biological evolution—that is, selected for changes at the level of the
genome. It would have been easier for him to make an argument for
psychoactive fungi’s influence on cultural evolution—such as the one
Wasson made—but evidently the fungi had more ambitious plans for the
mind of Terence McKenna, and Terence McKenna was more than happy
to oblige.
Stamets became good friends with McKenna during the last few years
of his life, and ever since McKenna’s death (at age fifty-three, from brain
cancer), he has been carrying the stoned ape’s torch, recounting
McKenna’s theory in many of his talks. Stamets acknowledges the
challenges of ever proving it to anyone’s satisfaction yet deems it “more
likely than not” that psilocybin “was pivotal in human evolution.” What is
it about these mushrooms, I wondered, and the experience they sponsor
in the minds of men, that fires this kind of intellectual extravagance and
conviction?
The stories of myco-evangelists like McKenna read like conversion
narratives, in which certain people who have felt the power of these
mushrooms firsthand emerge from the experience convinced that these
fungi are prime movers—gods, of a sort—that can explain everything.
Their prophetic mission in life becomes clear: bring this news to the
world!
Now consider all this from the mushroom’s point of view: what might
have started as a biochemical accident has turned into an ingenious
strategy for enlarging the species’ range and number, by winning the
fervent devotion of an animal as ingenious and well traveled (and well
spoken!) as Homo sapiens. In McKenna’s vision, it is the mushroom itself
that helped form precisely the kind of mind—endowed with the tools of
language and fired by imagination—that could best advance its interests.
How diabolically brilliant! No wonder Paul Stamets is convinced of their
intelligence.
• • •
THE NEXT MORNING, before we packed up the cars for our trip south,
Stamets had another gift he wanted to give me. We were in his office,
looking at some images on his computer, when he pulled off the shelf a