The problem with Terence McKenna was that he was a wonderful, living contradiction of himself that somehow made sense, in that he lectured in the New Age domain, perennially distancing himself from 'woo' and other 'goddamned foolishness', 'nonsense', etc while espousing his own brand of 'nonsense'.

It was very difficult, though, not to follow Terence down any random rabbit hole of his (except Timewave), because he was took a pragmatic (cartesian), well-reasoned, rationalist, reductionist (citing Occams razor), very well studied approach and argument for his many unorthodox ideas. Coupled with the fact that he read nearly every philosopher, was one of the foremost historians on the subject of alchemy, shamanism, psychedlia, and contemporary history that it was very easy to listen to what he had to say on those very subjects.

And occasionally he would state that he received this special understanding from a mushroom alien god with whom he developed a special relationship built out of subversive antiauthoritarianism and stalwart self-reliance within the psychedelic experience with specifically psilocybe mushrooms, which happen to be something he was also a foremost expert at cultivating, leading to a the book psilocybe mushroom growers guide under a pseudonym along with his brother and coauthor Dennis (who himself is a savant ethnobotanical chemist with multiple phds and many publications).

After listening to TM for so long I finally get it. He never comes out and says it, but he's a gnostic. He never wanted to take a stance or play into any organized religion, but it was clear that he was a hermeticist and that his whole lecture series was an attempt to swing a pendulum of the collective human unawareness back into a higher frequency of thought--he wanted everyone to get smart, fast and create art. Most of all he wanted to turn everyone on, in a Leary type of sense, but he wanted everyone to do it for themselves--to take the red pill on their own so to speak. He was the original Morpheus, or King Mob, but far smarter and more interesting than both times a thousand.