after a long bout with cancer.» — la muerte de la madre, que el libro data en el periodo canadiense y que McKenna repite como nudo del año anterior al viaje.

«We are at last freed of our umbilical connection to civilization. This morning, under the uncertain skies which mark the Amazon during the dry season, we have at last gotten» — primera entrada del diario de viaje que el libro reproduce, fechada el 6 de febrero de 1971; el troceo corta por cambio de plana y la frase sigue en la 29 con underway.

«Moving toward the absolute center of the geography of the secret, I am moved to ponder, as ever, the meaning of this truly strange search.» — la entrada del diario nombra el destino como centro absoluto de la geografía del secreto y llama extraña a la búsqueda misma.

«There can now be little doubt that, given that we continue to press forward as we have, we shall reach a state of satisfaction.» — la confianza que el diario declara en enero del viaje, dicha con la cautela de little doubt.

«Projections concerning who we will be or what we will do when this excursion is over are unconsciously based on the assumption that our experience will leave us unaffected, an assumption which is doubtless false, but its alternative can hardly be imagined.» — el diario objeta su propio supuesto: que el viaje los deje intactos, dice, es falso y a la vez lo contrario no se puede imaginar.

«Following the channel means moving from side to side of the river, usually near one of the banks. The land is thickly covered by a dense canopy of jungle reminiscent of Central Seram or the coast of Ambon—a Venusian forest.» — la nota de navegación del diario, con la comparación con Seram y Ambon que McKenna ya había declarado inane.

«like the sacred Ganga, the brown, smooth water of the Putumayo soon flows through all our dreams and daydreams.» — el diario vuelve sobre la analogía con el Ganges pese a la regla que el propio libro acaba de enunciar.

«We are looking for Dr. Alfredo Guzman, mentioned in one of our papers as the source of an authentic sample of the oo-koo-he we are looking for.» — el diario nombra la fuente de la muestra de oo-koo-hé que buscan y el papel que le dan a Guzmán.

«This village is situated at the beginning of the old rubber-gatherers' trail that leads through the jungle to La Cho-rrera. Not only can Guzman aid us in our search, but he can help us hire bearers for the trek overland.» — la ruta que el diario traza hasta La Chorrera por la vieja trocha del caucho; el troceo imprime el topónimo partido como La Cho-rrera.

«The moods of the approach to the secret are many. The air is delicious with oxygen, and the odors which reach us from the passing liana-hung forest change with the frequency and subtlety of a sonata.» — entrada del 7 de febrero: el diario habla ya de una aproximación al secreto y le atribuye estados de ánimo propios.

«With our own small monkey, the nonhuman population of this ark of fools numbers two dogs, three monkeys, a kitten, a danta, a cock, a pig, and a crate of pigeons.» — el censo de animales que el diario hace del barco, al que llama arca de tontos.

«The tensions that divide us have also surfaced. Vanessa and Solo, who have very little in common, seem warm friends. Is this because I have miffed Vanessa? It is not going well at all.» — el diario consigna en caliente las tensiones del grupo y se pregunta por su causa sin resolverla.

«He seems to have thought that one just takes off one's shoes and goes to an Indian brother and says that one wants to learn the secrets of the forest and they say, "Come, my son, come with us and you will learn the secrets of the forest.» — McKenna pone en solfa la expectativa de su compañero Dave sobre lo que sería aprender de los indígenas, parodiándola en estilo directo.

«The something else is flying saucers. I know it sounds nuts but they're mixed up in this somehow. It's pretty murky now. Fortunately it doesn't matter yet, but DMT is» — McKenna consigna, con todas sus reservas puestas, que los platillos voladores andan mezclados en el asunto; el troceo corta aquí por cambio de plana y la frase sigue en la 28 con somehow linked to the whole psychic side of the notion of saucers.

«somehow linked to the whole psychic, you know Jungian, side of the notion of saucers. Deep water, I know. It's a hunch, but strong.» — continuación del tramo anterior en la plana siguiente: McKenna liga la DMT al lado que llama junguiano de la cuestión de los platillos y lo deja en corazonada.

«Now all was transformed, the jungle eerily silent very suddenly, the moon washed an orange-red, the eclipse in progress and near totality.» — McKenna describe el eclipse de luna que dice haber visto solo desde una loma; el troceo corta aquí por cambio de plana y la frase sigue en la 31.

«The scene and the feeling were profoundly "Other." Alone in an immensity of jungle and rivers more vast than any I had ever known, we seemed witnesses to the emergence of strange dimensions, the clash of unearthly geometries, lords of places unseen and undreamed of by humanity.» — primera vez que el libro usa la palabra Other, que será su nombre para lo que dice encontrar en La Chorrera; aquí la aplica al paisaje y la pone entre comillas.

«Unknown to me in that moment was that the eclipse that had drawn me as a lone observer from my hammock to this eerie scene would in a few short hours trigger a groaning shift of billions of tons of impacted rock along the San Andreas Fault in Southern California.» — McKenna enlaza el eclipse que vio con el terremoto de la falla de San Andrés horas después; la frase no declara causa, pero el libro la trae como coincidencia significativa.

«Knowing nothing of the world beyond the forest and the river I returned to my hammock oddly cheered and exalted—the bizarre moment seemed a portent of great things.» — McKenna consigna cómo leyó entonces el eclipse, como presagio, y lo dice en pasado y con seemed.

«This was Mission San Raphael. We were properly, if unenthusiastically, received by Padre Miguel. He was thin, Castilian, with deep-set eyes and a barely noticeable palsy that was the result of malaria contracted years before. He had been in the Amazon over thirty years.» — el retrato que McKenna hace del padre Miguel, con los treinta años de Amazonas y la malaria a cuestas.

«He had seen many anthropologists, botanists, and adventurers pass through, but I sensed that our longer hair and loose manner made him uneasy.» — McKenna atribuye al padre incomodidad ante el aspecto del grupo, y lo deja en lo que él mismo percibió.

«Yes, Dr. Guzman is doubtless there. He passed through on his way to return to his language studies only three weeks before. And his wife was with him." The priest's gaze hardened. "You may be assured of finding him.» — voz del padre Miguel según McKenna, con el endurecimiento de la mirada que el relato le adjudica al nombrar a Guzmán.

«Yes, he confirmed, the trail took five days for a fully loaded expedition to traverse. We anticipated the need for porters to help carry our equipment. Padre Miguel said that we could get some help in El Encanto, but now was the time of hunting and men would be reluctant to leave the hunt to travel to La Chorrera.» — la información logística que el padre les da y que fija el plazo de la trocha; el troceo imprime La Cho-rrera partido en el renglón anterior.

«It was a spot that seemed no less desolate than any other place we had passed in our wild ride, but the priest clambered up the bank and pointed out a broad trail much overgrown with vines.» — McKenna consigna el punto exacto en que el grupo queda solo: un banco de arena indistinguible de cualquier otro.

«We were on our own now,» — la frase con que McKenna marca el corte; el troceo la parte por cambio de plana y sigue en la 33 con without a seasoned expert in control.

«without a seasoned expert in control, and we all became aware of it in that moment on that spit of sand on the shore of a jungle river identical to hundreds of other such rivers.» — continuación del tramo anterior en la plana siguiente: McKenna fija el momento en que el grupo deja de tener guía experto.

«We all recognized it as a malloca, the traditional type of house peculiar to the Witoto people.» — McKenna nombra la maloca witota tal como el volumen la escribe, con doble ele.

«Inside, resting in a hammock that hung between two smoke-darkened supporting posts, was Dr. Alfredo Guzman.» — entrada en escena del antropólogo Alfredo Guzmán, a quien el libro va a tratar como obstáculo y como fuente a la vez.

«Seeming to address us all equally, Guzman spoke: "My wife shares my professional interests.» — la primera frase que McKenna pone en boca de Guzmán, y la única presentación que le da de su mujer.

«Doctor, our apologies for disturbing your solitude and the local social environment here. We can appreciate your wish to be undisturbed in your work. We are anxious to push on to La Chorrera, and we hope that you will help us arrange bearers here to go with us. Also, we are here with a special purpose. I refer to the Virola hallucinogens that you reported to Schultes.» — McKenna reproduce su propia petición a Guzmán y nombra ahí el objeto declarado del viaje, los alucinógenos de Virola que Guzmán había reportado a Schultes.

«I am telescoping my account, of course; it all took longer and moved less directly.» — McKenna declara que comprime el relato, advertencia que el libro repite y que forma parte de su modo de contar.

«We also learned that Guzman was an ardent Structuralist, Marxist, and male chauvinist, that his involvement with the Witoto approached the maniacal, and that he was regarded by his colleagues back in Bogota as bonkers.» — el retrato que McKenna hace de Guzmán, con el juicio de los colegas bogotanos puesto en boca de ellos.

«He gave us no encouragement that we would find the oo-koo-he, which he said was a secret of the men that was slowly dying out.» — según McKenna, Guzmán desalienta la búsqueda y declara el oo-koo-hé secreto de hombres en extinción; es el primer muro que el libro consigna para su objeto declarado.

«Like the males of the Witoto group, Guzman was a coca enthusiast, and he had become quite paranoid from constantly chewing it. When we saw him in the morning, he always had coca staining his lower chin.» — McKenna atribuye a la coca la paranoia que dice haberle visto a Guzmán.

«Because the tribe is very hard on women, Annalise had been told by Alfredo that, in order to become integrated into this society, she had to take on the women's role. This required pounding yucca root with stones and also making the coca, which the women are not allowed to chew at all.» — lo que McKenna dice haber oído de Annalise Guzmán sobre el papel que su marido le impuso entre los witotos; la voz es de ella y él la reporta.

«The men lie around in hammocks and listen to transistor radios. The women live with the dogs and the children under the houses, while the men lived in the houses. At five o'clock in the afternoon, the women are all sent to the sleeping place with the children and the dogs.» — la descripción que McKenna da del reparto de la vida cotidiana witota tal como dice haberla visto.

«The fart is their most highly appreciated form of humor. There are ten thousand variations on the fart and all are thought riotously funny.» — McKenna consigna el humor witoto que le llamó la atención, con la cifra dada a ojo.

«We lived with these people elbow-to-elbow, staying in that uncomfortable setting until the morning of the eighteenth of February. It took that long—nearly a week—to arrange for two young boys to leave the hunting to help us carry our supplies over the trail to La Chorrera.» — McKenna fecha la partida hacia la trocha el dieciocho de febrero y cifra en casi una semana la negociación de los porteadores.

«In one of his oddest moves, Dr. Guzman asked us to answer any questions about the relationships prevailing within our group by saying that we were all brothers and sisters.» — según McKenna, Guzmán les pidió declararse todos hermanos ante los witotos; el libro lo consigna como rareza del antropólogo y no como método.

«Danger lurks everywhere. Never swim alone in the river. Huge forms move beneath its surface. There is the anaconda. The rivers abound with them. Snakes are everywhere. Be aware of this as you make your way to La Chorrera. The forest is unforgiving of error.» — voz de Guzmán según McKenna, con la advertencia que el relato luego contrapone a su propia experiencia.

«I had my own idea of the risks of the forests, not nearly so dark as the thoughts of the wildly gesticulating figure who strode raving at my side.» — McKenna objeta el cuadro de peligros de Guzmán desde su propia experiencia de campo en Indonesia y el Amazonas.

«He lived in a nightmare world of delusions brought on by coca addiction.» — la explicación que McKenna da del estado de Guzmán; es adjudicación suya y el libro no aporta más base que lo que vio.

«There were strange incidents that set everyone on edge. A bushmaster, most deadly of vipers, was killed near the village and brought back and shown around. Incidents? Say rather omens or ominous events.» — McKenna enmienda él mismo la palabra incidentes por presagios, y ese cambio de registro es el que gobierna el resto del libro.

«Two nights before we were to leave the village, a tree burst into flames near our hut. This seemed unambiguously unfriendly and we accelerated our plans for departure.» — el árbol en llamas que McKenna cuenta entre los presagios, leído por él como hostilidad sin decir de quién.

«Ridiculous, my friend. You're not going to get it. These people don't even speak Spanish. They speak only Witoto. There were forty thousand of them killed here fifty years ago. They have no reason to like you and the drug is supersecret. What are you doing here? I urge you to leave the jungle while that is still possible.» — voz de Guzmán según McKenna: le niega toda posibilidad de conseguir el oo-koo-hé y le aconseja salir de la selva; repite además la cifra de los cuarenta mil muertos.

«But in his way he was informative; we learned that the oo-koo-he was always made with the ash of other trees mixed into the DMT-containing resin. We felt that these additional ingredients must be the key to its oral activity, since normally DMT would be destroyed by enzymes in the large intestine.» — el dato técnico que McKenna dice haber sacado de Guzmán, con la hipótesis del grupo sobre por qué la ceniza haría oral la DMT.

«Dennis was determined that we make a firm botanical identification of the "secret activators." Ideally we hoped to be the first to get good collections of these plants. It would be our small contribution to Amazonian ethnobotany.» — McKenna atribuye a su hermano Dennis el objetivo botánico del viaje y lo llama la contribución pequeña que esperaban hacer.

«Solo was doing things. He insisted on going first on the trocha. He would get far ahead, then sharpen sticks and put them on the ground in odd patterns, fetishes.» — McKenna consigna la conducta de Solo en la trocha y la nombra con la palabra fetiches.

«I finally came to understand that he was probably going to kill me and was most likely completely deranged.» — el temor que McKenna declara haber tenido, dicho con probably y sin más prueba que lo que observaba.

«I recalled that mushroom maven Gordon Wasson and his wife had been accompanied by an undercover CIA agent during their second journey to the mushroom village of Huatla de Jimenez in the remote uplands of Mazatecan, Mexico.» — McKenna trae el caso de Gordon Wasson y del agente encubierto de la CIA en el segundo viaje a Huautla como antecedente de su propia sospecha.

«Psychedelic history would have been different if Wasson had detected that clumsy effort at co-option. Then the CIA's absurd notion that psilocybin might forever remain what it termed an "in-house prerogative" could never have been entertained.» — McKenna sostiene que la historia psicodélica habría sido otra si Wasson hubiera detectado aquella maniobra, y adjudica a la CIA la idea de la psilocibina como prerrogativa interna.

«It was only the speedy publication of the molecular structure of psilocybin by Swiss pharmacologist and LSD-inventor Albert Hofmann that had short-circuited that dark and grandiose fantasy.» — McKenna adjudica a Albert Hofmann, a quien llama inventor del LSD, el haber cortado ese plan al publicar pronto la estructura de la psilocibina.

«He offered me a kilo of his own crop, and I jumped at the chance to pay him a hundred dollars.» — el modo en que McKenna cuenta la salida de Solo del viaje, sin ahorrarse su propia parte en el trato.

«After Solo's departure, I buttoned up my stash, hefted my butterfly net, and felt like Van Veen, the priapic hero of Nabokov's surreal love story Ada.» — McKenna se compara con Van Veen, el personaje de Ada de Nabokov, al quedarse sin rival; el epígrafe del volumen sale de esta misma frase.

«my thoughts returned to Nabokov and the seemingly prophetic lines written in Pale Fire by his character, the apocryphal American poet John Shade:» — McKenna llama proféticas las líneas de Pale Fire que va a citar, y nombra a su autor ficticio.

«that rare phenomenon The iridule—when, beautiful and strange In a bright sky above a mountain range One opal cloudlet in an oval forni Reflects the rainbow of a thunderstorm Which in a distant valley has been staged— For we are most artistically caged.» — los versos de Pale Fire que McKenna cita como anticipación de la nube que dirá haber visto en La Chorrera; voz del poeta apócrifo John Shade, y el troceo imprime forni por form, sic.

«I think that we were already feeling the effects of "the phenomenon," a backwash from our experimental tampering with the laws of physics that still lay days in the future. But it is impossible to say.» — McKenna adjudica retroactivamente el cansancio de la trocha a un reflujo del experimento que todavía no había ocurrido, y en la misma frase declara que es imposible saberlo.

«The women announced that we would eliminate breakfast and lunch to make better time. It was their decision since they were doing the cooking; it was too much of a chore to make a fire in the damp Amazonian forest.» — McKenna consigna quién decidía la comida en la marcha y por qué.

«During one of our breaks, Vanessa pointed out a rainbow that lay directly over the path we were traveling.» — el arcoíris sobre la trocha, que el relato pone entre los signos del camino y que en el momento el grupo tomó a broma.

«On the walls of this enclosure were paintings in tempera of cartoon elves with pointed ears.» — los elfos pintados en el muro de La Chorrera, que McKenna encuentra al llegar y que enlaza con los hombrecitos del oo-koo-hé.

«Most of the Amazon Basin is made up of alluvial deposits from the Andes. La Chorrera is different. A river, the Rio Igara-Parana, narrows and flows into a crack. It becomes very rapid then drops over an edge—a lip—creating not exactly a waterfall but a narrow channel of water (chorro means "chute"), a flume whose violent outpouring has made a sizable lake.» — McKenna describe la geografía de La Chorrera y da la etimología del topónimo por el chorro del río Igara-Paraná.

«La Chorrera is a paradisiacal place. You push very hard and suddenly you are there. There are no stinging or biting insects. In the evening, mist drifts across a large pasture creating a beautiful pastoral scene. There is the mission, the foam-flecked lake below, the jungle surrounding, and much to my surprise, white cattle.» — McKenna llama paradisíaco al lugar y consigna la sorpresa que lo decide todo: hay ganado, y por tanto puede haber hongo.

«The afternoon following our arrival, at the edge of the pasture, which had been cleared by the Spanish priests who had managed Mission La Chorrera since its establishment in the 1920s, I held and turned over in my hand perfect specimens of the same species of mushroom that I had eaten near Florencia. In the pasture before me were dozens of these mushrooms.» — el hallazgo que desvía el viaje: la misma especie que McKenna había comido cerca de Florencia, ahora por docenas en el potrero de la misión.

«After examining several, my brother concurred, pronounced them the same Stropharia cubensis we had found before, one of the largest, strongest, and certainly the most widely distributed of any of the known psilocybin-containing mushrooms.» — McKenna adjudica a su hermano Dennis la identificación botánica del hongo y le atribuye la calificación de más extendido entre los que contienen psilocibina.

«What to do? We had no data on the proper dosage of psilocybin. Our expedition's thinned-down drug and plant file was concerned with flowering plants, not with fungi.» — McKenna consigna el vacío de datos con que decidieron la dosis: el archivo del viaje era de plantas con flor.

«Collectively we seemed to remember that in the Oaxacan mushroom rituals described by Gordon Wasson, in Life magazine of all places, mushrooms were always eaten in pairs, with several pairs consumed.» — la única guía de dosis que dicen haber tenido: el recuerdo colectivo de lo que Gordon Wasson había publicado en la revista Life sobre los rituales oaxaqueños.

«Are we indeed now in some way camped on the edge of another dimension?» — la entrada del diario del 23 de febrero de 1971 abre en pregunta, que es el modo en que el libro sostiene su tesis mayor.

«He and I gathered thirty delicious psilocy-binsaturated specimens in about a half an hour. We each ate about six and spent last night on an enormously rich and alive, yet gentle and elusive, trip.» — el diario cifra la cosecha y la dosis de la primera vez en La Chorrera; el troceo imprime la palabra partida como psilocy-bin-saturated; el troceo parte psilocybin-saturated a fin de renglón y devuelve psilocy-binsaturated.

«Multifaceted and benevolent, as complex as mescaline, as intense as LSD—the mushroom, as is said of peyote, teaches the right way to live.» — el diario atribuye al hongo lo que dice atribuirse al peyote, enseñar el modo correcto de vivir, y lo pone en boca de ese dicho ajeno.

«This particular mushroom species is unclaimed, so far as I know, by any aboriginal people anywhere and thus is neutral ground in the tryptamine dimension we are exploring.» — el diario sostiene que ningún pueblo originario reclama esta especie y por eso la llama terreno neutral; es la premisa con que el libro justifica experimentar sin linaje.

«vegetable teacher one can gain entry into the world of the elf chemists.» — continuación del diario en la plana siguiente: llama al hongo maestro vegetal y le adjudica la entrada al mundo de los elfos químicos.

«It is, however, extremely mercurial and difficult to catch at work.» — el límite que el propio diario le pone al hongo, en la misma entrada en que lo ensalza.

«Dennis and I, through a staggered description of our visions, noticed a similarity of content that seemed to suggest a telepathic phenomenon or some sort of simultaneous perception of the same invisible landscape.» — el diario consigna la coincidencia de visiones entre los dos hermanos y la propone como telepatía o percepción simultánea, sin decidir entre las dos.

«This mushroom is a transdimensional doorway which sly fairies have left slightly ajar for anyone to enter into who can find the key and who wishes to use this power—the power of vision— to explore this peculiar and naturally occurring psychoactive complex.» — la formulación más fuerte del diario: el hongo como puerta transdimensional que unas hadas dejaron entornada.

«We are closing distance with the most profound event a planetary ecology can encounter. The emergence of life from the dark chrysalis of matter.» — el diario cierra en verso y anuncia la emergencia de la vida desde la crisálida oscura de la materia; el troceo conserva los cortes de renglón.

«It was Dave or my brother, Dennis; Dennis, I believe. He said that we were now stoned in the home territory of the Secret and so should not remain in the confined space of our thatched hut, but we should move out into the night and the warm, enfolding fog over the pasture.» — McKenna adjudica a su hermano la propuesta de salir al potrero, y consigna su propia duda sobre quién habló; es el arranque del episodio de las luces.

«Dennis nominated Dave and myself, calling Dave the least skeptical and me the most.» — el reparto de papeles que McKenna dice que hizo Dennis, y que el libro usa para presentarse a sí mismo como el escéptico del grupo.

«I heartily agreed, not actually wishing to visit the dark and dewy pasture myself, and having no faith, so skeptical was I, in the transcendental potential of the errand.» — McKenna declara su propia incredulidad de entonces, lo que para el libro hace más fuerte lo que dice haber visto después.

«There was a dim light on the ground a few yards away. It seemed to retreat as one walked toward it.» — la descripción que McKenna da de la luz del potrero, en términos de retroceso ante quien avanza.

«Sometimes the light seemed to be hovering above the ground just twenty feet ahead and then, leaping and falling again, it would recede as we approached. We would run forward to catch up with it, yet it continued to remain ahead of us.» — McKenna sostiene la descripción en seemed y consigna la persecución de la luz sin nombrarla.

«As we turned to depart I seemed to see a flickering of the diffuse light that, to my mind, suggested someone dancing before a fire.» — la lectura alternativa que el propio McKenna se ofrece: no un ovni sino alguien bailando ante una fogata.

«Was this a shaman dancing around a small fire? Did it have something to do with us? No illumination was ever shed on this incident, but the general eeriness of it anticipated all that was to follow.» — McKenna deja el episodio sin resolver y lo declara anticipo de todo lo demás; es su modo típico de cerrar un episodio.

«The words of my journal are revealing. I wrote matter of factly of "gaining entry into the world of elf chemists"; I called the mushroom a transdimensional doorway and linked it to a transformation of life on the planet. A younger, more naive, more poetic self is revealed—a more intuitive self, at ease with proclaiming wild unlikelihoods as hallucinogenically derived Gnostic Truth.» — McKenna lee su propio diario a veinte años de distancia y califica de más ingenuo y más poético al que lo escribió.

«And yet these ideas have changed very little in twenty years; then I was eager to be convinced by demonstration, and demonstration was given. I was changed and was obviously eager to be changed.» — McKenna sostiene la continuidad de sus ideas y consigna a la vez que estaba dispuesto a ser convencido; la objeción de la predisposición se la hace él mismo.

«point during that evening, Dennis and I both seemed able to see and describe the same inner visions. Off and on over the years this has happened several times with psilocybin. The wonder of it remains.» — McKenna repite la coincidencia de visiones con su hermano, dice que ha vuelto a ocurrir varias veces con psilocibina, y lo deja en asombro.

«It had begun to dawn on me that the mushroom was in fact a kind of intelligent entity—not of earth—alien and able during the trance to communicate its personality as a presence in the inward-turned perceptions of its beholder.» — la tesis central del volumen, enunciada por primera vez: McKenna sostiene que el hongo es una entidad inteligente no terrestre capaz de comunicar su personalidad durante el trance.

«I have told various parts of our story over the years, never revealing the entire incredible structure to any one listener, knowing full well what it seems to imply about our mental condition during the time of the experiences.» — McKenna declara que nunca había contado entera la historia y por qué: lo que parece implicar sobre su estado mental.

«Who would fail to attribute our "UFO experience" to the fact that we were tripping?» — McKenna se formula él mismo la objeción más obvia contra su relato y la deja en pie.

«The events at La Chorrera generated a great deal of controversy and subsequent bitterness among the participants. Several ideas of what was taking place were represented, each basing itself on data unavailable to or deemed irrelevant by the competing interpretations.» — McKenna consigna que los propios participantes no coincidieron y que cada lectura descartaba los datos de las otras; el libro no las armoniza.

«What some of us took to be a metamorphosis toward the transcendental, others took for an outbreak of obsessional fantasy.» — las dos lecturas enfrentadas dentro del grupo, dichas en paralelo y sin arbitrar.

«that the method of approach described here is generally effective for triggering whatever it is that I am calling the alien contact experience. (It may also be dangerous, so don't try this at home, folks.» — McKenna declara reproducible el procedimiento que describe y a la vez advierte del riesgo, en broma y entre paréntesis; es la única cautela práctica del volumen.

«Our first Stropharia trip at La Chorrera occurred on the twenty-second of February, 1971, only a little more than twenty-four hours after our arrival at La Chorrera and following the four-day walk through the jungle from San Jose del Encanto on the Rio Cara-Parana.» — la fecha exacta que el libro da del primer ensayo con el hongo en La Chorrera.

«I knew only that the mushroom was the best hallucinogen I had ever had and that it had a quality of aliveness I had never known before. It seemed to open doorways into places I had assumed would always be closed to me because of my insistence on analysis and realism.» — McKenna atribuye al hongo una cualidad de estar vivo y le adjudica abrir puertas que su propio realismo tenía cerradas.

«I had never had psilocybin before and was amazed at the contrast with LSD, which seemed more abrasively psychoanalytic and personal. In contrast, the mushrooms seemed so full of merry elfin energy that casting off into a visionary trance was all the more enticing.» — la comparación que McKenna hace entre el LSD y la psilocibina, en términos de registro y no de potencia.

«We knew oo-koo-he was taboo, so we were in no hurry.» — McKenna consigna que el objeto declarado del viaje seguía en pie y sin prisa cuando el hongo lo desplazó.

«I pulverized them into a snuff, which we all took.» — el segundo ensayo, esta vez en rapé preparado por McKenna.

«Not until Jacques Vallee had written The Invisible College» — McKenna nombra el libro de Jacques Vallee que dice haberle dado el valor de examinar lo de La Chorrera; el tramo se corta antes del año entre paréntesis que el volumen imprime a continuación.

«noting that an absurd element is invariably a part of the situation in which contact with an alien occurs, did I find the courage to examine the events at La Chorrera and try to fit them into some general pattern.» — la observación que McKenna atribuye a Vallee, que el absurdo forma parte invariable de la situación de contacto, y que él aplica a su propio caso.

«That afternoon a young Witoto named Basilio came to the ca-sita and, having heard of our interest from the priest, offered to take us to see his father, a shaman with a local reputation. Basilio assumed we were interested in ayahuasca, the better-known hallucinogen in the area, which is generally available for the asking.» — entrada en escena de Basilio y de su padre chamán; McKenna consigna que el muchacho supuso que buscaban ayahuasca, que sí se da a quien la pida.

«There had been a murder at La Chorrera a month or two before we arrived— actually several murders—and Guzman claimed they all had to do with oo-koo-he.» — McKenna atribuye a Guzmán la vinculación de varios asesinatos recientes con el oo-koo-hé, y por eso declara imprudente preguntar por él.

«Supposedly a shaman had murdered one of two shaman brothers by painting the top rung of a ladder with a DMT-containing resin. When the victim grabbed the rung, the resin had absorbed through his fingers and he had gotten vertigo and fallen, breaking his neck.» — el relato del asesinato que McKenna recoge de oídas, con la resina de DMT pintada en el peldaño; el supposedly es suyo y queda dentro de la cita.

«The shaman whose brother had been killed struck back by causing an accident. The alleged murderer's wife, daughter, and grandchild had been in a canoe above the chorro and, unaccountably unable to reach the shore, they had been swept over it. It was generally assumed that they were victims of magic. Only the wife had lived through it.» — la venganza que se cuenta en La Chorrera y la adjudicación a la magia, que McKenna reporta como suposición general y no como hecho.

«in light of later events, I now look back to that afternoon of deepening contentment and almost bucolic relaxation as the first faint stirring of a current that was shortly to sweep me toward unimaginably titanic emotions.» — McKenna vuelve a leer hacia atrás un estado de ánimo y lo convierte en primer indicio de lo que vendría; el libro repite ese movimiento en cada episodio.

«Basilio described to us his own single experience with ayahuasca when, several years before, after days of fever from an unknown cause, he had taken it with his father.» — McKenna presenta el testimonio de Basilio sobre su única toma de ayahuasca, hecha con su padre a raíz de una fiebre.

«He described the ayahuasca as a cold water infusion, rare for that area, where vigorous boiling usually plays a part in the preparation. After soaking the shredded ayahuasca for a day and a night, the unboiled water becomes hallucinogenically potent.» — la preparación que Basilio describe según McKenna, por infusión en frío y no por cocción, que el propio relato declara rara en esa zona.

«There had been many "fences" to cross in Basilio's visions. He had a sense of flying. The father had seen the "bad air" that had weakened his son as coming from the mission, which was recognized as a place of ill omen.» — lo que Basilio cuenta de sus visiones y lo que su padre dice haber visto: el mal aire que enfermó al hijo venía de la misión; las dos voces son indígenas y McKenna las reporta.

«It was all very interesting, our first exposure to "field conditions," and it accorded well with our data on ayahuasca usage and beliefs in the area.» — McKenna consigna que el testimonio de Basilio concordaba con sus datos previos, que es el único cotejo de campo que el libro declara haber hecho.

«It was in this small hut, instantly christened "the knoll house," that we proposed to live while we made arrangements to move farther into the nearby jungle and away from the somewhat confining atmosphere of the mission.» — McKenna nombra la casa del altozano, que será el escenario del resto del libro.

«It is the practice of the Witoto to leave their children in the keeping of the padres for six or more months out of the year; the times of gathering at the mission at the beginning and end of the school year are high points of the Witoto social swirl and an excuse for soccer games and evening bailes, for the Witoto are inveterate dancers.» — McKenna describe el calendario social witoto alrededor de la misión y la costumbre de dejar a los niños con los padres capuchinos.

«These we ate and then, as the evening's trip deepened, we smoked joints rolled out of shavings of the freshly gathered Banisteriopsis caapi. The caapi smoke was delicious; it smelled like a light incense, and each toke synergized beautiful slow-motion volleys of delicate hallucinations, which we immediately dubbed "vegetable television."» — McKenna nombra el efecto del humo de caapi con la expresión que el grupo acuñó esa noche.

«We triggered it repeatedly, and excitedly discussed it as an example of the sort of thing that sophisticated shamanic technicians must have been whipping up for each other's amazement since the late paleolithic.» — McKenna proyecta la técnica hasta el paleolítico tardío y atribuye a chamanes antiguos la misma clase de invención; es conjetura suya y la dice como tal.

«We were especially interested in the obsidian liquids that ayahuasqueros are said to produce on the surface of their skins and use» — McKenna introduce el líquido de obsidiana que se dice que producen los ayahuasqueros sobre su piel; el troceo corta por cambio de plana y la frase sigue en la 46 con to look into time.

«The idea of a kind of hologramatic alchemical fluid, a self-generated liquid crystal ball, seemed to me very strange and somehow compelling.» — McKenna nombra por primera vez el fluido alquímico hologramático que será el centro del opus de su hermano, y deja su propia reacción en strange y compelling.

«The question of whether or not such things are possible is actually a more gut issue in disguise: Is what we moderns have remaining to learn about the nature of reality slight and will it require only light fine-tuning of our current way of looking at things; or do we understand very little, missing the point entirely about the nature of our situation in being?» — McKenna reformula la disputa como pregunta por cuánto queda por saber, y la plantea en disyuntiva sin resolverla.

«I found myself arguing that reality is made of language and that we somehow had to step outside the cultural prison of language to confront a reality behind appearances.» — la tesis de McKenna sobre el lenguaje, que el libro irá extendiendo hasta el Timewave: la realidad está hecha de lenguaje y hay que salir de la prisión cultural del lenguaje.

«Rhetoric waxed hot and heavy. Ev, Dennis, and I became passionate defenders of this view. Vanessa and Dave insisted on a psychological-reductionist approach to unusual events. They argued that everything could be seen in a context of fantasy, delusion, and wish-fulfillment. For them nothing that occurred during hallucinations happened in the real world; only mental events were taking place.» — el reparto del grupo en dos posiciones; McKenna nombra a los suyos y da la posición contraria, la reduccionista de Vanessa y Dave, en sus propios términos.

«Then, ideology forgotten, they denounced the passion of our commitment as naive and obsessive. We retorted that they repressed the real power of the unconscious and that if they had come along to try to vindicate some behaviorist/materialist view of man, then they would be in for a surprise.» — McKenna consigna el intercambio de reproches sin armonizarlo: cada bando descalifica al otro y el libro deja las dos descalificaciones.

«or at least precipitating a crisis during which we had to decide whether or not to go deeper into a dimension whose precise nature could not yet be seen.» — continuación en la plana siguiente: McKenna reformula la crisis como decisión de entrar o no en una dimensión cuya naturaleza aún no veían.

«Three of us were ready to become alchemical children, ready to strip down and climb into the sophic fountain and take the measure of the thing from the inside.» — primera aparición del vocabulario alquímico en el relato: McKenna llama niños alquímicos a los suyos y nombra la fuente sófica.

«See Terence McKenna and Dennis McKenna, The Invisible Landscape (New York: The Seabury Press, 1975), chapter six.]» — la nota al pie que el troceo imprime dentro del cuerpo: es la única ficha completa que el volumen da del libro anterior de los dos hermanos.

«Call it Faustian or obsessed, that was our position. I considered it continuing the program of investigations that brought us to La Chorrera in the first place.» — McKenna acepta los calificativos con que se le podría reprochar la posición y la presenta como continuidad del programa del viaje.

«So there we were, a group of friends sharing a common set of symbols, completely isolated in the jungle, struggling with an epistemological problem upon whose eventual solution our sanity would seem to depend.» — McKenna resume la situación como problema epistemológico del que dependía la cordura del grupo, y lo deja en seem.

«Some of us were committed to going more deeply into the idea systems of the mushroom trance, and some were disturbed by the sudden depth of things and preferred only to witness the occasion.» — la bifurcación del grupo, dicha sin adjudicar razón a ninguno de los dos lados.

«Later, this house, which was at the river landing of La Chorrera, would be the site of my own brush with the Other.» — McKenna anticipa el episodio que da título al capítulo y nombra a la Otra Cosa con la mayúscula que el libro le da.

«It was the sixth day of our residence at La Chorrera. We had taken the mushrooms three times.» — la cuenta exacta de días y de tomas con que McKenna llega al episodio central del libro.

«Such unconsciousness seems almost the precondition for change.» — la fórmula con que McKenna cierra el capítulo cinco: la inconsciencia como condición previa del cambio.

«But I believe that the real cause of tension even then was a sense that something in the mushroom experience was pulling everyone» — McKenna adjudica la tensión del grupo a un tirón del propio hongo, y lo dice con I believe; el troceo corta por cambio de plana y la frase sigue en la 47 con *toward it, or at least precipitating a crisis*.

«My journal entries had ceased, my careful writing now replaced by long flights of reverie, dizzying and beautiful, the faint traces of the deepening contact with the Other, though I did not then recognize it for that.» — McKenna explica el corte del diario por el contacto con la Otra Cosa, y aclara que entonces no lo reconocía así.

«Each day seemed like an alchemical pearl born from the warm and starry night preceding.» — la primera de las metáforas alquímicas con que McKenna describe los días de La Chorrera, antes de que el opus entre en el relato.

«But the lake into which it empties its waters is no mere catch-basin for the rapids; it is the site of some ancient geological catastrophe that shattered the basaltic layer deep beneath the earth's surface, peeling back a great hole and laying thousands of house-sized rock fragments near the cliff, on the northern side of the lake.» — la lectura geológica que McKenna da del lago del chorro, como resto de una catástrofe antigua.

«Within a rudely fenced, hexagonal area, perhaps two dozen graves, many of them obviously of children, were eroding away. The shocking red of the lateritic soil was here laid bare. It was a place touched with sad loneliness even on a perfect sunny day.» — el cementerio de la misión, con las tumbas de niños erosionándose, que el relato coloca entre los presagios del lugar.

«It was during that walk through the pasture that I noticed for the first time, or at least mentioned for the first time, that everything was very beautiful and that I felt so good that I had a strange sense of being in a movie, or somehow larger than life.» — McKenna fecha ahí el primer cambio de percepción que consigna, y lo dice con la reserva de haberlo notado o solo mencionado entonces.

«What was this? Was it a slight distortion of space brought on by accumulating levels of psilocybin? Psilocybin can induce such perceptual distortions.» — McKenna ofrece él mismo la explicación farmacológica del efecto y la deja al lado de la otra.

«I felt ten feet high; just a touch of the superhuman, or a bit like Alice, whose mushroom eating made her alternately tall and small.» — la comparación con Alicia, que McKenna ya había usado para el lenguaje visible y que aquí aplica al tamaño.

«The onset of the Stropharia was rapid, and the hallucinations very vivid, but despite the larger dose, after an hour or so the experience did not seem to be particularly different from the earlier trips.» — McKenna consigna que la dosis mayor no produjo efecto distinto, dato que el relato deja sin explotar.

«Dennis complained that he felt blocked from a deep connection by concern for our father in Colorado, about whether or not he had gotten our last messages to him before we set off down the Rio Pu-tumayo. Dennis seemed melancholy, as if his homesickness had been amplified by the hallucinogen.» — lo que Dennis dice de su propio estado según su hermano, y la adjudicación que Terence hace de ello, marcada como suposición suya.

«He said that his trip consisted of many things, a suffusing inner heat and a strange inaudible buzzing that gave him, so he said, insight into glossolalia-like linguistic phenomena, which I had experienced on DMT and had described to him before.» — voz de Dennis reportada por Terence: calor interior y un zumbido inaudible que le daría acceso a fenómenos lingüísticos parecidos a la glosolalia.

«I asked him to imitate the sounds that he was hearing, but he seemed to think it was not possible.» — McKenna consigna que en ese momento Dennis no creyó poder reproducir el sonido; el episodio siguiente depende de ese cambio de opinión.

«What happened next was nothing less than a turn of events that would propel us into another world. For with the fading of the radio Dennis gave forth, for a few seconds, a very machine-like, loud, dry buzz, during which his body became stiff. After a moment's silence, he broke into a frightened series of excited questions. "What happened?" and, most memorably, "I don't want to become a giant insect!» — el episodio central del capítulo: según McKenna, su hermano emitió un zumbido seco y mecánico con el cuerpo rígido, y las palabras que siguen son de Dennis.

«It was obvious that what to us had seemed only a strange sound had far different effects on the person who made it.» — McKenna separa las dos perspectivas del suceso, la de los que oyeron y la del que emitió, y no decide entre ellas.

«I understood his predicament because it was familiar to me from DMT experiences, where a kind of glossolalia of thought, which had seemed the very embodiment of meaning to me, seemed mere gibberish when verbalized and heard by other people.» — McKenna compara lo de su hermano con lo que él mismo dice haber vivido con DMT: lo que por dentro es la encarnación misma del sentido, dicho fuera suena a galimatías.

«Dennis said there was a tremendous energy in the sound and that he had felt it like a physical force of some kind.» — lo que Dennis sostiene del sonido según Terence, en términos de fuerza física.

«He said he felt as if he might have left the ground if he had directed his voice downward.» — la afirmación más fuerte que Terence pone en boca de Dennis sobre el sonido, y la conserva dentro del as if con que dice que su hermano la dijo.

«We wondered if one could make a sound capable of having a synergistic effect on metabolizing drugs, while Dennis suggested that chanting might make some drugs metabolize more rapidly.» — la hipótesis que los dos hermanos discuten, con la parte de Dennis nombrada aparte: que el canto acelere el metabolismo de la droga.

«According to Dennis, from the inside it felt as if he had acquired a shamanic power of some sort.» — Terence marca expresamente que la adjudicación de un poder chamánico es de Dennis y es desde dentro.

«He began pacing around and wishing aloud that Vanessa would appear out of the gloom with her skepticism, which he felt would crumble when confronted with his testimony of the reality of something strange.» — según Terence, Dennis quería confrontar el escepticismo de Vanessa con su propio testimonio.

«I told him that she would only think of it as a peculiar sound in combination with a hallucinogen she was growing uncertain of.» — la respuesta de Terence, que anticipa la lectura reduccionista que el libro deja siempre en pie.

«It is incredible to see all that you believe about reality changed around by these plant metabolites.» — McKenna justifica el asombro de su hermano por lo que él mismo atribuye a los metabolitos vegetales.

«To calm us all and to argue for the universality of the kind of experience that Dennis had just had, it occurred to me to tell a story.» — McKenna declara la función del capítulo siguiente: un relato contado para sostener que la experiencia de Dennis es universal.

«My purpose in studying Tibetan was different from that of most Westerners involved with the language in Nepal. They were nearly all interested in some aspect of Mahayana Buddhist thought, while I was interested in a religious tradition that antedated the seventh century and the introduction of Buddhism into Tibet.» — McKenna declara su interés tibetano: no el pensamiento budista mahayana sino la religión anterior al siglo séptimo.

«This indigenous pre-Buddhist religion of Tibet was a kind of shamanism closely related to the motifs and cosmology of the classical shamanism of Siberia. Tibetan folk shamanism, called Bon, continues to be practiced today in the mountainous area of Nepal that borders Tibet.» — McKenna identifica el bon como chamanismo emparentado con el siberiano y lo da por vivo todavía en el Nepal fronterizo.

«Its practitioners are generally despised by the Buddhist community, being thought of as heretics and as generally low types.» — McKenna consigna el desprecio de la comunidad budista hacia los bon-po, atribuido a esa comunidad y no suscrito por él.

«It is common in such painting that the most fantastic, extravagant, and ferocious images are drawn from the pre-Buddhist substratum of folk imagery.» — la tesis de McKenna sobre la pintura tibetana: lo más fantástico sale del sustrato anterior al budismo.

«The terrifying, multi-armed, and multi-headed guardians of the Buddhist teaching, called Dharmapalas, with their auras of flame and light, are autochthonous Bon deities whose allegiance to the late-arriving Buddhist religion is maintained only by powerful spells and rituals that bind and secure the loyalty of these forceful demons.» — McKenna sostiene que los dharmapalas guardianes de la enseñanza budista son deidades bon autóctonas sujetas por conjuros.

«It seemed to me that the shamanic tradition that spawned such outlandish and fantastic images must at some time have had the knowledge of a hallucinogenic plant.» — la hipótesis de McKenna sobre el bon, dicha con seemed to me y sin prueba que la respalde.

«Shamanic ecstasy in Siberia was known to be attained through the use of the mushroom Amanita muscaria, and Gordon Wasson has made a good case for the use of the same mushroom in Vedic India.» — McKenna apoya su hipótesis en la Amanita muscaria siberiana y en el caso que atribuye a Gordon Wasson sobre la India védica, al que llama bueno sin discutirlo.

«Since Tibet is situated roughly between these two areas, it did not seem impossible that, before the coming of Buddhism, hallucinogens were part of the indigenous shamanic tradition.» — el argumento geográfico con que McKenna cierra la hipótesis, formulado en doble negación: no le parecía imposible.

«Pegamum harmala of the Zygophallaceae family is another suspect. It, like Banisteriopsis caapi, contains the hallucinogenic beta-carboline alkaloid harmaline in considerable quantities and is probably hallucinogenic by itself. Certainly in combination with a DMT-containing plant, of which the flora of India boasts several, it should yield a strong hallucinogen whose composition would not differ chemically from the ayahuasca brews of the Amazon.» — el segundo candidato botánico que McKenna propone para el Tíbet antiguo, con la química que lo emparentaría con la ayahuasca; el troceo imprime los nombres latinos así, sic.

«I wanted to learn from the Bon-po whatever knowledge they still retained of hallucinogens they might once have known and used. I wished, in my naivete, to prove my hypothesis» — McKenna declara el propósito de su viaje a Nepal y califica de ingenua su propia intención de probar la hipótesis; el troceo corta aquí ante la llamada de nota.

«The giant river reed, Arundo donax for example, occurs in India and its roots contain DMT. See S. Ghosal, S. K. Dutta, A. K. Sanyal, and Bhattacharya, "Arundo donex L. (Graminae), Phytochemical and Pharmacological Evaluation," in the Journal of Medical Chemistry, vol. 12 (1969), p. 480.]» — nota al pie que el troceo imprime dentro del cuerpo, con la referencia farmacológica que McKenna aduce para la DMT en la India; el volumen escribe Arundo donex en el título del artículo, sic, y el tramo se declara como bibliografía con su año entre paréntesis, releída entera en el crudo.

«about the influence of plant hallucinogens on Tibetan painting and then write a monograph about it.» — continuación del propósito declarado en la plana anterior: McKenna quería escribir una monografía sobre el influjo de los alucinógenos en la pintura tibetana.

«As soon as I arrived in Asia, the enormity of the task and the effort that this project would require were seen more nearly in their correct proportions. My proposed plan was actually an outline for a life of scholarly research!» — McKenna consigna el fracaso de su propio plan académico y lo mide contra lo que habría exigido.

«The people of the village were Buddhist and I made my arrangements to study with the monks there without mentioning my interest in the Bon-po.» — McKenna declara que ocultó a sus maestros budistas el objeto real de su estudio.

«Tashi Gyaltsen Lama was my teacher. He was a very kind and understanding Gelugpa. In spite of his advanced age, he would arrive every morning promptly at seven for our twohour lesson. I was like a child; we began with penmanship and the alphabet.» — McKenna nombra a su maestro y su escuela, y consigna que empezó por la caligrafía y el alfabeto; el troceo une a fin de renglón two-hour y lo devuelve como twohour.

«During this time the method I had evolved for probing the shamanic dimension was to smoke DMT at the peak point of an LSD experience. I would do this whenever I took LSD, which was quite occasionally. It would allow me to enter the tryptamine dimension for a slightly extended period of time.» — el método que McKenna declara haberse hecho para lo que llama la dimensión chamánica: fumar DMT en la cima de un viaje de LSD.

«My own tiny supply had arrived in Kathmandu, prophetically hidden inside a small ceramic mushroom mailed from Aspen.» — McKenna llama profético al detalle del hongo de cerámica en que llegó el LSD, otra de las coincidencias que el libro marca.

«Almost as a joke, I suggested that they substitute the seed of the Himalayan Datura, Datura metel, for the LSD.» — McKenna consigna que la sustitución por semilla de datura la propuso él mismo medio en broma.

«annual bushes and the source of a number of tropane alkaloids— scopalamine, hylosciamine, and so on—compounds that produce a pseudo-hallucinogenic effect. They give an impression of flying or of confronting vague and fleeting visions, but all in a realm hard to keep control of and hard to recollect later.» — la descripción farmacológica que McKenna da de la datura, a la que llama pseudoalucinógena y difícil de controlar y recordar.

«The seeds of Datura metel are used in Nepal by saddhus (wandering hermits and holy men), so their use was known in the area. Nevertheless my suggestion was made facetiously, since the difficulty of» — McKenna apoya el uso de la datura en los saddhus nepalíes y a la vez declara legendaria su dificultad de control; el troceo corta por cambio de plana y sigue en la 54 con *controlling Datura is legendary*.

«I was too distant to be aware of them. She was seated directly across from me, and he farther back and to one side, in the shadows. He played his flute. I passed the hash pipe. The moon rose full and high in the sky. I fell into long hallucinatory reveries that each lasted many minutes but felt like whole lifetimes.» — McKenna describe el efecto del LSD en la azotea de Boudanath en términos de duración subjetiva: ensueños de minutos que se sentían vidas enteras.

«For me it was an enormous amount of DMT, and I immediately had a sense of entering a high vacuum.» — McKenna cuantifica la dosis por su propio efecto y da la primera sensación como entrada a un vacío alto.

«I heard a high-pitched whine and the sound of cellophane ripping as I was transformed into the ultra-high-frequency orgasmic goblin that is a human being in DMT ecstasy.» — la descripción que McKenna da del tránsito al éxtasis de DMT, con el sonido y la transformación del propio cuerpo.

«I was surrounded by the chattering of elf machines and the more-than-Arabian vaulted spaces that would shame a Bibiena. Manifestations of a power both alien and bizarrely beautiful raged around me.» — McKenna nombra de nuevo a las máquinas elfas y llama ajeno y bellísimo a lo que dice haber encontrado; el volumen escribe hoards por hordes más adelante en el mismo pasaje.

«At the point where I would normally have expected the visions to fade, the pretreatment with LSD synergized my state to a higher level.» — el efecto que McKenna atribuye a la combinación: el LSD previo sinergiza y prolonga el estado de DMT.

«I suddenly found myself flying hundreds of miles above the earth and in the company of silvery disks. I could not tell how many. I was fixated on the spectacle of the earth below and realized that I was moving south, apparently in polar orbit, over Siberia.» — McKenna describe el vuelo orbital que dice haber vivido, acompañado de discos plateados cuyo número no puede precisar.

«In a series of telescoping leaps, I went from orbit to a point where I could specifically pick out the circular depression that is the Kathmandu Valley. Then, in the next leap, the valley filled my field of vision. I seemed to be approaching it at great speed. I could see the Hindu temple and the houses of Kathmandu, the Temple of Svayambhu-nath to the west of the city and the Stupa at Boudanath, gleaming white and a few miles to the east.» — el descenso por saltos telescópicos hasta el valle de Katmandú, que McKenna cuenta con los topónimos reconocibles como prueba de precisión de la visión.

«Among the several hundred rooftops I found my own.» — el cierre de la visión orbital, con el regreso al propio tejado; el troceo corta enseguida por cambio de plana.

«But suddenly all the normal sets of relations were obviated. We reached out toward each other, and I had the distinct impression of passing through her, of physically reaching beyond her.» — McKenna describe la suspensión de las relaciones ordinarias en términos de atravesar a la otra persona.

«We were both howling and singing in the glossolalia of DMT, rolling over the ground with everything awash in crawling, geometric hallucinations.» — McKenna vuelve a nombrar la glosolalia de la DMT, que en el capítulo anterior había atribuido a su hermano.

«She was transformed; words exist to describe what she became— pure anima, Kali, Leucothea, something erotic but not human, something addressed to the species and not to the individual, glittering with the possibility of cannibalism, madness, space, and extinction. She seemed on the edge of devouring me.» — McKenna nombra lo que dice haber visto con nombres tomados de otras tradiciones, ánima, Kali, Leucotea, y lo declara dirigido a la especie y no al individuo.

«Then I saw that where our bodies were glued together there was flowing, out of her, over me, over the floor of the roof, flowing everywhere, some sort of obsidian liquid, something dark and glittering, with color and lights within it.» — el fluido de obsidiana aparece aquí por primera vez en primera persona; es el mismo que McKenna había atribuido de oídas a los ayahuasqueros, y ahora lo declara visto.

«After the DMT flash, after the seizures of orgasms, after all that, this new thing shocked me to the core. What was this fluid and what was going on?» — McKenna consigna que el fluido lo desconcertó más que todo lo anterior, y deja la pregunta sin responder en esta plana.

«surface of my own mind reflected in front of me. Was it translin-guistic matter, the living opalescent excrescence of the alchemical abyss of hyperspace, something generated by the sex act performed under such crazy conditions?» — McKenna formula en preguntas lo que cree ver en el fluido y nombra por primera vez la materia translingüística; el troceo imprime la palabra partida como translin-guistic.

«I looked into it again and now saw in it the lama who taught me Tibetan, who would have been asleep a mile away. In the fluid I saw him, in the company of a monk I had never seen; they were looking into a mirrored plate. Then I realized that they were watching me!» — lo que McKenna dice haber visto dentro del fluido: su propio maestro de tibetano y otro monje mirándolo a él por una placa espejada; el troceo corta la frase por cambio de plana.

«It is an effect typical of Datura that whatever one experiences is very difficult, indeed usually impossible, to recollect later.» — McKenna consigna el rasgo de la datura que deja sin segundo testigo todo lo de esa noche.

«It seemed that while what had transpired had involved the most intimate of acts between two people, I was nevertheless the only witness who could remember anything at all of what had happened.» — McKenna reconoce él mismo que del episodio decisivo no hay más testimonio que el suyo.

«Incredibly, they were unbroken, although I had distinctly heard them shatter.» — el detalle de los anteojos intactos, que McKenna pone entre las cosas que no cuadran y deja sin explicar.

«Obsidian liquids, the ectoplasmic excrescences of tantric hanky-panky, were nowhere to be seen.» — McKenna consigna que del fluido no quedaba rastro al volver, con una fórmula que se burla de su propio relato; el troceo corta la frase por cambio de plana y sigue en la 57 con of tantric hanky-panky.

«She remembered nothing of the events on the roof. About a week after all this was over, I told her my impression of what had happened. She was amazed but accepting.» — McKenna cierra el episodio consignando que la única otra persona presente no recordaba nada y aceptó su versión sin poder cotejarla.

«I did not know what had happened. I christened the obsidian fluid we had generated "luv," something more than love, something less than love, perhaps not love at all, but some kind of unplumbed potential human experience very little is known about.» — McKenna nombra el fluido y declara a la vez no saber qué pasó; la definición que da es enteramente negativa.

«It was this incident that had kindled my interest in the violet fluids that ayahuasca shamans are said to generate on the surface of their skins and to use to divine and cure.» — McKenna declara el origen de su interés en los fluidos violetas que se atribuyen a los ayahuasqueros, y les asigna el uso de adivinar y curar.

«Whenever I tell this story, it is the phenomenon of the liquid that I stress. That was what I accentuated to reassure Dennis that foggy night.» — McKenna dice qué parte de la historia subraya al contarla y por qué la contó esa noche.

«I did not tell the absurd part about waking up wearing someone else's drawers. It was damned embarrassing and contributed nothing to the story.» — McKenna consigna con precisión lo que se calló, porque de esa omisión depende el episodio de telepatía que anuncia.

«I mention this because that absurd incident was later to become the focus of an instance of telepathy that was the most convincing I have ever witnessed.» — McKenna anuncia el que llama el caso de telepatía más convincente que ha presenciado, y lo hace depender de lo que acaba de callar.

«At the time this fruit was unknown to science; a few years later Schultes would describe it and name it Macoubea witotorum. I have yet to encounter this fruit again.» — McKenna adjudica a Schultes la descripción posterior de la fruta que compraron y declara no haberla vuelto a ver.

«Vanessa and Dave were unmoved by Dennis's excited assertion that some extremely peculiar energy field had been tapped into and verified.» — McKenna consigna que la afirmación de Dennis sobre un campo de energía no convenció a la otra mitad del grupo; el desacuerdo queda sin arbitrar.

«I approach these pages with a peculiar sense of urgency as a man might who had confronted an unexplainable phenomenon as some impossible creation of dreams or unaccountable natural principle. The task facing such a man would be a very subtle one; that is, to describe the phenomenon as accurately as possible.» — arranca el cuaderno de Dennis McKenna del 28 de febrero de 1971, que el volumen reproduce; Dennis declara su tarea como descripción de un fenómeno inexplicable.

«Before going further, something tells me it is necessary to consider who I am. Twenty-four hours ago I thought I knew—now this has become the most perplexing question I have ever been confronted with.» — voz de Dennis: pone su propia identidad como la pregunta más difícil después de aquella noche.

«These may be the last characters of» — el troceo corta aquí por cambio de plana; la frase de Dennis sigue en la 59 con *a crude language that I will ever apply to the description of anything*.

«a crude language that I will ever apply to the description of anything; since the phenomenon begins at the edge of language, where the concept-forming faculty gropes but finds no words, I must be careful to avoid not distinguishing between mere languagesymbol-metaphor and the reality I am attempting to apply it to.» — voz de Dennis: sitúa el fenómeno en el borde del lenguaje, donde la facultad de formar conceptos tantea sin palabras, y se impone distinguir el símbolo de la realidad; el troceo une a fin de renglón language-symbol y lo devuelve como languagesymbol.

«When I read this prologue later, it seemed to me both grandiose and alarming, but Dennis had an aura of calm certitude that seemed to command respect. I felt that the Logos was struggling with the vocabulary of its newest vessel. He seemed to be making more and more sense, to be on to something.» — Terence consigna su propio juicio doble sobre el cuaderno de su hermano, grandioso y alarmante a la vez, y dice que creyó ver ahí al Logos peleando con el vocabulario de su nuevo recipiente.

«It has to do with controlling one's body chemistry in such a way as to produce very specific vocal and au-dial phenomena: the state becomes possible when highly biodynamic vegetable alkaloids, specifically tryptamines and MAO-inhibitors,* are introduced into the body under very carefully regulated parameters.» — voz de Dennis: define el fenómeno como control de la química corporal por triptaminas e inhibidores de la MAO bajo parámetros regulados; el troceo imprime las palabras partidas como au-dial y bio-dynamic; el troceo une a fin de renglón bio-dynamic y lo devuelve como biodynamic, y deja au-dial partido.

«This phenomenon is apparently possible in the presence of tryptamines alone, though MAO inhibition definitely helps to trigger it by facilitating tryptamine absorption.» — Dennis acota su propia afirmación con apparently y separa lo necesario de lo que solo ayuda.

«The phenomenon has now been triggered by two people within our immediate group: Terence has been experimenting with vocal phenomena under the influence of DMT for some years now.» — Dennis cifra en dos los casos dentro del grupo y adjudica la primacía a su hermano; el troceo corta aquí ante la llamada de nota.

«Until last night, when I triggered and experienced this sound wave for a few brief seconds under the influence of nineteen Stropharia mushrooms, Terence was the only person I knew who claimed ability to perform this sound.» — Dennis fecha su propio caso y cifra la dosis en diecinueve hongos Stropharia; el verbo con que describe lo de su hermano es claimed.

«MAO-inhibitors are chemical compounds whose activity in the body slows down or interferes with Mono Amine Oxidase, an enzyme system that oxidizes many compounds in foods and drugs into harmless byproducts.» — nota al pie que el troceo imprime dentro del cuerpo, con la definición técnica que el volumen da de los inhibidores de la MAO.

«In the presence of MAO-inhibitors, compounds that would normally be metabolized into inactive by-products instead have the duration of their physiological and psychological activity extended.» — segunda mitad de esa nota: el efecto declarado es la prolongación de la actividad y no el aumento de la potencia.

«My experiments had consisted of having observed that the spontaneous glos-solalia that DMT caused in myself sometimes triggered a kind of seizure of synesthesia in which syntactical structures, spoken language, actually became visible.» — nota al pie de Terence dentro del cuaderno de su hermano: acota en qué consistieron sus propios experimentos con la glosolalia de la DMT; el troceo imprime la palabra partida como glos-solalia.

«Some effect such as this may have been behind my rooftop experience in Nepal. Unusual linguistic and vocal displays seem to typify DMT intoxication.» — cierre de esa nota: Terence enlaza con may have been lo de Katmandú y lo suyo, y generaliza que los despliegues lingüísticos tipifican la intoxicación por DMT.

«My task is compounded by the fact that the phenomenon I must try to describe has itself to do with the very tools of» — voz de Dennis: la dificultad que se plantea es que lo que describe toca los instrumentos mismos de la descripción; el troceo corta por cambio de plana y la frase sigue en la 59 con *description; i.e., language*.

«It had given way, in me at least, to a warm suffusion of contentment and good feeling that actually seemed to burn away somewhere inside of me. Such feelings I have had before, both on mushrooms and just after DMT flashes.» — voz de Dennis en su cuaderno: describe el estado previo al sonido y acota el alcance con in me at least.

«Then we began to discuss people far away and how we might attempt to contact them fourth-dimensionally; since apparently magical connection at a distance is a concern of shamanism this was not such a strange rap for us.» — Dennis consigna de qué hablaban cuando apareció el sonido, y apoya la conversación en que la conexión mágica a distancia es asunto del chamanismo.

«But it was definitely at some point in time near to that conversation that I first heard the sound, immeasurably distant and faint, in the region between the ears, not outside, but definitely, incredibly there, perfectly distinct on the absolute edge of audible perception.» — Dennis sitúa el sonido entre los oídos y en el borde mismo de lo audible, y no fuera de la cabeza.

«A sound almost like a signal or very, very faint transmissions of radio buzzing from somewhere, something like tingling chimes at first, but gradually becoming amplified into a snapping, popping, gurgling, cracking electrical sound.» — la descripción que Dennis da del sonido, por acumulación de símiles y sin fijar ninguno.

«Suddenly, it was as if the sound and my voice locked onto each other and the sound was my voice—but coming out of me in such a way that no human voice could possibly distort itself the way mine was doing. The sound was suddenly much intensified in energy and was like the sound of a giant insect.» — el momento que Dennis declara decisivo: la voz y el sonido se traban y el resultado, dice, no podría producirlo una voz humana.

«It was a magic spot, but its magic at that moment was still fourteen days into the future.» — McKenna adelanta al lector el lugar del episodio del experimento y cuenta los días que faltaban; es una de las anticipaciones con que el libro enlaza sus escenas.

«I'm not sure. I'm very excited, but whatever it is that's the cause of my excitement is also developing ideas in my mind nearly faster than I can write them down.» — voz de Dennis en el diálogo junto al río: declara que las ideas le llegan más rápido de lo que puede escribirlas, sin decir de dónde.

«My intuition is that it is related to the psy-chofluids that Michael Harner reported in the July 1969 issue of Natural History and to what happened to you in Boudanath.» — Dennis enlaza el sonido con los psicofluidos que atribuye a Michael Harner y con lo de Katmandú; el troceo imprime la palabra partida como psy-chofluids.

«Remember how Harner implied that ayahuasqueros vomited a magical substance that was the basis of their ability to divine? This is like that, some sort of translinguistic stuff made with the voice.» — Dennis resume a Harner con el verbo implied y propone la analogía con lo suyo: una materia translingüística hecha con la voz.

«He was insistent in linking my experience in Nepal with a very strange phenomenon that occurred in Jivaro shamanism in Ecuador.» — Terence consigna que la insistencia en ligar Katmandú con los jíbaros fue de su hermano.

«The people take ayahuasca after which they, and anyone else who has taken ayahuasca, are able to see a substance that is described as violet or deep blue and that bubbles like a liquid.» — la descripción del fluido jíbaro que McKenna reporta del material etnográfico: violeta o azul profundo y burbujeante.

«When you vomit from taking ayahuasca, this violet fluid comes out of your body; it also forms on the surface of the skin, like sweat. The Jivaro do much of their magic with this peculiar stuff.» — el modo en que ese fluido se produciría y su uso mágico, dichos en tercera persona y adjudicados a los jíbaros.

«Informants insist that the shamans spread the stuff out on the ground in front of them, and that one can look at this material and see other times and other places.» — McKenna nombra la fuente del dato con la palabra del oficio, informants, y les adjudica a ellos la afirmación de que en el fluido se ven otros tiempos y otros lugares.

«According to their reports, the nature of this fluid is completely outside of ordinary experience: it is made out of space/time or mind, or it is pure hallucination objectively expressed but always keeping itself within the confines of a liquid.» — McKenna deja la definición del fluido en boca de esos informantes: hecho de espacio-tiempo o de mente, o alucinación objetivada que no sale de la forma líquida.

«Since the beginnings of ethnographic reporting out of the Amazon there have been rumors and unconfirmed reports of magical excrement and magically empowered psychophysical objects generated out of the human body using hallucinogens and song.» — McKenna sitúa el caso de Harner en una serie de rumores e informes que él mismo llama no comprobados, y lo dice con esas palabras.

«I recalled the alchemical observation that the secret is hidden in feces.» — McKenna trae la sentencia alquímica del secreto escondido en el excremento para encuadrar lo anterior; no da autor ni tratado.

«Matter that is hyperdimensional and therefore translinguistic? Is that what you mean?" I asked Dennis.» — Terence formula la fórmula que el libro usará en adelante, materia hiperdimensional y por tanto translingüística, y la pone como pregunta a su hermano.

«Yes. Whatever that means, but something like that, I suppose. Gad! Why not? I mean it's pretty nuts, but it's also the symbol system we brought with us running into the shamanic magic that we came here looking for.» — la respuesta de Dennis, que acepta la fórmula sin entenderla y la explica como choque del sistema simbólico propio con la magia chamánica que buscaban.

«This is what you shipped for, man, to chase the White Whale over all sides of ocean and both sides of earth till he spout black blood and roll fin out.» — Dennis cita a Melville según Terence, que se sorprende de la cita en boca de su hermano.

«The resort to Melvillian rhetoric was unexpected and not like him. Where did he get this stuff?» — Terence consigna su propia extrañeza ante el registro nuevo de su hermano; es el primer indicio del cambio que el libro le atribuirá a Dennis.

«We are having something like beginner's luck, you know, finding the 'Other' so accessible. The mushroom is doing this, or the mushroom and the ayahuasca smoking—it is hard to be sure. So many variables.» — Terence atribuye a la suerte del principiante el acceso a lo que llama la Otra Cosa y declara que no se sabe qué lo produce.

«There is a lot of synchronistic activity as well.» — Terence nombra la sincronicidad como parte del cuadro, con el término que el libro toma de Jung.

«We must just observe our active fantasy closely and try to ride herd on what is developing. The good old Jungian method, that's all.» — voz de Dennis: propone el método junguiano de observar la fantasía activa y lo nombra así.

«ideally all of this could be distilled down to the point where some sort of test of the validity of the effect could somehow be set up.» — Terence enuncia aquí la idea que producirá el experimento de La Chorrera: una prueba de validez del efecto.

«I recalled that there is an instance in The Teachings of Don Juan where the Peyote entity, Mescalito, holds up his hand, and in its palm Carlos Castaneda sees a past incident in his life.» — McKenna trae el episodio de Mescalito en el libro de Castaneda como precedente del espejo de fluido.

«If this phenomenon has any empirical validity, perhaps what happens is that a very thin film of this projection-sensitive transdi-mensional goo is present. And when you look at it, it is like perfect feedback. It is a mirror—not of your physical reflection but of who you are.» — la hipótesis que McKenna propone para el fluido: una película sensible a la proyección que devuelve no el reflejo físico sino quién es uno; el troceo imprime la palabra partida como transdi-mensional.

«All this lays in the realm of speculation, of course. Does this stuff exist? Or is it just hallucination? Who can believe in a thing like that?» — McKenna retira él mismo el estatuto de lo que acaba de proponer y lo deja en tres preguntas.

«Dennis felt strongly that it was connected with sound. One could either stabilize the stuff or cause it to appear by doing something with one's voice.» — Terence adjudica a Dennis la tesis de que el fluido se estabiliza o se produce con la voz.

«It was a strange, slippery idea because one could extrapolate it infinitely, since whatever it was, it was made of the very stuff of imagination itself.» — Terence consigna el defecto de la idea en el momento de exponerla: se extrapola sin límite porque está hecha de imaginación.

«If one shaped this stuff in three dimensions, it could be anything, yet this violet ectoplasmic mental liquid must only exist in the fourth dimension. It seemed possible to suppose that one might pierce the other dimension and have this fluid come boiling out.» — la formulación dimensional de la hipótesis, con el líquido existiendo solo en la cuarta dimensión y la posibilidad de perforarla.

«Recalling it now, having learned so much in the intervening twenty years, it is hard to be sure just what we did believe at La Chorrera, just what level of sophistication we did achieve.» — McKenna declara desde la escritura que no puede precisar qué creían entonces ni con qué nivel de sofisticación.

«We were excited with the prospect of actually grappling under near perfect conditions with "the Secret," as we called it then, meaning the spectrum of effects encountered in tryptamine-induced ecstasy.» — McKenna define el Secreto, que es como lo llamaban entonces, por el espectro de efectos del éxtasis por triptaminas.

«We were not unused to the idea of the Other, but we had only glimpsed it in brief flashes and in its manifestation as the lux natura, the spiritual radiance behind organic nature.» — McKenna sitúa el grado de trato que tenían con la Otra Cosa antes de La Chorrera y la nombra con el latín lux natura.

«We were in that moment the fans of the goddess, not yet her lovers.» — la fórmula con que McKenna mide la distancia de entonces, en femenino y en registro amoroso.

«How small we were, knowing little, yet fiercely proud of what we knew, and feeling ourselves somehow the representatives of humanity meeting something strange and Other, something at the edge of human experience since the very beginning.» — McKenna se pone a sí mismo y a los suyos por representantes de la humanidad ante algo Otro, y lo dice con la ironía sobre el propio orgullo dentro de la frase.

«I wandered away as they began to speculate on the causes—the time of day, the light conditions, optical illusions, and all the rest.» — McKenna consigna las explicaciones ordinarias que el grupo propuso y declara que él se apartó de la discusión.

«I seemed to have no heart for these arguments; each time they broke out, I found myself with some deep, inner assurance that the situation was moving forward just as it should and that everyone was playing a part and doing it very well.» — McKenna describe su propio estado como certeza interior de que todo iba como debía, y lo marca con seemed.

«But here is the thing; if there is something weird going on, then we should observe it and see what it is and try to reduce it to some coherent framework. Granted we don't know what it is that we are dealing with, but on the other hand, we know that we came here to investigate shamanic magic generally, so now we have to go to work on this effect, or» — voz de Dennis: propone tratar el fenómeno como objeto de observación y reducirlo a un marco coherente; el troceo corta por cambio de plana y la frase sigue en la 62 con *whatever it is, and just hope that we know what we are doing*.

«whatever it is, and just hope that we know what we are doing and have enough data to crack it. We are too isolated to do anything else, and to ignore it might be to squander a golden opportunity.» — continuación de la propuesta de Dennis en la plana siguiente: justifica la decisión por el aislamiento y por no desperdiciar la ocasión.

«It was Ev who noticed it first. The lake beneath the chorro was flecked with foam generated by the rush of water through the narrow channel. The foam floating on the brown water served to mark the currents of the river as it widened into the lake and continued on the other side. It was at this that Ev exclaimed. After several minutes of watching the water, a change had suddenly stolen over the moving, marbled surface at the far side of the river. The water there appeared to have stopped. Just that, just simply to have stopped moving. The surface appeared frozen, yet the near half of the river was seen to continue as before.» — el episodio del río que parece detenerse, que McKenna adjudica a la observación de Ev y describe como mitad quieta y mitad en movimiento.

«Last night I again triggered the phenomenon after having eaten one mushroom and smoking grass. It was almost identical to the first experience—a lifting, pulsing wave of vocal buzzing growing loud very quickly and picking up shock energy as it did so. Though I could have prolonged the sound beyond a brief burst, I did not because of the energy.» — cuaderno de Dennis del 1 de marzo de 1971: repite el fenómeno con un solo hongo y declara que lo cortó por la energía que le atribuye.

«I am certain that soon it will become possible to trigger the sound completely without tryptamines or other drugs. It is becoming easier to plug-in on each time, and I feel now that it is accessible at any time. It is clearly a learned activity that tryptamines can initiate and trigger, but it can happen without tryptamines once it is understood and mastered.» — la afirmación más fuerte de Dennis sobre el fenómeno: que es actividad aprendida y que podrá producirse sin triptaminas; lo dice con I am certain.

«We have thus far been able to establish the existence of peculiar vocal phenomena in two individuals subject to similar experimental controls. We must now attempt to understand what it is that the phenomenon could be. We must perform experiments with the sound and from our results develop theories to understand the processes at work.» — Dennis describe lo suyo en lenguaje de laboratorio, con sujetos, controles y experimentos por hacer.

«Things such as that the normally invisible syntactical web that holds both language and the world together can condense or change its ontological status and become visible.» — Dennis formula la tesis del lenguaje visible que su hermano le había contado: la trama sintáctica cambia de estatuto ontológico y se vuelve visible.

«Indeed there seems to be a parallel mental dimension in which everything is made of the stuff of visible language, a kind of universe next door inhabited by elves that sing themselves into existence and invite those who encounter them to do the same.» — Dennis describe un universo vecino hecho de lenguaje visible y habitado por elfos que se cantan a sí mismos a la existencia; la reserva there seems es suya.

«The DMT-initiated state, which allows prolonged bursts of this vocal energy, he describes as being one of seeing the levels of sound become more dense as they finally materialize into small, gnome-like, machine-like creatures made of material like obsidian froth, which pours from the body, mouth, and sex organs as long as the» — Dennis resume lo que su hermano describe del estado de DMT, con las criaturas de espuma de obsidiana; el troceo corta por cambio de plana y la frase sigue en la 65 con *sound continues*.

«It is effervescent, phosphorescent, and indescribable. Here is where the linguistic metaphors become useless, for what the material actually is is supra-linguistic matter; it is a language, but not made of words—a language which becomes and which is the things it describes.» — Dennis define la materia supralingüística como un lenguaje sin palabras que se vuelve las cosas que describe; el troceo imprime supra-linguistic partido en el renglón.

«It is a more perfect archetypal Logos. We are convinced that through experimentation with these vocal phenomena, with and without the aid of drugs, it will be possible to understand and use trans linguistic matter to accomplish any reality, for to say anything in this voice is to cause that thing to happen!» — la consecuencia operativa que Dennis saca de su propia definición: decir algo en esa voz es hacerlo ocurrir; el volumen imprime trans linguistic separado, sic.

«Non-chemists ourselves at that point, we had been able to turn the condensation of spirit into the idea of translinguistic matter. Word, object, and cognition had become fused in» — Terence describe desde la escritura lo que hicieron con la idea: convertir la condensación del espíritu en materia translingüística; el troceo corta por cambio de plana y sigue en la 65 con *the best tradition of the higher Tantric yogas*.

«the best tradition of the higher Tantric yogas. My brother was in the grip of a revelation of the alchemical mystery in the most traditional sense.» — Terence encuadra lo de su hermano en los yogas tántricos y declara que Dennis estaba tomado por una revelación del misterio alquímico en el sentido más tradicional.

«Our studies in the chemistry of mind, the metabolism of tryptamine, the nature of thought, of consciousness, history, magic, shamanism, quantum and relativistic physics, metamorphosis in insects, alchemical processes, etc., together with the intuitive understanding of acausal and synchronistic events that we are deriving from the Stropharia, allows us to venture a not entirely wild guess as to what this sound which takes form may be.» — voz de Dennis: enumera el repertorio entero del que sale su hipótesis, de la química a la alquimia y la sincronicidad, y llama a lo suyo conjetura no del todo salvaje.

«Hallucinogens, by effecting the neural matrix, can produce changes in consciousness in the temporal dimension. Clearly, consciousness can work changes in three dimensions as well.» — el paso del argumento de Dennis: de los cambios de consciencia en el tiempo a los cambios que la consciencia obraría en el espacio; el volumen imprime effecting por affecting, sic.

«On tryptamines it is possible, under special conditions, to hear and vocalize a sound that turns through a higher dimensional manifold and condenses as translinguistic matter, i.e., matter reduplicated upon itself through time, much as a hologram is reduplicated through space.» — la definición que Dennis da de la materia translingüística: materia reduplicada sobre sí a través del tiempo, como el holograma lo está en el espacio.

«The substance whose appearance the sounds initiate is tryptamine metabolized by mind through a higher spatial dimension. It is a hyperdimen-sional molecule carrying its trip on the outside of itself in "this" world.» — Dennis define la sustancia como triptamina metabolizada por la mente a través de una dimensión superior; el troceo imprime la palabra partida como hyperdimen-sional.

«The hyperdimensional nature of this material is such that it is all material, concepts, events, words, people, and ideas homogenized into one thing via the higher dimensional alchemy of mind.» — Dennis reúne materia, conceptos, sucesos, palabras, personas e ideas en una sola cosa y llama a esa operación alquimia de la mente; el troceo corta la frase por cambio de plana.

«This is the idea of the mysterious magical phlegm, the legend of which survives on the less-traveled side tributaries of the Amazon. There, persistent rumors circulate of a magical material, generated out of one's body by master shamans, that allows one to cure, work magic, and obtain information unavailable by any normal means.» — Terence nombra la flema mágica y la sitúa entre los rumores persistentes de los afluentes menos transitados del Amazonas.

«Like the magic mirrors familiar from fairy tales, the magical fluids of rainforest rumor are windows on distant times and places.» — Terence compara los fluidos mágicos con los espejos de los cuentos y les asigna la misma función, ser ventanas a otros tiempos y lugares.

«Our task was to create a credible model of how such a phenomenon could operate without leaving the known or suspected laws of physics and chemistry far behind.» — Terence declara el criterio que se pusieron: un modelo que no dejara atrás las leyes conocidas o sospechadas de la física y la química.

«We speculate it is hyperdimen-sionally metabolized tryptamine—an alchemical phenomenon which is a correct union of tryptamine (a compound nearly ubiquitous in organic nature), with vocally produced sound mediated by mind.» — voz de Dennis: llama fenómeno alquímico a la unión de triptamina y sonido vocal mediado por la mente, y encabeza la frase con we speculate.

«It is the mind that directs this process, and that direction consists of a harmonic atunement to an interiorized audio-linguistic phenomenon which may be an electron-spin resonance "tone" of the psilocybin molecule.» — Dennis propone que el tono interior sea una resonancia de espín electrónico de la molécula de psilocibina, y lo deja en may be.

«When this tone is locked in on— a process which consists of vocally imitating the interior tone to perfection, the hyperdimensional tryptamine is produced.» — Dennis describe el procedimiento como imitación vocal perfecta del tono interior; es la receta de la que saldrá el experimento.

«Is this substance mental as an idea is mental? Is it as real as an ordinary liquid, like water?» — Dennis deja abierta la pregunta por el estatuto de la sustancia, entre lo mental y lo líquido.

«Harner insisted that Jivaro shamans under the influence of MAO-inhibiting tryptamine plus Banisteri-opsis caapi (ayahuasca) infusions produce a fluorescent liquid by means of which they accomplish all of their magic. Though invisible to ordinary perception, this fluid is said to be visible to anyone who has ingested the brew.» — Dennis atribuye a Harner la afirmación sobre el líquido fluorescente de los chamanes jíbaros, visible solo para quien ha tomado el brebaje; el troceo imprime Banisteri-opsis partido.

«Ayahuasca is frequently associated with violet auras and deep blue hallucinations. This may indicate a thermal plasma, perhaps only visible in the UVspectrum.» — la explicación física que Dennis ensaya, un plasma térmico visible solo en el ultravioleta, dicha con may indicate; el volumen imprime UVspectrum pegado.

«If this phenomenon is found to fall into the category "mental," indicated above, functioning as described, but with the limitation of not being tangential to ordinary space/time, it will still represent perfected understanding of the hyperdimension Jung named the collective unconscious.» — Dennis pone su límite inferior: aun siendo solo mental, dice, sería comprensión perfecta de la hiperdimensión que Jung llamó inconsciente colectivo.

«Looking back from the vantage point of over twenty years, these notes seem both arcane and naive.» — Terence califica desde la escritura las notas de su hermano y no las retira.

«The idea of a possible unitary metamorphosis of the mental and physical worlds is counterintuitive and conceptually difficult, yet the belief that something real lies behind this phenomenon, or the idea of it, was a central factor in leading us to explore the shamanism of the Amazon Basin.» — Terence declara contraintuitiva la idea y a la vez la pone como motivo central del viaje.

«At the time when I first read these notes, I doubted what I read. It seemed to go against the grain of common sense; I could not really understand them. Today, after years of education pushed toward understanding the events at La Chorrera, these ideas seem as magically near and yet as far away as they did then.» — Terence consigna su propia duda de entonces y dice que veinte años después las ideas siguen igual de cerca y de lejos.

«We had a theory and we had an experience, and we soon decided to try to link them through an experiment whose results would have been preposterous unless there were some seed of operational truth in the bizarre ideas born in that period.» — Terence enuncia el paso al experimento y declara la condición que lo haría no absurdo: alguna semilla de verdad operativa en las ideas.

«Look how quickly the air conditions have changed. Now there is a ground fog just springing up.» — voz de Dennis al abrir el episodio de la niebla, que el libro cuenta como segunda anomalía del lugar.

«It's some kind of barometric instability that our burning joint was able to push over some critical threshold.» — la explicación que Dennis da de la niebla según Terence, y que Terence consigna que no pudo aceptar.

«And what's more, this is happening for a reason, or rather something, perhaps the mushroom, is using it as an example. It is a way of showing us that small instabilities in a system can trigger large general fluctuations.» — voz de Dennis: adjudica intención a lo ocurrido y nombra al hongo como posible agente, con un perhaps de por medio.

«This rap of Dennis's unsettled me. I could not imagine that his explanation was correct or exactly why he thought it made sense.» — Terence declara que no pudo seguir el razonamiento de su hermano; el troceo corta aquí ante la llamada de nota.

«Of course, none of us could have known that much of the mathematical research of the decades ahead would explore just such ideas under the name of chaos theory and dynamics.]» — nota al pie que el troceo imprime dentro del cuerpo: Terence enlaza desde la escritura aquella idea de su hermano con la teoría del caos.

«It passed through my mind for the first time that he might be spacing out mentally. I used no psychoanalytical jargon in thinking about it, but I noted a reaction in myself that included the idea that he might be unfolding into a mythopoetic reality, or as I thought of it then, "going bananas.» — Terence fecha aquí su primera sospecha sobre el estado mental de su hermano, y la dice con las palabras que dice haber usado entonces.

«With her eyes closed, she saw a strange, elf-like creature rolling a complicated polyhedron along the ground. Each facet of this polyhedron seemed, she said, like a window onto another place in time or another world.» — voz de Ev reportada por McKenna: el poliedro que un elfo hace rodar, con cada cara por ventana a otro tiempo o a otro mundo.

«It's the stone!" I breathed. I could almost see her vision of the lapis philosophorum—the glittering goal of centuries of alchemical and Hermetic speculation glimpsed in the Amazonian night, now seeming a great multi-dimensional jewel, the philosopher's stone, in the keeping of a telluric gnome.» — McKenna identifica la visión de Ev con la lapis philosophorum de la alquimia y la llama joya multidimensional en manos de un gnomo telúrico.

«I seemed to feel the spiritual dreams of the old alchemists, the puffers great and small, who had sought the lapis in the cloudy swirling of their alembics.» — McKenna se pone en la serie de los viejos alquimistas y los nombra con el término de oficio, los sopladores.

«I could feel the golden chain of adepts reaching back into the distant Hellenistic past, the Hermetic Opus, a project vaster than empires and centuries; nothing less than the redemption of fallen humanity through the respiritu-alization of matter.» — McKenna define la Obra hermética como redención de la humanidad caída por la reespiritualización de la materia, y la remonta al pasado helenístico por la cadena áurea de adeptos.

«It is the image of the philosopher's stone as hyperdimensional jewel-become-UFO— the human soul as starship. It is the universal panacea at the end of time, all history being the shock wave of this final actualization of the potential in the human psyche.» — la imagen que McKenna dice conservar hasta hoy: la piedra filosofal como ovni y como nave del alma, y la historia entera como onda de choque de esa actualización final.

«For three days, ever since the glossolalia episode of the twenty-seventh, Dennis had been saying that the energy of the phenomenon was so great that we should not go any further unless we had the greater isolation that the forest house provided.» — McKenna adjudica a su hermano la exigencia de aislamiento, motivada por lo que Dennis llamaba la energía del fenómeno.

«However, in all of our recent surge of speculation, our original ethnobotanical intentions, the search for the elusive Oo-koo-he, had» — McKenna sostiene que el objeto etnobotánico del viaje seguía en pie; el troceo corta por cambio de plana y la frase sigue en la 69 con *not been forgotten*.

«Our immediate intent was to use ayahuasca as a MAO-inhibitor and a problem-solving drug, and to brew and take the Banisteriopsis caapi that Ev and I had gotten from Basilio a few days before.» — el papel que el grupo asigna a la ayahuasca en el plan: inhibidor de la MAO y droga para resolver problemas.

«He had completed writing out the preliminary notes for what became "the experiment at La Chorrera." It is the only written record of his ideas that was actually made at the time, and as such, it is the only piece of written, primary evidence that we have about how we viewed what we were doing as we were doing it.» — McKenna declara el estatuto documental de las notas de su hermano: el único registro escrito hecho en el momento.

«These notes do not of course represent the final form of our theorizing about these matters and are not at all to be taken at face value. Refinement of these ideas has been constant since their creation.» — McKenna acota el valor de esas notas en la misma plana en que las presenta, y avisa que no se tomen al pie de la letra; el troceo corta aquí ante la llamada de nota.

«The theory that is represented in my brother's notes remains the operational basis for understanding the effect that was triggered on March fifth at the conclusion of the experiment.» — McKenna mantiene la teoría de su hermano como base operativa de lo que dice que ocurrió el cinco de marzo.

«They are not, however, for the reader of faint heart, since they read like the words of an alchemical text.» — McKenna compara las notas de su hermano con un texto alquímico y advierte al lector.

«Alchemy is a test of the limits of language as much as a test of the limits of matter. Alchemical machinery runs smoothest in the imagination.» — la definición de alquimia que da McKenna: prueba de los límites del lenguaje tanto como de la materia, y maquinaria que corre mejor en la imaginación.

«Magicians will wish to linger over these alchemical mutterings, which I will help decipher in the next [*The scientific basis of our work is elaborately described in The Invisible Landscape. That work represented our considered, composite opinion as of 1975. Since then these ideas have been much revised as the myths and fallacies spun into the fabric of their first conception have been separated out.] chapter. The rest of my readers might wish to skim over them and hurry on with what is, even without the adumbrations of arcane theory, a ripping good story:» — McKenna reparte a sus lectores en dos y ofrece el libro a la vez como tratado y como relato de aventuras; el troceo corta el tramo por la nota y la frase se completa en la plana siguiente.

«Further experiments with the psycho-audible warp phenomenon yesterday raise some interesting new questions and enhance our ongoing understanding. I chose the term "audible warp " because my experience thus far, coupled with what I have been told, leads me to believe that this all has to do with vocally generating a specific kind of energy field which can rupture three dimensional space.» — cuaderno de Dennis del 2 de marzo de 1971: acuña el término warp audible y lo define como campo de energía generado con la voz capaz de romper el espacio de tres dimensiones.

«I do not understand if the field is electromagnetic, but it seems to bend space in such a way as to turn it upon itself through a higher dimension.» — Dennis declara no saber de qué clase es el campo y conserva esa ignorancia dentro de la propia hipótesis.

«One must take enough psilocybin to allow the sound to be audible. This sound we understand to be the Electron Spin Resonance (ESR) of the psilocybin alkaloids within the mushroom.» — primer paso del procedimiento según Dennis: identifica el sonido con la resonancia de espín electrónico de los alcaloides del hongo.

«The presence of rapidly metabolizing high-energy tryptamines within the ayahuasca acts as an antenna that sensitizes the neural matrix to the spin resonance energy of the Stropharia psilocybin. It is this principle that allows the signal to be made audible.» — Dennis asigna a la ayahuasca el papel de antena que sensibiliza la matriz neural.

«It must then be amplified via the tryptamine admixture antenna to what is felt to be its fullest amplitude. Then, via vocal sound, this energy is placed into the harmine complex within the body and within the mushroom which has been, in some small part,» — Dennis describe la amplificación y la colocación de la energía por la voz; el troceo corta por cambio de plana y la frase sigue en la 70 con *cooled to absolute zero*.

«cooled to absolute zero—the temperature at which molecular vibration ceases, through absorption of the psilocybin ESR pulses.» — continuación en la plana siguiente: Dennis afirma que parte del hongo queda enfriada al cero absoluto por absorción de los pulsos.

«Since harmine complexes are merely further down the same bio-synthetic pathway that converts tryptophane into psilocybin, it is possible to consider the ESR tone of psilocybin as a harmonic overtone of harmine and vice versa.» — el argumento bioquímico de Dennis para tratar los dos tonos como armónicos el uno del otro.

«Using harmonic overtones, it is possible to sound a tone which will cancel one or more of its octaves reflected in the harmonic scales above and below it.» — Dennis enuncia el principio acústico en que apoya todo el opus.

«This is easily demonstrated on a cello: Suppose a tone, say the open string A, is sounded. The sound is a wave-vibration of air molecules caused by the string, which then acts as a resonator. The tone is heard mostly loudly in the key in which it was sounded» — el símil del violonchelo con que Dennis explica los armónicos; el troceo corta el tramo antes del paréntesis de la frase siguiente.

«It is possible to cancel out the original tone by touching the string very lightly at certain harmonic points. When this is done, the overtones in the higher and lower registers become audible.» — el paso que Dennis toma por modelo de la cancelación molecular que propone.

«When this understanding is applied to molecular ESR res-onation, it remains essentially the same in principle.» — Dennis traslada el principio acústico a la resonancia molecular y declara que se mantiene igual; el troceo imprime la palabra partida como res-onation.

«This leaves the momentarily electrically canceled and superconductive psilocybin suspended in a low energy electromagnetic field generated by the harmine ESR. In so doing, it will regain its original, but now superconductivity amplified, ESR signal, which will permanently lock it into a superconductive state.» — el núcleo de la teoría de Dennis: la psilocibina quedaría permanentemente fijada en estado superconductor.

«This will cause those molecules metabolizing within the body and bonded to the neural DNA to instantly drop to absolute zero.» — Dennis afirma que las moléculas ligadas al ADN neural caerían al cero absoluto dentro del propio cuerpo.

«Clearly this harmine-psilocybin-DNA complex must immediately separate itself from the cellular matrix. There is great danger» — Dennis deduce la separación del complejo de la matriz celular y anuncia el peligro; el troceo corta por cambio de plana y la frase sigue en la 71 con *at this moment, but pathways exist to deal with it*.

«at this moment, but pathways exist to deal with it. We will find that these molecules condense out of our bodies accompanied by a sound.» — continuación en la plana siguiente: Dennis afirma que hay vías para manejar ese peligro y que las moléculas se condensarían fuera del cuerpo con un sonido.

«The opus can now be briefly summarized: • The mushroom must be taken and heard. • The ayahuasca must be taken and charged with overtonal ESR of the psilocybin via voice-imparted, amplified sound. • The ESR resonance of the psilocybin in the mushrooms will be canceled and will drop into a superconducting state; a small portion of the physical matter of the mushroom will be obliterated.» — Dennis resume su opus en pasos numerados, con el hongo oído, la ayahuasca cargada por la voz y la obliteración de parte de la materia del hongo; el troceo conserva las viñetas.

«The result will be a molecular aggregate of hyperdimen-sional, superconducting matter that receives and sends messages transmitted by thought, that stores and retrieves information in a holographic fashion in neural DNA, and that depends on superconductive harmine as a transducer energy source and superconductive RNA as a temporal matrix.» — el producto que Dennis anuncia: un agregado de materia hiperdimensional y superconductora que recibe y manda mensajes por pensamiento y guarda información en el ADN neural de modo holográfico.

«This aggregate will be a living and functioning part of the brain of the molecular "singer" who creates it.» — Dennis declara que el agregado pasaría a ser parte viva del cerebro de quien lo canta, y llama cantor molecular a ese operador.

«A molecule that is higher dimensional matter would, by this theory» — Dennis acota la estabilidad del producto a su propia teoría; el troceo corta por cambio de plana y la frase sigue en la 71 con *be stable as long as it remains in a superconducting configuration*.

«be stable as long as it remains in a superconducting configuration, probably forever, since it is powered by its own ESR energy. It will then be responsive to command via endogenous tryptamine ESR (thoughts), it will be keyed into our collective DNA, and it will contain harmine as a superconductive transceiver and power source.» — continuación: Dennis atribuye al producto duración probablemente eterna, obediencia al pensamiento y enlace con el ADN colectivo.

«Talk about a steep learning curve! I had never heard my little brother carry on so.» — Terence consigna su propia reacción ante el cuaderno de su hermano, y es el reconocimiento de un cambio y no una adhesión.

«He said that the mind, through an act of will, could use the singing voice to interact with the brain as though it were a color organ and holographic library all wrapped up into one.» — Terence reporta la tesis de su hermano sobre la voz cantada como interfaz con el cerebro.

«Dennis pointed the way toward a kind of Orphic science where the great advances would be made by using only the interaction of the quarternity of singing voice, mind, brain, and imagination.» — Terence nombra ciencia órfica a lo que propone su hermano y da su cuaternidad de elementos.

«He was saying that the laws of acoustics and low amperage bioelectrical phenomena, and our bodies, could be manipulated to give the experimenter a doorway into exploring states of matter and realms of physics involving high energy and low temperature that are, currently at least, supposed to be the exclusive province of researchers totally dependent on extremely sophisticated and powerful instruments.» — Terence reporta el alcance que Dennis daba al método: llegar sin instrumental a estados de la materia reservados a los grandes laboratorios.

«It became possible for a moment to dream that the powers of shamanism, derived from a millennium-old knowledge of microphysics and bioelectronics, was far in advance of our own. The doorway that seemed to swing open was a doorway out of historical time, back toward some sort of archaic completion nearly forgotten.» — Terence formula en potencial y por un momento la tesis mayor del libro: que el chamanismo iría muy por delante de la ciencia y abriría una puerta fuera del tiempo histórico.

«Perhaps the shamanic traditions of this planet are the keepers of an understanding that uses the human body/brain/mind as its vehicle, leaving the present state of the art, which our own "scientific method" has achieved, a very poor second.» — McKenna sostiene con un perhaps que las tradiciones chamánicas guardan un entendimiento que usa el cuerpo por vehículo y deja atrás al método científico.

«This is really an old idea—the siren song of Pythagoras—that the mind is more powerful than any imaginable particle accelerator, more sensitive than» — McKenna remonta la idea a Pitágoras y la llama canto de sirena; el troceo corta por cambio de plana y la frase sigue en la 73.

«To the extent that I grasped what Dennis was saying, he thought, and it seemed a magnificent» — Terence acota expresamente el alcance de su propia comprensión antes de resumir a su hermano; el troceo corta por cambio de plana y la frase sigue en la 72 con *thought to me, that the body is like an undiscovered musical and scientific instrument*.

«thought to me, that the body is like an undiscovered musical and scientific instrument whose potential lies all around and within us, but of which we are unaware.» — continuación en la plana siguiente: la tesis de Dennis según Terence, el cuerpo como instrumento musical y científico cuyo alcance ignoramos.

«any radio receiver or the largest optical telescope, more complete in its grasp of information than any computer: that the human body— its organs, its voice, its power of locomotion, and its imagination— is a more-than-sufficient means for the exploration of any place, time, or energy level in the universe.» — continuación del canto de sirena pitagórico en la plana siguiente: McKenna sostiene que el cuerpo humano basta y sobra para explorar cualquier lugar, tiempo o nivel de energía del universo.

«It was this idea that Dennis would set out to prove, to realize in the actual hardware of the dimension-roving lenticular vehicle that he was convinced could be generated out of his own DNA and living organisms present at hand in the Amazonian environment—the mushroom and the ayahuasca.» — McKenna declara qué se proponía probar su hermano y con qué: un vehículo lenticular generado a partir de su propio ADN y de los organismos del lugar.

«He called it hyper-carbolation. According to his theory, you could use the singing voice and superconductivity (or the complete disappearance of electrical resistance, usually only possible with temperatures at absolute zero) to drive the molecules of psychedelic compounds into states of permanent association—or bonding—with living human DNA.» — Terence nombra la doctrina central del opus, la hipercarbolación, y la resume como enlace permanente de los compuestos psicodélicos con el ADN humano vivo.

«If you strike the chord and then squelch it, you can still hear the harmonic overtones, a phenomenon that had fascinated Pythagoras.» — Terence vuelve sobre los armónicos y adjudica a Pitágoras la fascinación por ellos.

«The same phenomenon that produces harmonic overtones can be used to still the movements of molecules. In very localized areas, perhaps only a few thousand angstroms across, one can produce low temperatures with audio cancellation. Molecular motion is a type of vibration and in the presence of just the right audio input such molecular motion will cease.» — el paso decisivo del razonamiento según Terence: la cancelación acústica aplicada al movimiento molecular en zonas de pocos miles de angstroms.

«Dennis felt he had figured out a way to blow the locked doors of paradise right off their hinges using psychoactive compounds, psilocybin, the tryptamine complex, and the beta-carbolines that occur in ayahuasca.» — Terence adjudica a su hermano la convicción de haber hallado cómo abrir las puertas del paraíso, y nombra los compuestos implicados.

«This is interesting because psychiatrist Claudio Naranjo had reported in The Healing Journey that 50 percent of his subjects who took harmine, a beta-carboline occuring in ayahuasca, reported a buzzing in the head.» — Terence trae como apoyo externo el dato que atribuye a Claudio Naranjo en The Healing Journey sobre el zumbido en la cabeza en la mitad de sus sujetos.

«It was not associated with other kinds of psychedelics; it seemed to be uniquely associated with these harmine compounds. The Jivaro shamans of Ecuador also report a buzzing in the head.» — Terence acota el dato a los compuestos de harmina y lo cruza con lo que reportan los chamanes jíbaros.

«Dennis's idea was that when ayahuasca is metabolizing through one's neural matrix in the brain, a sound is heard.» — Terence formula la idea de su hermano en su forma más corta y se la adjudica a él.

«The hallucinogens we were interested in have free rings, as does DNA, the molecule at the center of the genetic machinery of all life.» — el punto en que la analogía se cierra: alucinógenos y ADN comparten, dice el libro, el anillo libre.

«Here was where Dennis made his leap into delusion or illumination, for he began to insist that he could do things with this sound.» — Terence nombra el salto de su hermano con las dos lecturas puestas una al lado de la otra, delirio o iluminación, y no elige.

«Now, from this theoretical basis, we take flight.» — Terence marca él mismo dónde el razonamiento deja de ser técnico.

«Now a peculiar property of low temperatures is that very high bonding energies appear between molecules. A molecule close to absolute zero will bond to anything. It just forces its way into the structure.» — la propiedad física con que el libro justifica el enlace permanente que el opus busca.

«The harmine molecule, which is structured like a little bell, gives a bell-like chiming and buzzing sound. If we come on it right and cancel it and there is neural DNA active in the brain, the electrical configuration of harmine is enough like the molecular configuration of adenine, one of the bases in DNA, that it will replace it.» — voz de Dennis: describe la harmina como campanita y sostiene que reemplazaría a la adenina en el ADN por semejanza de configuración.

«It will bond through into the chain. And when it is bonded in, its ring will become activated. It is the same size as adenine, but it's a little more complicated. It has a free resonance ring.» — Dennis completa el mecanismo del reemplazo y apoya la sustitución en el tamaño y en el anillo libre.

«Now the normal ESR of harmine is a simple signal, but the electron spin configuration of DNA is very, very complicated. It is a broad band. When the harmine goes in there it will cease to broadcast its own resonation because it will have become very tightly bonded into the structure of the macro-molecule. It will instead begin to broadcast the» — Dennis explica por qué la molécula insertada dejaría de emitir su propia señal; el troceo corta por cambio de plana y la frase sigue en la 75 con *ESR resonation of the DNA*.

«ESR resonation of the DNA. That's it. If you have followed it this far, the rest is easy. DNA is what you are. The physical form is just a lot of juicy macro-physical crystals caused by gene expression, you know, the result of enzymes set in motion and coded by DNA.» — continuación en la plana siguiente: Dennis identifica a la persona con su ADN y llama a la forma física resultado de la expresión génica.

«Neural DNA is known to be non-metabolizing. It does not go away. The meat on your body comes and goes every few years. Your skeleton is not the same one you had five years ago, but neural DNA is an exception. It is there for all time. You come into the world with it. It records and it is an antenna for memory.» — la premisa biológica de Dennis: el ADN neural no se renueva y es, dice, antena para la memoria.

«Not only our personal memory, but any entity or organism which has DNA in it; there is a way to find a connection to it.» — Dennis extiende el alcance de esa antena a cualquier organismo con ADN.

«This is how we open a passage to the Divine Imagination, this is how William Blake understood Redemption. This is now within reach.» — Dennis nombra la Imaginación Divina y atribuye a William Blake esa comprensión de la Redención; es la voz de Dennis y el libro no la discute aquí.

«It will tell you everything—everything that can be known in the world of space and time because it contains your own and everyone else's records.» — la promesa máxima de Dennis: acceso a todo lo cognoscible en el espacio y el tiempo por los registros del propio ADN y el ajeno.

«We are all connected through this magical substance, which is what makes life possible and which causes it to take on its myriad forms. All DNA is the same. It is the settings that are different; you get butterflies, mastodons, or human beings, depending on the settings.» — Dennis llama sustancia mágica al ADN y hace de las diferencias entre especies una cuestión de ajustes.

«Or so you say," was my noncommittal reply. But I had the distinct impression that I did glimpse his meaning.» — Terence marca su respuesta como no comprometida y a la vez declara haber entrevisto el sentido; el libro deja las dos cosas.

«Organisms have enfolded in their embryology, in their morphology, a message about the structure of the larger universe. Mysticism has always insisted on this. Molecular biology as the inheritor of the theory of evolution seems to confirm it.» — Terence sostiene por su cuenta que los organismos llevan plegado un mensaje sobre la estructura del universo mayor, y pone al misticismo y a la biología molecular del mismo lado.

«Perhaps life is a strategy for amplifying quantum mechanical indeterminacy to a level where a macrophysical chemical system, in effect human beings, can experience and understand it?» — McKenna ofrece su propia hipótesis sobre la vida en forma de pregunta y con perhaps por delante.

«If one of us could pharmacologically redesign our neurocellular chemistry, there might indeed be strange new realms of perception and understanding to be explored, brave new worlds of the imagination based on new ratios of neurotransmitters in the still-evolving brains of human beings.» — McKenna condiciona los mundos nuevos a un rediseño farmacológico de la química neurocelular, y lo deja en might.

«I thought, "Who am I to judge?» — la abstención con que Terence cierra el razonamiento de su hermano.

«I could imagine any number of science fiction possibilities, provided that I was not asked to believe, that I was about to be present personally at their discovery or unleashing.» — Terence fija dónde estaba su límite: podía imaginar lo que fuera mientras no le pidieran creer que lo iba a presenciar.

«But this is what Dennis was saying: We had somehow stumbled upon or been led to the trigger experience for the entire human world that would transform the ontological basis of reality so that mind and matter everywhere would become the same thing and reflect the human will perfectly.» — Terence enuncia la tesis de su hermano en su forma más extrema: haber dado con el experimento disparador que volvería lo mismo a la mente y a la materia.

«Yet something very passive, yet ever present, was there elaborating these ideas in our minds—something that we had thought of for some days as "The Mushroom."» — Terence adjudica la elaboración de esas ideas a algo presente y pasivo que el grupo llamaba el Hongo, y lo deja entrecomillado.

«He thought that as the superconducting state became stabilized there should be a marked lowering of temperature in the immediate area.» — la predicción comprobable que Dennis deriva de su teoría y que hace posible la prueba parcial.

«After a couple of preliminary low, mechanical buzzes, Dennis made a sound very similar to the one he had unleashed in the knoll house three days before. This sound had an extremely peculiar quality and, as it rose in intensity, I looked down at the hair on my arms and saw it rise as goose-flesh formed and a wave of intense shivering swept over me.» — lo que Terence dice haber sentido durante la prueba parcial, descrito por sus efectos corporales.

«I frankly could not tell whether a real wave of very cold air had swept over me or whether that particular sound had somehow made my body react as though it was being exposed to cold air.» — Terence deja sin resolver la única prueba que el libro declara haber hecho antes del experimento, y formula las dos posibilidades.

«It was not lost on me that if the effect had truly generated a blast of cold air, then it had violated the known laws of physics.» — Terence consigna lo que estaría en juego si el efecto hubiera sido real, sin afirmar que lo fuera.

«But I did not care to experiment further— the whole thing had an eerie aura about it and if the effect was real, who knew what could come of pushing it too far?» — la razón que Terence da para no repetir la prueba, formulada como pregunta.

«The whole thing seemed absurd and yet very compelling, like a hypnotic game into which one becomes absorbed in spite of oneself.» — Terence describe su propia posición con el símil del juego hipnótico en que uno se absorbe a su pesar.

«We returned to our camp and mentioned to all present that Dennis had generated the wave of cold air that he had predicted from the theory. But it was all sufficiently ambiguous that no one felt drawn to comment.» — Terence consigna que la prueba no convenció a nadie por ambigua, y lo dice sin atenuarlo.

«had no basis whatsoever to judge what I was reading. My brother's scientific speculation seemed to have acquired a life of its own.» — Terence declara que carecía de base para juzgar lo que leía y describe la especulación de su hermano como algo con vida propia; el troceo parte la frase por cambio de plana y el pronombre inicial queda en la plana 72.

«But not all compounds have an electron spin resonation; to exhibit ESR activity a» — la condición técnica que el libro pone a la resonancia de espín; el troceo corta por cambio de plana y la frase sigue en la 74 con *molecule must have a ring free of molecular encumbrances*.

«molecule must have a ring free of molecular encumbrances. All compounds with a free ring will resonate under certain conditions.» — continuación en la plana siguiente: el anillo libre como requisito, que es lo que permitirá la analogía con el ADN.

«He was on to something very strange; his word-pictures caused reality to shimmer and crinkle at the edges. He was really in touch with this bubbling obsidian fourth dimensional fluid that we were going to stabilize into a usable tool. And end history. And go to the stars.» — Terence describe el efecto que le hacían las palabras de su hermano y enuncia el programa en tres frases cortas: estabilizar el fluido, acabar la historia, ir a las estrellas.

«At first, we had been happy heads trying to explore one last fairy tale so we could be rationalists forever, and instead we encountered something enormous. Something alive and very old and very strange. Something peculiar in every extreme.» — Terence declara el vuelco del propósito: iban a agotar un último cuento de hadas para poder ser racionalistas y se toparon, dice, con algo vivo, viejo y ajeno.

«I was quite uncreative in this period. I had taken the mushroom and was ecstatic all the time. It was the only time in my life when I was truly content simply to be.» — Terence consigna su propio estado en esas semanas y lo declara único en su vida.

«I had quite effortlessly formed the assumption, which I assumed was shared by all, that we would never leave La Chorrera. Leaving seemed unimaginable since all things seemed to be perfectly present there.» — Terence consigna la suposición que se le había formado sin esfuerzo, no volver a salir de La Chorrera, y la marca como suya y como supuesta de todos.

«His vision into which my credulity was dissolving went beyond anything that anyone I knew had ever dreamed of.» — Terence describe su propia posición con el verbo disolverse: la credulidad suya se iba en la visión de su hermano.

«We had set the following evening, that of March 4, as the day we would test the full theory of the harmine-DNA bond.» — la fecha del experimento, fijada por el propio grupo.

«I noted with unusual satisfaction that this day corresponded with an idiotic pun that had stuck with me since earliest childhood: "What day of the year is a command?" Answer: "March fourth.» — McKenna cuenta el retruécano infantil con que leyó la fecha; el libro lo trae como una más de las coincidencias que carga de sentido.

«Absurdly, the coincidence of the date with that pun seemed part of a universal secret plan unraveling to bring us to the history-culminating moment when humanity would march into a higher dimension.» — McKenna califica de absurda su propia lectura de la coincidencia en la misma frase en que la refiere.

«My own thoughts seemed to me to be nothing like the super-scientific theory formation that my brother was involved in. I was baffled by much of what was going on.» — Terence separa su propio registro del de su hermano y declara no haber entendido buena parte.

«We were operating in a world where scientific method, ritual, and participation mystique were inseparably intertwined. Our own minds and bodies were to be the retorts, the vessels, of the psycho-alchemical transformation that we were experimenting with.» — McKenna describe el estatuto de lo que hacían: método científico, rito y participación mística entrelazados, con los propios cuerpos por vasijas de una transformación psicoalquímica.

«That evening we made a tape of our intentions, but unfortunately our tape recorder was not in good working order and that tape has proven impossible to salvage. I greatly regret this loss, since the emotional content of what we were experiencing would come across most clearly from our own words.» — McKenna consigna la pérdida del único registro sonoro de las intenciones del grupo y dice qué se perdió con él.

«Hyper-carbolation: This is what we had named the process of altering the neural DNA and changing man into an eternal hyper-dimensional being.» — la definición que el propio grupo dio a la hipercarbolación: alterar el ADN neural y convertir al hombre en ser hiperdimensional eterno.

«We spoke of it as the "birth of an idea" in a sense whose literalness is not easy to convey to minds that have not brushed with schizophrenia.» — McKenna nombra la esquizofrenia al describir la literalidad con que hablaban entonces, y lo hace sin adjudicar diagnóstico.

«We hoped that mind, driven by a will to the good, could control the process of generation and guide this process toward the production of the imaginationmodulated resurrection body so dear to the Patristic Fathers, sixteenth-century alchemists, and modern UFO enthusiasts.» — McKenna nombra el cuerpo de resurrección y pone en una sola serie a los Padres de la Iglesia, a los alquimistas del siglo dieciséis y a los aficionados a los ovnis; el troceo une a fin de renglón imagination-modulated y lo devuelve como imaginationmodulated.

«In this notion we were following Jung, who early on realized that the flying saucer is an image of the self, the suppressed psychic totality that lurks behind the apparent dualism of mind and nature.» — McKenna adjudica a Jung la lectura del platillo volador como imagen del sí mismo, y declara haberlo seguido en eso.

«The hope was that out of biology, Tantra could» — el troceo corta aquí por cambio de plana; la frase sigue en la 78 con *summon the reality of the living stone, the chimerical unicorn of the alchemical quest*.

«summon the reality of the living stone, the chimerical unicorn of the alchemical quest made at last to lay his head in the maiden's lap. We dreamed, in short, of a union of Spirit and Matter.» — continuación en la plana siguiente: McKenna nombra la piedra viva y el unicornio quimérico de la búsqueda alquímica, y resume el sueño como unión de Espíritu y Materia.

«The dead: We believed that hyper-carbolation was to be the shamanic defeat of death, that those doorways through which the dead enter daily were to be finally thrown open to a hyper-carbolated humanity, which would then have freedom of movement to and from an eternity in which all the members of the species existed as a living reality.» — McKenna declara qué creían entonces sobre la muerte: que la hipercarbolación sería su derrota chamánica y abriría el paso de ida y vuelta a una eternidad.

«The presence of giants from the human past—Carl Jung, Newton and Nabokov, Bruno, Pythagoras, and Heraclitus— was an overwhelming and all-inclusive intuition that we shared and could not ignore.» — McKenna nombra a los que decían sentir presentes, de Jung a Heráclito, y llama a eso intuición compartida e inevitable.

«There seemed to be an ideological lineage, the golden chain, whose collective task was the shattering of the historical continuum through the generation of the living philosophical lapis of hyper-carbolated humanity.» — McKenna nombra la cadena áurea y le asigna por tarea colectiva romper el continuo histórico mediante la lapis viviente.

«Now, as the secret work of human history, the» — el troceo corta aquí por cambio de plana; la frase sigue en la 79 con *generation of Adam's cosmic body, lost since paradise*.

«generation of Adam's cosmic body, lost since paradise, neared completion, these shades stirred and pressed near to our Amazonian campsite.» — continuación en la plana siguiente: McKenna llama obra secreta de la historia a la generación del cuerpo cósmico de Adán perdido desde el paraíso.

«Our destiny was apparently to be the human atoms critical to the transformation of Homo sapiens into galaxy-roving bodhisattvas, the culmination and quintessence of the highest aspirations of star-coveting humanity.» — McKenna enuncia el destino que se atribuían y lo marca con apparently: átomos humanos críticos de la transformación en bodhisattvas capaces de recorrer la galaxia.

«The psychologically minded will recognize this as a description of messianic ego inflation. Such it is, but we felt these things as anyone would feel them if they truly believed they were at such a point in history. We wondered, "Why? Why us?» — McKenna se adelanta al diagnóstico de inflación mesiánica del ego, lo acepta como descripción y a la vez sostiene que cualquiera sentiría eso en ese lugar.

«To such questions the mushroom spoke in my mind without hesitation: "Because you have diligently sought the good and because you trusted no human being more than yourself.» — primera vez que el libro pone al hongo hablando en primera persona dentro de la mente de McKenna; la voz es la del hongo y McKenna solo la reporta.

«The emotional impact of these sorts of inner exchanges was intense beyond anything I have ever experienced. I felt humbly grateful to the point of tears. I felt exalted.» — McKenna consigna el efecto emocional de esos intercambios interiores y lo declara el mayor de su vida.

«Where the elder shamanism had failed, we would succeed.» — la frase en que McKenna sitúa lo suyo por encima del chamanismo antiguo; el libro la conserva como pensamiento de entonces.

«All the pain and suffering and war and desperation would somehow be repaid and made right through the intercession of the mystery of higher dimensions and a backward flowing logic of time that somehow undoes what has already happened.» — la promesa retroactiva que McKenna atribuía al opus: una lógica del tiempo que corre hacia atrás y deshace lo ya ocurrido.

«The lenticular shape of the approaching philosopher's stone seemed to be everywhere that I looked. Every shape and form around me was pregnant with its unearthly, opalescent depths.» — McKenna consigna la forma lenticular de la piedra filosofal vista en todas partes, que es también la forma del platillo del libro.

«People have been looking into fires like this for thousands and thousands of years. The squeal of these coals is the release of ionized plasma and in the flickering waves of free electrons thus created, one can see into the past and the future. The fire is the place where the ideas come from.» — voz de Dennis junto al fuego: atribuye a las ondas de electrones libres la visión del pasado y del futuro y llama al fuego el sitio de donde vienen las ideas.

«I felt our ancestors then, seemingly present on the other side of the interface represented by the flame. "What is happening to us?" I again asked myself, but said nothing, silence seeming more eloquent.» — Terence consigna su propia pregunta callada, que el libro repite como estribillo.

«It is now possible to reconstruct the physical-chemical idea that has evolved in the process of understanding this phenomenon: i.e., the fourth-dimensional rotation of matter.» — cuaderno de Dennis del 4 de marzo de 1971: nombra el objeto del experimento, la rotación tetradimensional de la materia.

«The psilocybin that occurs in the mushroom acts as an antenna for picking up and amplifying the harmonic ESR tones of all tryptophane-derived compounds of all living organisms within its range.» — Dennis atribuye al hongo el papel de antena para los tonos de todos los organismos vivos dentro de su alcance.

«Since the psilocybin undergoing metabolism is superconductive, this means that its range of reception is theoretically infinite. The antenna does, to some degree, pick up a signal whose ultimate origin is the totality of living creatures; but since the psilocybin metabolism is carried on within the brain (or mushroom) at a very low voltage level, the antenna behaves as though its range was limited, even though it is superconductive.» — Dennis deduce alcance infinito y enseguida lo acota por el bajo voltaje del metabolismo, con lo que salva su propia hipótesis.

«I see this notion as an effort to explain the very real sense of informational interconnectedness that pervaded our experience, which occurred in one of the densest tropical forests on the planet.» — Terence lee la hipótesis de su hermano como intento de explicar la sensación de interconexión informativa, y llama muy real a esa sensación.

«We did seem to be in touch with the living mind of the» — el troceo corta aquí por cambio de plana; la frase sigue en la 81 con *tropical forest*.

«Perhaps tryptamine compounds are the mediators of the signaling mechanisms of the command-and-control structure that regulates and integrates whole ecosystems.» — la hipótesis que McKenna propone por su cuenta, con perhaps: las triptaminas como mediadoras de la estructura que regula ecosistemas enteros.

«It seems clear, therefore, that the signal, which when we are intoxicated on the mushroom in this ecologically dense area can be discerned so clearly, originates in the ESR resonation of the ayahuasca plant, though perhaps all the biosphere is picked up and broadcast, amplified via the ayahuasca superconductive transducer.» — Dennis adjudica el origen de la señal a la ayahuasca y admite entre incisos que quizá sea la biosfera entera.

«This transfer of superconductive compounds charged within the body to a superconductive template prepared within the mushroom will not occur in three-dimensional space; no actual physical transfer will be visible, as the organically processed superconductive material will bond itself to the mushroom template through a higher spatial dimension.» — el paso que Dennis declara invisible: la transferencia no ocurriría en el espacio de tres dimensiones.

«It is at this point that the rationalist will despair, for indeed what abyss of untested theoretical and perhaps fanciful assumptions hides behind the phrase "through a higher spatial dimension"?» — Terence marca el punto exacto en que el argumento de su hermano deja de ser comprobable, y lo dice con la palabra abismo.

«Like the vocabulary of alchemy, his words are a blend of modern scientific formalisms and Hermetic aspiration. He had created a new alchemical dispensation and raised the specter of alchemical hope, phoenix-like, from the ashes of modernity.» — Terence describe el lenguaje de su hermano como mezcla de formalismo científico moderno y aspiración hermética, y lo llama una dispensación alquímica nueva.

«The result will be the work of works—that wonder which cannot be told—four dimensions captured and delineated in three.» — Dennis nombra el producto la obra de las obras con la fórmula de los tratados alquímicos, y lo define como cuatro dimensiones capturadas en tres.

«The stone will be all things; but the elements which are bound together in hyperspace to form it are among the most common natural products, and the function and place of each in the stone can be understood.» — Dennis sostiene que la piedra será todas las cosas y a la vez que sus elementos son productos naturales comunes y comprensibles.

«The stone is a solid-state hyperdimensional circuit that is quadripartite in structure:» — la definición operativa que Dennis da de la piedra: un circuito hiperdimensional de estado sólido con cuatro partes.

«First, psilocybin, charged in the mushroom to act as a template on which the rest of the circuit is condensed. In the final state the psilocybin acts as a superconducting antenna to pick up on information diffused through space and time.» — la primera parte del circuito según Dennis: la psilocibina como plantilla y luego como antena superconductora.

«Second, the superconductively charged harmine complex within the stone will act as its transmitter and energy source. It is interesting to note that the same energy that sustains the antenna circuits in superconductivity will sustain the whole of the device.» — la segunda parte: la harmina como transmisor y fuente de energía del propio artefacto.

«The third component of the stone is the DNA bonded to and resonating through the harmine. It will constitute the hyperdimensional, holographic memory of the device and will contain and explicate the genetic history of all species. It will be the collective memory of the device, and all times and places and conceivable forms will be accessible within its matrix.» — la tercera parte: el ADN como memoria holográfica que contendría la historia genética de todas las especies.

«The fourth part of the circuit will be the RNA, which will also be superconductively charged. [Normally the function of RNA is to "read" the molecular code of DNA and to transcribe its genes into usable protein molecules.] Through its function of selfreplication turned through hyperspace, the RNA will be able to project a wave form, a three-dimensional holographic image, and thus it will give form instantly to any idea. It will perform the same function it has always had—the process of replication through time. But henceforth replication will be subject, in part, to the whim of consciousness.» — la cuarta parte: el ARN proyectando imágenes holográficas, con lo que la replicación quedaría sujeta a la consciencia; el corchete con la definición de la función del ARN es del propio volumen; el troceo une a fin de renglón self-replication y lo devuelve como selfreplication.

«Why I and my companions have been selected to understand and trigger the gestalt wave of understanding that will be the unleashing of the hyperspatial Zeitgeist is becoming more clear to me each moment, though I know I won't understand our mission fully until the work is complete.» — Dennis se declara seleccionado para disparar lo que llama el Zeitgeist hiperespacial, y acota que no entenderá la misión hasta terminarla.

«We will be instructed in the use of the stone by some infinitely wise, infinitely adept fellow member of the hyperspatial community; of that I feel sure. It will be the taking of the keys to galactarian citizenship.» — Dennis anuncia instructores de la comunidad hiperespacial y llama a eso la toma de las llaves de la ciudadanía galáctica; lo afirma con of that I feel sure.

«I speculate that we will be the first five human beings to be instructed in its use— our mission will be to selectively disseminate it to the rest of humanity, but slowly, and in such a way as to ease the cultural shock.» — Dennis cifra en cinco a los primeros instruidos y les asigna la tarea de diseminar la piedra despacio; la frase encabeza con I speculate.

«And so now, against all probabilities and chance and circumstance, my companions and I have been given the peculiar privilege of knowing history will end.» — la afirmación más extrema del cuaderno de Dennis: saber que la historia va a terminar.

«As this monumentally inscrutable statement intimates, Dennis was in the process of turning some sort of corner. Under the influence of his ideas and images, our lives had become pure science fiction.» — Terence califica el pasaje de su hermano de monumentalmente inescrutable y describe el efecto sobre el grupo.

«But what had really changed? Were we about to take the tiller of history into our hands, or was this one more sadly misguided reach for the power of an archetype that must always slide though one's fingers?» — Terence deja la evaluación del episodio en dos preguntas enfrentadas y no elige entre ellas; el volumen imprime though por through, sic.

«toward in three dimensions is the passing of this wave of understanding into a higher dimension, the realm of the atemporal.» — voz de Dennis: define el suceso esperado como paso de la onda de entendimiento a una dimensión superior, la de lo atemporal.

«As it happens, it will make this transition through one of us.» — Dennis anuncia que el tránsito ocurrirá a través de uno de ellos, sin decir cuál.

«Its joy will then be complete when in a vast amount of time it has constellated full understanding throughout creation.» — el término que Dennis le pone al proceso, dicho en registro devocional y a plazo enorme.

«If we trigger the eschatology, we will appear to act in the role of the Anti-Christ, but the real Anti-Christ is history's distorted reflection of the Christ at the end of time—the cosmic Adam-anthropos.» — Dennis se adelanta a la lectura que los pondría del lado del Anticristo y la reinterpreta como reflejo distorsionado del Cristo del fin del tiempo; el troceo imprime el nombre con guion.

«It is interesting that among Maza-tecans and other tribal groups of the Central Mexican highlands the idea of Christ is linked to the mushrooms—is this syncretism or prophecy?» — Dennis consigna el vínculo entre Cristo y los hongos entre los mazatecos y deja la alternativa abierta en pregunta; el troceo imprime Maza-tecans partido.

«By now positions relative to "the phenomenon" had polarized us into irreconcilability.» — Terence declara irreconciliables las posiciones del grupo la víspera del experimento.

«We will obtain a metabolizing, living mushroom. Dig up the shit around it and physically move the whole thing to the hut. We want to do the bonding in the mushroom because we don't know what it would be like if it were done in our own bodies. It is wide open.» — voz de Dennis dando el procedimiento: hacer el enlace en el hongo y no en el cuerpo, porque no saben qué pasaría.

«With your voice, your mind, and a mushroom, these things can be done.» — la fórmula más corta del opus según Dennis: voz, mente y un hongo.

«Particle accelerators, all of that, no! With the energy that is hundreds of times less than the energy in an ordinary flashlight battery, one can probably rend space/time apart.» — Dennis contrapone su método al de los aceleradores de partículas y cifra la energía necesaria por debajo de una pila de linterna; el troceo corta la frase por cambio de plana.

«Dave's objections to what we were doing were emotional and fearful, along the lines of "Man was not meant to know these things." Hardly what we expected from a colleague.» — Terence reporta la objeción de Dave en sus propios términos y la descalifica por venir de un colega; el desacuerdo queda consignado sin armonizar.

«The light of a first-quarter moon revealed the tattered sky and, directly above the path returning to the river, an enormous black thunderhead rearing its twisting and writhing form up through thousands of feet of moisture-and electricity-saturated air. It looked like an enormous centipede with broad strokes of lightning flickering out of its lower portions, stroking the tops of the jungle canopy with a roar that, when it broke over us, was as deafening as field artillery.» — la tormenta que el grupo lee como presagio, descrita con el símil del ciempiés.

«It's a backwash from the approaching breakthrough. It says to me there is now no doubt that we'll succeed!» — voz de Dennis ante la tormenta: la lee como reflujo del suceso por venir y saca de ella una certeza.

«The sudden electrical storm and its impact on us was taken as an omen by both points of view. Dennis, Ev, and I assumed it was associated with a feedback of effects from the experiment whose performance was only a few hours ahead of us. Dave and Vanessa thought it a light dose of the wrath of God for having such Promethean aspirations.» — Terence consigna las dos lecturas del mismo suceso, la del reflujo y la de la cólera divina, una al lado de la otra.

«The possibility that it had nothing to do with us at all went unexamined.» — la tercera posibilidad, que McKenna consigna expresamente como la que nadie examinó.

«Is this the healing of my split-T that my astrologer predicted for this time?" Scorpio Vanessa asked of no one in particular.» — voz de Vanessa, que lee la tormenta por su carta astral; McKenna la reporta con el signo de ella puesto delante.

«Since then, having seen ayahuasca brewed professionally by shamans in Peru, I am sure that our brew was too weak to have had any major role in what followed.» — McKenna enmienda desde la escritura su propia versión de entonces y quita a la ayahuasca el papel causal.

«It was the mushroom that was the causal agent, if a causal agent could be isolated.» — McKenna adjudica la causa al hongo y en la misma frase pone en duda que haya causa aislable.

«We had hung the chrysalis of a Morpho near the mushroom so that animal tissue undergoing metamorphosis would also be represented in the target area tableau.» — el detalle del dispositivo que McKenna consigna sin justificarlo: una crisálida de Morpho colgada junto al hongo para representar tejido animal en metamorfosis; el troceo parte Morpho a fin de renglón como Mor-pho y lo devuelve unido.

«What was science and what ritual? We did not know and could not tell. All bets were covered. Poetic inspiration and scientific insight had become fused.» — McKenna declara indistinguibles la ciencia y el rito en lo que hicieron, y lo dice como constatación y no como reproche.

«Now, years after that evening, not only do I question the concentration at which we brewed the Banisteriopsis but also our identification of the admixture plant.» — McKenna pone en duda desde la escritura tanto la concentración del brebaje como la identificación botánica del aditivo.

«There is no doubt that there was considerable harmine alkaloid in the infusion, but as I later learned not as much as is necessary to» — McKenna acota la cantidad de harmina por debajo de lo necesario para una intoxicación inequívoca; el troceo corta por cambio de plana y la frase sigue en la 86 con *provoke an unambiguous intoxication*.

«As we neared the critical moment, Ev and Dennis became unaccountably clumsy and seemed to find their bodies hard to handle; it was that which had sent them to their hammocks.» — McKenna consigna la torpeza inexplicable de los otros dos antes del experimento y su propia falta de síntomas.

«The mushroom is presently metabolizing within our bodies; this has keyed in on the tryptamine template in the living mushroom and it has been sensitized for the condensation of the harmine-psilocybin-DNA molecule.» — último cuaderno de Dennis antes del experimento, escrito en la hamaca: declara el hongo ya sensibilizado para la condensación.

«When the ayahuasca is ingested the harmine analog will start to metabolize within the body. The ESR of the presensitized psilocybin circuit will immediately cancel the ESR of the harmine and cause it to bond superconduc-tively to the DNA-RNA complex both in our bodies and in the mushroom simultaneously in a higher dimension.» — Dennis describe en futuro lo que espera que ocurra, con el enlace superconductor al ADN en los cuerpos y en el hongo a la vez; el troceo imprime la palabra partida como superconduc-tively.

«The harmine alkaloids present were, in my opinion, boosted by the psilocybin that had accumulated in our systems, or rather the» — McKenna atribuye el efecto a la psilocibina acumulada y no a la harmina, y lo marca como opinión suya; el troceo corta por cambio de plana y la frase sigue en la 86 con *MAO-inhibiting effect of these beta-carbolines*.

«MAO-inhibiting effect of these beta-carbolines caused the residual psilocybin to emerge into consciousness as a deep hallucinogenic experience.» — continuación en la plana siguiente: la explicación farmacológica que McKenna da a posteriori, la inhibición de la MAO sacando a la luz la psilocibina residual.

«I had no notion of what this all meant or was leading to. I took the attitude that I must simply be a good witness. Surely nothing at all would happen, or something wonderful was in store.» — Terence declara su propia posición ante el experimento: ser buen testigo, con la disyuntiva dejada abierta.

«Dennis explained that he was unable to move about very well because of something having to do with the backward flow of time. The ever-increasing constraints on the set of possible futures had rendered him nearly immobile; only the mind, planning and computing, was free.» — la explicación que Dennis da de su propia inmovilidad, por el flujo del tiempo hacia atrás y la reducción de los futuros posibles.

«Dennis began narrating our countdown toward an Omega that none of us could really understand; we were completely transformed by the expectation that we might witness the outbreak of the millennium.» — Terence describe la cuenta regresiva y declara que nadie entendía hacia qué; el término Omega es de Dennis.

«Prior to this, we had taken no hallucinogens for several days, so the effects we were experiencing were not arising from that source. Something else was happening.» — Terence descarta la explicación farmacológica para lo de esa noche, cerrando él mismo esa puerta.

«Unattended, its slight tilt had become slowly exaggerated so that now it hung at a crazy angle, defying gravity because, he said, time was passing so slowly that we could not see that it was actually in the act of falling.» — la prueba que Dennis ofrece del tiempo lentificado, la vela inclinada; la explicación es de Dennis y Terence la reporta.

«The fire appeared still, absolutely frozen. My mind shot back to the moment above the river when it too had seemed stilled forever. The flame was uncanny. As deeply as I cared to look into it I could see no movement of particles or gas. I seemed to have my usual freedom of movement, but the world around me was coming to a crystalline and eerie halt.» — lo que Terence dice haber visto al acercarse a la vela, con la llama detenida y su propia movilidad intacta.

«A series of discreet energy levels must be broken through in order to bond this thing. It is part mythology, part psychology, part applied physics. Who knows? We will make three attempts before we break out of the experimental mode.» — voz de Dennis fijando el procedimiento y su propio estatuto: parte mitología, parte psicología, parte física aplicada, y tres intentos; el volumen imprime discreet por discrete, sic.

«We all drank the ayahuasca. The taste was sharp and astringent, like a sauce of leather and mole, but it faded quickly as the liquid went churning through our guts.» — la toma del brebaje, descrita por el sabor.

«For the past several days, Dennis had been hearing the ESR tone that he deemed the sine qua non of what we were attempting. After about fifteen minutes, he announced that he could hear it more clearly and that it was gathering strength.» — Terence reporta que su hermano oía el tono y lo declaraba cada vez más fuerte; la condición del experimento la fija el propio Dennis.

«We agreed that each time during the actual making of the sound we would extinguish the candle so that our minds would not be burdened by the sight of any tryptamine-induced facial distortions that the odd yelling might cause.» — la precaución que el grupo toma, apagar la vela, y la razón que da: no cargar la mente con las distorsiones faciales.

«Years before, during peak episodes of DMT among our old Berkeley gang, we had witnessed spasms of facial musculature that were completely hair-raising, invoking as they did the entities of Tantric Buddhism—the bulging eyes, the impossibly long, rolling tongue, that sort of thing.» — Terence justifica esa precaución con lo que dice haber visto en Berkeley, y nombra las entidades del budismo tántrico como término de comparación.

«I put out the candle, and he sounded his first howl of hyper-carbolation. It was mechanical and loud, like a bull roarer, and it ended with a convulsive spasm that traveled throughout his body and landed him out of his hammock and onto the floor.» — el primer intento, descrito por Terence con el símil del bramadera y con la convulsión que tira a Dennis de la hamaca.

«Again a long, whirring yodel ensued, strange and unexpectedly mechanical each time it was sounded.» — el segundo intento, con el adjetivo mecánico que Terence repite para el sonido.

«We settled in for the third yell, and when it came it was like the others but lasted much longer and became much louder. Like an electric siren wailing over the still, jungle night, it went on and on, and when it finally died away, that too was like the dying away of a siren.» — el tercer intento y el más largo, del que depende todo el libro; el troceo corta la frase por cambio de plana.

«Then, in the absolute darkness of our Amazon hut, there was silence, the silence of the transition from one world to another; the silence of the Ginnunga gap, that pivotal, yawning hesitation between one world age and the next of Norse mythology.» — Terence nombra el silencio que siguió con el Ginnunga gap de la mitología nórdica, el hueco entre dos edades del mundo.

«In that gap came the sound of the cock crowing at the mission. Three times his call came, clear but from afar, seeming to confirm us as actors on a stage, part of a dramatic contrivance.» — el canto del gallo tres veces, que Terence lee como señal de que eran actores de un montaje.

«Dennis had said that if the experiment were successful the mushroom would be obliterated. The low temperature phenomena would explode the cellular material and what would be left would be a standing wave, a violet ring of light the size of the mushroom cap.» — Terence recuerda cuál era el criterio de éxito que su hermano había fijado: el hongo obliterado y en su lugar una onda estacionaria, un anillo violeta.

«It would be as if one had given birth to one's own soul, one's own DNA exteriorized as a kind of living fluid made of language. It would be a mind that could be seen and held in one's hand.» — la descripción del producto esperado según Dennis: el propio ADN exteriorizado como fluido vivo hecho de lenguaje, una mente que se pueda ver y tener en la mano.

«It would be a miniature universe, a monad, a part of space and time that magically has all of space and time condensed in it, including one's own mind, a map of the cosmos so real that it somehow is the cosmos, that was the rabbit he hoped to pull out of his hat that morning.» — Terence nombra el producto mónada y mapa del cosmos que de algún modo es el cosmos, y lo cierra con la ironía del conejo en el sombrero.

«Clearly, but only for a moment, as the shadow bisected the glowing mushroom cap, I saw not a mature mushroom but a planet, the earth, lustrous and alive, blue and tan and dazzling white.» — lo que Terence dice haber visto sobre el sombrerillo del hongo: la Tierra; lo afirma y a la vez acota la duración.

«It is our world." Dennis's voice was full of unfathomable emotions. I could only nod. I did not understand, but I saw it clearly, although my vision was only a thing of the moment.» — Terence consigna a la vez la declaración de su hermano, su propia visión y su propia incomprensión.

«We have succeeded." Dennis proclaimed. "I don't understand," and I did not. "Let's walk to the pasture. I need to think.» — la declaración de éxito la hace Dennis; la respuesta de Terence es que no entiende.

«As we walked along, Dennis would make occasional comments that were, it burst over me, answers to things I was thinking but not articulating.» — el episodio que Terence presenta como prueba de telepatía: su hermano respondía a lo que él no había dicho.

«Was this it then? I asked. Had he somehow acquired telepathic powers? No, he replied, there was more to it than that.» — Terence formula la hipótesis de la telepatía y consigna que su hermano la rechazó por corta.

«According to Dennis, the bonding of the harmine into his DNA had given him immediate access to an enormous, cybernetically stored fund of information. And this information was freely available to anyone in the world who looked into their mind and prefaced their question with the word "Dennis."» — la afirmación de Dennis sobre lo que le habría dado el enlace: acceso a un fondo cibernético de información, disponible a quien anteponga su nombre a la pregunta.

«The absurdity of the second half of this proposition struck me as utterly too much. But naturally, at his insistence, I made the test.» — Terence declara absurda la segunda mitad de la afirmación y consigna que aun así hizo la prueba.

«Immediately and without any effort of my own that I was aware of, a scientific name, now forgotten, popped into my head.» — el resultado de la prueba según Terence: un nombre científico que hoy no recuerda, aparecido sin esfuerzo.

«The experiment seemed to secure that something was giving answers in my head, but I could not tell if they were correct or not.» — Terence acota lo que la prueba dejó sentado y lo que no: que algo respondía, no que respondiera bien; el troceo corta la frase por cambio de plana.

«Dennis was oddly preoccupied, yet he assured me that his effort had succeeded and that all over the world the wave of hyper-carbolation was sweeping through the human race, eliminating the distinction between the individual and the community as everyone discovered themselves spontaneously pushing off into a telepathic ocean whose name was that of its discoverer: Dennis McKenna.» — la afirmación planetaria de Dennis según Terence: la ola de hipercarbolación barriendo a la especie y el océano telepático llevando su nombre.

«I ask myself now why it was so easy for me to make the leap from assuming that we were having a peculiar localized experience to the idea that we were key parts of a planet-wide phenomenon? It is an important, unanswered question that speaks volumes about my susceptibility to inflation and suggestion at that moment.» — Terence se hace desde la escritura la pregunta que el libro no cierra, y la llama importante y sin responder.

«I was quite simply the victim of a cognitive hallucination; that is, rather than a visual experience of something not actually present, a cognitive hallucination is a total shift of the highest levels of our intellectual relationship to the world.» — la lectura que Terence da de sí mismo a veinte años: alucinación cognitiva, que define como desplazamiento del nivel intelectual y no como visión.

«The psilocybin-induced cognitive hallucination made the impossible and unlikely seem probable and reasonable.» — Terence describe el efecto de esa alucinación cognitiva sobre el juicio de probabilidad.

«I became flooded with ecstasy as the realization passed over me that we had passed the omega point, that we were now operating in the first few moments of the millennium.» — Terence consigna qué sintió y qué creyó en ese momento, sin retirar lo uno ni lo otro.

«We have not condensed the stone into visible space, but we have generated it in our heads. It does not immediately appear as a visible vehicle, but first as a teaching—the teaching we are hearing in our heads right now. Later, the words will be made flesh.» — la enmienda que Dennis hace de su propio criterio de éxito: la piedra no como vehículo visible sino como enseñanza, con las palabras hechas carne más tarde.

«Now Mother and possibly lots of dead people will be showing up soon. Jung will doubtless come and, by god, I want to hear what he has to say.» — voz de Dennis anunciando la llegada de la madre muerta y de Jung; Terence la reporta sin comentario.

«Is that Nabokov, Sunny Jim that nice Joyce boy, or is it that pesky Nick Cusa?» — voz de Dennis nombrando a los muertos que decía esperar, entre ellos Joyce y Nicolás de Cusa; el troceo imprime el nombre como Nick Cusa.

«Over a period of a few minutes, I had passed from weary, disgruntled skeptic to ecstatic believer.» — Terence data en minutos su propio cambio de posición y lo nombra con las dos palabras extremas.

«Looking back on it, I believe that, for me, this was the critical juncture. Why did I not question Dennis more closely? Was I somehow self-hypnotized? Did the unfamiliar setting, the restricted diet, the strain and expectations push me into a place where I was unable to resist participation in the world of my brother's bizarre ideation? Why was I unable to maintain my detached and skeptical viewpoint?» — Terence marca el punto crítico de su propio relato y se hace ahí cuatro preguntas que el libro no responde.

«In some sense this willing suspension of disbelief is the crux of the matter—and, I believe, of many a "close encounter" situation.» — Terence generaliza su propia suspensión de la incredulidad a los casos de encuentro cercano, y lo dice con I believe.

«The Other plays with us and approaches us through the imagination and then a critical juncture is reached. To go beyond this juncture requires abandonment of old and ingrained habits of thinking and seeing. At that moment the world turns lazily inside out and what was hidden is revealed: a magical modality, a different mental landscape than one has ever known, and the landscape becomes real.» — la tesis de McKenna sobre el modo en que la Otra Cosa se acerca: por la imaginación y hasta un punto crítico que exige abandonar los hábitos de pensar.

«This is the realm of the cosmic giggle. UFOs, elves, and the teeming pantheons of all religions are the denizens of this previously invisible landscape.» — McKenna nombra la risita cósmica y pone en un mismo paisaje a los ovnis, los elfos y los panteones de todas las religiones.

«One reaches through to the continents and oceans of the imagination, worlds able to sustain anyone who will but play, and then one lets the play deepen and deepen until it is a reality that few would even dare to entertain.» — McKenna describe el procedimiento por el que el juego se vuelve realidad, y lo dice de sí mismo tanto como de otros.

«Instead I assumed that my body was metabolizing its way toward the resurrection body, the "soul made visible" of Christian hermeneutics, that we had expected to be part of the success of our experiment.» — Terence consigna lo que suponía entonces sobre su propio cuerpo y nombra el cuerpo de resurrección como alma hecha visible de la hermenéutica cristiana.

«The understanding bloomed in my mind that we are all enlightened beings and that only our inability to see and feel ourselves and others as we really are keeps us from shedding our guilt and experiencing ourselves as truly enlightened.» — la revelación que Terence dice haber tenido camino del río: todos somos seres iluminados y solo la ceguera sobre uno mismo lo impide.

«I have never been a psychedelic bliss bunny, yet there I was suspended somewhere between cliche and archetype.» — Terence se distancia del registro devocional en la misma frase en que refiere su propia beatitud.

«As I walked across the pasture I would stop and say, "Dennis," and the response would be instantaneous, just like thought.» — Terence describe el procedimiento y la respuesta inmediata, y consigna en la misma plana que lo confundía.

«I said "Terence. Terence." It was very much like talking to myself. Then I said "Dennis," and the thing was instantly there, ready to do business.» — la prueba que Terence dice haber hecho con los nombres, con resultado distinto para el propio y para el del hermano.

«Then I said "McKenna, McKenna," and it was still there. I realized that I couldn't reach it with my first name, but I could reach it with my last name.» — el refinamiento de esa prueba: el apellido funcionaba y el nombre de pila no; Terence lo da como dato sin explicarlo.

«I told them that we had succeeded and that the fruit of our success was not a condensed hyper-object, but a teaching.» — Terence traslada a los demás la enmienda de su hermano: el fruto del experimento sería una enseñanza y no un objeto.

«they told me that during the darkest part of the night Dave had awakened hysterical, in a state not unlike the condition induced in him by the electrical storm the evening before. They had been very agitated and could only attribute this to what we had been doing.» — lo que Dave y Vanessa reportan de su propia noche y la causa que le atribuyen; McKenna lo consigna sin discutirlo.

«He had said that the demarcation between day and night, the dawn line, was now making a twenty-four hour sweep around the world, a sweep that began at the dawn moment when the experiment at La Chorrera was finished. Throughout the world, traffic and factories were coming to a halt. People were leaving their homes and schools to stare into the sky, realizing that someone, somewhere, had broken through, that it was not a day like any other day.» — la afirmación planetaria de Dennis según Terence: la línea del alba llevando el suceso por el mundo en veinticuatro horas, con fábricas y tráfico deteniéndose.

«This was Dennis's ruana, a short blanket worn by South American peasants, and his shirt discarded in the middle of the path. Next came a pair of pants and then further on two sweat socks.» — el rastro de ropa tirada que Terence encuentra en el camino, primera señal exterior del estado de su hermano.

«With the instruction that you could not receive a proper initiation unless you were naked, Dennis insisted that we take off our clothes. Vanessa peeled and Dave and I followed.» — la instrucción de desnudarse la da Dennis; Terence consigna que todos la siguieron, incluidos los escépticos.

«The presence of the mushroom was palpable and it seemed to be saying, "Take off your clothes. Throw everything away. Everything is breaking. All objects are no good to you now. Throw everything away. You do not need it any more.» — voz del hongo según Terence, que la introduce con seemed to be saying y no la afirma.

«I was not surprised at this result since a voice in the head is a very slippery and subjective thing. If one has it, there is no doubt; if one does not have it, it seems a very murky matter.» — Terence formula el problema epistemológico de su propio relato: la voz interior no se puede compartir ni comprobar desde fuera.

«Everyone was very amiable, except that Dennis was showing a tendency to talk right through other people's comments as though they were not present. It seemed as if he were on a different time-track from the rest of us, since he really seemed unable to realize when someone else was talking.» — la primera señal que Terence consigna del desfase de su hermano, descrita como otra línea de tiempo.

«Once we had moved, I asked the thing in my head what should be done and received instructions that we should visualize our lives starting from the present, and then move back through our entire life, encountering and setting things right with every sentient creature that we had ever wronged.» — la instrucción que Terence dice haber recibido de la cosa en su cabeza: recorrer la vida hacia atrás reparando con cada criatura.

«When we reached the end of this process, we would leave our bodies and somehow enter into the dimension of absolute freedom, which now seemed so near.» — el término anunciado por esa instrucción: dejar el cuerpo y entrar en la dimensión de la libertad absoluta.

«I conceived of this as though it were a fast rewind of the recording of karmic activity. Once one's karma was rewound a state of original innocence would naturally flower.» — la figura con que Terence entendió la instrucción, un rebobinado del karma que devolvería la inocencia original.

«The voice of the teacher spoke in my mind. "You've found it. This is it. It's all over now. There is no more. Within a few hours, the superstructure of earthbound, human civilization is going to collapse and your species will depart. First you will go to Jupiter and then to Alpha in Sagittarius. A day of high adventure dawns at last for the human beings.» — voz del maestro según Terence: anuncia el colapso de la civilización en horas y la partida de la especie hacia Júpiter y Alfa de Sagitario; McKenna la reporta y no la suscribe.

«At first the images seemed to be deepening and growing more intense, but after an hour it was clear that they were actually fading.» — Terence consigna el desvanecimiento de las imágenes, que es donde el relato empieza a volverse contra sí mismo.

«Then I realized that something was wrong. Apprehension was outrunning reality, as it always does. For everyone else, nothing had happened.» — la frase en que el libro registra el fracaso de lo anunciado, dicha por Terence y sin atenuantes.

«As we talked, it came out that no one could hear Dennis in their mind except me. And actually, they were all wondering what was going on, growing more alarmed as they couldn't help but conclude that I was losing my mind.» — Terence consigna que el efecto no era compartido y que los demás concluían que él estaba perdiendo la cabeza.

«Dennis was definitely disengaged from reality. I would talk to him and he wouldn't know he was being spoken to. He broke into conversations because he didn't know anyone else was speaking.» — Terence describe el estado de su hermano con las palabras más duras del libro, y lo hace en primera persona.

«A group of Witoto gazed at us as we passed and then roared with appreciative laughter.» — la reacción de los witotos ante el grupo, que McKenna consigna sin interpretarla en esta plana.

«My conclusion was that something real and unanticipated had happened, that Dennis had done something, and that some kind of odd pharmacological effect had been unwittingly manipulated. But the effect had behaved only in part as we had expected, and so we were cast we knew not where.» — la conclusión que Terence saca al día siguiente, formulada en términos farmacológicos y no místicos.

«I still felt utterly changed and made new, both removed from everyone and content to let events unfold as they would. I was assured by the new thing inside of me that however odd things appeared all was very, very well.» — Terence describe su propio estado y nombra a la cosa nueva dentro de él como la que le aseguraba que todo estaba bien.

«From his hammock Dennis broke the silence to explain that this night in our dreams we would learn a series of things that would end with us severing our connection to our bodies long before morning.» — segunda profecía de Dennis, que anuncia para esa misma noche la separación del cuerpo; el troceo corta la frase por cambio de plana.

«This was the second self-limiting prophecy that had been made since the experiment, the first being that morning's effort to meditate backward to one's birth.» — Terence nombra esas anticipaciones profecías autolimitadas, porque traen su propio plazo y por tanto su propio desmentido.

«In retrospect I now see that this "eschatological hysteria" was one of the chief ways in which my thinking seemed radically different.» — Terence nombra con sus palabras el rasgo que le cambió el pensamiento, histeria escatológica, y lo dice de sí mismo.

«Like Old Testament prophets or Hellenistic alchemists, we felt that we were caught up in a cosmic drama of fall and redemption.» — McKenna sitúa lo suyo en la serie de los profetas veterotestamentarios y los alquimistas helenísticos, en un drama de caída y redención.

«Four days from the experiment, five, seven, ten, sixteen, twenty-one, forty, sixty-four— all were times awaited with hope and willful suspension of disbelief and all came and went with the eschaton still all-pervading, yet still very elusive.» — la cuenta de los plazos incumplidos, que McKenna consigna uno por uno sin explicarlos.

«The equation lapis = self = UFO was the operating assumption of Dennis's long voyage of self-discovery and return.» — la ecuación que McKenna da por supuesto operativo de su hermano: piedra igual a sí mismo igual a ovni.

«An intense, triple-layered corona of light was shimmering out from the candle flame for a distance of about four feet. A deep, iridescent blue alternated with an equally pure orange.» — lo que Terence dice haber visto alrededor de la llama de la vela a media noche, descrito por sus colores.

«I was immediately reminded» — el troceo corta aquí por cambio de plana; la frase sigue en la 96 con *of the aura of light that surrounds the body of the resurrected Christ in the painting by Matthias Grunewald*.

«of the aura of light that surrounds the body of the resurrected Christ in the painting by Matthias Grunewald. I understood that Grunewald must have seen the same thing that I was seeing now and later incorporated it into his "resurrection."» — Terence enlaza lo que vio con el Cristo resucitado de Grünewald y adjudica al pintor haber visto lo mismo; el libro no da más base que la semejanza.

«Simultaneously, as though I was having a yet deeper thought, I somehow intuitively "understood" that the distortion or polarizing of the light of the flame was an effect caused by the distortion of psychic space-time induced by our experiment and the nearby, ubiquitous presence of the lapis.» — la explicación que Terence dice haber intuido, con el entendido entre comillas por él mismo: la luz distorsionada por la cercanía de la piedra.

«The distortion of light from a candle might act as a detector of the philosopher's stone.» — la hipótesis instrumental que McKenna propone y deja en might: la vela como detector de la piedra filosofal.

«I awakened Ev and she sleepily confirmed the colors around the candle, but it communicated nothing to her of what it communicated to me.» — el único cotejo externo del episodio: Ev dice ver los colores y no lo que Terence les atribuía.

«Upon close questioning, it came out that he was completely convinced that sometime during the night he had arisen and dressed and then had a series of nocturnal adventures. These involved going alone in the darkness to the thundering immensity of the chorro over a mile away, then returning to climb and spend some time in a large tree near the edge of the mission, then making his way back across the pasture and returning to his hammock, strung among all the others.» — Terence reporta la convicción de su hermano de haber salido de noche y acota con or imagined he had.

«Even though I was 90 percent» — el troceo corta aquí por cambio de plana; la frase sigue en la 97 con *certain that it had never really happened*.

«certain that it had never really happened, I was determined to eliminate all possibility of such rambles in the future.» — Terence cifra su propia incredulidad en un noventa por ciento y aun así toma la precaución.

«Dennis's story was the classic description of a shamanic night journey.» — Terence encuadra el relato de su hermano en un género y con ese encuadre lo consigna.

«On impulse, he had climbed it, aware as he did that the ascent of the world tree is the central motif of the Siberian shamanic journey.» — lo que Dennis declara haber sabido mientras subía al árbol: que el ascenso al árbol del mundo es el motivo central del viaje chamánico siberiano.

«as he reached the highest point in his ascent, something that he called "the vortex" opened ahead of him—a swirling, enormous doorway into time.» — Dennis nombra el vórtice, que da título al capítulo, y lo describe como puerta giratoria al tiempo.

«He could see the Cyclopean megaliths of Stonehenge and beyond them, revolving at a different speed and at a higher plane, the outlines of the pyramids, gleaming and marble-faceted as they have not been since the days of pharaonic Egypt.» — lo que Dennis dice haber visto dentro del vórtice, con Stonehenge y las pirámides girando a velocidades distintas.

«And yet farther into the turbulent maw of the vortex, he saw mysteries that were ancient long before the advent of man—titanic archetypal forms on worlds unimagined by us, the arcane machineries of sentient agencies that swept through this part of the galaxy when our planet was young and its surface barely cooled.» — el fondo del vórtice según Dennis: formas arquetípicas y maquinarias de agencias sintientes anteriores al hombre.

«He next found himself in the pasture a few hundred feet from his newly discovered axis mundi.» — Terence nombra axis mundi al árbol de su hermano, con el término del oficio comparatista.

«The continuum seemed to be shredding and ripping itself to pieces before his eyes, time and space swirling the artifacts of twenty-thousand years of human striving into a vortex of apocalyptic contradictions.» — la descripción del estado de Dennis en términos del propio contenido de su visión.

«Dennis returned to our camp and noiselessly returned to his hammock, or awakened there from a dream of the same thing.» — Terence deja las dos versiones del episodio nocturno, la real y la soñada, sin decidir entre ellas.

«This was too long to be considered a normal reaction to mushrooms or ayahuasca. Two choices presented themselves to explain the situation:» — Terence fija el plazo que vuelve anómalo el estado de su hermano y anuncia las dos explicaciones que el libro va a dar sin arbitrar.

«The first was the position that Vanessa and Dave leaned toward, and it said that the strain of the journey and the recent psilo-cybin tripping had contributed to activate a shamanic archetype in Dennis that had been latent all along.» — la primera explicación, la psicológica, atribuida por nombre a Vanessa y a Dave: un arquetipo chamánico latente y ahora activado.

«This was now overt and carrying a strong transference potential to which I was succumbing by being unable to recognize my brother's condition as a potentially pathological state.» — la parte de esa explicación que toca a Terence mismo: una transferencia que le impedía reconocer el estado de su hermano como patológico.

«A second explanation, the one Ev and I leaned toward, took a biochemical rather than a psychological approach. It said that Dennis, through his unusual diet of alkaloids and the experiment he performed, had inhibited some enzyme system that would normally return one from the heights of a hallucinogenic trip, but in this case had somehow become inoperative.» — la segunda explicación, la bioquímica, que Terence atribuye a Ev y a sí mismo: un sistema enzimático inhibido que no devolvía a Dennis del viaje.

«The phenomenon of irreversible MAO inhibition is known to occur with some drugs and is a condition that takes nearly two weeks to correct itself. Though the compounds in Banisteriopsis caapi are known to usually reverse their MAO inhibition in four to six hours, as subsequent events show, this explanation was doubtless some part of the story, since Dennis was to be in the grip of his shamanic ravings for nearly two weeks.» — Terence apoya la segunda explicación en el plazo de la inhibición irreversible y lo cruza con las dos semanas que duró el estado de su hermano.

«After years of thought, my own explanation continues to lean heavily on the second idea for an operational explanation.» — Terence declara cuál de las dos explicaciones sostiene hoy, y la llama operativa y no definitiva.

«I do not believe that Dennis was predisposed to an archetypal submergence. I believe that somehow, in a single moment, he bound up all the MAO in his body, and his derangement was due to the lag time that was required to rebuild his MAO level from a complete and sudden inhibition.» — Terence niega la predisposición arquetípica de su hermano y atribuye el desarreglo al tiempo de reconstrucción de la MAO.

«In short, I believe that he induced an irreversible MAO inhibition in his body through the use of psilo-cybin and his voice and will.» — la explicación que Terence sostiene de lo que le pasó a su hermano, en términos de inhibición irreversible producida por la voz y la voluntad; el troceo imprime la palabra partida como psilo-cybin.

«If this is true, then the implication for humankind may be every bit as great as we, in our inflated state of mind, supposed, since it hints at a pharmacological technology by which humankind might explore the parallel continuum whose interaction with our own existence is signified by the visionary experience.» — McKenna condiciona con un if toda la consecuencia que extrae, una tecnología farmacológica para explorar el continuo paralelo.

«My continued interest in these matters is based on the personal belief that some unusual and still unconfirmed effect was at work in our experiment, something like the principle of resonance-canceling that Dennis was so intrigued by.» — McKenna declara que su interés descansa en una creencia personal sobre un efecto que él mismo llama no comprobado, y lo dice con esas palabras.

«But since Dennis is your brother and you have strong opinions on this subject, I will defer in favor of what you think should be done here. At least for the moment.» — voz de Vanessa, que cede a Terence la decisión sobre su hermano y pone plazo a esa cesión.

«Any diagnosis had to come forth with an operational prediction on that vital point.» — el criterio que Terence exige de cualquier diagnóstico: una predicción operativa sobre cuándo saldría su hermano del estado.

«During certain times each day when he became more coherent he said that the experience had catapulted him to the edge of the Riemannian pseudosphere that is the universe, in which even parallel lines intersect.» — lo que Dennis dice de sí mismo en sus ratos coherentes, con la pseudoesfera de Riemann por figura del universo.

«He could hear my mind working. He was telepathic; of this I have no doubt.» — la afirmación más sin reservas del libro entero, hecha por Terence sobre su hermano.

«He referred to me as "The Teach," not teacher or teaching but The Teach, a kind of personified alien ambassador empowered to negotiate the entry of the human species into the councils of higher intelligence.» — el nombre que Dennis da a su hermano y el papel que le adjudica, embajador alienígena facultado para negociar la entrada de la especie.

«He said that the discovery of a higher physical dimension was a few years ahead of us, but somehow linked up to Egypt, to Acacia tryptamine cults, to Tibet eight thousand years ago, to Bon-po shamanic magic and the / Ching.» — la cadena de referencias que Terence adjudica a su hermano en esos días, de Egipto al Tíbet y al bon y al I Ching; el escaneo imprime el título como / Ching.

«No notes exist from this period. So filled was I with the assumption that we were abiding in eternity that I felt no need to write at all.» — McKenna declara el hueco documental de los cinco días centrales del libro y da su razón de entonces.

«Nothing is coherent or remains connected from those five days. I remember it as the most intense time that I have ever gone through.» — McKenna consigna el estatuto de lo que sigue: nada coherente ni conectado, y a la vez el tiempo más intenso de su vida.

«In the notes made weeks after those times I could only summarize those five days by labeling them, absurdly: fire, water, earth, man, peace.» — la única etiqueta que McKenna encontró para esos cinco días, y la califica de absurda él mismo.

«For the next nine days I neither slept nor needed sleep. Though I know that such cases are on record, for years afterward I took my lack of a need for sleep for nine days as the most solid argument for the reality of the forces with which we experimented.» — McKenna da su propia falta de sueño por nueve días como el argumento más sólido a favor de la realidad de lo ocurrido, y consigna que casos así están registrados.

«Not only did I not need to sleep, but I was constantly thinking in a rich, calm, image-filled way that made my normal thought process seem a pale and jerkily animated shadow.» — McKenna describe el cambio en su propio pensamiento durante ese periodo y lo declara duradero.

«Then I heard him make, low but strong and clear, the same undulating howl that had catapulted us into a new world forty-eight hours before. Three times it sounded, just as something in my mind assured me that it would.» — la repetición del aullido dos días después, que Terence dice haber sabido de antemano por la cosa en su mente.

«Then, as it faded away, I again heard the cock's crow drifting across the whitening air from the mission. Why did things happen with such symmetry, as though a huge, ordered form was trying to surface in the very organization of the reality around us?» — Terence consigna la simetría de los dos episodios y la formula como pregunta por una forma ordenada que buscara aflorar.

«All was myth-making and image-making, mercurial, meta-leveled, ever-flowing.» — la fórmula con que McKenna califica lo que quedó de esos días, con el adjetivo alquímico puesto.

«He imitated, personified, described, and otherwise invoked immense Gnostic and Manichaean entities that were struggling on a cosmic scale.» — Terence describe las arengas de su hermano por las entidades que invocaba, gnósticas y maniqueas, en lucha a escala cósmica.

«But he was not without humor, occasionally moaning out that he felt "like an old Mandaean," then collapsing with laughter at this cleverness.» — Terence conserva la broma de su hermano sobre los mandeos, que el libro trae como muestra de que el humor no se había perdido.

«It was a beautiful, recursive geometric form with four "petals." The voice in my mind informed me that this was "the valentine curve."» — la primera de las que Terence llama enseñanzas, una curva de cuatro pétalos nombrada por la voz de su mente.

«Valentine, a fifteenth-century alchemist and author of The Triumphal Chariot of Antimony. I had read the book, but could remember virtually nothing about it.» — McKenna enlaza la curva con Basilio Valentín y su Carro triunfal del antimonio, y declara no recordar nada del libro.

«I thought too of Valentinius, the Alexandrian Gnostic of the second century, and his doctrine that the material world was the condensed emotion of the errant Sophia, who had selfishly created a universe without undergoing any union except with herself.» — McKenna trae la doctrina que atribuye a Valentino, el gnóstico alejandrino, sobre el mundo material como emoción condensada de la Sofía errante.

«The concrescence of the anguish of the Sophia, the lowest of the Archons, into the physical world was an idea closely related to our own alchemical efforts.» — McKenna declara emparentada su propia empresa con esa doctrina gnóstica por el punto de la condensación de la emoción en materia.

«The condensation of emotion into matter; that theme was hair-raising. It was the theme that had brought us to the Amazon.» — McKenna identifica ese tema como el motivo del viaje entero.

«Alchemy was the gnosis of material transformation. Glues seemed everywhere; everything was webbed together in a magical fabric of meaning and affirmation and mystery.» — la definición que McKenna da de la alquimia, gnosis de la transformación material, y el estado en que todo le parecía conectado.

«One of those themes that was seized upon and amplified, at first slowly and then more rapidly, radically and inclusively, was the set of ideas and relationships contained in the / Ching, the Chinese oracle.» — McKenna nombra el I Ching como el tema que se amplió más y más en esos días; el escaneo imprime el título como / Ching.

«These ancient and fragmentary commentaries on a still more ancient set of sixty-four oracular ideograms, called hexagrams, had long been of interest to me as part of my general interest in noncausal forms of logic.» — McKenna describe el I Ching por sus sesenta y cuatro ideogramas oraculares y declara el interés propio: las formas no causales de la lógica.

«In fact, I had first learned of the / Ching from reading Jung, who suggested that the meaningful juxtaposition of a hexagram with a situation in the outer world, the juxtaposition that allows the / Ching to be used as a fortune-telling device, hinted at a noncausal connection between the inner mental world and objective exterior reality.» — McKenna atribuye a Jung su primer conocimiento del I Ching y la sugerencia de una conexión no causal entre lo mental y lo exterior.

«Jung named this phenomenon synchronicity.» — McKenna adjudica a Jung el nombre del fenómeno que el libro usará en adelante.

«For several years it had been my habit to throw the / Ching, which consists of manipulating forty-nine stalks of yarrow or in my case bamboo skewers whose configurations create the hexagrams, at each new and full moon and to record the throws on a slip of paper, which I kept inside the back cover of my copy of the book.» — McKenna describe su propia práctica oracular, por lunas nuevas y llenas y con registro escrito, que es lo que hará posible el Timewave.

«After a half-hour of the exercise I determined that, according to my record, I had thrown each of the sixty-four hexagrams at least once in the three years leading up to that moment.» — el hallazgo en su registro de tiradas: los sesenta y cuatro hexagramas salidos al menos una vez en tres años.

«This mildly improbable fact seemed charged with significance to me. The likelihood of occurrence for each hexagram is not equal, and the odds of getting all the hexagrams in so few throws seemed unusual.» — McKenna califica el hecho de levemente improbable y a la vez cargado de significado, y lo marca con seemed.

«of the microcosm and had been chosen somehow to be in precisely the situation in which I found myself. Tears came easily at this personal verification of the ordered pattern of life whose designs I was discovering everywhere. I composed myself and then, at the strong prompting of the inner wave of understanding, I quietly burned the record of my / Ching throws. It was a very uncharacteristic thing for me to do.» — McKenna cuenta que quemó el registro de sus tiradas del I Ching por indicación de lo que llama la onda interior de entendimiento, y marca el acto como impropio de él; el escaneo parte el título como /Ching, con el renglón partido.

«What can you do with a hole in a stick that you can't do with a stick in a hole?» — uno de los acertijos que Dennis lanzaba en esos días, que Terence reproduce y enseguida interpreta a su manera.

«Dennis looked up from his meditations and announced that he had just realized that he could cause any telephone to ring by simply concentrating on an image that he refused to divulge.» — la afirmación de Dennis sobre los teléfonos, reportada por Terence sin comentario en la misma frase.

«He went further than that and claimed that he could make phones ring at anytime in the past during which telephones existed.» — la extensión de esa afirmación al pasado, que Terence marca con el verbo claimed.

«To demonstrate this ability he dialed Mother sometime in the fall of 1953. He caught her in the act of listening to Dizzy Dean call a World Series game. And according to Dennis she refused to believe that he was on the phone, since she could see his three-year-old form asleep in front of her.» — la escena que Dennis dice haber tenido con la madre muerta por teléfono en 1953; Terence la reporta con according to Dennis.

«A reasonable conclusion would have been to suppose that Dennis was toxically schizophrenic and that we should leave the Amazon.» — McKenna enuncia la conclusión razonable que no sacaron, y la nombra con el término clínico.

«What muddied the water considerably was me. I was comparatively normal except for one thing: I insisted that everything was all right and that Dennis knew exactly what he was doing.» — McKenna se señala a sí mismo como el factor que impidió esa conclusión.

«I felt this way although I knew nothing about how he had performed the experiment or discovered the theory.» — McKenna consigna que sostenía a su hermano sin saber nada de su procedimiento ni de su teoría.

«My contact with the voice was like that of a student to a teacher. It let me know things. Beyond any possibility of argument I knew things that I couldn't ordinarily know.» — McKenna describe su relación con la voz en términos de discípulo y maestro, y declara haber sabido cosas que no podía saber.

«Ev had gone through the experiment, but nothing at all had happened to her.» — el dato de control que el propio libro consigna: la tercera participante del experimento no notó nada.

«The main thing the unseen teacher said was, "Do not worry. Do not worry, because there is something that you have to get straight about. Your brother will recover. Your companions will take care of him. Do not worry, but listen. You have to get this down.» — voz del maestro invisible según McKenna, con la encomienda de la que saldrá el Timewave.

«I noticed with interest that while he seemed disoriented and his ideation was structurally as wild and woolly as ever, in content there had been a definite sort of improvement.» — Terence separa la forma del contenido en el delirio de su hermano, y es ahí donde ve la mejoría.

«On the second day, he awoke within the galaxy and his visions and fantasies remained within it. Had that been the only instance of his telescoping back into himself, it would not have been worth noting, but the fact was that each step of his return to a normal state of mind was accomplished this way.» — la pauta que Terence describe en la recuperación de su hermano, por condensación desde lo cósmico hacia lo personal.

«Later still, he became the embodiment of all the members of our vast and peculiar Irish family stretching back till before Judges had given us Numbers or Leviticus committed Deuteronomy, as James Joyce put it.» — Terence describe la fase familiar de la recuperación de su hermano y cita a Joyce para el linaje irlandés.

«Finally and thankfully, he came to rest with the realization that he was Dennis, returned from the edge of the universe of mind, restored and reborn, a shaman in the fullest sense of the word.» — el término de la recuperación según Terence: su hermano vuelto a ser él mismo y, dice, chamán en el sentido pleno; el troceo corta la frase por cambio de plana.

«Bending down and parting the grasses at the base of the tree, he pointed to the letters AMA carved in the bark. It was a carving at least several years old.» — el episodio de las letras AMA talladas en el árbol, que Terence consigna como hecho comprobado y sin explicación.

«The incident was confusing. How had Dennis known the carving was there and what did it mean anyhow?» — McKenna deja el episodio en dos preguntas, que es su modo constante de cerrar lo que no puede resolver.

«These assertions that flew completely in the face of reason were very hard to take and enkindled in me brief stabs of despair for his state of mind, though most of the time I was able to convince myself that he was improving and returning from the unseen worlds that were so vivid to him that he could see nothing else.» — Terence consigna su propia desesperación ante las afirmaciones de su hermano y el modo en que se convencía de lo contrario.

«I tried directing the developing fantasy of my brother—I used the idea that the re-creation of the scattered self was as an alchemical act with immense personal and historical significance.» — Terence declara haber dirigido la fantasía de su hermano con la idea alquímica de la recomposición del sí mismo disperso.

«Each morning for several days after the fifth of March we would walk to the pasture and I would demand of him "the stone."» — el rito diario que Terence dice haber impuesto: exigirle a su hermano la piedra.

«Be amazed at nothing; you are to receive the kingship of the father," spoke the quiet voice from hyperspace. "The Mystery of the wellspring and the datepalm will unfold.» — voz del hiperespacio según McKenna, con una fórmula que suena a texto hermético; el volumen no da fuente.

«I watched my own understanding of the connections between what we were doing and classical alchemy move by vast intuitive leaps to implicate Gerhard Dorn, Robert Fludd, and Count Michael Maier, names associated with the finest literary flowering of the alchemical mind.» — McKenna nombra a Gerhard Dorn, Robert Fludd y Michael Maier como la mejor floración literaria de la mente alquímica; el troceo corta la frase por cambio de plana.

«And equally associated with a view of man and nature that had perished with the rise of modern chemistry.» — McKenna data la desaparición de esa visión del hombre y la naturaleza en el ascenso de la química moderna.

«The thirty-sixth emblem of Maier's Atlanta Fugiens is a wonderful visual pun that connects the cube of Stropharia cubensis with the UFO, the hyper-object seen in the sky.» — McKenna lee el emblema treinta y seis de Maier como juego visual que enlaza el cubo del hongo con el ovni; el volumen imprime el título como Atlanta Fugiens, sic.

«John Dee, with his angel-haunted skrying stone and the occult geometry of his cryptic opus The Hieroglyphic Monad, is mixed up in the same set of images.» — McKenna suma a John Dee, su piedra de visiones y la Mónada jeroglífica a la misma serie de imágenes.

«Did this circle of alchemical adepts penetrate the mystery to a secret undreamed of by their contemporaries and competition?» — McKenna formula en pregunta la tesis fuerte sobre esos alquimistas y no la afirma.

«Images flashed before my mind's eye: Nicholas Flamel and his wife, Pemelle, their legendary love affair and their unknown end.» — McKenna trae a Flamel y a su mujer Perenela por el lado del amor legendario y del final desconocido; el troceo imprime el nombre como Pemelle.

«Mutus Liber ("the silent book") depicts a» — el troceo corta aquí por cambio de plana; la frase sigue en la 106 con *couple working at a furnace; it almost looks as though they are drying mushrooms*.

«couple working at a furnace; it almost looks as though they are drying mushrooms.» — la lectura que McKenna hace de una lámina del Mutus Liber, y la acota con almost looks as though.

«How sophisticated did alchemy become before Enlightenment science scattered the adepts and rendered their control language inoperable?» — McKenna pregunta por el grado que alcanzó la alquimia y llama a su vocabulario un lenguaje de control.

«It was a world whose unseen, cybernetic chroniclers spoke to us telepathically in our minds and revealed that we and all humanity were in the act of once again becoming able to go between these alien dimensions and our own to re-establish the es-chatological shamanism lost scores of millennia ago.» — McKenna describe el mundo en que dice haber estado y lo cierra con la promesa de restablecer un chamanismo escatológico perdido; el troceo imprime la palabra partida como es-chatological.

«I began to imagine this symbol as the symbol of the condensation of the alchemical lapis. To me it appeared to be the natural symbol for a four-dimensional universe somehow bound into a 3-D matrix.» — McKenna adopta el signo de la ampersand como símbolo de la condensación de la lapis.

«I spoke of it as the ampersand for several days, then I called it "the eschaton." This I imagined as a basic unit of time; the combination and resonance among the set of eschatons in the universe determined which of the possible worlds allowed by physics would actually undergo the formality of occurring.» — el paso del signo a la unidad de tiempo: McKenna nombra el eschaton y le adjudica decidir qué mundo posible ocurre.

«The formality of actually occurring" was a phrase from Whitehead that kept echoing through my thoughts like the refrain of a half-forgotten song.» — McKenna adjudica a Whitehead la frase que le da el término, y consigna el modo en que le volvía a la cabeza.

«I imagined that at the end of time all the eschatons would resonate together as a unity and thereby create an ontological transformation of reality—the end of time as a kind of garden of earthly delights.» — la escatología que McKenna dice haber imaginado, con todos los eschatons resonando a la vez; el troceo corta aquí ante la llamada de nota.

«From such experiences I concluded that whatever was happening, part of it involved all the information that we had ever accumulated, down to the most trivial details.» — McKenna concluye que el proceso usaba toda la información acumulada por ellos, hasta el detalle más trivial.

«The overwhelming impression was that something possibly from outer space or from another dimension was contacting us.» — McKenna deja la atribución de agencia en impresión y en dos posibilidades, el espacio exterior u otra dimensión.

«These were the first faint stirrings of thoughts that were to lead eventually to the development of my own theory of time described in The Invisible Landscape. These early intuitions bore no resemblance to the final theory» — nota al pie dentro del cuerpo: McKenna data aquí el origen de su teoría del tiempo y declara que estas intuiciones no se parecían a la formulación final.

«It took years of reading and self-education to keep track of the things that the internal voice was saying. Its presence and persistence over the years since La Chorrera has been amazing.» — sigue la nota: McKenna consigna los años de lectura que le costó seguir a la voz interior y declara asombrosa su persistencia.

«That day at La Chorrera, the voice had a holistic and systems-oriented approach to things that did seem to be slightly of another order—not enough to be alarming, but enough to repeatedly remind me that the ideas I was producing were coming fully organized from somewhere else, and I was nothing more than a message decipherer, hard-pressed to keep up with a difficult, incoming code.]» — cierre de la nota: McKenna describe su propio papel como descifrador de un código que llegaba de otra parte, y acota el grado de rareza de la voz.

«Our collective intelligence was not compromised, but what was compromised was the ability of reason to give a coherent account of what was going on, as paradox, coincidence, and general synchronistic strangeness began to increase exponentially.» — McKenna precisa qué se descompuso, no la inteligencia sino la capacidad de la razón de dar cuenta coherente.

«Into the vacuum left by the collapse of reason rushed a staggering array of exotic intuitions about why things were as they were.» — McKenna nombra lo que ocupó el sitio de la razón y lo llama intuiciones exóticas.

«He said that one could see any point in time by closing one's eyes, visualizing an eight, turning it on its side so that it approximated the sign for infinity, and then mentally sliding the two closed rings over each other to form a circle, shrinking the circle to a dot, and thinking the word "please" and the target point in space-time.» — la enseñanza del ocho tumbado que Dennis anuncia, con el please incluido en el procedimiento.

«I recalled with perfect clarity that six weeks before, shortly before I left Vancouver, British Columbia, I had gone to a dentist as part of the standard pre-travel tune-up. While in the waiting room, I had read a several-months-old journal of some Canadian education association.» — Terence remonta la imagen a un artículo leído en la sala de espera de un dentista en Vancouver.

«It was a bit of media flotsam that my brother, or something working through my brother, was able to lift right out of my mind weeks after I had forgotten it. Something was able to refashion and use our memories in whatever absurd way that it wished.» — la conclusión que Terence saca del episodio: algo podía rehacer y usar sus recuerdos, y deja abierto si era su hermano o algo que obraba a través de él.

«I have almost two months' perspective on the events surrounding our experience at La Chorrera, and I can clearly recognize that both my brother and I evinced the classic symptoms of the two generally distinguished categories of process schizophrenia. He appeared to manifest the withdrawn characteristics of essential schizophrenia while my behavior was of a more outward and paranoid sort.» — apunte de McKenna del 12 de mayo de 1971: reconoce en los dos hermanos los síntomas clásicos de las dos categorías de esquizofrenia de proceso.

«Nevertheless, I am unable to make the assumption that our experiment was therefore "nothing but" two simultaneously occurring cases of schizophrenia.» — McKenna rechaza la reducción a dos esquizofrenias simultáneas, y lo hace sin negar los síntomas que acaba de conceder.

«With the full knowledge that such a position argues that I may still be experiencing residual symptoms of the illness, I maintain that we were in fact dealing with an objective phenomenon that, though of a highly peculiar nature inexorably bound up with psychic processes, does have its basis in the molecular ideas we were in the process of investigating.» — McKenna se adelanta a la objeción de que su defensa sea ella misma un síntoma, y sostiene igual el fenómeno objetivo.

«The suddenness with which the symptoms developed following our actual experiment: Within a few minutes after we completed our pre-planned experimental procedures, my brother began to disengage himself from the continuum of shared perceptions and at this same time I underwent a willing suspension of disbelief and began to experience the cybernetic unit that we had predicted would be a part of the effect we would cause if we were successful in our attempt to generate a superconducting genetic matrix and harmine bond.» — primer argumento del apunte: la aparición de los síntomas a los pocos minutos del procedimiento.

«The integrated or dovetail aspect of our shared disassocia-tion: meaning that though both of us were exhibiting the symptoms of types of schizophrenia, the fantasy, the ideas, and the understanding which we were experiencing was shared. While my brother thought of me as the shaman messiah in all manifestations, I perceived him as the condensed mindlens making a return journey across the universe that might have been one logical outcome of our experiment.» — segundo argumento: la disociación de los dos hermanos era compartida y encajaba pieza con pieza; el troceo imprime la palabra partida como disassocia-tion; el troceo une a fin de renglón mind-lens y lo devuelve como mindlens, y deja disassocia-tion partido.

«Each of us alone would have given the clear appearance of being deluded; however, each of us seemed to offer elusive proof of the correctness of the other's position.» — McKenna consigna el problema de ese argumento en la misma frase: cada uno era la única prueba del otro.

«his apparent lack of integration was due to the fact that his thinking was moving backward in some fundamental way.» — la explicación que Terence da del desorden de su hermano, en términos de pensamiento corriendo hacia atrás.

«Dennis felt confident that the brain operates on the principle of a hologram. This was an idea originated by Karl Pribram, a neurophysiologist at Stanford, that was very much in vogue in our circles then.» — Terence adjudica a Karl Pribram la idea holográfica del cerebro y consigna que estaba de moda en su medio.

«It neatly explains the fact that a large percentage of the physical brain can be damaged or removed with no impairment of memory, since a portion of a hologram contains all the information embedded in the larger whole from which it has been taken.» — el argumento que el libro da a favor de esa idea, por la resistencia de la memoria al daño cerebral.

«In fact, I still believe that our only error throughout this entire experiment and the events following it has been our inability to correctly predict the duration of the process.» — McKenna reduce el error propio a uno solo, la duración, y conserva el resto de la teoría.

«At times my brothers free associations consisted of incidents which I had experienced more than a year previously and more than ten thousand miles from where Dennis was then living—incidents about which I had spoken to no one.» — el argumento telepático del apunte: asociaciones de Dennis sobre incidentes que Terence no había contado a nadie; el volumen imprime brothers sin apóstrofo, sic.

«in a perfect imitation of our father's voice, he consoled me with the spoken thought that "Dennis is a good lad and would never do a thing like that.» — el episodio con que McKenna ilustra la escucha de su pensamiento, con la voz del padre puesta por su hermano.

«This prediction of a material transmutation is not so odd when the alchemical concerns and ideas that led us into this experiment are recalled.» — McKenna encuadra la predicción en el marco alquímico que declara haber traído desde el principio.

«After all, we had been reading and discussing alchemical ideas ever since I had discovered Jung's Psychology and Alchemy, at age fourteen.» — McKenna data en los catorce años su descubrimiento de Psicología y alquimia de Jung y lo pone en el origen del interés alquímico de los dos hermanos.

«It had seemed to us then that in the projection of the phantasms of the unconscious onto matter, the alchemists were achieving a kind of psychedelic state of understanding.» — la lectura de la alquimia que McKenna dice haber tenido desde entonces: la proyección de los fantasmas del inconsciente sobre la materia como estado psicodélico de entendimiento.

«And, after all, isn't the alchemical faith really a faith that the world is made of language? That poetry can somehow be the final arbiter of authentic being?» — la tesis de McKenna sobre la alquimia, formulada en dos preguntas: que el mundo esté hecho de lenguaje y que la poesía sea el árbitro último del ser.

«I examined the pipe's bowl very carefully and, though no change in the physical appearance of the smoking mixture had occurred, it was now definitely, to my own satisfaction and to that of skeptical Ev, behaving exactly like hashish—a luxury absolutely unknown in the Amazon in 1971.» — lo que McKenna declara haber comprobado de la transmutación anunciada, con el testimonio de Ev puesto de su lado.

«This phenomenon persisted for about five minutes and then slowly faded, returning to the rational continuum of normal behavior for materials.» — McKenna acota la duración del fenómeno y consigna el retorno a la conducta normal de los materiales.

«It is to be regretted that this transmutation occurred with a substance where any skeptic will be at ease in venting his or her scorn. We are all familiar with the facile view that "pot-heads can't think straight," but to anyone who has in-depth involvement with these two substances the difference is unmistakable.» — McKenna se adelanta a la objeción obvia contra el episodio y la contesta por experiencia propia.

«This experience contained a number of parallels to the Nijuli movement among the Lawangan people of Borneo, who in the early 1920s promulgated ideas centering around the claim that a piece of resin had suddenly become longer through the influence of a flute played nearby, and that the lengthening of the resin foreshadowed human immortality.» — McKenna busca paralelo etnográfico en el movimiento Nijuli de los lawangan de Borneo, con la resina alargada por el sonido de una flauta.

«Are you my tailor?" He demanded, in a strong English accent.» — la frase de su hermano que Terence reconoce de Katmandú, y que es el episodio de telepatía que el libro anuncia desde el capítulo seis.

«All these reflections. See. It's me. Uh, but where is my tailor, my silly? Look, look at you, cor, why you've got my knickers on!» — la continuación de esa imitación, que reproduce lo que Terence declara no haber contado nunca a nadie.

«Dennis was imitating the conversation that I had had with my English friend in Nepal, after I had come looking for her and had returned with her delirious to my room during our LSD and DMT trip more than a year before! This crazy conversation, which I had never discussed with anyone save her, was now booming out over our Amazon clearing in the mad voice of my brother.» — Terence explica de dónde venía la escena y por qué la considera prueba; el troceo corta la frase por cambio de plana.

«But I was impressed and convinced that he had somehow penetrated not only my immediate thoughts but my private memories.» — Terence declara la única conclusión que saca del episodio, sin afirmar cómo ocurrió.

«Most important among the factors arguing for more than a simple case of simultaneous schizophrenia is the surprising durability of the model we have created out of the careful observation of the things that happened to us.» — el argumento que McKenna pone por encima de todos: la durabilidad del modelo construido observando lo ocurrido.

«But I have taken the fruits of the visionary revelation and carried them further, deconstructing them to discover a very elegant wave/particle theory of the nature of time.» — McKenna declara haber deconstruido la revelación hasta una teoría ondulatoria del tiempo, que es lo que el libro llamará Timewave.

«According to this theory, the old notion of time as pure duration, visualized as a smooth plane or straight line, is to be replaced by the idea that time is a very complex fractal phenomenon with many ups and downs of many sizes over which the probabilistic universe» — la tesis del Timewave en su forma más corta: el tiempo no como duración lisa sino como fenómeno fractal complejo; el troceo corta por cambio de plana.

«Another incident occurred seven days after the reversal began, on March 12. Dennis announced that at eleven o'clock that night» — Dennis anuncia para esa noche la aparición de una sustancia imposible de hallar en el Amazonas; el troceo corta por cambio de plana y la frase sigue en la 110 con *the good shit would appear*.

«the "good shit" would appear. This was a reference to a kind of psilocybin-enriched hashish that Dennis claimed he had encountered a few months before leaving the States, but which would be impossible to find in the Amazon.» — continuación en la plana siguiente: el objeto de la predicción es un hachís enriquecido con psilocibina que Dennis decía haber conocido antes del viaje.

«I had discovered the fractal dimension of time itself, a mathematical constant that replaces probability theory with a complex, but elegant—indeed an almost magical—set of constraints on the expression of novelty.» — McKenna declara haber descubierto la dimensión fractal del tiempo, una constante matemática que sustituiría a la teoría de la probabilidad.

«These were the motifs of the "teacher" and the insect. We could feel the overwhelming presence of some unseen, intelligent entity that seemed to be observing and sometimes exerting influence to keep us moving gently toward a breakthrough.» — McKenna nombra los dos motivos que gobiernan el episodio y declara la presencia de una entidad inteligente no vista.

«Because of the bizarre nature of the DMT flash, with its seeming stress upon themes alien, insec-tile, and interstellar, we were led to speculate that this teacher was somehow a diplomat-anthropologist, come to give us the keys to galactarian citizenship.» — la figura con que McKenna interpreta al maestro, diplomático y antropólogo, derivada del carácter insectil de la experiencia de DMT; el troceo imprime la palabra partida como insec-tile.

«This sense of the presence of an alien third party was sometimes very intense, especially from March fifth to the tenth, after which it faded off gradually.» — McKenna acota con fechas el periodo en que dice haber sentido esa presencia.

«We thought at the time that the process we were involved with was akin to giving birth to a child, but also much like the metamorphosis that occurs in the life cycle of insects, especially beetles, moths, and butterflies.» — la analogía que el grupo hacía del proceso con el parto y con la metamorfosis de los insectos.

«We "knew" that tryptamine was somehow a major part of the solution to the enzyme mysteries surrounding metamorphosis.» — McKenna pone el verbo saber entre comillas para marcar el estatuto de esas certezas, y lo mantiene así en toda la serie.

«The cauda pavonis (the peacock's tail) is the brief stage that heralds the final whitening; by exotic intuition I "knew" that the occurrence of such iridescence in nature indicated the presence of tryptamine-related compounds.» — McKenna toma de la alquimia la cola de pavo real y le adjudica, con el saber entrecomillado, la presencia de compuestos emparentados con la triptamina; el troceo corta la frase por cambio de plana.

«I "knew" that the enzymes active in insect metamorphosis received molecular tuning and control through resonation induced by the harmonic strum of those forest insects with psychoactive trypt-amine in their bodies. The tryptamine acted for them as an antenna to the electron spin resonance signal of the collective DNA, just as it did for us in the experiment.» — la hipótesis entomológica de McKenna: la triptamina de los insectos como antena hacia la señal del ADN colectivo; el troceo imprime la palabra partida como trypt-amine.

«This signal is somehow keeping the entire class Insecta keyed into a point of stable equilibrium in the evolutionary stream. This odd notion explained the remarkable durability of insect adaptation, which, it is true, stabilized its basic evolutionary strategy some hundreds of millions of years ago.» — McKenna deriva de ahí una explicación de la estabilidad evolutiva de los insectos, y la llama noción rara en la misma frase.

«Such improbable insights into nature were delivered quite conversationally by the voice in my mind.» — McKenna declara la procedencia de esas ideas y el tono en que dice haberlas recibido.

«It is known that the chitinous material that forms the outer covering of insects and spores is one of the most electron-dense materials in organic nature, being, in this property, similar to metal.» — el dato con que McKenna apoya la analogía entre el caparazón del escarabajo y la espora del hongo.

«The inner teacher urged that this specimen be analyzed for the presence of psychoactive tryptamines. If they were found, it would tend to confirm the idea that some species responsible for the buzz of the forest would be discovered to contain tryptamines.» — McKenna consigna que la propuesta de analizar el escarabajo vino del maestro interior y no de él.

«Acoustically driven chemical reactions are well known; I felt sure that some of the life processes of the Insecta must be acoustically regulated by a few species in this way.» — McKenna apoya la hipótesis en un hecho conocido y la extiende a la vida de los insectos con I felt sure.

«By the third or fourth day following the experiment, I had learned enough of the new and peculiarly symbolic language that he was speaking that I was increasingly convinced that through it I could observe him achieving a gradual but progressive integration.» — Terence declara haber aprendido la lengua simbólica de su hermano y haber visto en ella una integración progresiva.

«Several times on such occasions I looked down and noticed with a weird thrill that my unconscious fingers had been engaged in gathering small twigs and arranging them in patterns as though they were to be miniature fires.» — el gesto inconsciente que Terence dice haberse sorprendido haciendo, con las ramitas dispuestas como hogueras en miniatura.

«I interpreted it then as a literal overflowing of the organizing energies that were being poured into me from some unknown source, the same source that was supplying me with energy so that I could matter of factly go without sleep.» — la interpretación que Terence dio entonces a ese gesto, marcada con then y ligada a su falta de sueño.

«Questioning uncovered his belief that in hyperspace the topology of all human bodies is continuous and so he could effortlessly absorb what he needed directly out of our bodies.» — la creencia que Terence atribuye a su hermano sobre la continuidad de los cuerpos en el hiperespacio.

«For five days life went on in that mode, a waking dream of overkill by palindrome and pun. We sent amazingly few waves of interaction out into the "real world" around us. No one stopped to stare at us or our camp; we seemed to have become invisible.» — McKenna describe los cinco días con la fórmula del palíndromo y el retruécano, y consigna que no produjeron efecto alguno afuera.

«seem that I made the inevitable mistake of taking the situation for granted.» — Terence marca su propio descuido como inevitable, y es el que produce el episodio público del capítulo.

«He had gone straight to the mission, located the bell rope of the bell used to call the people to Mass, and had rung it furiously until the priest found Vanessa and Dave and they had none too gently persuaded Dennis to desist from his hijinks.» — el episodio de la campana de la misión, que es la primera acción de Dennis con testigos fuera del grupo.

«Nevertheless, the already circulating rumor that one member of our expedition had gone a bit off the deep end was not eroded by this sudden and totally public outrage.» — McKenna consigna el efecto del episodio sobre la posición del grupo en la misión.

«The delicate political balance I had established allowing me to have my way in the matter of how to treat Dennis was now destroyed.» — Terence declara perdida su autoridad sobre el trato a su hermano.

«Riding on the inner assurance that worry would be preposterous and acknowledging that I had completely lost control of the situation, I agreed to all suggestions.» — Terence explica por qué cedió: la seguridad interior le hacía absurda la preocupación.

«I assumed that the eruption of the millennium would soon obviate all such mundane concerns, but that was a fact that I would let others discover for themselves as they made their way into the ever-deepening dimension of the future.» — la razón de fondo de esa cesión: McKenna daba por inminente el milenio y por eso irrelevante lo demás.

«As residents of Berkeley, we had all encountered acid casualties; comparison of Dennis's state with those lost souls was not reassuring.» — la comparación que el grupo hacía con los casos que habían visto en Berkeley, y el resultado que McKenna declara.

«Dennis's move to the river was a turning point, for from then hence the effects the phenomenon unleashed were less in our minds and more in the world.» — McKenna marca el punto en que los efectos del fenómeno dejan de ser interiores.

«What the teacher told me in the first few days after the experiment was, "You almost got it; you didn't quite get it." Or rather it used the metaphor of condensation: "It is condensing.» — voz del maestro según McKenna, con la enmienda del resultado del experimento en términos de condensación en curso.

«I supposed that if a few of these species resonated, then other shrilling species could tune themselves to the molecular signal» — la hipótesis acústica de McKenna sobre el zumbido de la selva, marcada con I supposed; el troceo corta por cambio de plana y la frase sigue en la 113 con *thus amplifying it and sustaining it through the forest*.

«It was like a perfect alchemical metaphor. The stone is everywhere. It is here.» — McKenna cierra la enmienda del maestro con la fórmula alquímica de que la piedra está en todas partes.

«I can see the lapis. It is two hundred and fifty feet away to the left; it's down near the waterhole, hovering above the water.» — voz de Dennis localizando la lapis en el terreno, con distancia y dirección; Terence la reporta sin discutirla.

«I continued to ask him each day for the stone, and each day the Sophie hydrolith—a.k.a., the universal panacea—would get closer in.» — la rutina que se asienta entre los dos hermanos y el modo en que la piedra se iba acercando; el volumen imprime Sophie hydrolith por Sophic, sic.

«Our intuitions concerning what was going on ranged from the religiously profound to the utterly absurd.» — McKenna mide él mismo el rango de lo que se les ocurría en esos días.

«This particular afternoon, Dennis called our attention to the little hen, saying that if one thought of her as art, then the achievement she represented was immense.» — el arranque del episodio de la gallina, en que Dennis propone mirarla como obra de arte.

«Over the next few minutes he proceeded to make his case: that Finnegans Wake represented the most complete understanding yet achieved of the relation of the human mind to time and space» — la tesis de Dennis sobre el Finnegans Wake como la comprensión más completa de la relación de la mente con el tiempo y el espacio; el troceo corta por cambio de plana.

«Dennis was only following Wyndham Lewis, who made Joyce's ascent to eminence in the afterworld the subject of his novel The Human Age.» — Terence sitúa la ocurrencia de su hermano en un antecedente literario, la novela de Wyndham Lewis.

«Jim and Nora," as Dennis called the newly revealed deity and his consort, were both in and acting through everything at La Chorrera, particularly in the things that Joyce had loved.» — Terence reporta la deidad que su hermano proclamaba en esos días y el modo en que la veía actuar en el lugar.

«These ideas were absurd but delightful, and they led me eventually to reread Joyce and to accept him as one of the true pioneers in the mapping of hyperspace.» — Terence califica de absurdas las ideas de su hermano y a la vez declara el efecto duradero que tuvieron en su propia lectura de Joyce.

«He reminded me that one of our alchemical analogues for the philosopher's stone, which we shared in our private code of associations as children, was a certain, small, silver key to a box of inlaid wood with a secret compartment that had belonged to our grandfather.» — el análogo privado de la piedra filosofal que los dos hermanos compartían de niños, la llave de plata del abuelo.

«I said that the ability to produce that key right then would prove the reality of Dennis's shamanic powers and ability to transcend normal space and time.» — Terence fija él mismo la prueba que le pide a su hermano, con lo que el episodio queda planteado como contraste.

«The conversation took the form of a question-and-answer session that ended with Dennis demanding that I hold out my hand, and then, slapping his closed hand into my open one, letting out a loud, ludicrous squawk, and depositing in my palm a small, silver key.» — el resultado de esa prueba según Terence, con la llave depositada en su mano.

«Had he saved that key over all those years to produce it now, in the middle of the Amazon, to completely distort my notion of reality? Or was this only a similar key that Dennis had been carrying when he arrived in South America, but that I had somehow not noticed until he produced it?» — Terence se ofrece a sí mismo dos explicaciones ordinarias del episodio, en preguntas.

«This seemed unlikely. He was confined to a room far from our stored equipment, and it was difficult to conceive of him becoming calm and organized enough to go to the baggage and carefully sort through it to find the secreted key.» — Terence argumenta contra esas explicaciones por la situación material de su hermano.

«And anyway, it was I who had conceived of asking for the key; had he somehow tricked me into asking for the one object that he had brought with him to deceive me?» — la tercera posibilidad que Terence se plantea y que tampoco resuelve.

«This matter of the silver key, whether it was the original key or not, has never been satisfactorily settled. The original box was lost long ago, so the key was never tested.» — McKenna declara expresamente no resuelto el episodio de la llave y da la razón: la caja se había perdido.

«A final ironic note is added to the episode by the fact that both Dennis and I are fans of the stories of H. P. Lovecraft and so were aware of his story "Through the Gates of the Silver Key," a tale seething with many dimensions, strange beings, a cosmic time scale, and reckless, oddball adventurers like ourselves.» — McKenna consigna la coincidencia con el relato de Lovecraft y la llama nota irónica, sin adjudicarle más peso.

«Like the fox spirit of the / Ching who wanders eternally among the jeweled, night grasses, I wandered in the pastures and on the trails around La Chorrera.» — McKenna se compara con el espíritu zorro del I Ching al describir sus rondas nocturnas; el escaneo imprime el título como / Ching.

«Effortlessly, the deeper something that shared my mind connected up the constellations for me and showed me the enormous Zodiacal machine of stellar fate that must have come to the ancients with the same suggestive force.» — McKenna adjudica a algo que compartía su mente el trazado de las constelaciones, y lo enlaza con la experiencia de los antiguos.

«It was during those velvet, star-strewn, jungle nights that I felt closest to understanding the tripartite mystery of the philosopher's stone, the Alien Other, and the human soul.» — McKenna nombra el misterio tripartito del libro: la piedra filosofal, la Otra Cosa alienígena y el alma humana.

«There is something human that transcends the individual and that transcends life and death as well. It has will, motive, and enormous power. And it is with us now.» — la afirmación más desnuda de McKenna sobre lo que sostiene, sin condicional ni matiz.

«I have come to believe that under certain conditions the manipulative power of consciousness moves beyond the body and into the world. The world then obeys the will of consciousness to the degree that the inertia of pre-existing physical laws can be overcome.» — McKenna enuncia con I have come to believe la tesis de que la consciencia obra fuera del cuerpo venciendo la inercia de las leyes físicas.

«This inertia is overcome by consciousness determining the outcome of the normally random, micro-physical events. Over time the deflection of micro-events from randomness is cumulative so that eventually the effects of such deflections is to shift the course of events in larger physical systems as well.» — el mecanismo que McKenna propone para esa acción: desvío acumulado de sucesos microfísicos normalmente aleatorios.

«Is this just a fantasy, a grown man trying to explain to himself how wishes can come true? I don't think so.» — McKenna se formula la objeción y la contesta en tres palabras, sin más argumento que su experiencia.

«It is as though subtle pressure toward a given end accomplishes a series of micro-deviations leading to a non-random and anti-entropic situation—a wish come true.» — la formulación del mecanismo en términos de presión sutil y situación antientrópica, sostenida con as though.

«I remember being so small that my mother could cradle me in her arms, and she would lean over me and whisper the old nursery rhyme, "If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.» — McKenna remonta su propio deseo de cumplir deseos al refrán que su madre le decía de niño.

«I saw that there is an interphase between consciousness active in the world and consciousness active in the central nervous system, whose intermediary is the body. That interphase is language.» — McKenna nombra el lenguaje como la interfase entre la consciencia en el mundo y la consciencia en el sistema nervioso.

«To use language, consciousness informs the brain to inform the body to impart coherency to the random motion of the air molecules near but outside the body. This coherency is supplied by consciousness in the form of a word.» — la descripción física que McKenna da del habla: coherencia impuesta al movimiento aleatorio de las moléculas de aire.

«None of the physical laws operating on the air molecules have been violated, because the coherent pattern of behavior of the molecules is due to an input of energy—an input of energy whose release was initiated by an act of conscious will. Will is not an item in the toolkit of scientific explanation.» — McKenna sostiene que su descripción no viola ley física alguna y señala dónde queda el hueco: la voluntad no figura en la caja de herramientas de la ciencia.

«Language is thereby seen to be a kind of parapsychological ability since it involves action at a distance and telekinesis, albeit» — la consecuencia que McKenna extrae: el lenguaje como habilidad parapsicológica, acción a distancia y telequinesis; el troceo corta por cambio de plana y la frase sigue en la 118 con *voice-transduced*.

«Perhaps under the influence of psilocybin an immense energizing of will could be vocally transduced into the world where it might do more than imprint a signal onto the random motion of air molecules. Perhaps instead a word, visibly beheld, might be transduced and appear through appropriate shifts of refraction in those same nearby air molecules.» — la especulación que McKenna construye sobre esa base, con dos perhaps: la palabra hecha visible por refracción del aire.

«Normal speech itself is sometimes seen to effect the refractive index of the air in front of the speaker's mouth. Viewed in profile a speaker is sometimes seen to generate a wavering of the air in front of the mouth that is like the shimmer of a mirage above a hot highway.» — el hecho ordinario con que McKenna apoya la especulación; el volumen imprime effect por affect, sic.

«A more perfect Logos would seem to be the result— a Logos able to regulate the activity of the ego as it exists in the sum total of individuals living at any time.» — McKenna nombra el Logos más perfecto y le atribuye regular la actividad del yo en el conjunto de los vivos.

«It is like a god; it is the human god. It is something that will happen to human destiny sometime in the future, and because it will happen, it is happening.» — la fórmula temporal que sostiene el Timewave: lo que ocurrirá en el futuro está ocurriendo porque ocurrirá.

«The ontological mode of the higher dimensions into which humanity is being propelled is being anticipated by the singularity that we call the wholly Other or the alien.» — McKenna nombra la singularidad que anticipa el modo ontológico por venir y la llama la Otra Cosa enteramente otra o lo alienígena.

«The alien is teaching something through its reinforcement schedule: It is preparing us to confront the God facet of ourselves that our explorations into the nature of life and matter are about to reveal.» — McKenna atribuye a lo alienígena un programa de refuerzo cuyo fin sería enfrentarnos con la faceta divina de nosotros mismos.

«He said that it was the mushroom at the end of history. To him the shape of the atomic cloud was a physical and biophysical pun on the transformative powers of the Strophariad and its eruption into human history.» — Terence reporta la fórmula de su hermano, el hongo al final de la historia, y el juego visual que hacía con el hongo atómico.

«From the seething base of the cloud what looked like a column of light emerged. The column was sustained, not merely a bolt of lightning. It was hard to see how it could be a shaft of sunlight, since it was late afternoon and the sun was in the west, while the cloud was in the southeast.» — la columna de luz que McKenna y Ev dicen haber visto, con la objeción del ángulo del sol puesta por el propio narrador.

«Ev was quite shaken. Even more than the frozen appearance of the river, this occurrence was of an empirical order different than anything that she had experienced at La Chorrera.» — Terence consigna el efecto sobre Ev y lo sitúa en otro orden empírico que lo anterior.

«Also, I did not have Vanessa's faith that all Dennis needed to return to normal was to check into the world of modern psychiatry.» — Terence declara su desacuerdo con la salida que Vanessa proponía para su hermano, y lo dice con la palabra fe.

«From out of nowhere I remembered an old Celtic saying that Robert Graves discusses: "Poetry is made at the edge of running water.» — McKenna atribuye a Robert Graves la discusión del dicho celta sobre la poesía hecha al borde del agua corriente.

«By this time, I had stopped forcing my opinions on people. I was already regarded as nuts, not incoherent exactly, but not to be trusted or relied upon because I believed such odd things.» — McKenna consigna su propia posición dentro del grupo en esos días, con las palabras de los otros puestas.

«the bow of a rainbow never formed, but the deepening of the colors in one spot was very definite.» — McKenna describe el fenómeno con precisión y consigna lo que no llegó a formarse.

«Yes, we see it. Not much of one is it?» — el asentimiento que McKenna obtiene de sus compañeras, y que el libro conserva con la reserva que ellas le ponen.

«I had the strong sense of the eye-in-the-sky drawing close to my thoughts and watching with satisfaction as I understood the importance of the southeast, and of watching and focusing my attention on that spot.» — McKenna nombra el ojo en el cielo y le atribuye satisfacción ante su propia comprensión.

«In my mind, the teacher said, "This is the place. This is the sign. Watch here.» — voz del maestro según McKenna, que le fija el sitio y la vigilia de la noche del avistamiento.

«For it had become my belief that the contact with an intelligent and utterly alien species was beginning» — McKenna enuncia lo que había llegado a creer: que empezaba el contacto de la humanidad con una especie inteligente y ajena; el troceo corta por cambio de plana.

«It seemed that out of the long night of cosmic time the novelty of novelties, the moment of contact between minds on utterly different planes, was beginning.» — McKenna llama a ese contacto la novedad de las novedades, con el vocabulario que su teoría del tiempo hará técnico.

«We were among the first to achieve contact with this Other species. It was the real thing.» — la afirmación sin reservas que McKenna hace de lo suyo, en dos frases cortas.

«there, in the darkness of the heart of the Amazon, we had been found and touched by this bizarre and ancient life form that was now awakening to the global potential of a symbiotic relationship with technical humanity.» — McKenna describe al hongo como forma de vida antigua que despertaba al potencial de una simbiosis con la humanidad técnica.

«And I saw the plan, the mighty plan. At last. It was an ecstasy, an ecstasis that lasted hours and placed the seal of completion on all of my previous life. At the end I felt reborn, but as what I knew not.» — McKenna consigna el éxtasis de aquella noche y deja el resultado en la ignorancia de en qué había renacido.

«I watched very carefully as the rolling line of darkening mist split into two parts and each of these smaller clouds also divided apart. It took only a minute or so for these changes to be executed, and I was now looking at four lens-shaped clouds of the same size lying in a row and slightly above the horizon, only a half mile or so away.» — la observación de las nubes lenticulares, contada paso a paso y con las distancias dadas.

«The symmetry of this dividing and rejoining, and the fact that the smaller clouds were all the same size, lent the performance an eerie air, as if nature herself were suddenly the tool of some unseen organizing agency.» — McKenna adjudica el suceso a una agencia organizadora no vista y lo sostiene con as if; el troceo corta la frase por cambio de plana.

«But even as the thought formed, I heard a high-pitched, ululating whine come drifting over the jungle tree tops, obviously from the direction of the thing I was watching.» — McKenna se ofrece a sí mismo la explicación de la tromba marina y la descarta por el sonido que dice haber oído.

«To arouse someone I would have had to go hand-over-hand up the slope and consequently take my eyes off the thing I was watching. In the space of an instant, I decided that I could not cease observing.» — McKenna explica por qué no buscó testigos, que es la razón por la que el episodio queda sin otro testigo.

«I tried a shout, but no sound came from my fearconstricted throat.» — el único intento de McKenna de llamar a alguien, que el propio relato declara fallido; el troceo une a fin de renglón fear-constricted y lo devuelve como fearconstricted.

«For the first time, I truly believed in all that had happened to us, and I knew that the flying concrescence was now about to take me.» — McKenna data en ese instante su propia creencia plena, y nombra a la cosa concrescencia voladora.

«Then it passed directly overhead at an altitude of about two hundred feet, banked steeply upward, and was lost from sight over the edge of the slope behind me. In the last moment before it was lost, I completely threw open my senses to it and saw it very clearly.» — la descripción del paso del objeto, con altura y maniobra, y la declaración de haberlo visto con claridad.

«It was a saucer-shaped machine rotating slowly, with unobtrusive, soft, blue and orange lights. As it passed over me I could see symmetrical indentations on the underside. It was making the whee, whee, whee sound of science fiction flying saucers.» — la descripción del objeto que McKenna da, con el sonido tomado del cine de ciencia ficción puesto por él mismo.

«Was it real in the naive sense in which that question is asked of UFOs and tables and chairs? No one else saw this thing as far as I know. I alone was its observer.» — McKenna se formula la pregunta por la realidad del objeto y consigna que no hubo otro testigo.

«I saw this thing go from being a bit of cloud to being a rivet-studded aircraft of some kind. Was it more true to itself as cloud or aircraft?» — McKenna deja la naturaleza del objeto en pregunta, entre nube y aeronave.

«Against my testimony can be put my admitted lack of sleep and our involvement with psychedelic plants. Yet curiously this last point can be interpreted in my favor. I am familiar through direct experience with every known class of hallucinogen. What I saw that morning did not fall into any of the categories of hallucinated imagery I am familiar with.» — McKenna reúne los argumentos contra su propio testimonio y los responde con su experiencia de todas las clases de alucinógeno.

«It is that as the saucer passed overhead, I saw it clearly enough to judge that it was identical with the UFO, with three half-spheres on its underside, that appears in an infamous photo by George Adamski widely assumed to be a hoax.» — McKenna consigna el detalle que vuelve absurdo su propio relato: el objeto coincidía con la foto de George Adamski tenida por fraude.

«I had not closely followed the matter, but I accepted the expert opinion that what Adamski had photographed was a rigged up end-cap of a Hoover vacuum cleaner.» — McKenna declara que él mismo daba por buena la explicación del fraude.

«But I saw this same object in the sky above La Chorrera. Was it a fact picked up as a boyhood UFO enthusiast? Something as easily picked out of my mind as other memories seem to have been?» — McKenna sostiene el avistamiento y a la vez se ofrece la explicación de que el objeto saliera de su propia memoria.

«By appearing in a form that casts doubt on itself, it achieves a more complete cognitive dissonance than if its seeming alienness were completely convincing.» — la lectura que McKenna da del absurdo: la forma dudosa produce mayor disonancia cognitiva que una apariencia convincente.

«It was, if you ask me—and there is no one else really that one can ask—either a holographic mirage of a technical perfection impossible on earth today or it was the manifestation of something which in that instance chose to begin as mist and end as machine, but which could have appeared in any form, a manifestation of a humorous something's omniscient control over the world of form and matter.» — McKenna da sus dos únicas explicaciones del objeto y en la misma frase consigna que no hay a quién más preguntarle.

«Years later it occurs to me that perhaps it was a kind of mirage still unknown to us—a temporal mirage.» — McKenna propone el término espejismo temporal, en el que apoyará su lectura de los ovnis.

«But a temporal mirage is another matter; it is a lenticular image of» — McKenna define el espejismo temporal como imagen lenticular; el troceo corta por cambio de plana y la frase sigue en la 124 con *a distant time and place. Cause unknown*.

«a distant time and place. Cause unknown. What makes the ordinary and temporal mirages members of the same class is that both types of mirages require the intercession of the human mind in order to exist.» — continuación en la plana siguiente: McKenna declara desconocida la causa y pone en común a los dos tipos de espejismo la intercesión de la mente humana.

«Or perhaps the temporal mirage is a natural phenomenon, and the UFO is an artifact resulting from the temporal mirage being used or experimented with by some future technology?» — la hipótesis que McKenna prefiere, formulada en pregunta: el ovni como artefacto de una tecnología futura que experimenta con el espejismo temporal.

«The UFO is a reflection of a future event that promises humanity's eventual mastery over time, space, and matter.» — la tesis de McKenna sobre el ovni: reflejo de un suceso futuro que promete el dominio humano sobre el tiempo, el espacio y la materia.

«We, in our clumsy attempt to probe these mysteries, were able to coax nature into throwing out this great, burning scintilla of pure contradiction from the dark retort where she labors over the chemistry of the millennium.» — McKenna describe lo que dice haber provocado con vocabulario alquímico, con la retorta oscura donde la naturaleza trabaja.

«It meant to me that we were on the right track; the Stropharia cubensis mushroom is a memory bank of galactic history.» — la tesis que McKenna saca del avistamiento: el hongo como banco de memoria de la historia galáctica.

«When we look within ourselves with psilocybin, we discover that we do not have to look outward toward the futile promise of life that circles distant stars in order to still our cosmic loneliness. We should look within; the paths of the heart lead to nearby universes full of life and affection for humanity.» — la conclusión práctica de McKenna: mirar adentro en vez de buscar vida en estrellas distantes.

«Beyond his commenting as we got aboard that an airplane was a partial condensation of a flying saucer, he said little.» — la frase de Dennis al subir al avión, que Terence conserva como muestra de su estado.

«We stayed two days in Leticia, days in which Dennis showed marked improvement while the rest of us drifted into various stances of distance with regard to each other.» — Terence consigna a la vez la mejoría de su hermano y el distanciamiento del grupo.

«By the time we reached Bogota, Dennis had almost completely returned to normal, lending weight to the idea that some form of temporary chemical imbalance had been responsible for his reaction rather than the emergence of a chronically unbalanced personality structure.» — Terence toma la rapidez de la recuperación como peso a favor de la explicación química y en contra de la psicológica.

«He was very shaky and very bummed by any mention of fourth-dimensional superconducting bonds, ayahuasca, or shamanism. He said, "Look, I have had it." He had, too.» — la única reacción que Terence conserva de su hermano sobre todo el asunto, en boca de Dennis.

«He was nearly normal, but I was just at the beginning of a years-long period of unusual ideation—the state of suspended disbelief that gave birth to the ideas concerning time set out in The Invisible Landscape.» — Terence marca el desfase entre los dos hermanos y data ahí el arranque de su propia teoría del tiempo.

«It was an immense accomplishment to have been able to allow the reversal to work itself out without the aggravating influence of modern mental health care procedures.» — la lectura que McKenna hace del desenlace, en contra de la intervención psiquiátrica que Vanessa proponía.

«The ordeal in the wilderness that all shamans must face had been endured. A step on the path to knowledge had been taken.» — McKenna encuadra lo que le pasó a su hermano en la prueba iniciática del chamán.

«I predict that tomorrow Dennis will return to the psychological set he experienced prior to March first, though it is possible that rather than a residual amnesia concerning events at La Chorrera he will have instead a growing understanding of the experiment of which he was the creator.» — apunte del 21 de marzo de 1971: McKenna hace una predicción fechada sobre su hermano, con las dos salidas posibles.

«The past weeks have been harrowing and seemingly made of so many times, places, and minds that a rational chronicle has been impossible. Only Finnegans Wake gives some idea of the reality of the paradoxicum as we experienced it by virtue of being able to pierce beyond time's double face.» — el apunte declara imposible la crónica racional de esas semanas y pone al Finnegans Wake por única medida de lo vivido.

«I was caught up in an obsessive immersion, almost an enforced meditation, on the nature of time.» — Terence describe su propio estado tras el regreso y lo llama meditación forzada sobre el tiempo.

«Resonances, recurrences, and the idea that events were interference patterns caused by other events temporally and causally distant claimed my attention.» — los materiales con que McKenna dice haber empezado a construir su teoría: resonancias, recurrencias y patrones de interferencia.

«In those early speculations I imagined a mythic cycle needing forty days to be brought to completion. It was only later, when I began to be impressed with the DNA-related and calendrical nature of the temporal cycles, that I turned my attention to cycles of sixty-four days duration.» — McKenna consigna el paso del ciclo de cuarenta días al de sesenta y cuatro, y da la razón: el carácter calendárico y ligado al ADN de los ciclos.

«This speculation eventually led me to turn to the / Ching.» — McKenna data así su vuelta al I Ching, que será la base del Timewave; el escaneo imprime el título como / Ching.

«However, that elegance was reserved for the future; the early conception was crude, self-referential, and idiosyncratic.» — McKenna califica su propia concepción temprana con tres adjetivos y no la defiende.

«It was only my faith that it could be made coherent and rational to others that kept me at it for those several years, transforming the original intuition into a set of formal propositions.» — McKenna declara que lo que lo sostuvo en el trabajo fue la fe en que la intuición podría volverse coherente para otros.

«I was beginning to see the dim outlines of what would become the / Ching time-wave theory. The first maps of the / Ching hexagram hierarchy, which was eventually turned into a computer software program I called Timewave Zero» — McKenna nombra el Timewave Zero y lo data en los primeros mapas de la jerarquía de hexagramas; el troceo corta la frase por cambio de plana y el escaneo imprime / Ching.

«I was in the grip of a creative mania more extreme than any I had thought possible. Each conversation with someone on these matters seemed to open vast gulfs of misunderstanding.» — McKenna describe su propio estado en Berkeley con la palabra manía y consigna el efecto sobre sus conversaciones.

«Earlier I had made an appointment to see Dr. Gunther Stent, the world-class molecular geneticist and author of the The Molecular Chemistry of the Gene.» — McKenna nombra al genetista con quien buscó contraste experto y da el título de su libro.

«After a few minutes, I sensed that he might be calculating the odds of whether I would physically attack him. To his credit, he seemed to fight back this alarming swarm of thoughts, allowing me to ramble on and on.» — McKenna consigna lo que percibió en su interlocutor y lo dice con I sensed.

«Dr. Stent, my concern in coming here to discuss this with you is simply that I would like to know whether this theory has any validity or is simply fallacious.» — la pregunta que McKenna dice haber puesto al genetista, formulada como disyuntiva.

«My dear young friend, these ideas are not even fallacious.» — voz de Gunther Stent según McKenna, que conserva el juicio adverso sin discutirlo; el volumen lo trae como el único contraste experto que buscó.

«My chagrin was bottomless and I fled, dizzy with embarrassment. So much for my bridge building efforts toward normal science.» — McKenna consigna el efecto de ese juicio sobre él y declara ahí terminado su intento de puente con la ciencia normal.

«Encounters such as that convinced me that I had to relearn epistemology, genetics, philosophy of science—the entire gamut of subjects necessary to discuss the areas for which I now had such compelling concern.» — la consecuencia que McKenna saca del episodio: reaprender epistemología, genética y filosofía de la ciencia.

«As my study of the / Ching, or Book of Change, advanced, I had refined the idea that its structure was the basis of a timewave or waves. These waves are discrete periods of change that follow each other as well as enclose each other.» — McKenna define la onda de tiempo por la estructura del I Ching: periodos discretos de cambio que se siguen y se contienen; el escaneo imprime / Ching.

«I came to realize that the internal logic of the timewaves strongly implied a termination of normal time and an end to ordinary history.» — la consecuencia escatológica que McKenna adjudica a la lógica interna de sus ondas.

«At that point, the idea of concrescent psycho-matter and the UFO that I had encountered at La Chorrera became identified in my mind with each other and with the end of time scenarios of the Western religious traditions.» — McKenna consigna el momento en que identificó entre sí la psicomateria, el ovni y las escatologías religiosas de Occidente.

«I saw that important events in my own life seemed to be occurring every sixty-four days with eerie regularity.» — la observación personal de la que sale el ciclo de sesenta y cuatro días, marcada con seemed.

«I understood that whether or not the effect I was exploring was a general phenomenon in nature or a unique idiosyncrasy, it was obviously vitally important for me, personally, to let the forces I had become entangled with play themselves out to the end.» — McKenna deja abierto si lo suyo era fenómeno general o idiosincrasia, y declara que en cualquier caso tenía que llevarlo hasta el final.

«Bizarre as the plan seemed to others, I resolved to return to La Chorrera, to its solitude and its strangeness, and to spend time there simply and calmly observing the thing that had come over me.» — la decisión de volver a La Chorrera, que McKenna presenta como observación calmada de lo que le pasaba.

«Once back at La Chorrera, I was determined to write down all that had overtaken us; that was my resolve, and much of the early draft of The Invisible Landscape was the result.» — McKenna declara el propósito del segundo viaje y el libro que salió de él.

«This return to continue the contemplation of the phenomenon in the pure medium of tropical nature in which we discovered it marks a dedication to and an immersion in the phenomenon that, I imagine, anyone familiar with the events which overtook us in March finds incredible and even perhaps not without an element of risk.» — apunte del 15 de julio de 1971: McKenna se adelanta a lo que su vuelta pareciera a otros y nombra el riesgo.

«I refer not to danger inherent in the jungle or to the inevitable hardships attendant upon travel in remote areas, but rather to the psychological stress inherent in confronting the phenomenon— strangely so much a part of one's self and yet vast and other--away from the mitigating world of friends and a world that is unaware or skeptical concerning our encounter with the phenomenon and the subsequent understanding which we derived from it.» — el apunte precisa cuál es el riesgo que le preocupa: la tensión psicológica de enfrentar el fenómeno lejos de un mundo que lo modere; el troceo corta la frase por cambio de plana.

«My first consideration in this area is to do all in my ability to eliminate the unexpected. My brothers crypto-schizophrenic reversal is ever in my mind in this regard.» — el apunte declara su prioridad y nombra el precedente que la motiva, el estado de su hermano.

«I believe we are dealing with something to which no vagueness or uncertainty of inner dynamics adheres. Careful thought and study can eliminate the possibility of the contact phenomenon suddenly "turning on us" or otherwise behaving unexpectedly.» — la confianza que el apunte declara en la estabilidad del fenómeno, dicha con I believe y ya desmentida por lo que el libro ha contado.

«Again and again the "inner voice" of the phenomenon has insisted that since my brother's opus of hyper-carbolation nothing at all remains to be done, and that if something is required in the way of activity, then by virtue of the very nature of the contact, that something will be precisely what we are doing.» — voz interior del fenómeno según McKenna: le dice que nada queda por hacer y que lo que haga será justamente lo requerido.

«There in the center of the Amazon greenery I elaborated my theories of time and covered sheet after sheet of paper with my wave mechanical fantasies.» — McKenna describe el trabajo del segundo viaje y llama fantasías a sus propios cálculos.

«state of mind, the letters D, M, T seemed to stand out in his name like a beacon.» — McKenna consigna la coincidencia de letras en el nombre de Demetrius y la atribuye a su propio estado de exaltación.

«Days later, on my twenty-fifth birthday, I was brought a tarry goo wrapped into little leaf packets. I was never able to obtain a hallucinogenic experience from this material, but later analysis by the chemists of the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm confirmed the presence of di-methyltryptamine.» — el desenlace del objeto declarado del viaje: McKenna obtiene el oo-koo-hé, no le produce efecto, y el análisis del Instituto Karolinska le adjudica dimetiltriptamina.

«The important thing about the second trip to La Chorrera was that the teaching of the Logos was more or less continuous. And what it taught during those months and afterward was an idea about time.» — McKenna declara qué le dejó el segundo viaje: la enseñanza continua del Logos sobre el tiempo.

«The Logos taught me how to do something with the / Ching that perhaps no one knew how to do before. Perhaps the Chinese knew how to do it once and then lost it thousands of years ago.» — McKenna atribuye al Logos la enseñanza de un uso del I Ching que, dice, quizá los chinos tuvieron y perdieron; el escaneo imprime / Ching.

«It taught me a hyper-temporal way of seeing.» — la fórmula más corta de lo que McKenna dice haber recibido.

«This new model of time enables one to have as much of a certain kind of knowledge about the future as it is possible to have.» — McKenna acota lo que su modelo permite saber del futuro, y la acotación es parte de la tesis.

«The future is not absolutely determined; there is not, in other words, a future to "see" in which every event has already been determined.» — McKenna niega el determinismo del futuro en el mismo pasaje en que propone conocerlo.

«The future is not yet completed, but it is conditioned. Mysteriously, out of the set of all possible events, certain events are selected, in Whitehead's phrase, to undergo the formality of actually occurring.» — la fórmula central del Timewave, con la frase de Whitehead citada por su nombre.

«The Logos was concerned to reveal the mechanics of this process and did reveal it as the idea of the timewave.» — McKenna adjudica al Logos la revelación del mecanismo y nombra así la onda del tiempo.

«My mother's death was the first of these points in time that I isolated. Then I noted that my chance-formed relationship with Ev had begun sixty-four days after that, and that the culmination of the experiment at La Chorrera had occurred another sixty-four days later.» — los tres puntos con que McKenna fija su ciclo de sesenta y cuatro días, todos de su propia vida.

«The notion of a hexagram-based lunar year grew out of the idea of six cycles of sixty-four days each, a year of six parts, just as an / Ching hexagram has six lines.» — la derivación del año lunar de trescientos ochenta y cuatro días a partir de las seis líneas del hexagrama.

«The personal worth of the idea was confirmed for me when I noticed that such a year of three hundred and eighty-four days, if begun at the time of my mother's death, would end on my own twenty-fifth birthday on November 16, 1971.» — McKenna consigna que la comprobación del modelo fue personal: el año calculado terminaba en su propio cumpleaños.

«But what was not told there were the experiences at La Chorrera and the way in which these coincidences and my unconscious mind—or something in my mind—guided me to discover these long hidden properties of the / Ching.» — McKenna declara qué quedó fuera de su libro anterior y deja en disyuntiva la fuente de la guía, su inconsciente o algo en su mente; el escaneo imprime / Ching.

«What to make of the ocean of resonances that the timewave seemed to show connecting every moment of time to every other moment through a scheme of connection that knew nothing of randomness or causality?» — McKenna formula en pregunta lo que su onda mostraría: conexiones entre todos los momentos del tiempo al margen del azar y la causa.

«These were inflationary images—and I recognized them as such—but the power and allure of them as a form of private entertainment was frankly irresistible.» — McKenna nombra sus propias imágenes inflacionarias y declara que aun así no podía dejarlas.

«The timewave seemed to be an image from the collective unconscious that sought to prove, at least in its own terms, that the culmination of all the processes in the universe would occur within our lifetimes.» — McKenna lee su propia onda como imagen del inconsciente colectivo y acota su pretensión con at least in its own terms.

«For each of us this is obviously true: our own lives do seem to us, embedded as we are in our bodies and our historical milieus, to be somehow the expression of the final purpose of things.» — la objeción que McKenna se hace a sí mismo: a cualquiera le parece que su propia vida es el propósito final de las cosas.

«Concern for my mental state was rife among my friends, and rumor had reached us that the FBI was aware that I was» — McKenna consigna las dos razones de su salida de California, la preocupación de sus amigos y el FBI; el troceo corta por cambio de plana y la frase sigue en la 129 con *somewhere back inside the country and had begun looking for me*.

«The timewave predicted its own end within our lifetimes; actually only a decade after the turn of the century, a time of such novelty that beyond it there could be nothing less than the end of time itself. This was the most puzzling of all, more puzzling than its personal, idiosyncratic side, this implicit "end of time": a period when a transition of regimes would take place that would completely transform the modalities of reality.» — McKenna fecha el término de su onda una década después del cambio de siglo y lo describe como transición de regímenes que transformaría las modalidades de lo real.

«I was familiar with the idea of eschatology—the end of time— in a religious context, but it had never before occurred to me that regimes in nature might undergo sudden shifts that would reshuffle natural laws.» — McKenna consigna la novedad que le supuso la idea de que los regímenes de la naturaleza cambien de golpe.

«It is simply that science, in order to function, must assume that physical laws are not dependent on the time and the context in which they are tested. If this were not so, the idea of the experiment would have no meaning, since experiments performed at different times might then give different results.» — McKenna reconoce el supuesto que su tesis pone en juego: la invariancia de las leyes físicas, sin la que el experimento pierde sentido.

«I succeeded finally in 1974 in achieving a completely formal, mathematical quantification of the fractal structure that I had unearthed inside the structure of the / Ching.» — McKenna data en 1974 la cuantificación formal de la estructura fractal que dice haber hallado en el I Ching; el escaneo imprime / Ching.

«Throughout the eighties I worked, first with Peter Broadwell and then with Peter Meyer, to create personal computer software, which I called Timewave Zero, that allowed careful study of this wave.» — McKenna nombra a sus dos colaboradores en el programa Timewave Zero y fecha el trabajo en los años ochenta.

«Today my conclusion regarding these matters is that the theory of the fractal and cyclical nature of novelty's ingression into the world is a truly self-consistent and completely mathematical theory. It is true to itself.» — el alcance que McKenna reclama hoy para su teoría, acotado a la consistencia interna.

«And it returns the human drama and our own lives to the very center of the universal stage.» — McKenna declara lo que su teoría devuelve, y es lo mismo que en otro pasaje llama imagen inflacionaria.

«It is possible, in a certain sense, that all states of liberation are nothing more than perfect knowledge of the contents of eternity.» — McKenna propone con dos reservas que los estados de liberación sean conocimiento perfecto de los contenidos de la eternidad.

«If one knows what is contained in time from its beginning to its end you are somehow no longer in time. Even though you still have a body and still eat and do what you do, you have discovered something that liberates you into a satisfying all-at-onceness.» — la consecuencia que McKenna saca de esa definición, con el término que acuña para el estado.

«Times are related to each other—things happen for a reason and the reason is not a causal one.» — la tesis del libro sobre la conexión entre tiempos, expresamente no causal; el troceo corta la frase por cambio de plana.

«Resonance, that mysterious phenomenon in which a vibrating string seems magically to invoke a similar vibration in another string or object that is physically unconnected, suggested itself as a model for the mysterious property that related one time to another even though they may be separated by days, years, or even millennia.» — McKenna toma la resonancia acústica por modelo de la relación entre tiempos distantes.

«I became convinced that there is a wave, or a system of resonances, that conditions events on all levels.» — la tesis que McKenna declara haber llegado a sostener, con el verbo convencerse puesto.

«This timewave is expressed throughout the universe on a number of extremely discrete levels. It causes atoms to be atoms, cells to be cells, minds to be minds, and stars to be stars.» — el alcance que McKenna da a su onda, de los átomos a las estrellas.

«I would be the first to admit that it has not been possible to find a bridge between this theory and normal physics. Such a bridge may be neither possible nor necessary.» — McKenna concede que no hay puente entre su teoría y la física normal y sostiene que quizá no haga falta.

«We may find that normal science indicates what is possible, while the time theory I propose offers an explanation for what is.» — el reparto que McKenna propone entre la ciencia y su teoría, lo posible frente a lo que es.

«It is clear to me that the theory cannot be disproven from without; it can only be disproven by being found inconsistent within itself. Anyone is welcome to dismantle it if they are able; this is what I have attempted to do and failed.» — McKenna fija el único modo de derribar su teoría que admite, la inconsistencia interna, y declara haberlo intentado él mismo.

«By November 16, 1971, I had begun to realize that the chart had too many variables to ever function as a predictive map of the future.» — McKenna consigna el defecto que él mismo le halló a su primer gráfico: demasiadas variables.

«Two old friends, Arabian somehow, yet more ancient, sit in a palace far older than themselves, set on a mountainside surrounded by vineyards, date palms, and citrus orchards. Insomniac and affable, they pass the long starry hours preceding dawn in the smoking of hashish and the propounding of riddles.» — fábula que McKenna escribe el día de su cumpleaños veinticinco en La Chorrera, y que el libro reproduce entera.

«Finally, in a great despotism, in an age of brash science and bright decadence, he saw himself divided into the persons of two brothers—and through them, through their wanderings and lifetimes which passed before him in a moment, he perceived the intricate and pleasing nature of the riddle.» — el punto de la fábula donde el soñador se ve dividido en dos hermanos y entiende el acertijo.

«Are we to be left then with nothing but fable? Or is there more here?» — McKenna deja al lector la pregunta por el estatuto de su propia fábula.

«Life is stranger than even the strangest among us can suppose.» — la fórmula con que McKenna cierra el capítulo, variante de la frase de Haldane que el índice atribuye al capítulo doce.

«Until the / Ching timewave was quantified with more data, its way of integrating seemingly meaningless and unrelated factors made it very easy to become psychologically entangled within. It seemed to operate like a kind of bottomless inkblot test; one could see whatever one wished to see in it.» — McKenna describe el defecto de su modelo sin cuantificar con la figura de la prueba de manchas de tinta; el escaneo imprime / Ching.

«Even though my twenty-fifth birthday came and went with very little shift toward the novel, either in my own life or in the world, I continued to propagate the cycles of the chart forward into the future.» — McKenna consigna el incumplimiento de su propia predicción y declara que siguió proyectando los ciclos igual.

«I felt that the idea of a hidden structure of time was correct but that this could not be argued for until the correct alignment between that structure and human history had been found and confirmed.» — McKenna separa la tesis de la estructura oculta del tiempo del problema de su alineación con la historia.

«I noticed this was the winter solstice. Here was a clue. The winter solstice is traditionally the time of the rebirth of the savior messiah. It is a time of pause when there is a shifting of the cosmic machinery.» — McKenna lee el solsticio de invierno como tiempo tradicional del renacimiento del mesías salvador.

«I put no particular stock in astrology, but I noted that Dennis is a Sagittarius and Ev a Capricorn.» — McKenna declara no dar crédito a la astrología y en la misma frase registra la coincidencia de los signos.

«On the very day that I was researching, December 22, 1973, a total, annular eclipse of the sun would occur and the path of totality would sweep directly across La Chorrera and the Amazon Basin.» — el hallazgo que McKenna declara decisivo: el eclipse total cuya franja cruzaba La Chorrera el día que su onda señalaba.

«I was dumbfounded. I felt like a person in a novel; this string of clues was actually real!» — McKenna consigna su propia reacción ante la cadena de coincidencias.

«The vertiginous elf chatter of hyperspace rose squealing in my ears. Was it mocking me or egging me on?» — McKenna deja en pregunta la intención de lo que oía, entre la burla y el estímulo.

«Belem means Bethlehem in Portuguese. My perceptions, sensitive to any messianic possibility, seized on this.» — la cadena de asociaciones que McKenna arma con el nombre de Belém, y que él mismo atribuye a su sensibilidad mesiánica.

«Belem is Bethlehem; it lies at the delta of the Amazon. Delta is the symbol for change in time; delta in Joyce's fiction and among graffiti artists throughout history represents the vagina. Dennis was born in Delta, Colorado.» — la cadena entera, del topónimo al signo del delta y al lugar de nacimiento de su hermano; McKenna la expone sin defenderla.

«Was it possible that all of our experiences could have been a premonition of an event at a time and place two years hence in Brazil?» — McKenna formula en pregunta la hipótesis de la premonición.

«Had I known of the impending eclipse on some unconscious level?» — la explicación alternativa que McKenna se ofrece a sí mismo, en forma de pregunta.

«it seemed impossible that I had somehow known these things and manipulated my conscious self to imagine that it was "discovering" these things. I was like a snow-blind traveler caught in a blizzard of coincidence.» — McKenna descarta la explicación por conocimiento inconsciente y se describe a sí mismo como ciego de nieve en una ventisca de coincidencias.

«This was the discovery of the comet Kohotek, heralded as the largest comet in human history, dwarfing even Halley's Comet.» — el suceso que McKenna toma por prueba perfecta de una agencia mayor que su inconsciente: el cometa Kohoutek; el troceo imprime el nombre partido como Ko-hotek.

«A nonperiodic comet, unknown to anyone on earth until March of 1973, was hurtling toward a rendezvous with the sun within a hundred hours of the solstice» — McKenna cifra la coincidencia del cometa con el solsticio y el eclipse; el troceo corta por cambio de plana; el troceo une a fin de renglón non-periodic y lo devuelve como nonperiodic.

«What I am suggesting is a new metaphysics, a metaphysics» — McKenna nombra su propia empresa; el troceo corta por cambio de plana y la frase sigue en la 133 con *with mathematical rigor; something that is not simply a new belief*.

«with mathematical rigor; something that is not simply a new belief or new religious conviction. Rather this insight takes the form of a formal proposition.» — continuación en la plana siguiente: McKenna distingue su tesis de una creencia o convicción religiosa y la presenta como proposición formal.

«where the ecliptic crosses the cusp of Sagittarius and Capricorn, at 23 degrees Sagittarius, is the very spot to within one or two degrees» — la coincidencia astronómica que McKenna suma a la cadena; el troceo corta por cambio de plana y la frase sigue en la 135 con *where the galactic center is presently located*.

«It was a large coincidence, if we define a coincidence as an improbability that deeply impresses its observer.» — la definición de coincidencia que McKenna propone, y que pone el peso en la impresión del observador y no en el suceso.

«This coincidence is not diminished by the fact that Kohotek never really lived up to expectations, for the expectations alone became a wave of millenarianism and apocalyptic restlessness among the fringes of the population that would die only as the comet returned to the darkness out of which it emerged.» — McKenna consigna que el cometa no cumplió lo esperado y sostiene igual la coincidencia, por el efecto milenarista de la expectativa; el troceo imprime Kohotek, sic.

«Did anything happen in Belem on the day of the eclipse? I do not know; I was not there.» — McKenna cierra el episodio del eclipse declarando que no sabe si pasó nada y que no estuvo allí.

«But I do know that the compression of events that occurred around that date, and the way in which the charts predicted this, were uncanny.» — lo único que McKenna reclama del episodio: la compresión de sucesos y su predicción por los gráficos.

«Only with the development of personal computers was I able to understand the way that the timewave describes the ebb and flow of novelty in time over many different spans of time: some last scant minutes, others endure for centuries.» — McKenna describe qué mide su onda, el flujo de la novedad en escalas de tiempo muy distintas.

«If over years of study one becomes convinced that the wave does» — McKenna condiciona el efecto de su teoría a años de estudio; el troceo corta por cambio de plana y la frase sigue en la 136 con *show the future course of novelty*.

«show the future course of novelty, then the ordinary anticipation of the future is gradually replaced with an almost Zen-like appreciation and understanding of the complete pattern.» — continuación: McKenna describe el efecto que atribuye a su teoría, una apreciación casi zen del patrón completo en vez de la anticipación ordinaria.

«I must mention the following incident in order to connect the history of my own unconscious processes with the curiously specific and puzzling piece of information that was seeking to emerge from me.» — McKenna anuncia el sueño de Taipéi como eslabón de sus propios procesos inconscientes, y llama información a lo que buscaba salir de él.

«It occurred, though I did not know it, on the very day that my father and Dennis were told that our mother was dying of cancer. That was something that I would not learn until nearly a week later.» — la coincidencia que McKenna adjudica al sueño: ocurrió el mismo día en que a su padre y a su hermano les dijeron que la madre moría.

«I paused to examine a large map of the Amazon Delta on the wall—published, the legend informed me, to commemorate a conference of a French archaeological society which convened on a small island there in 1948.» — el detalle del sueño de 1970 en que McKenna apoya la premonición del delta del Amazonas.

«The meaning of this dream was far from clear at the time, and even now it remains obscure.» — McKenna declara que el sueño sigue sin aclararse, y lo dice antes de extraer de él una conclusión.

«What is clear is that at a given date an event of importance was to be expected in the delta of the Amazon.» — la conclusión que McKenna sí extrae del sueño, formulada como lo claro frente a lo oscuro.

«I hoped then that the total eclipse of the sun was that longanticipated event, and that its totality over the vagina of the world mother anticipated an event of great import for everyone.» — McKenna consigna en pasado lo que esperó del eclipse y nombra a la vagina de la madre del mundo, con lo que cierra la cadena de asociaciones del capítulo; el troceo une a fin de renglón long-anticipated y lo devuelve como longanticipated.

«A FEW MONTHS BEFORE that precursive dream a strange incident occurred that I now look back on as further proof that I was destined to travel to the Amazon, and that somehow I had come under the spell of the cosmic giggle:» — McKenna presenta el episodio de Timor como prueba más de su destino amazónico y vuelve a nombrar la risita cósmica.

«Under indictment in the States for the heinous crime of importing hashish, I traveled and lived under the dramatic assumption that international police agencies were combing the globe looking for me.» — McKenna consigna su propia situación legal de entonces y llama dramática a la suposición que hacía sobre la policía internacional.

«My cover, that of a graduate student in entomology doing field work for a degree—a butterfly collector—had worked well over the previous six months as I had made my way slowly through Malaysia, Sumatra, Java, and a host of other less familiar but equally exotic insular backwaters.» — la tapadera que McKenna declara haber usado en aquel viaje, que es la misma actividad que ejerce de veras en el libro.

«I am not big on chance meetings. In those days I always tried to avoid having anything to do with what I considered "non-freaks."» — McKenna declara su propia regla de trato de entonces, que es la que el episodio de Timor va a romper.

«Herr McKenna, is it not?» — la frase con que empieza el episodio de Timor, dicha por el desconocido que conoce su nombre.

«The manager here has told me of your biological researches on Timor. Allow me to introduce myself. I am Dr. Karl Heintz of Far Eastern Mining and Minerals, Inc.» — voz del doctor Heintz presentándose; McKenna conserva el nombre de la empresa tal como dice habérselo oído.

«He sported a schmiss on his left cheek, a long, thin scar. I had never seen a schmiss before but the crossword puzzle term sprang into my mind unbidden.» — McKenna describe la cicatriz de su interlocutor con el término alemán y consigna que la palabra le vino sin buscarla.

«Dr. Heintz was, he said, a geologist with an outfit in Singapore. The year before, a survey team had found evidence of a large deposit of nickel that straddled the border between Indonesian and Portuguese Timor. He was there to confirm their findings and to estimate the feasibility of a mining operation.» — la versión que Heintz da de sí mismo según McKenna, con el he said puesto en la primera línea.

«That seemed straightforward enough, although there were references to a set of instruments that could somehow determine the true size of the deposit. I knew very little of prospecting technology, but a device that could see hundreds of feet into the ground sounded farfetched to me.» — McKenna consigna el primer detalle que no le cuadró del relato de Heintz, los instrumentos capaces de ver bajo tierra.

«FEMMI is no ordinary company, Herr McKenna, please be assured of that. No. We are like a family. This is the source of our strength. And we have plans for the future. Very big plans.» — voz de Heintz sobre su empresa; McKenna reproduce el discurso entero sin interrumpirlo, que es su método en este capítulo.

«I only nodded, thinking it best not to inform him that I considered large mining corporations the scourge of the earth.» — McKenna declara lo que calló y lo que piensa de las mineras, y lo pone aparte del discurso ajeno.

«It is because we, each one of us, has known the horror of privation, the depths of despair, and the glorious feeling that comes from overcoming these things. We are united in our triumph, Herr McKenna, and the sense of inevitable conquest of difficulty has made us invincible!» — voz de Heintz sobre el origen de la cohesión de su grupo; el troceo imprime la palabra partida como right y el volumen conserva su pronunciación de genius.

«It is like this: we all lived through the Hitler times and the war. Germany was nothing after the war. There was not one stone upon another in my Berlin. In the ruins of Europe we were like cockroaches. May I tell you that the bank accounts of all the SS families were frozen. My mother, my poor aristocratic mother, was reduced to selling paintings from our estate in order to buy potatoes to feed herself and my younger sister. Imagine this!» — voz de Heintz revelando su procedencia, con las cuentas de las familias de las SS congeladas puestas como agravio.

«Oh no," I thought, "Not Nazis. Is this guy telling me he was a Nazi?" I fought to get my look of horror under control, but now he was on a roll and seemed to take no notice.» — la reacción de McKenna ante la revelación, consignada tal como dice haberla pensado.

«I was a mere nothing. A Messerschmidt pilot in the Luftwaffe. A good German only." This last was said without a trace of irony.» — la respuesta de Heintz sobre su propio papel, con la coletilla que McKenna consigna que dijo sin ironía.

«After the war, a few of us, my fellow, young scholars from the Max Planck Institute, gathered in the ruins of Berlin. We were finished with ideology, with the grand political dreams.» — voz de Heintz sobre la fundación del grupo en las ruinas de Berlín, con la ideología declarada abandonada.

«We determined to build a new world for ourselves, a world based on two principles, two great powers, the power of capital and the power of science.» — los dos principios que Heintz declara fundacionales de su empresa, el capital y la ciencia.

«We began slowly, with patents, processes that had been discovered at the Planck Institute during the war, trade secrets really. Carefully we expanded on this, we established ourselves in Singapore.» — el origen material que Heintz da a la empresa, en patentes del Instituto Max Planck de tiempos de la guerra.

«Our furher was a professor who' had trained us all, a true genius. His name was Max Bockermann. It was he who held us together; it was his faith and strength that made it all possible.» — Heintz nombra a Max Bockermann y le da el título de conductor; el troceo imprime furher por Führer y mete un apóstrofo suelto en who, sic.

«From our offices in Singapore we control projects in eleven countries. Oil, nickel, tin, bauxite, uranium—we have it all. But we have more, we have love, companionship, community, and the power to make our dreams come true.» — el balance que Heintz hace de la empresa, con los recursos enumerados y el amor y la comunidad puestos al final.

«I decided to go with the usual half-truth reserved for straight people. "I am an art historian turned biologist. I went to Nepal to study Tibetan but found that I am no linguist when it comes to Asian languages. I have returned to biology, my first love.» — McKenna declara la media verdad que usaba con los que llamaba gente formal.

«Wallace was the real discoverer of the theory of natural selection, but Darwin got all the credit. I identify with his underdog status. Wallace was shafted by Victorian science because he was of the wrong class and didn't know how to play politics the way Darwin did.» — la tesis que McKenna sostiene sobre Alfred Russel Wallace y Darwin, y la razón de clase que le adjudica.

«Eventually I will write a monograph on speciation among the butterflies of Amazonas and Eastern Indonesia, which will get me a degree. Then, who knows. Teaching perhaps.» — el plan académico que McKenna dice haber expuesto, y que el libro entero muestra abandonado.

«But believe me, I know the Amazon well, a jungle the size of a continent; it is not like these islands here. Here you do well to stay with the priests and to make your expeditions, one week, two weeks into the forest. But in Amazonas to do serious work you will have sustain yourself in the field for perhaps months. You will need a boat, equipment, bearers. Believe me, I know. It is not for shoemakers.» — voz de Heintz advirtiendo sobre la escala del Amazonas frente a las islas indonesias.

«Our teams are thirteen in number and some of these are natural scientists such as yourself. The new team is nearly formed but Bock-ermann, if he approves of you, would accept my recommendation that you join the team as the thirteenth member.» — la oferta que Heintz hace a McKenna, con el número trece del equipo puesto por delante.

«You see, by having scientists with us we can write off part of our tax liability, and anyhow we are believers in the worth of pure science.» — la razón doble que Heintz da para llevar científicos, la deducción fiscal y la fe en la ciencia pura.

«But I was not whom I must seem to Heintz. I was no academic. I was an international fugitive with a price on my head.» — McKenna consigna la asimetría del trato con Heintz: el otro le hablaba a un académico que no existía.

«As for the Nazi matter, I was confused. I knew that Max Planck was supposedly the only person ever to stand up to Hitler, telling him to keep his hands off the pure science of the Institute.» — McKenna consigna su propia confusión y el dato que la sostenía, la resistencia de Max Planck ante Hitler.

«You must be interviewed by Bockermann himself. He can see into the soul of a human being. If there is one iota of falsity in your character or your story he will detect it.» — voz de Heintz sobre la condición final de la oferta, con la capacidad que atribuye a Bockermann de ver dentro de un alma.

«This has the feeling of fate," I thought to myself. "Play it out, give it a chance, and see what happens.» — la regla de conducta que McKenna declara haberse dado y que es la misma que gobierna todo el libro.

«On the morning of the seventh day, I awoke with the conviction that I had been had. It had all been some kind of weird mind game.» — McKenna consigna el desenlace de la oferta y su propia primera lectura.

«course there was another possibility; that somehow they had been able to check up on me and had discovered my false history. That I was sure would put me in the shoemaker class and effectively cook my goose.» — la segunda explicación que McKenna se da, que lo hubieran investigado y hallado la tapadera.

«A year later, in the aftermath of La Chorrera, I decided that it had been a precursive reflection of the true craziness that did finally find me in the Amazon. It had been an anticipation, a wavering in the time field, a kind of living prophetic dream, an instance of the cosmic giggle.» — la lectura que McKenna adopta del episodio: reflejo precursor, ondulación en el campo del tiempo, sueño profético vivido; el troceo corta la frase por cambio de plana.

«Autocatalytic hypercycles seemed to me an obvious necessary correlative to the ideas that I was working out concerning the timewave and the way in which it was expressed and reflected in living organisms.» — McKenna enlaza los hiperciclos autocatalíticos de Manfred Eigen con su propia teoría del tiempo, y lo dice con seemed to me.

«Somehow I must have betrayed my agitation to him, for as I watched in near disbelief I saw him move his hand to the pocket of his jacket and with a faultlessly smooth motion remove his name tag and drop it into his pocket.» — lo que McKenna dice haber visto hacer a Heintz en el auditorio, y que es toda la base del episodio.

«They both responded with looks that said plainly "Are you losing it, or is this a joke?» — la reacción de Dennis y Ev, que McKenna consigna en contra de su propio relato.

«Heintz? Heintz? My name is not Heintz. And I have never been in Kupang.» — voz del interpelado negando el encuentro; el libro conserva la mención de Kupang que McKenna toma por delación.

«Madman, a creature of my fevered imagination, a charlatan, or the tip of a Nazi iceberg of scheming dreamers? To this I have no answer.» — McKenna enumera las cuatro lecturas posibles del episodio y declara no tener respuesta.

«That's how it is with the cosmic giggle.» — la fórmula con que McKenna cierra el capítulo y nombra otra vez la risita cósmica.

«A model of the world is a way of seeing, and to assimilate the timewave theory that was forced upon us there is to see the world differently.» — McKenna define qué es un modelo del mundo y qué pide asimilar el suyo.

«My approach has been to grant the possibility that the theory is true. It may someday be disproved, but until then, I shall believe it, albeit with tongue in cheek.» — McKenna declara el estatuto con que sostiene su propia teoría, concediéndole la posibilidad de ser verdadera y con la lengua en la mejilla.

«Many good ideas simply perish for lack of a context. But this idea proposes a fundamental reconstruction of the way in which we see reality. And it can be taught. It fulfills my spiritual aspirations because it is understanding, simply and purely understanding.» — McKenna declara qué satisface su aspiración espiritual en esta teoría, y la respuesta es el entendimiento.

«The theory elaborated in the wake of the experiment at La Chorrera doesn't deny any body of knowledge; it augments.» — McKenna acota la pretensión de su teoría frente a los saberes ya asentados.

«While what Dennis did in the Amazon may not have caused the idea that I developed, I have the strong intuition that it did. In the wake of the experiment, my ordinary private concerns were replaced with such utterly strange musings that I could not recognize them as products of my own personality.» — McKenna deja en intuición el vínculo causal entre lo que hizo su hermano y su propia teoría.

«they did broadcast a totality symbol whose deep structure reflects the organizational principles of the molecules of life itself.» — la afirmación de McKenna sobre lo que habrían hecho las moléculas psicodélicas ligadas al ADN: emitir un símbolo de totalidad.

«This totality entered linear time disguised, in the presence of ordinary consciousness, as a dialogue with the Logos.» — McKenna explica la voz del Logos como el disfraz con que esa totalidad entró en el tiempo lineal ante la consciencia ordinaria.

«The Logos provided a narrative voice able to frame and give coherency to the flood of new insights that otherwise would have overwhelmed me.» — la función que McKenna atribuye a la voz: dar forma narrativa y coherencia a lo que si no lo habría desbordado.

«My task became to unearth and replicate the symbolic structure behind the voice and to discover if it had any significance beyond myself and my own small circle of acquaintances.» — McKenna declara su tarea desde entonces y la condición que le pone: averiguar si aquello significaba algo fuera de su círculo.

«The timewave is a kind of mathematical mandala describing the organization of time and space. It is a picture of the patterns of energy and intent within DNA.» — la definición que McKenna da de su onda: mandala matemático de la organización del tiempo y el espacio y retrato de los patrones del ADN.

«The DNA unfolds those mysteries over time like a record or a song. This song is one's life, and it is all life. But without a conceptual overview one cannot understand the melody as it plays. The timewave theory is like the score of the bio-cosmic symphony.» — la metáfora musical con que McKenna explica su teoría, con la vida por canción y la onda por partitura.

«I am interested in disproving this theory. A good idea is not fragile and can withstand a lot of pressure.» — McKenna declara querer derribar su propia teoría y da su criterio de solidez.

«What happened at La Chorrera cannot be explained away; rather it asks simply to be explained.» — la exigencia que McKenna pone a quien no acepte su lectura, formulada como distinción entre explicar y explicar como si nada.

«If it is not what I say it is, then what is the concrescence, the scintilla, the encounter with the wholly Other? What does it really represent?» — McKenna devuelve la carga de la prueba en forma de preguntas y nombra otra vez a la Otra Cosa enteramente otra.

«Natural laws are easier to understand if we assume that they are not universal constants, but rather slowly evolving flux phenomena.» — la propuesta de McKenna sobre las leyes naturales, no constantes universales sino fenómenos de flujo de evolución lenta; el troceo corta la frase por cambio de plana.

«After all, the speed of light, which is taken as a universal constant, has only been measured in the last hundred years. It is pure inductive thinking to extrapolate the principle of the invariance of the speed of light to all times and places.» — el argumento con que McKenna apoya esa propuesta, por el corto plazo en que se ha medido la velocidad de la luz.

«Any good scientist knows that induction is a leap of faith. Nevertheless, science is founded on the principle of induction. That principle is what the timewave theory challenges.» — McKenna identifica la inducción como el principio que su teoría objeta y la llama salto de fe.

«Before Einstein, space was thought to be a dimension where one put things; it was analogous to emptiness. Einstein pointed out that space is a thing that has a torque and is affected by matter and by gravitational fields. Light passing through a gravitational field in space will be bent because the space through which it travels is bent. In other words, space is a thing, not a place where you put things.» — McKenna usa el cambio einsteiniano sobre el espacio como modelo del que propone para el tiempo.

«What I propose, in a nutshell, is that time, which was also previously considered a necessary abstraction, is also a thing. Time not only changes, there are different kinds of» — la tesis de McKenna en su forma más corta: el tiempo es una cosa y hay clases distintas de tiempo; el troceo corta por cambio de plana y la frase sigue en la 150 con *time*.

«And these kinds of time come and go in cyclical progression on many levels; situations evolve as matter responds to the conditioning of time and space. These two patterns condition matter.» — McKenna hace del espacio y del tiempo dos patrones que condicionan la materia.

«Science has long been aware of the patterns of space—we call these "natural laws"—but the patterns of time? That is another consideration entirely.» — McKenna sitúa el hueco que su teoría pretende llenar: la ciencia conoce los patrones del espacio y no los del tiempo.

«Matter has always been assumed to epitomize reality, but it actually has some qualities more nearly like thought.» — McKenna acerca las cualidades de la materia a las del pensamiento.

«Leibnitz described monads, which he envisioned as tiny particles that are infinitely reduplicated everywhere in the universe and contain all places within themselves.» — McKenna toma de Leibniz la mónada como axioma de su propia teoría; el volumen imprime Leibnitz, sic.

«All monads are identical, but they interconnect to build up a» — McKenna describe la trabazón de las mónadas; el troceo corta por cambio de plana y la frase sigue en la 150 con *larger continuum*.

«larger continuum while at the same time maintaining their individual, unique perspectives. These Leibnitzian ideas anticipated the new field of fractal mathematics, an exotic example of which is my idea of a temporal pattern.» — McKenna adjudica a las ideas de Leibniz la anticipación de la matemática fractal y sitúa la suya como ejemplo exótico de ella.

«Destruction of up to 95 percent of the brain does not impair memory function. It appears that memory isn't stored anywhere; memory seems to permeate the brain. Like a hologram, all of the memory seems to be in each part.» — el dato neurológico con que McKenna apoya la analogía holográfica de la memoria.

«This "holographic" aspect of memory has been assumed to be of central importance by such thinkers as David Bohm and Karl Pri-bram. But it was Dennis and I who went so far as to suggest that this form of organization could be extended beyond the brain to include the cosmos at large.» — McKenna nombra a David Bohm y a Karl Pribram y marca en qué se aparta de ellos: extender el modelo holográfico al cosmos entero; el troceo imprime Pri-bram partido.

«If time is an object, then the obvious question to be asked is what is the smallest duration relevant to physical processes? The scientific approach would be to keep dividing time into still smaller increments in order to find out if a discrete unit exists. What one is looking for by doing this is a chronon, or a particle of time.» — McKenna deriva de su propia tesis la pregunta por la unidad mínima del tiempo y nombra el cronón.

«I believe the chronon exists, but it is not distinct from the atom. Atomic systems are chronons; atoms are simply far more complicated than had been suspected.» — la identificación que McKenna propone entre el cronón y el átomo, dicha con I believe.

«The Heisenberg/Bohr model allows us to simulate the physical universe of stars, galaxies, and quasars; but it doesn't explain organisms or mind.» — McKenna sitúa el límite que atribuye al modelo atómico corriente.

«I don't claim to have done this yet. But I do believe that I have stumbled upon an intellectual avenue that could be followed to achieve this understanding. The key lies in cycles of temporal variables nested in hierarchical structures, which generate various kinds of fractal relationships unfolding toward often surprising kinds of closure.» — McKenna acota lo que reclama haber hecho y describe la vía: ciclos de variables temporales anidados en jerarquías.

«The person who has laid the most firm foundation for understanding this sort of notion philosophically is Alfred North Whitehead.» — McKenna nombra a Whitehead como el fundamento filosófico de lo suyo.

«Chaotic at-tractor dynamics is the idea that any process can be related through a mathematical equation to any other process simply by virtue of all processes being part of a common class. The overthrow of a dictator, the explosion of a star, the fertilization of an egg—all should be describable through one set of terms.» — McKenna expone la dinámica de atractores caóticos y da sus ejemplos, del derrocamiento de un dictador a la fecundación de un óvulo; el troceo imprime la palabra partida como at-tractor.

«The most promising development in this area has been the emergence of the new evolutionary paradigm of Ilya Prigogine and Erich Jantsch. Their work has achieved nothing less than a new ordering principle in nature—the discovery and mathematical description of dissipative self-organization as a creative principle underlying the dynamics of an open and multi-leveled reality.» — McKenna nombra a Ilya Prigogine y a Erich Jantsch y describe la autoorganización disipativa como principio ordenador nuevo.

«What is important is to understand the true boundaries of reality, not the probable boundaries of possible future events.» — McKenna distingue las condiciones de contorno reales de las probabilidades del futuro.

«Although boundary conditions operate on the future, they are probabilistic constraints, not absolutely determined fact.» — la acotación que McKenna pone a sus propias condiciones de contorno.

«That is what the timewave allows one to predict, that there are conditions under which events of great novelty may occur.» — McKenna acota lo que su onda predice: condiciones bajo las que puede haber gran novedad, no sucesos concretos.

«Because we suggest a model of time whose mathematics dictate a built-in spiral structure, events keep gathering themselves into tighter and tighter spirals that lead inevitably to a final time.» — McKenna llama problema a la consecuencia escatológica que su propia matemática impone.

«Like the center of a black hole, the final time is a necessary singularity, a domain or an event in which the ordinary laws of physics do not function.» — la definición de tiempo final que McKenna da, con el símil del agujero negro.

«We are asked by science to believe that the entire universe sprang from nothingness, at a single point and for no discernible reason.» — McKenna objeta la singularidad de la ciencia, el Big Bang, y la describe con las palabras con que la rechaza; el troceo corta la frase por cambio de plana.

«It is a notion that is, in fact, utterly absurd, yet terribly important to all the rational assumptions that science wishes to preserve.» — McKenna llama absurda a esa noción y a la vez reconoce que las demás suposiciones racionales dependen de ella.

«Western religion has its own singularity in the form of the apocalypse, an event placed not at the beginning of the universe but at its end.» — McKenna sitúa el apocalipsis como la singularidad de la religión occidental y la contrapone a la de la ciencia.

«If singularities exist at all it seems easier to suppose that they might arise out of an ancient and highly complexified cosmos, such as our own, than out of a featureless and dimensionless mega-void.» — el argumento con que McKenna prefiere la singularidad final a la inicial, formulado con it seems easier to suppose.

«The idea of entropy makes an assumption that the laws of the space-time continuum are infinitely and linearly extendable into the future. In the spiral time scheme of the timewave this assumption is not made.» — McKenna objeta el supuesto que ve detrás de la entropía y declara que su propio esquema no lo hace.

«Rather, final time means passing out of one set of laws that are conditioning existence and into another radically different set of laws.» — la definición que McKenna da del tiempo final, como paso de un conjunto de leyes a otro.

«The universe is seen as a series of compartmentalized eras or epochs whose laws are quite different from one another, with transitions from one epoch to another occurring with unexpected suddenness.» — el cuadro del universo que sostiene McKenna, por épocas de leyes distintas con transiciones bruscas.

«If one examines this planet, which is the only planet we can examine in depth, one finds that processes are steadily accelerating in both speed and complexity.» — McKenna acota su propia evidencia a un solo planeta y saca de ahí la aceleración que su teoría describe.

«mind is brief in comparison to what preceded it; from the dumb confrontation with chipped flint to the starship is one hundred thousand years.» — McKenna cifra la brevedad de la época de la mente frente a lo anterior.

«What could that era be but the ingression of a new set of laws? An emergent new psychophysics is allowing our species to manifest very peculiar properties: language, writing, dreaming, and the spinning of philosophy.» — McKenna lee el lenguaje, la escritura, el sueño y la filosofía como propiedades de una psicofísica nueva.

«Like rattlesnakes and poplar trees, human beings are made by DNA. Yet we trigger the same energies that light the stars.» — McKenna pone al ser humano en la misma serie natural y a la vez señala lo que lo aparta.

«And what is mind? We haven't a clue.» — la abstención de McKenna sobre la naturaleza de la mente, en medio de una teoría que la hace central.

«Most puzzling are the predictions the timewave theory makes of near term shifts of epochs made necessary by the congruence of the timewave and the historical record. The timewave seems to give a best fit configuration with the historical data when the assumption is made that the maximum ingression of novelty, or the end of the wave, will» — McKenna anuncia la predicción de su onda; el troceo corta por cambio de plana y la frase sigue en la 154 con *occur on December 22, 2012*.

«occur on December 22, 2012. Strangely enough this is the end date that the Mayans assigned to their calendar system as well.» — la fecha que McKenna da por término de su onda y la coincidencia que declara con el calendario maya.

«What is it that gives both a twentieth-century individual and an ancient Meso-American civilization the same date upon which to peg the transformation of the world? Is it that both used psychedelic mushrooms? Could the answer be so simple? I don't think so.» — McKenna se plantea la explicación fácil de esa coincidencia, por los hongos, y la descarta; el troceo imprime Meso-American partido.

«Rather, I suspect that when we inspect the structure of our own deep unconscious we will make the unexpected discovery that we are ordered on the same principle as the larger universe in which we arose.» — la explicación que McKenna prefiere, con I suspect por delante: el inconsciente profundo ordenado según el mismo principio que el universo.

«The interesting thing about such dunes is that they bear a resemblance to the force that created them, wind.» — la analogía de las dunas con que McKenna explica cómo un sistema guarda la huella de la fuerza que lo formó.

«In my thinking, the genes of organisms are grains of sand arranged by the ebb and flow of the winds of time.» — McKenna aplica la analogía a los genes y marca expresamente que es su modo de pensarlo.

«DNA is the blank slate upon which the changing temporal variables have had their sequence and relative differences recorded.» — la consecuencia que McKenna saca: el ADN como registro de las variables temporales.

«Any technique that saw into the energetic relationships within a living organism, such as yoga or the use of psychedelic plants, would also give a deep insight concerning the variable nature of time.» — McKenna pone al yoga y a las plantas psicodélicas del mismo lado, como técnicas que darían acceso a la naturaleza variable del tiempo.

«The King Wen sequence of the / Ching is the product of this kind of insight.» — McKenna adjudica la secuencia del Rey Wen del I Ching a esa clase de visión; el escaneo imprime / Ching.

«Human culture is a curve of expanding potentiality. In our own tormented century it has reached vertical gain.» — la fórmula con que McKenna describe la cultura humana en el siglo veinte.

«The planet when viewed as a sentient entity can react to this kind of pressure. It is three billion years old, and it has many options.» — McKenna atribuye al planeta la condición de entidad sintiente capaz de reaccionar, y lo dice con when viewed as.

«Dualistic talk about humanity not being part of the natural order is foolish. We could not have arisen unless we served a purpose that fit into the planetary ecology.» — McKenna objeta la separación entre humanidad y orden natural con un argumento funcional.

«It is not clear what our purpose is, but it seems to have to do with our enormous research instruments.» — McKenna declara no claro el propósito de la especie y lo liga con seems a los instrumentos de investigación.

«We are simply a tool-building species that is itself the tool of a planetary ecology that is a higher intelligence. It knows what the dangers and limits on the cosmic scale are and it is furiously organizing life to both preserve and transform itself.» — la tesis de McKenna sobre el papel de la especie: herramienta de una ecología planetaria que él llama inteligencia superior.

«The notion of some kind of fantastically complicated visionary revelation that happens to put one at the very center of the action is a symptom of mental illness.» — McKenna nombra él mismo el síntoma que su propia teoría exhibe.

«This theory does that, and yet so does immediate experience, and so do the ontologies of Judaism, Islam, and Christianity.» — McKenna pone su teoría en la misma serie que las ontologías del judaísmo, el islam y el cristianismo.

«My theory may be clinically pathological, but unlike these religious systems, I have enough humor to realize this.» — la única diferencia que McKenna reclama frente a esos sistemas, y es el humor.

«It is important to appreciate the intrinsic comedy of privileged knowledge. It is also important to have recourse to the scientific method whenever appropriate.» — la doble regla que McKenna se da, el humor sobre el conocimiento privilegiado y el método científico cuando quepa.

«The Amazonian rumors of time-binding magical fluids self-generated out of the bodies of master shamans are nothing less than intimations of the metamorphosis of the human body/mind into a higher-dimensional state.» — McKenna lee los rumores amazónicos del fluido como intimaciones de una metamorfosis del cuerpo y la mente.

«The flying saucer is an image of the perfected human mind: waiting, warmly humming, at the end of human history on this planet.» — la definición que McKenna da del platillo volador, imagen de la mente humana perfeccionada.

«When it is perfect, there will be an ontological mutation of the human form, nothing less than the resurrection-body that Christianity anticipates.» — McKenna identifica esa mutación con el cuerpo de resurrección del cristianismo.

«The UFO holds out the possibility of mind become object, a ship that can cross the universe in the time it takes to think about it. Because that is what the universe is—a thought.» — la tesis más desnuda de McKenna sobre el universo, en una frase.

«When Jung suggested that the saucer was the human soul, he was more correct than he may have supposed.» — McKenna vuelve sobre la lectura junguiana del platillo y declara que Jung acertó más de lo que creía.

«Our roles as parts of the process introduces an uncertainty in our observations that bedevils prediction.» — la limitación que McKenna reconoce en su propia empresa predictiva, por estar dentro del proceso.

«All these themes are woven around DMT, possibly because DMT creates a microcosm of this very shift of epochs in the experience of a single individual.» — McKenna sitúa la DMT en el centro de todos sus temas y la describe como microcosmos del cambio de época.

«When Plato remarked that "Time is the moving image of» — McKenna cita a Platón sobre el tiempo como imagen móvil de la eternidad; el troceo corta por cambio de plana y la frase sigue en la 156 con *Eternity*.

«Like the shift of epoch called the apocalypse and anticipated by religious hysterics, DMT seems to illuminate the regions beyond death.» — McKenna compara el efecto de la DMT con el cambio de época del apocalipsis y le atribuye iluminar las regiones más allá de la muerte, con seems.

«If we can trust our own perceptions, then it is a place in which thrives an ecology of souls whose stuff of being is more syntactical than material.» — la descripción que McKenna da de esa dimensión, condicionada a que se pueda confiar en la percepción propia.

«The afterlife is more Celtic fairyland than existential nonentity; at least that is the evidence of the DMT experience.» — McKenna acota su propia afirmación sobre el más allá al testimonio de la experiencia de DMT.

«And yet our physics, which can light the fires of the stars in our deserts, cannot explain the strangeness of the phenomenon of our being alive.» — McKenna señala el límite que atribuye a la física: no explicar la rareza de estar vivo.

«We are moving toward the unimaginable as information piles up about the real nature of the situation we confront. To paraphrase J. B. S. Haldane: Our situation may not only be stranger than we suppose; it may be stranger that we can suppose.» — McKenna cierra el capítulo parafraseando a J. B. S. Haldane; el volumen imprime stranger that por than en la segunda mitad, sic.

«My brother and I concluded that the truly novel element, the candidate for being the causal agent at La Chorrera, was the mushrooms.» — la conclusión conjunta de los dos hermanos sobre el agente causal de La Chorrera; el troceo corta la frase por cambio de plana.

«During those years we dabbled with the thought of cultivating Stropharia cubensis, but the only work on the subject was Wasson and Heim's work in French, and it somehow seemed a remote and technically difficult thing to attempt.» — McKenna consigna la única bibliografía que había entonces sobre el cultivo del hongo, el trabajo en francés de Wasson y Heim.

«We may have seen into the heart of the mysteries, but that did not mean that we were any wiser than ordinary people when it came to the affairs of our own hearts.» — McKenna acota expresamente el alcance de lo que dice haber visto: no los hizo más sabios en lo propio.

«And there they were! By the dozens, by the hundreds, huge picture perfect specimens of Stropharia. The dark night of the soul had turned my attention elsewhere, and in that moment they had perfected themselves.» — el hallazgo que reabre el ciclo: los hongos fructificados en el invernadero mientras McKenna miraba a otro lado.

«I was neck deep in alchemical gold! The elf legions of hyperspace had ridden to my rescue again.» — McKenna nombra el hallazgo con el vocabulario alquímico que usa en todo el libro.

«we determined within a matter of weeks that the hardy Stropharia not only grew and fruited with the new method, but that they could be more easily grown than the Agaricas species sold in grocery stores as food.» — el resultado técnico que los dos hermanos declaran: el hongo se cultiva más fácil que el champiñón comercial.

«During the spring, I experimented with low dosages several times. The sense of peace and lightness that I associated with the halcyon days at La Chorrera was definitely there; so too was the presence of a teaching voice and a return to close consultation with a cosmic agency of complex intent.» — McKenna consigna el retorno de la voz maestra con las dosis bajas, y nombra a la agencia cósmica de intención compleja.

«Throughout the spring and summer of 1975, I took the mushroom at doses of five grams dried, or fifty grams fresh, as often as I felt was prudent, which worked out to about once every two weeks.» — la dosis y la frecuencia que McKenna declara haber usado, con el criterio de prudencia puesto por él mismo.

«I discovered my own mind like a topological manifold, lying before me, inviting me to rove and scan the reflective knot of past and future time that is each of us.» — McKenna describe lo que dice haber hallado con el hongo, la propia mente como variedad topológica.

«The mushroom stressed its age, its vast knowledge of the ebb and flow of historical forces in many civilizations through the millennia.» — lo que el hongo sostiene de sí mismo según McKenna: su antigüedad y su conocimiento de las civilizaciones.

«I knew somehow that in the particular future I was seeing, hundreds of millions of people lived in such cylindrical worlds.» — una de las visiones de futuro que McKenna reporta, con las colonias cilíndricas; el troceo corta la frase por cambio de plana.

«On other occasions I saw alternative futures where the knowledge of the mushroom was not fused with humanity's restless expansionism. I saw a planet covered with a society of slave-worker machine symbiots.» — McKenna consigna que también veía futuros contrarios, con lo que su propio relato deja de ser una sola profecía.

«The dualism of fascism and democracy hung around North America's neck like an albatross. Again and again, nightmare police-state fascism would sweep like a fouled tide over the aspirations of the people, and again and again, the subtlety of the people would organize against the stupidity of the oppressor. They would rise in wild and bloody revolt to secure the space of a few generations in which to inaugurate attempts at democratic social reform.» — la visión política que McKenna reporta, con el ciclo de fascismo y revuelta puesto en ciclos; el troceo corta la frase por cambio de plana.

«The mushroom always returned to the theme that it was wise in the ways of evolution and sympathetic therefore to a symbiotic union with what it referred to as "the human beings."» — la tesis que el hongo repite según McKenna: sabiduría evolutiva y disposición a una unión simbiótica con lo que llama los seres humanos.

«From its point of view, the mushroom is an elder life form, and as such it offers its tempering experience to a vibrant but naive child-race standing for the first time on the brink of flight to the stars.» — McKenna expone la posición del hongo marcando que es su punto de vista: forma de vida mayor ante una especie niña.

«As our imagination has striven outward to attempt to encompass the possibility of the intelligent Other somewhere in the starry galaxy, so has the Other, observing this, revealed itself to be among us, when we are in the psilocybin trance, as an aspect of ourselves.» — la tesis que cierra el capítulo: la Otra Cosa se revela entre nosotros, en el trance de psilocibina, como un aspecto de nosotros mismos.

«In the phenomenon of Stropharia cubensis, we are confronted with an intelligent and seemingly alien life-form, not as we commonly imagine it, but an intelligent alien life nevertheless.» — McKenna sostiene que el hongo es una forma de vida inteligente y ajena, y acota que no como se la imagina de costumbre.

«Only an anachronistic lack of informed self-reflection would lead one to suppose that an intelligent, alien life-form would be even remotely like ourselves.» — el argumento de McKenna contra la figura humanoide del alienígena.

«Star-traveling species could be presumed to have a sophisticated knowledge of genetics and DNA function and therefore would not necessarily bear the form that evolution on a native planet had given them. They might well look as they wished to look.» — McKenna deriva de la genética que una especie viajera no llevaría la forma que la evolución le dio.

«The mushroom, with its habit of living off nonliving organic matter and its cobweb-fragile underground network of ephemeral mycelium, seems an organism designed with Buddhist values of noninterference and low environmental impact in mind.» — McKenna describe al hongo con valores que llama budistas, la no interferencia y el bajo impacto; el troceo corta la frase por cambio de plana.

«In the late summer of 1975, Dennis and I decided that the world we were exploring required a wider audience. We hoped to establish a community of consensus about what was going on. To that end we wrote and published a guide to the method we had developed cultivating the Stropharia.» — McKenna data la publicación del manual de cultivo y declara su propósito, formar una comunidad de consenso.

«The mushroom speaks, and our opinions rest upon what it tells eloquently of itself in the cool night of the mind:» — McKenna declara expresamente que lo que sigue es lo que el hongo dice de sí mismo, y sobre eso descansan sus opiniones.

«I am old, older than thought in your species, which is itself fifty times older than your history. Though I have been on earth for ages, I am from the stars.» — voz del hongo en primera persona, tal como McKenna la imprime en el manual: se declara anterior al pensamiento humano y de procedencia estelar.

«My home is no one planet, for many worlds scattered through the shining disk of the galaxy have conditions which allow my spores an opportunity for life.» — sigue la voz del hongo: se atribuye muchos mundos y no uno.

«The mushroom which you see is the part of my body given to sex thrills and sun bathing. My true body is a fine network of fibers growing through the soil.» — la voz del hongo distingue el cuerpo fructífero de lo que llama su verdadero cuerpo, la red de micelio.

«These networks may cover acres and may have far more connections than the number in a human brain.» — la voz del hongo compara su red con el cerebro humano por número de conexiones.