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 From the high desert and the great American Southwest, I bid you all good evening, or good morning, as the case may be,
 and welcome to another edition of the best in live overnight talk radio, by far the largest.
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 For whatever reason, you might want to do that.
 Listen, in a moment, coming up is Terrence McKenna, and he'll be with us for the balance of the hour.
 And Terrence has been through some pretty serious tribulations of late.
 Terrence McKenna is, what is Terrence? He's a philosopher, I guess.
 He's probably the man who inherited the mantle from Tim Leary.
 He's in Hawaii, and I'm going to let him tell you the way what has happened to him lately has occurred chronologically.
 Terrence, my friend, welcome back.
 It's a pleasure to talk to you, Art. It's a real pleasure to talk to you.
 It's good to hear your voice. Terrence, you were just humming along in life.
 And of course, I had interviewed you, gosh, it was not that long ago we had done a full, you know, like four-hour interview, I think.
 And you were sort of humming along in life, and then one day here recently,
 I mean, without a hitch, you were feeling fine, weren't you?
 Well, I had had four days of headaches that I thought were flu, and I had a tour on the mainland.
 I'd heard about a flu that was preceded by headaches.
 So you thought you had the flu?
 I thought I had the flu, and after four days of headaches, I went into the bathroom, and I had a massive brain seizure, which I knew nothing about.
 My partner, Christy, wrestled me into our truck, got me down to the local hospital.
 They did a CAT scan. Within 40 minutes, they could see a brain tumor the size of a quail egg on the right side.
 They took one look, and Air Medical evacuated me to Honolulu.
 All right, this is a tumor in your frontal lobe region?
 That's right. As far as I can tell, about three inches behind the eyes.
 Once in Honolulu, they did what they call a stereotactic gasse, where they basically bolt a metal frame to your head and drill in to get a piece of this thing.
 Oh my God.
 The doctors looked at it, and the diagnosis was glioblastoma metaforma, stage four.
 This thing is the fastest-moving brain tumor known to human medicine.
 Stage four?
 Stage four, which is an advanced stage.
 Immediately, they scheduled a procedure called the gamma knife, which can only be done in a few hundred places around the world.
 The way to think of it is like nuclear acupuncture.
 201 sources of cobalt-60 focused on this thing to burn it to a crisp.
 They told me flat out, "There's a one in ten chance you won't live through this procedure."
 Through the gamma knife?
 Yes.
 A one in ten chance?
 Yes.
 Let's back up a little bit. Before you had the gamma knife, obviously, the doctor sat you down and said, "Hey, Terrence, here's where you are.
 Here are your options. Here's your prognosis."
 What did they tell you before you even made a decision about a treatment?
 I said, "Untreated, where are we headed?"
 He said, "You'll be dead in 30 days, no question about it."
 Thirty days?
 Thirty days.
 Looking at that, I had friends who flew in from London. My brother came from Minnesota. Friends came from California.
 We had enough brain power in the room to match the Nobel Prize committee.
 We all looked at this and the gamma knife thing seemed to be the way to go.
 Yesterday, it was two weeks.
 Since the gamma knife?
 They did it.
 My understanding is that the gamma knife took about 90% of the tumor and apparently destroyed it or started it toward destruction. Is that about right?
 That's what they believe, 90 to 95%.
 The trick is these tumors have fractal boundaries. They have messy boundaries.
 Without follow-up radiation and chemotherapy, the doctors here said, "It will return within weeks and you'll be back where you started from."
 We spent a very difficult ten days looking at every cancer therapy alternative and otherwise in the world, trying to sort the real stuff from the surreal stuff.
 Basically, what we came down to is what scientific medicine can do for you is something like the gamma knife or a much scarier operation called a craniotomy, where they actually take off the top of your head and go in for this thing with knives, followed by the radiation treatment.
 Then, they pat you on the back and send you home.
 The other option, the surgical option, what did they tell you about that?
 They obviously had to tell you something so you could make an informed choice.
 They said it was so dangerous and that death was so likely that they didn't want to do it unless there was an absolute crisis.
 Well, 30 days to live is pretty much of an absolute crisis.
 Yes, so they hold up the gamma knife as a substitute for the craniotomy.
 I must say, after the gamma knife, I walked out of there.
 In other words, it's a walk-in procedure. You lie down, they bombard you with these gamma rays that are so precise that they can go to the area of the tumor, passing through the outside of your head and some portion of your brain or whatever, and doing the cutting or the burning or the destroying just at the tumor site.
 That's how they see it. That's what they believe.
 That's incredible.
 Well, let's hope they know what they're doing.
 Well, you're talking to me.
 Well, I told them through it, and they didn't fully anesthetize me. It was local anesthetics.
 So, I was with them all the way, and I said, "Guys, let's keep the oops factor to a minimum here."
 Yeah, right. One little oops, and Terrence is not Terrence anymore.
 Well, they tell you. They say, "The scary part of this is if we hit the motor strip, you're paralyzed. If we hit the optic nerve, you're blind."
 My gosh.
 So, yes, it's a tight space in there. Now, after two weeks having had this thing, I keep looking into my mind, trying to see what's missing, what's different.
 My son, Finn, was here, and at one point with the surgeon, he turned to him and he said, "So, this tumor, it's thinking?"
 And the doc thought a while, and then he said, "Well, yes, it's thinking about something."
 I'm trying to figure out what it was thinking about that I'm not thinking about anymore.
 In other words, he was suggesting the tumor, the out-of-control of the cancer was actually part of your brain?
 I mean, was that a joke, or do the cells actually, when they're there, function as the brain functions in some way? Is that what you're saying?
 Well, apparently so. In other words, the doctors say it had to have been there a year or 18 months,
 and in that year and 18 months, I've noticed that I got some bifocals. I noticed I was a little more forgetful,
 but I certainly didn't feel like somebody who was at risk for brain seizure.
 The seizure itself, Terrence, did you just pass out? Were you in convulsions? What happened?
 Well, what I had heard about this flu was that you had bad headaches, and then you would vomit.
 So the fourth day, I was lying down with these headaches, and I began to feel nauseated.
 I thought, "Aha, it's going to turn into a flu." So I went into the bathroom, and then it was,
 and speaking as a psychedelic explorer, all hell broke loose. It was very confusing, and it was confounding.
 I had no idea what was happening. I was having hallucinations. I was not sure where I was or who I was.
 I had two or three more of these seizures as Christy wrestled me down the mountain.
 So in other words, in a way, you had a form of consciousness during these seizures,
 at least enough that you're able to remember what you're telling me right now.
 There were flashes of awareness, but a very confused kind of awareness.
 Here's what the real tip-off to all this was, Art. For a month leading into these seizures,
 I had been having dreams that were, the only way I could describe them was, I couldn't describe them.
 They lasted hours, and yet I could not describe them even to myself.
 I even said to Christy and my son a few mornings before the seizure,
 "I think I should see a neurologist. These dreams are so bizarre. I can't believe that healthy people have these experiences."
 Well, as most everybody in the world knows who has listened to you, you have done a lot of psychedelic drugs.
 Now, it must have occurred to you that one possibility with regard to the dreams was some sort of effect
 from some psychedelic drug that you have taken at some point in your life. Did that one roll through your mind?
 It did. It was like a tryptamine, but it was not like DMT, which is what I know best.
 But the quality of being indescribable and the quality of being visual were things I could only associate with psychedelics.
 Once I got over here to Honolulu and we were facing these doctors, I said to them,
 "If you want to guilt trip me, I have a history of psychedelic and recreational drugs."
 They just waved it away as preposterous and said, "No, no, no. This comes out of your genetics.
 This comes out of the environment. This is not about smoking dope in the evening."
 Well, that just tore another question right out of my hands, so you asked it yourself.
 Oh, of course, because I knew that anybody hearing this news about me...
 Was going to say, "Remember all the drugs he took?"
 Right. "See what happened to that guy? Here's a bad example."
 So, where are you now? In other words, now the gamma knife procedure is done,
 some great portion of the tumor has been destroyed, and I guess you've entered a regime,
 a mainstream regime of what? Radiation?
 Yes, soft focus radiation.
 What they try to do, the way I visualize the tumor is, it's not smooth. It has spurs and processes on it
 and they have to focus on those things or within weeks, the thing will regrow.
 These scientific doctors don't hold out much hope.
 I mean, I think they're trained to look you right in the eye and they do.
 They say, "6 to 9 months, no escape."
 So, that's what they're telling you now?
 That's what they're telling me now, yes.
 You know, I don't believe that, actually. I actually don't believe it now.
 I do believe in mainstream medicine's ability to probably, I mean, the gamma knife,
 obviously, with the choice you had, there's no choice there. I'd go for that myself.
 I'd have done that. I'd have made the same choice.
 And then, we all know then there's some left of the tumor, which you don't need much.
 All you need is one malignant cell left and it regrows.
 You said it was one of the most, the most aggressive?
 Known to science.
 Known to science.
 Yes, so one of the godsends of this situation was that my brother, Dennis, was here.
 He's a professional pharmacologist and drug designer.
 So, he could ask the questions, ask the hard questions, really push on these guys
 and study the stuff on the Internet.
 And, you know, if you have liver problems or eye problems,
 straight medical science knows a great deal.
 But the thing about brain tumors is it's a total frontier.
 And there are dozens of people out there with machines, drugs, treatments,
 and who knows whether this stuff works.
 Most of it you can't even use inside the United States because the government won't allow it.
 And, of course, when people hear they're dying, and many of these people are well healed,
 they will spend any amount of money, go anywhere to try and live.
 So, we've been looking at all this stuff and there are machines in the Dominican Republic.
 There's a guy in Houston.
 There's a guy at the University of Virginia.
 There's a cancer clinic in Germany.
 Dr. Day, there are a million different alternative treatments
 and there are champions for all of them who will say,
 "You must do this and you must do it right away."
 Yes, and if you don't follow my advice, you're choosing grim death.
 Yeah, that's right.
 All right, so we've got to pause here at the bottom of the hour, Terrence,
 but when we come back I've got a lot of other questions for you
 in view of the best case prognosis, six to nine months.
 Now, when I said I don't believe that, I meant it.
 You see, I think there's a spiritual component that can be thrown into the mix
 and just knock six to nine months right in the teeth.
 It can happen. I've seen it happen.
 We've done it before.
 We tried it and we'll try it again.
 It's a power that the doctors don't exactly know about.
 I'm Art Bell and this is Coast to Coast AM.
 Terrence McKenna is here and he'll be right back.
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 To reach Art Bell in the Kingdom of Nye,
 from west of the Rockies dial 1-800-618-8255.
 East of the Rockies 1-800-825-5033.
 First time callers may reach Art at 1-775-727-1222
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 To reach Art on the toll-free international line,
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 This is Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell on the Premier Radio Network.
 Terrence McKenna is here.
 What would you do out there?
 You ever think about it?
 Walk into a doctor's office when you thought you had the flu
 after some seizures and they sit you down and tell you
 you've got stage 4 brain cancer and you're terminal.
 Have you ever thought about that?
 We'll be right back.
 Go gather that pen and paper.
 I'm going to give you an opportunity to help Terrence in two ways,
 spiritually and financially.
 He can use both, believe me.
 And there is now the Terrence McKenna Research Foundation account
 and I'm going to tell you about it toward the end of this particular segment.
 But right now, it's back to Terrence.
 Terrence, you're back on the air again.
 Good.
 Terrence, what do you believe about the power of the mind?
 The context in which I ask is we had millions of people concentrating,
 you know, white light, healing, prayer, whatever it is the individual happens
 to believe in and sending it your way.
 Now, we did that and we're going to do it again,
 but I just wonder what you believe about all this yourself.
 Well, I mentioned community immunity.
 I think what we're really talking about here is the power of love.
 And once they pull the rug out from under you and give you a death sentence,
 suddenly the lights come on and you realize that love is what it's all about
 and love is what keeps people going.
 It cures diseases.
 It brings children into the world.
 It makes people able to die with dignity.
 And I think if anything can change the statistics and turn this into a happy story,
 it's the community that has supported me and cares about me
 and affirmed the things that I was into.
 I was very attentive to the concentrated moment that you organized and sent.
 And while it was happening, which was just before the Gamma Knife procedure,
 I felt that really that's why I lived through it.
 That's amazing.
 You're actually the second person to make a statement like that.
 The first was Richard Hoagland, who said he could actually feel it while it was going on.
 I felt I could feel it.
 I felt it as a kind of welling energy coming almost, I would say, out of the earth.
 But I sat with my eyes closed and it was pouring in.
 And then I talked to one of the big, literally the big kahuna on the big island,
 and he said, "When you go into the Gamma procedure, tell your body to be strong."
 And when I did that, I had the same feeling that I had during the group meditation.
 So it brought home to me the horror of dying alone and unloved.
 And I really want to say, if you think there are no heroes in this world,
 go to your local cancer center and look into the eyes of the people sitting in the waiting room.
 They're not worried about Kosovo or the stock market.
 They are dealing with stuff so deep and beyond most people's imagining
 that you just have to genuflect to their nobility.
 What do you believe about us?
 I meant to ask you that when I say about us.
 We are biological, complex organisms,
 and the big kahuna question is whether we are more than just that.
 Whether at death there is not an ending, but something else.
 A new beginning or something, a continuation of some sort, obviously, in your situation.
 You would have been reflecting on this.
 Well, I think nature doesn't build patterns as complex as ourselves
 simply to throw them away at the edge of the grave.
 I really think that what a lifetime of psychedelic journeying has taught me
 is consciousness can exist outside of the body.
 And if it can exist for an hour or six hours,
 then why would nature throw the beauty of that away?
 So, this has been an emotional turmoil for me,
 but at my best moments I say, "For knowledge of your own death,"
 if that's what this is, "is a kind of enlightenment."
 And of course, everyone can have this enlightenment.
 There really are a lot of ways to look at it.
 How old are you? - 52.
 I'm going to be 54 at midnight here.
 Really? Congratulations.
 And so, at best, if we're lucky, we have another...
 and nothing goes wrong. We have another 20, 30 years, maybe.
 That's right.
 That's the case. So, in the cosmic sense of things,
 even if you were to die tomorrow, it's a blink.
 The difference between tomorrow and 20 years, cosmically, is just...
 it's nothing. It's not even considered. It's not even time, as we understand it.
 And so, it's like, you'll be there tomorrow and I'll be there tomorrow.
 In that sense, if there is a continuation of life...
 And people who write books and paint paintings and do what you do,
 I think are in touch with a kind of Greek notion of immortality,
 which is, you live as long as people remember you
 and hold you positively in their mind.
 And if this is not an argument for doing good and spreading love,
 I don't know what is.
 What has changed for you, in the way you think of all of this,
 since that moment, since the doctors told you what the prognosis was?
 What has changed for you?
 Well, the most startling thing is, I have the idea, hallucination, notion,
 I'm not sure what it is, that I can walk down the street
 and I can tell who's living and who's dying.
 I can look into people's faces and I can see who has figured out enough
 about the living condition to make it work for them
 and who is just spinning it away in anxiety, money chasing and foolishness.
 And I see my own life and how I gave energy to certain things,
 not to other things.
 It's a revelation.
 Do you now perceive that a lot of your life energy was misdirected?
 I could have treated people better.
 I could have been more compassionate, more kind, more open to people.
 You and I have had many a conversation where I was knocking various ideas
 or systems which I felt were flaky and maybe I still feel they're flaky.
 But what I now see behind all that was the intent and the compassion,
 the desire to make life, whatever it is, an easier journey to whatever it sweeps us toward.
 You've got some insurance.
 Obviously, you're facing medical bills right now that are probably like Mount Fuji.
 Yes. Well, I had medical insurance my whole life.
 I paid too much and now I discover it doesn't cover drugs,
 it doesn't cover the evacuation flight over here.
 The average bill to an insurance company for a person who dies of cancer is $350,000.
 Wow.
 And no alternative medicine is covered, absolutely none.
 So my friends suggested that there be a research foundation where people could donate.
 I resisted that. I've always paid my own bills. I've always taken care of myself.
 And then as I got into this, I realized that the medical system and the insurance system
 victimizes everyone.
 And so many people have sent suggestions and books and machines and names of doctors.
 And I realized I'm going to need all the help from my friends I can get.
 And if in fact I'm headed to the great beyond, then whatever is left in this trust fund
 should be given to promising forms of cancer research, drug research.
 We don't know enough about cancer and it's a scandal because so many of us will come to these places.
 All right. I have the information on what you just talked about,
 the Terrence McKenna Research Foundation.
 And my understanding is that the money while you're alive will be used to help offset
 some of what you just talked about.
 But should you pass away, as you just said, it will go to cancer research of some sort.
 It is the Terrence McKenna Research Foundation and you can make out a check to that,
 the Terrence McKenna Research Foundation.
 And it will be going to the Washington Mutual Bank.
 And I actually have several pieces of information here.
 I have an account number so that you could actually transit money,
 electronically move money into that account.
 And that account or transit number is 3222-71627.
 I'll repeat that in a moment.
 You can also send it to, by mail, the Terrence McKenna Research Foundation at Box 3287,
 La Jolla, California, zip code 92038.
 Once again, that would be the Terrence McKenna Research Foundation account at Box 3287
 in La Jolla, California, 92038.
 And one more time, the routing number for any funds that you might want to send would be 3222-71627.
 So there are two real ways to get money into that account.
 One is directly as in a bank transfer and the other, of course, is at the address I just gave you.
 And let me say, Art, your audience may not know this,
 but you and I have never met, never laid eyes on each other.
 But we had plans.
 We had plans and we may still have plans.
 But for you to do this for me with your audience,
 I'm finding out who the real saints of this world are.
 And this is as great a gift as I can imagine any human being doing for another.
 And I love you, man.
 Well, thank you.
 How do you, Terrence, when you read the, you must be in a personal review of your life now.
 And aside from the regrets, and listen, Terrence, we all have them.
 There was only one perfect guy a couple thousand years ago they talk about.
 Otherwise, we've all done things we're sorry for, that we feel guilt about, you know, mistreated people.
 Certainly I've done it.
 But aside from that, when you review your life, Terrence, it's been a pretty good one mostly, hasn't it?
 Oh, it's been a fantastic life.
 I mean, I've been many times around the world.
 I've written books.
 I know everybody.
 I've eaten in the best restaurants.
 I've been in the company of beautiful women and am in the company of the most beautiful woman I've ever known.
 I am surprised, Art, at how, I wouldn't say this is easy to take,
 but if somebody had described this happening to me, I would have assumed that I would just panic and fling my mind away.
 And instead, there's been a wonderful consolidation and appreciation.
 And I'm ready for whatever comes down the pike.
 This has been a long, strange trip.
 And I want to live, but if that's not in the cards,
 I want to do a good job with the time left to me and learn from this experience.
 When this occurred, a member of your soulmate's family called and spoke on the air a little bit
 and attributed a quote to you, which was that when you spoke with the doctors, Terrence,
 you said you would like to opt for quantity of life versus quality of life.
 And I asked you about that quote. Is there anything to that or was that just wrong?
 No, I can't believe that if I'm alive, I can't generate happiness and peace of mind out of myself.
 And so I don't want extreme chemotherapy. I don't want wild measures to prolong things.
 I want simply to do a good job with this so that the entirety of my life makes sense.
 Because I think how you die is part of how you will be remembered.
 And I want my ideas, my values, the books and the ideas about plants to stand the test.
 And Larry did a good job and Watson and we all are in the same canoe here.
 I could almost claim a fortunate position because I know now and that gives me time to clean up my act.
 And review it now. You should walk in front.
 A lot of people tomorrow morning or tomorrow during the day are going to walk in front of a car
 and be instantly dead without one second of thought about anything at all.
 Yes, that's what I always assumed would happen to me.
 An unpleasant 15 minutes on the freeway and then the velvet darkness.
 Velvet darkness. So at one time you really did think about the other side as a velvet darkness.
 Well, or at least the velvet curtain.
 So really aside from the normal regrets we all have, what you have spoken about publicly on my program,
 what you have written about in your books, you don't feel any change about any of that, do you?
 No, I don't. I'm amazed that I may not make it to 2012 and that I may not lift the cup to the new millennium.
 But no, no regrets. All those books, all those ideas were put forward in deepest sincerity and nothing has changed.
 My friend, it's so good to hear from you.
 Whatever time you have left, whether it be a couple of months, a month or years yet,
 and I hope it's years, we're going to see to it. We're going to try our best to see to it that it's years.
 And a lot of times, you've got to know, Terrence, a lot of times what the doctors say turns out to be absolute crap
 about how much time you've got left.
 That's true.
 There's an awful lot of walking around, talking examples of that for sure.
 So there's always, where there's life, there's hope. And you're obviously alive.
 And obviously the gamma knife didn't miss because you sound like the same Terrence to me.
 I love talking to you, Art. I love being on your show. I love knowing how many people are listening to me.
 And as long as I make sense, I'm happy to come on. It's very healing and affirming.
 You're doing good work. Just keep doing it, buddy.
 All right, my friend. Thank you. And good night, Terrence.
 Good night.
 That's Terrence McKenna. Folks, that's Terrence.
 Now, again, if you would like to donate to the Terrence McKenna Research Foundation,
 you can do so by making out a check to the Terrence McKenna Research Foundation,
 Box 3287, La Jolla, California, zip code 92038. The Terrence McKenna Research Foundation, Box 3287, La Jolla, California, zip code 92038.
 So that's Terrence. We're going to do something more about Terrence. Keep listening. I'm Art Bell.
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 Call Art Bell in the Kingdom of Nye from west of the Rockies at 1-800-618-8255, east of the Rockies, 1-800-825-5033.
 First-time callers may reach Art at 1-775-727-1222, and the wildcard line is open at 1-775-727-1295.
 To reach Art on the toll-free international line, call your AT&T operator and have them dial 800-893-0903.
 This is Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell from the Kingdom of Nye.
 Good evening or good morning, wherever you are. I'm Art Bell.
 In the last hour, you heard from Terrence McKenna.
 If you listen to the doctors, a terminal Terrence McKenna.
 But we're going to have something to say about that. We're going to have our say.
 Terrence said a very interesting thing. He said, "At the moment you did the concentration, you could feel it."
 Do you remember Richard Hoagland saying the exact same thing as we tried the experiment?
 Do you remember that? Do you remember Richard Hoagland saying, "I knew it. I could feel it when it was happening, and feel it when it let up."
 So I believe, even with an intractable brain tumor, that something can be done beyond the gamma knife,
 and radiation, and chemotherapy, and all that he's going through right now.
 And we're going to be doing that again shortly.
 And when I say shortly, I mean in the next few days. So stand by for that.
 So that was Terrence McKenna.
 Quite a remarkable man by any measure of anybody. Remarkable man.
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