JM: Isn't it the case, that, I believe it was the German chemist who isolated this, uh, chem [stumbles] the chemical active ingredient in ayahuasca originally named it telepathine?
TM: Yes, that's right, Based on field reports of the states of group mind induced by ayahuasca, which is also called yage, he felt it was fitting to name it telepathine. Now, the rules of scientific nomenclature are such that the first name of a compound is always given precedent, and about 20 years after it was name telepathine, it was realized that the identical compound had been isolated around the turn of the century from the giant Syrian rue, Peganum harmala, and named harmine. So today the active ingredients of ayahuasca are known as harmine, harmaline, and tetrahydroharmine. But your point is well taken, the- what struck the early explorers and ethnographers into the Amazon Basin was the fact that the people seemed to be taking this plant preparation in order to undergo states of community group mindedness, and during these intoxicating intervals social plans, relative to migration hunting and warfare, were undertaken by the elders of the tribe and though the name has been changed to the more innocuous harmine, nevertheless there's a continued persistence of the feeling that telepathic and group mind states are induced by this particular plant mixture. And, it's particularly interesting in the light of the fact that the chemical constituents which make it go are in fact found endogenously in the human brain. These are not exotic compounds from the point of view of ordinary human brain chemistry. So there is a suggestion there, that manipulation of neurohumoral compounds, brain neurotransmitters, and that sort of thing may in fact open the door, to, uh, untapped areas of human potential. -terence mckenna