[00:00:00 - 00:00:00] Yeah. [00:00:00 - 00:00:15] We're going to start very quickly because the Philosophical Society has asked that we [00:00:15 - 00:00:23] wind ourselves down. I wanted to call your attention to a couple of things before I take [00:00:23 - 00:00:35] questions. Psilocybin, the magic mushroom grower's guide, is back in print by popular demand [00:00:35 - 00:00:42] at health food stores you buy agar. [00:00:44 - 00:00:53] But I do technical consulting for a hefty hourly fee. But this can be gotten at Bodytree. It's [00:00:53 - 00:01:01] longer, it's on better paper, it has more drawings. It's a state of the art as we could make it. It has [00:01:01 - 00:01:05] brought freedom, prosperity, and enlightenment to tens of thousands. [00:01:10 - 00:01:15] We have, not to be outdone by Tim Leary, we have a piece of software. [00:01:15 - 00:01:30] So if you own a 2E, 2C, or 2GS machine from Apple, why you can run this time wave software, [00:01:30 - 00:01:38] which in my opinion is actually my best trick. And I will be writing and talking more and more about [00:01:39 - 00:01:46] about the wave of time because in Hawaii finally developing this software gave me a real [00:01:46 - 00:01:53] grip on it. Eventually we will market this for Macintosh and IBM compatible machinery, [00:01:53 - 00:02:04] but right now it's in the 2E, 2C line. Also I'd like to mention that Kat and I will be at Esalen [00:02:04 - 00:02:12] next weekend, so if any of you are true gluttons for punishment, why you can join us up there for [00:02:12 - 00:02:19] two and a half days. And it should be lots of fun. That will wind this all up. [00:02:19 - 00:02:29] And before I take questions, I want to again remind you of Botanical Dimensions. It is a tax-exempt [00:02:29 - 00:02:40] nonprofit. We do need donations. All the money that is given goes very directly into visibly [00:02:40 - 00:02:48] manifesting the botanical garden in Hawaii, collecting the plants, building a computer [00:02:48 - 00:02:57] database, and basically support, not even supporting, but keeping a Peruvian collector [00:02:57 - 00:03:03] in the field. Since I'm most familiar with Amazonian botany, why that's where we've concentrated. [00:03:03 - 00:03:13] Well usually questions are the most interesting. How is this to be done? Are you going to hand a [00:03:13 - 00:03:22] microphone? Do people come up? Stand up? Stand up and speak loudly. In the middle, in the back. [00:03:23 - 00:03:31] Yes. Yes, parents. I was wondering if you could share with us your ideas on what spirit is. [00:03:31 - 00:03:42] Well, I think it's my notion of it is it's an informed that the way we experience it, [00:03:42 - 00:03:50] it's an informing understanding. It's on one level, it's simply appropriate activity, [00:03:51 - 00:04:00] you know, knowing how to do everything because it is the Tao of the ancestors. In other words, [00:04:00 - 00:04:07] you can sort of see yourself as the most recent version of your family's genes. [00:04:07 - 00:04:17] And in all traditional activities, there's millions of years of morphogenetic fields stored up for how [00:04:17 - 00:04:25] you pick something up, how you sit something down. So in the immediate sense, the manifestation of [00:04:25 - 00:04:35] spirit is appropriate activity. What it really is, I think, is some kind of hidden howness [00:04:35 - 00:04:45] that makes everything be as it is. And that's what the spirit is. In other words, science describes [00:04:46 - 00:04:56] the possible things that can happen. Science is the study of possibilities. And what nobody has ever [00:04:56 - 00:05:06] answered is how is it that out of the entire class of possibilities, certain things actually undergo [00:05:06 - 00:05:15] the formality of occurring? Somehow they are selected out of the class of the possible and they [00:05:15 - 00:05:23] become the actual. Well, the thing which mediates the coming into being of the actual out of the [00:05:23 - 00:05:31] class of the possible is what I think the spirit is. It is the invisible hand, if you will. It is [00:05:31 - 00:05:42] the guiding force. It is the invisible landscape over which becoming flows like a river. It defines, [00:05:42 - 00:05:48] it creates. It is this telos that I mentioned, this attractor at the end of time. [00:05:48 - 00:05:57] Other? Yes, back there. Yes, Terrence. Has there been any research that you have known of in relation to [00:05:57 - 00:06:04] electron spin resonance recently since the invisible landscape? And secondly, can tryptamine [00:06:04 - 00:06:12] act as a mechanism for release of genetically stored material through that ESR, electron spin [00:06:12 - 00:06:19] resonance, with an interpolation of tryptamine, both skin long, as substances into the neural DNA? [00:06:19 - 00:06:27] In essence, is that a genetic mechanism for racial movement? Well, in the invisible landscape, [00:06:27 - 00:06:36] that is what we were suggesting. And the invisible landscape was published in 1975. Since then, [00:06:36 - 00:06:45] there has been a lot of work with NMR and ESR. None of it which overthrows this idea. It is a real [00:06:45 - 00:06:56] question about the, where is the epigenetic data stored? In other words, all the memories that you [00:06:56 - 00:07:05] accumulate during your life die with you. Your genetic material, you can pass on at least half [00:07:05 - 00:07:14] to your children. And so during the life of the individual, this epigenetic material, [00:07:14 - 00:07:22] experience anecdotes, memories, anticipations, how, where is it molecularly stored or is it [00:07:22 - 00:07:31] molecularly stored? In the invisible landscape, we were suggesting that thought is actually a [00:07:31 - 00:07:40] naturally occurring ESR readout of portions of the DNA, which were not associated with genetic [00:07:40 - 00:07:51] expression, but which were somehow like writeable memory in a computer. The epigenetic stuff was [00:07:51 - 00:07:59] being stored there. There's no data to overthrow that notion that I'm aware of. I'm not, I don't [00:07:59 - 00:08:10] cling to it as strongly as I once did. I look more and more, I see, I didn't realize that this was a [00:08:10 - 00:08:27] fundamental break, this allowing of spirit into the scientific model of the world. And I now think of [00:08:27 - 00:08:37] the brain as a receiver of the phenomenon of consciousness, that I don't believe that that [00:08:37 - 00:08:45] consciousness is generated in the brain any more than that television programs are made inside my [00:08:45 - 00:08:55] TV. You know, the box is too small. You know, that, I mean, it just obviously is too small. [00:08:55 - 00:09:01] I mean, it might not be if you didn't have the psychedelic experience, but once you [00:09:01 - 00:09:08] splice that and they say, well, it's taking, you know, 10 high 16 megabytes of memory to store this [00:09:08 - 00:09:14] database. So it just doesn't, I just don't think it would be done like that. I think that there is [00:09:14 - 00:09:22] a, somehow this field phenomenon that I keep returning to. This is another slice on what the [00:09:22 - 00:09:32] spirit is. It is this field of some sort of energy that organisms as they evolve, discover, [00:09:32 - 00:09:40] right? Already somehow present in the environment. It is the, the appetition for being that drives [00:09:40 - 00:09:49] organic evolution into this kind of dance of relatedness to this other thing, which it can [00:09:49 - 00:09:56] transduce from another dimension. That's why, you know, if you take consciousness expansion, [00:09:56 - 00:10:05] the phrase or consciousness enhancement seriously, it must be very important because consciousness is [00:10:05 - 00:10:15] after all what it's all made out of. That's the name of the game. So this transducing of higher [00:10:15 - 00:10:25] states of consciousness then seems very important. Even at that, it will be necessary to elucidate [00:10:25 - 00:10:35] the physical mechanism, whether it's ESR, NMR, or what it is, an interesting sort of opportunity [00:10:35 - 00:10:41] for psychedelic research. You see, the amazing thing about psychedelics is not only that they [00:10:41 - 00:10:48] are illegal and restricted from the so-called ordinary person, but they are restricted to [00:10:48 - 00:10:55] scientific research. Nobody can do research on psychedelics. I mean, it is professionally and [00:10:55 - 00:11:03] practically impossible to do it. Well, there's no other area where this is true. I mean, science [00:11:03 - 00:11:10] probes obscenely into the pri, the most private areas of our sex lives, our social lives, our dream [00:11:10 - 00:11:17] lives. Monkeys are smashed against walls to study. I mean, there's no limit to it. And yet there's [00:11:17 - 00:11:25] this total hands-off attitude toward the psychedelic. So an interesting break in this front [00:11:25 - 00:11:34] is the sudden need because of computer-assisted tomography, CAT scanning, the need for compounds [00:11:34 - 00:11:41] which locate in certain highly defined parts of the brain. If you could tritiate these drug [00:11:41 - 00:11:48] compounds and make them radioactive, you could make very nice pictures of various parts of the [00:11:48 - 00:11:56] brain. So now suddenly there is an interest in all this old psychedelic research about the receptor [00:11:56 - 00:12:03] site and location densities of molecules in the brain. So we may be on the brink of an era where [00:12:03 - 00:12:10] to have a psilocybin trip in the evening, you must have signed on for a CAT scan at general [00:12:10 - 00:12:20] hospital in the morning. Someone else. Well, I have a couple of questions. I guess I'd like to [00:12:20 - 00:12:26] hear just about the state of these plants that you feel that you need to sort of rescue them [00:12:26 - 00:12:31] from the Amazon and bring them into Hawaii and how many types of plants there are and that kind of [00:12:31 - 00:12:42] thing. Well, every time I have gone to the Amazon plant collecting, I've observed that the cultures, [00:12:42 - 00:12:51] the indigenous rainforest cultures are more and more disrupted and there's a lot of conservation [00:12:51 - 00:12:58] and big organizations raising money to preserve the rainforests and to get large tracts of [00:12:58 - 00:13:09] rainforests set aside. But there is no awareness or social conscience about the fact that the [00:13:09 - 00:13:19] presence of capitalism in the Amazon is totally disrupting tribal human culture. So these people [00:13:19 - 00:13:26] who have been tribal for thousands of years, the men are just totally walking out on the traditional [00:13:26 - 00:13:33] lifestyle and taking their canoe a hundred miles down river and signing on at sawmills and on oil [00:13:33 - 00:13:43] drilling crews and this sort of thing. And so the consequences of this is that far more rapidly than [00:13:43 - 00:13:52] the rainforest itself is being destroyed, the human cultural interaction with the rainforest [00:13:52 - 00:13:59] is being lost and thousands and thousands of species of medicinal plants, antibiotics, [00:13:59 - 00:14:09] immune stimulators, hallucinogens, analgesics, all these different kinds of plants, this data, [00:14:09 - 00:14:20] this lore is being lost. And when you realize that, you know, 80% of the drugs sold in the United [00:14:20 - 00:14:28] States are in fact traceable to plant sources. And in spite of the vaunted success of so-called [00:14:28 - 00:14:34] strategic pharmacology, where you just think up the drug you think you need and make it in the [00:14:34 - 00:14:42] laboratory, it really, it's still a lot of the, of what drug companies do is screen for plants [00:14:43 - 00:14:52] and cash in on folklore, basically. So it's important to preserve these plants and the lore [00:14:52 - 00:15:00] about them because you see, I mean, like it's really hard to explain how some of these plants [00:15:00 - 00:15:08] have been discovered. For instance, in the case of ayahuasca, ayahuasca is a visionary, shamanic [00:15:08 - 00:15:17] brew that happens to be made of two different plants, Banisteriopsis copy supplies an MAO [00:15:17 - 00:15:28] inhibitor and Socotria viridis supplies DMT. Either plant by itself is inert and you have to know to [00:15:28 - 00:15:36] brew the wood and bark of one with the leaves of the other. And you have to know that it's in a [00:15:36 - 00:15:42] certain proportion and you have to know to concentrate it to a certain degree. Well, [00:15:42 - 00:15:50] when you realize that an a square mile of Amazonian rainforest can have 120,000 species of [00:15:50 - 00:15:57] plants on it. I mean, that's in contrast to when you go into the Sierras, a square mile of forest [00:15:57 - 00:16:07] may have 150 species of plants. So it's an ultra complex environment and human beings, [00:16:07 - 00:16:14] who knows by what means, I mean, it's it is to my mind that the vegetable spirits lead them to it, [00:16:14 - 00:16:24] have sussed out all this knowledge that is, you know, an seamless web of understanding about [00:16:24 - 00:16:32] nature. And so this is what we're trying to preserve in Hawaii. I think ayahuasca is a good [00:16:32 - 00:16:42] example. It has tremendous potential for psychiatry. It is a purgative, it kills intestinal parasites, [00:16:42 - 00:16:52] it appears in Agar in slant culture to kill the trypanosome of malaria. Well, instead of delivering [00:16:52 - 00:16:59] high price drugs made in Germany and the United States to the outback of Indonesia, where malaria [00:16:59 - 00:17:06] is raging, you could simply send in 1000s of cuttings of this plant, people could grow it as [00:17:06 - 00:17:14] a door yard plant, take it as a tea on a weekly basis. And malaria would be held at bay. There are [00:17:14 - 00:17:23] over 200 plants in a recent review article that I saw known from Africa that appear to be immune [00:17:23 - 00:17:29] stimulating plants. Well, God, this should have everybody on the edge of their seat, the breakdown [00:17:29 - 00:17:38] of the immune system and the whole AIDS related complex and all of that. It turns out that [00:17:38 - 00:17:46] adaptations to plants in traditional cultures have conferred or have stimulated the immune system and [00:17:46 - 00:17:52] conferred certain kinds of immunity. Well, then this could be the basis for a drug strategy of [00:17:52 - 00:17:58] some sort, and so on. So this is the kind of preservational work that we're doing there. [00:17:58 - 00:18:08] Yes, against the wall. Yes, a few days ago, you were on KPFK with Roy and you mentioned briefly [00:18:08 - 00:18:12] San Pedro. That's what you said, right? You were talking about the [00:18:12 - 00:18:22] plant, the San Pedro cactus. Could you just give me briefly background, maybe a parallel between [00:18:22 - 00:18:29] the experience or your experience if you've had it with San Pedro to that of psilocybin [00:18:30 - 00:18:39] question because when I tried San Pedro taxes mixing it with vanilla ice cream didn't work. [00:18:39 - 00:18:43] Well, I don't know what work means, but it must have startled your stomach. [00:18:43 - 00:18:53] It was pretty vile. I didn't know what I was doing. Well, I don't really know that much about [00:18:53 - 00:18:58] San Pedro. I've never gotten around to it. I know a person who swears by it, but they have an [00:18:58 - 00:19:04] elaborate way of cooking it up in a pressure cooker. Mescaline, which and and halamine, [00:19:04 - 00:19:10] on halamine and methyl mescaline, all of these things are occurring in that plant. [00:19:10 - 00:19:18] It's an amphetamine related thing. It tends to be pretty rough of the of the natural [00:19:20 - 00:19:29] hallucinogens, the really the big ones as I think of them. Mescaline is the harshest. An operating [00:19:29 - 00:19:37] dose is considered to be actually close to a gram, 700 milligrams, which one way that [00:19:37 - 00:19:44] pharmacologists judge the toxicity of a drug is by how much it takes to get you off. And the less it [00:19:44 - 00:19:51] takes, then the more benign the drug is thought to be. So on that scale, mescaline doesn't do too well. [00:19:51 - 00:19:58] But my experience with mescaline has been with peyote, which I gather is somewhat similar. And [00:19:58 - 00:20:06] it's been interesting. It's hard to take enough to really reach the deep water without it really [00:20:06 - 00:20:13] reacting on your stomach. It's not the cleanest way to go. I think that, you know, having looked [00:20:13 - 00:20:23] at these things in South America and in many places, in my experience, the mushroom just is it. [00:20:23 - 00:20:31] I mean, other things have other aspects to it and bring it in. But the mushroom is an extraordinary [00:20:31 - 00:20:38] organism. It's like it's engineered for that purpose. And I've spoken about how it was almost [00:20:39 - 00:20:48] strewn in the path of developing primitive man in Africa because it was associated with the manure [00:20:48 - 00:20:56] of cattle and on the and the ungulate herds of Africa evolving on the veldt at the same time [00:20:56 - 00:21:04] that the human animal was evolving a complex pack signaling language and so forth. It just set the [00:21:04 - 00:21:11] stage. It seems to me it was the catalyst. I really believe that we are in a symbiotic relationship [00:21:11 - 00:21:20] with these plants and that the mushroom, by virtue of being global in its distribution, [00:21:20 - 00:21:28] is probably a major slice relationally of that pie. And in other words, that the peculiar turn [00:21:28 - 00:21:37] that evolution took in our species, the reinforcing of self reflective consciousness and the reinforcing [00:21:37 - 00:21:45] of linguistic signaling has to do with the presence in the human diet in that early stage [00:21:45 - 00:21:53] of these mushrooms. It's known that the mushroom that low amounts of psilocybin, subthreshold doses [00:21:53 - 00:22:01] of psilocybin increase visual acuity. Well, it isn't hard to figure then that if evolutionary [00:22:01 - 00:22:09] pressure is operating on a hunting species, a pack hunting species, that visual acuity is going to be [00:22:09 - 00:22:19] at a premium. And if small amounts of psilocybin in the food chain increase visual acuity, those [00:22:19 - 00:22:26] animals will be selected and survive. Well, then their habit of using of accepting the mushroom as [00:22:26 - 00:22:37] a food lays them open for this linguistic synergy, this symbol forming capacity. And then the deeper, [00:22:37 - 00:22:42] more ecstatic experiences with psilocybin, which are then projected onto the mushroom, [00:22:42 - 00:22:52] onto the cattle, become the basis for a kind of cattle goddess mushroom, a cycle of herophany, [00:22:52 - 00:22:59] the discovery of the tremendous. I mean, almost as though in the scene in 2001, where the apes [00:22:59 - 00:23:06] encountered the monolith, it was precisely that except that the monolith was a mushroom. It was a [00:23:06 - 00:23:17] superbly genetically engineered omnivorous organism that could insert itself into the [00:23:17 - 00:23:27] ecosystem of a planet and begin to coax an effect out of a mammal that it had a relationship to. [00:23:27 - 00:23:36] And this effect coaxed out of the mammal is this relationship to this higher dimensional wave form, [00:23:36 - 00:23:44] which we call the spirit or mind, which is apparently, you know, that's what it's all about. [00:23:44 - 00:23:51] Why this is happening is not clear. I mean, in the mushroom book, I suggested that it was because [00:23:51 - 00:24:00] there is some awareness of planetary finitude, that the mushroom actually thinks on so large a [00:24:00 - 00:24:14] scale that it is using us to make machines for it, to perpetuate it throughout the nearby galaxy, [00:24:14 - 00:24:21] that it is aware of the finite nature of our star. We don't know. We don't plan yet on those [00:24:21 - 00:24:31] kind of scales. We're an infant race, very obstreperous. And the mushroom said to me once, [00:24:31 - 00:24:36] if you don't have a plan, you become part of somebody else's plan. And one of it's slightly [00:24:36 - 00:24:46] more paranoid. But it is good, I think, to have a plan and to have allies. And [00:24:48 - 00:24:56] the mushroom is very contemptuous of the notion of humans having human allies. It says, you know, [00:24:56 - 00:25:02] for one human being to think it could gain enlightenment from another is like for one grain [00:25:02 - 00:25:09] of sand to think it could gain enlightenment from another. So it really believes in, you know, [00:25:09 - 00:25:17] hierarchical levels and trickle down gnosis, which I'm not sure how I view that. I believe all secrets [00:25:18 - 00:25:23] should be told and that we should just lay our cards on the table. But maybe I don't have as [00:25:23 - 00:25:35] many cards as they do. So we play by their rules on the aisle. You're a wonderful, convincing speaker. [00:25:35 - 00:25:42] And I'm sure nobody here has had any self-doubt or doubt about what you're saying. But in case [00:25:42 - 00:25:49] they do, I want to bear witness and tell them what you're saying. It's absolutely true that [00:25:49 - 00:25:54] there's this intelligence that wants to connect to us and that we want and we need to make a record [00:25:54 - 00:26:02] to connect to because, as you say, it's extremely informative. And you're saying that one way we can [00:26:02 - 00:26:07] do this is through the psychedelic experience, which I agree with, it's happened to me. But I'd [00:26:07 - 00:26:14] like you to talk a little bit about the Western tradition of the mysteries, which involves ritual [00:26:14 - 00:26:26] and using ritual in order to maintain contact with this nature spirit, which I might add is [00:26:26 - 00:26:33] a spirit that's just bursting at the seams right now to connect to us and inform us and talk to us [00:26:33 - 00:26:44] and help us. Yes, well, Marsiliad talked about the difference between sacral and profane time. [00:26:44 - 00:26:54] And he said, the way you leave history is you sacralize the space and you sacralize the space [00:26:54 - 00:27:01] through ritual. You abolish the profane constraints of space and time, the here and now, [00:27:01 - 00:27:09] and you imagine that you are what he what he called in Iliotempore in the time before in [00:27:09 - 00:27:16] the paradisical time before the fall. This goes back to what I said about the Anutatara Yoga Tantra, [00:27:16 - 00:27:26] the imagining of these titanic godlike states of mind as a ground for being. Yes, I would never [00:27:26 - 00:27:34] have thought I mean, I've been pushed to my position by my experience. I mean, I'm amazed [00:27:34 - 00:27:41] at what I have to say based on what I've experienced, because I never thought it would be [00:27:41 - 00:27:48] this way. You know, I came up a whole different way. I was a Marxist and an existentialist and [00:27:48 - 00:27:57] all of these things. And it was as you testified, it's the pure evidence of it. I mean, you can [00:27:57 - 00:28:05] you can convince yourself intellectually that something is true. But it's only in the in the [00:28:05 - 00:28:12] embrace of the tremendous that it just sweeps over you how true it is. And [00:28:14 - 00:28:19] as far as the difference between establishing these connections through psychedelics and through [00:28:19 - 00:28:27] ritual, I think deep psychedelic tripping is something that you don't do very often, [00:28:27 - 00:28:35] simply because each time it's so rich, it takes a long time to process this stuff. It's much better [00:28:35 - 00:28:44] to go deeper, seldom than than to diddle with it in the other ways that people do. I mean, it often [00:28:44 - 00:28:52] seems to me that it's not even so much a matter of, of, of, you know, spreading the good word and [00:28:52 - 00:28:58] turning it into a mass movement. It might be much more interesting if simply the people who were [00:28:58 - 00:29:10] already in on the secret did it more conscientiously and more deeply. Although I hasten to add that you [00:29:10 - 00:29:17] shouldn't do too much. You should never do more than about six or seven grams of mushrooms. I say [00:29:17 - 00:29:23] that because I keep hearing stories about people who think going deeply means doing a lot. And they [00:29:23 - 00:29:28] do amounts which stand my hair on in. I mean, in the past month, traveling around, I've heard stories [00:29:28 - 00:29:35] where I just say, you know, and people are crazy. They say, I couldn't remember whether you said five [00:29:35 - 00:29:52] grams or five ounces. So to be safe, I did announce in a half. You know, I mean, it's important to [00:29:52 - 00:29:58] it's important to get there granted, but it's important to come back. [00:30:02 - 00:30:10] Oh, Lord. Yeah. In your talk, you said something about the transcendental object. [00:30:10 - 00:30:20] The way I imagined that history works is, well, first of all, let me say how the way [00:30:20 - 00:30:23] the people I disagree with think it works. [00:30:26 - 00:30:34] Then you had cooling and development of molecular atomic and molecular and organic and ultimately [00:30:34 - 00:30:42] cultural and systems and ultimately technological systems. And this will go on indefinitely [00:30:42 - 00:30:50] down into the heat death of the universe and the development of life and of culture has nothing to [00:30:50 - 00:30:57] do with the physical astrophysical level of things. It's sort of ancillary and a mistake. [00:30:57 - 00:31:06] My view is somewhat different. It's that if we have to have a singularity in our cosmology, [00:31:06 - 00:31:12] in other words, it's so hard to figure out how you get from nothing to something. No [00:31:12 - 00:31:17] philosophical school has ever been able to do it without some kind of singularity. [00:31:17 - 00:31:24] So if we're going to have a singularity in our system, let us try to make it as [00:31:24 - 00:31:34] logically palatable as possible. So how to do that? It's not logically palatable to me [00:31:34 - 00:31:39] to believe that the universe sprang from nothing in a single instant. [00:31:39 - 00:31:43] Seems to me, if you believe that you're set up to believe anything, [00:31:45 - 00:31:50] right? I mean, isn't that it? Well, if they'll believe this, what wouldn't you believe? [00:31:50 - 00:32:02] So how about this instead, that the universe, its origins are a mystery and cannot be [00:32:02 - 00:32:11] determined. But as we look at its history, the history of it that is available to our inspection, [00:32:11 - 00:32:21] what we see is increasing complexity ending in ourselves and our civilization so far as we know. [00:32:21 - 00:32:28] Well, then if you're going to have a singularity, I think of a singularity as a kind of [00:32:28 - 00:32:37] phase transition. You know, Ilya Prigozhin talks about how a chemical system will suddenly and [00:32:37 - 00:32:45] spontaneously migrate to a higher state of order. Well, that's sort of how I think of this thing. [00:32:45 - 00:32:55] It is capable of migrating to a higher state of order. So if we're going to have a singularity, [00:32:55 - 00:33:02] isn't it more likely that it will emerge out of the situation of vast complexity than a situation [00:33:02 - 00:33:10] of utter metaphysical nothingness? I think so. So I think that what the transcendental object is, [00:33:10 - 00:33:21] is it is the cause of the universe, if you will, except that this cause is at what we would [00:33:21 - 00:33:29] conventionally refer to as the end. It's what everything flows toward. It isn't something [00:33:29 - 00:33:38] wound up which runs down. It's something diffuse which is gathered in to something. [00:33:38 - 00:33:47] And this gathering in takes the form not only of a progressive densification at the physical level, [00:33:47 - 00:33:55] but of a progressive complexification at the organizational level. It also is a kind of a [00:33:55 - 00:34:05] spiral. It has a temporal closure so that each epoch of closure happens more quickly than the [00:34:05 - 00:34:12] ones which preceded it. And what I mean by that is it took the universe is 20 billion years old. [00:34:12 - 00:34:20] The first five billion years, well, no. The first 10 billion years, it was all about star formation [00:34:20 - 00:34:29] and nuclear cook down of heavier elements out of lighter elements. And then you get molecules which [00:34:29 - 00:34:35] signify a higher level of organization which can only go on at a lower temperature. So as temperature [00:34:35 - 00:34:42] leaves the universe, more complex systems become possible. And then ultimately, polymers of great [00:34:42 - 00:34:51] lengths become possible. So this complexification is occurring and it is at each stage more rapid [00:34:51 - 00:35:02] than the last. Now, the emergence of self-reflection in our own species is part of this. It isn't a fluke. [00:35:02 - 00:35:11] It isn't an accident. It is obedient to the same natural law which created these other systems. [00:35:11 - 00:35:21] And the emergence of our own curiously alienated and at odds with itself culture is also a part of [00:35:21 - 00:35:30] this phenomenon. We are initiating a kind of crisis with the planet. It is in the same way that a fetus [00:35:30 - 00:35:39] will become septic if it is carried too far beyond term. There is a crisis now in the Gaia human [00:35:39 - 00:35:49] system. The two must be parted. And the transcendental object is this knitting together [00:35:49 - 00:35:59] of the organic intent of the planet to somehow expel us from the planetary environment in some [00:35:59 - 00:36:07] way which is very hard for us to foresee and anticipate because it is in fact the transcendental [00:36:07 - 00:36:13] object. I mean, by appointing a committee to look into this, we are not going to find out what it is. [00:36:13 - 00:36:22] It is the face of the abyss. It is the transcendental object. It cannot entirely be [00:36:22 - 00:36:29] known. It is the living embodiment of Gödel's incompleteness theorem. You know, science has [00:36:29 - 00:36:35] taught us that there are no mysteries. There are only unsolved problems. This is a mystery, [00:36:35 - 00:36:44] not an unsolved problem. Nevertheless, it is the narrowing vector of our timeline. And as some of [00:36:44 - 00:36:56] you probably know, in my opinion, around 2012 AD, we will cross through novel epochs of concrescence [00:36:56 - 00:37:05] and the transcendental object will be manifest. It's a very curious thing. It's something which [00:37:05 - 00:37:13] is coming toward us from the future, but we are creating out of our intellectual and technological [00:37:13 - 00:37:21] anticipation of deity, really. I mean, at times I've spoken of it as the flying saucer. It is the [00:37:21 - 00:37:29] flying saucer and it does enter history at a certain moment and it is coming toward us, but as we [00:37:30 - 00:37:37] go toward it, we are becoming what we behold. In effect, what I'm saying is that the entirety of [00:37:37 - 00:37:47] human history is a kind of psychedelic apotheosis where we are involved in a hieroskamos, a kind of [00:37:47 - 00:37:57] alchemical marriage. And what the next 25 years are about is advancing to meet the bride. And the [00:37:57 - 00:38:12] bride is the unimaginable and unanticipatable fulfillment of our heart's desire. We are becoming [00:38:12 - 00:38:21] what we behold. Our metaphysical hypostatization of deity is becoming a cultural program for our [00:38:22 - 00:38:28] completion. And that's why communication is so important because what we're trying to do [00:38:28 - 00:38:40] is articulate this vision of the over soul of our species. We are going into a kind of swarm state [00:38:40 - 00:38:50] or there is a pheromonal transformation of our cultural modalities. Our pheromones are information [00:38:50 - 00:38:59] systems and now information systems ideologies are being released into the mass psyche that actually [00:38:59 - 00:39:08] set us up to undergo this cultural compression and compressence that the experience of the [00:39:08 - 00:39:15] transcendental object is. If you haven't read William Gibson, you might give him a go. His [00:39:15 - 00:39:23] anticipation of a cybernetic future is part of the anticipation of the transcendental object. [00:39:23 - 00:39:32] And what Gibson is saying in Neuromancer and Count Zero is that data storage in hyperspace [00:39:32 - 00:39:40] will become conventionalized the way the grids of cities are conventionalized in three-dimensional [00:39:40 - 00:39:48] space so that when you jack in to cyberspace, you will find, you know, you will see the Bank [00:39:48 - 00:39:55] of America database like an enormous red neon oblong glowing off to your left and over the [00:39:55 - 00:40:01] horizon, the Transworld Airlines database. In other words, the dimension of culture, [00:40:01 - 00:40:10] which for 15,000 years or so has been for purposes of comparison, let's say, as thin [00:40:10 - 00:40:16] as a thick sheet of paper. I mean, what has culture been? It's been a few mud huts, some [00:40:16 - 00:40:22] brick streets, a cathedral here and there recently, and then more recently a lot of knitted together [00:40:22 - 00:40:31] electrified cheap construction. Suddenly, the dimension of culture is about to be, [00:40:31 - 00:40:38] which is orthogonal to ordinary reality, is about to be expanded a hundred, a thousand fold [00:40:38 - 00:40:48] into a complete mind space. The cyberspace that Gibson is talking about, the psychedelic space [00:40:48 - 00:40:58] that shamans have always known about is about to be activated as a cultural artifact in high-tech [00:40:58 - 00:41:08] society where we will become whatever we imagine. You know, you will move off into this electronically [00:41:08 - 00:41:15] sustained realm of mind. At least that's how I imagine it. I imagine that passage through the [00:41:15 - 00:41:24] transcendental object leads into the imagination and that the imagination is really our true home [00:41:24 - 00:41:34] and that all of this electronics and culture and art and drugs and magic and ritual is about the [00:41:34 - 00:41:45] prodigal return to the imagination as a cultural norm. And the transcendental object represents the [00:41:45 - 00:41:53] narrow neck, the narrowest place, the place where the phase transition occurs. At least that's what [00:41:53 - 00:42:00] I hope. That's what I feel the symbiosis with the hallucinogens is coaxing out of us because we [00:42:00 - 00:42:10] cannot go to the stars in the ape mindset, you know, with ape politics and it's just impossible. [00:42:10 - 00:42:18] And very clearly we are on the brink of taking control of our own self-image. This is what the [00:42:18 - 00:42:23] long cultural march has been. This is the justification, if there is one, for science [00:42:23 - 00:42:32] is that it does give us a certain measure of control over stuff and it's out of, it is the [00:42:32 - 00:42:39] mirror of our minds that we will make out of stuff that we will eventually perform this [00:42:39 - 00:42:49] magical evocation in front of and walk through into the time outside of history, the place before [00:42:49 - 00:42:55] history. Another question. Somebody over here. Yes. [00:42:55 - 00:43:06] Terence, welcome to LA. People who listen to Sonny Howells on the radio. I just want to say we really love you. [00:43:06 - 00:43:09] And I just think that's a very nice day. [00:43:09 - 00:43:25] Although I have to admit I saved the show on my ECR and I get it during the day. But anyway, [00:43:25 - 00:43:35] I was going to go to Mexico to a little village up in Oaxaca and my companion sort of convinced me [00:43:35 - 00:43:42] that it might not be the best idea because while you're looking around for green men you might find [00:43:42 - 00:43:49] some federales or something and it might not be the best place to totally let go. So I decided to [00:43:49 - 00:43:55] grow some mushrooms and that just ended up on the low priority of things. I still haven't grown them, [00:43:55 - 00:44:02] you know. But I was always of the fantasy that going to this place in Mexico there was something [00:44:02 - 00:44:09] magic there and there was this quote unquote morphic resonance and I wanted to know if there [00:44:09 - 00:44:17] was a morphic resonance wouldn't that be in the negative time space frame? And so my question is [00:44:17 - 00:44:21] one, do you buy this morphic resonance idea? [00:44:28 - 00:44:40] That's the question. Yeah. Well, one of the best people, one of the very, very best people that I've [00:44:40 - 00:44:50] found in the so-called new age is Rupert Sheldrake. I mean he and I are tight and we've spent a lot [00:44:50 - 00:45:00] of time just pushing these ideas around. Ultimately, I think probably he's very much [00:45:00 - 00:45:05] on to something. It's interesting that it's such a considered such a radical idea because think [00:45:05 - 00:45:13] about what it says. It says that things are as they are because they were as they were. [00:45:14 - 00:45:23] One can hardly imagine a more conservative philosophy. In fact, the problem for this [00:45:23 - 00:45:32] philosophy is to therefore explain how anything ever manages to be different. How any kind of [00:45:32 - 00:45:40] novelty could emerge out of a situation where the past is so present that it configures everything. [00:45:41 - 00:45:48] So Rupert's idea and my idea, which I haven't discussed except by implication tonight, [00:45:48 - 00:45:55] but I have this notion which is embodied in the software of a wave of novelty, [00:45:55 - 00:46:03] a way of quantifying the flux of the Tao. And a wave of novelty would be necessary [00:46:04 - 00:46:11] to for Sheldrake's idea to support the coming into being of new forms. [00:46:11 - 00:46:19] I mentioned this evening in the main body of my talk the term compressionism. I've just sort of [00:46:19 - 00:46:25] begun to think about this. I like it because I like impressionism, abstract expressionism, [00:46:25 - 00:46:33] surrealism. I like it because it's an art movement not a science. But I would number the compressionists [00:46:33 - 00:46:42] that come to mind to be Rupert Sheldrake, Ralph Abraham, Frank Barr, and myself, [00:46:42 - 00:46:51] bringing up the rear. And we all four of us have a slice on it, each different, but each [00:46:51 - 00:46:59] leading to the same set of conclusions that there is a set of hidden variables, which we all describe [00:46:59 - 00:47:05] differently, but that these hidden variables are channeling the development of events. [00:47:05 - 00:47:13] And what this signifies is a new way of thinking about time. And it's all very much in flux. [00:47:13 - 00:47:22] Rupert is a true, a true great scientist and gentleman. If the theory of morphic resonance [00:47:22 - 00:47:29] can be overthrown, it will be and he will lead the charge. Our effort when we get together, much of [00:47:29 - 00:47:37] our effort is experimental design. We try to think of experiments that would disprove the notion, [00:47:37 - 00:47:44] because it is a notion which asserts very firmly certain strange things about reality should be [00:47:45 - 00:47:55] measurable and discernible. So morphic resonance, my novelty ways, the dynamic attractors of Ralph [00:47:55 - 00:48:06] Abraham and the fractal hierarchies of Frank Barr are all embryonic efforts. There's a feeling in [00:48:06 - 00:48:16] the air, a sense of an idea to be nailed down. And I'm convinced, you know, that in the next 10 or 15 [00:48:16 - 00:48:24] years, one of us or somebody we know or somebody sitting at the table nearby will work it out. [00:48:24 - 00:48:32] It's really the great intellectual adventure of our time. And it carries us all along with it. [00:48:32 - 00:48:40] When this thing is figured out, it's going to be understandable to all of us. It is going to end [00:48:40 - 00:48:46] the era of the professional abstraction. You know, for the new paradigm to work, [00:48:46 - 00:48:52] it's going to have to transform the lives of hundreds of millions of people. And that's the [00:48:52 - 00:48:59] point that has been missed by the proponents of some of the more narrow versions of what the new [00:48:59 - 00:49:06] paradigm is. The new paradigm will be an understandable explanation of the world. [00:49:06 - 00:49:14] Understandable to whom? To you, to me, not an abstraction sanctioned by a professional [00:49:14 - 00:49:19] elite and handed down by the academy. Doesn't some aspect of this phenomenon [00:49:19 - 00:49:28] have to be able to be translated into numbers in order to convince straight society of its existence? [00:49:28 - 00:49:33] Well, that's the beauty and the wonder and the delight of time wave zero. [00:49:33 - 00:49:43] Absolutely. I mean, this was produced to convince scientists. What this thing does is it draws [00:49:43 - 00:49:52] graphs of the ingression of novelty into time. I advance novelty as a new primary quality of the [00:49:52 - 00:50:00] space-time continuum on a par with charge, spin, angular momentum, novelty. This is the realm of [00:50:00 - 00:50:10] the hidden variables. And this program makes thousands of experimentally testable assertions. [00:50:10 - 00:50:17] This is not smoke and mirrors stuff. You give it an end date, you give it a date of interest, [00:50:17 - 00:50:25] and it draws a mathematically defined graph of its opinion as to where the flux of novelty and [00:50:25 - 00:50:33] habituation, these are the two opposed quantities, novelty and habituation, where they fall vis-a-vis [00:50:33 - 00:50:42] this event system. So every time you activate the program, it fills the monitor with a screen [00:50:42 - 00:50:52] full of precise predictions about known historical phenomena. So it seems to me, if there were a body [00:50:52 - 00:51:00] of informed give and take on the matter, we could quickly settle whether it's just that I smoke too [00:51:00 - 00:51:09] many little brown cigarettes or that this kind of thinking is in fact going to underlie and [00:51:09 - 00:51:17] restructure science. It's all right. I mean, why should we assume that the basic qualities [00:51:17 - 00:51:27] of the universe have been defined as of 1965 by modern physics? After all, modern physics doesn't [00:51:27 - 00:51:38] explain the unicorn or the flower. So there must be more work in the universal mix than we have [00:51:38 - 00:51:46] perceived. Well, I think I'll do one more question. Robert? Am I hearing this right? Is this like a [00:51:46 - 00:51:56] historical time graph of human events? Yes, that's exactly what it is. It's a way of looking at the [00:51:56 - 00:52:03] life of an individual or a society and asking the question. See, the way I think this will be, this [00:52:03 - 00:52:15] is good because the spirit to Eastern philosophy is the Tao, and the Tao is the how-ness of the way [00:52:15 - 00:52:23] things happen. Well, we are so accustomed to allowing these Eastern forms of thought to remain [00:52:23 - 00:52:31] largely formally undefined that we never ask obvious questions about the Tao for existence, [00:52:31 - 00:52:42] for example. In the Tao Te Ching, the opening words in the Weili translation are, "The way that can [00:52:42 - 00:52:50] be told of is not an unvarying way." Okay, it's a double negative. It's not an unvarying way, [00:52:50 - 00:52:59] means it's a varying way. Well, anything which varies is modulated. That's a mathematical term [00:53:00 - 00:53:06] that has precise meaning. So if the way that can be told of is not an unvarying way, [00:53:06 - 00:53:15] then it can be mathematically described as a set of integers in flux. The problem then becomes, [00:53:15 - 00:53:22] what integers? Well, that's a long story, but it's all in here. [00:53:27 - 00:53:37] And I'm not mad enough to claim that this particular take, this particular set of integers [00:53:37 - 00:53:48] is correct. I'm very impressed by its successes, but I am convinced that a theory of this class [00:53:49 - 00:53:59] will eventually explicate time. Time is the spirit, not the time of flat duration in the [00:53:59 - 00:54:08] Newtonian universe or the very slightly curved time of Einstein's universe, but time as lived [00:54:08 - 00:54:16] from moment to moment. It flows like a river. It runs here quickly, there slow and deep. [00:54:16 - 00:54:24] Here there are cataracts. Here there are vast lakes form and all sense of direction is momentarily [00:54:24 - 00:54:35] lost. Time is the continuum upon which our entire experience of being is deployed. And yet, [00:54:35 - 00:54:42] up until very recently, the only model we've had of it was this flat or slightly curved surface. [00:54:42 - 00:54:50] That didn't explain the vicissitudes and the synchronicities and the mysteries of our own lives. [00:54:50 - 00:54:57] Now, if we take a fractal model of time, the kind of fractals that we see in the psychedelic [00:54:57 - 00:55:03] experience and the kinds of fractals that we see when we unleash computers in the realm of pure [00:55:03 - 00:55:11] mathematics, then we begin to see the time of pure experience, the time that we recognize where every [00:55:11 - 00:55:19] day is like every other but different, every year is like every other but different. We grow, but we [00:55:19 - 00:55:26] stay the same. We move forward at the same time that we move backwards. All of these kinds of [00:55:26 - 00:55:33] feeling-toned complexes about movement and time are handled very well in the fractal. So, [00:55:34 - 00:55:42] what the psychedelic experience has done for me above and beyond the heart opening and what it's [00:55:42 - 00:55:55] done for me as a person, what it's done for me as a seeker after truth has given me this total [00:55:55 - 00:56:04] description of reality. And I think our senses and our minds and our hearts are always trying to give [00:56:04 - 00:56:14] us a total map, a total mandala. It's always trying to emerge out of the chaos of perception. [00:56:14 - 00:56:21] But it appears to me that it can happen to any depth and that if you still your mind with [00:56:21 - 00:56:27] psychedelics and with discipline and you look into the black rivers that flow through our hearts and [00:56:27 - 00:56:35] our minds, eventually you see not only the truth of yourself, not only the truth of ourselves, [00:56:35 - 00:56:46] but formal truth, the truth of mathematics. And then you have sort of made a kind of closure. [00:56:46 - 00:56:54] And so this was my personal meditation in Time Wave Zero. I urge you to take a look at it because [00:56:57 - 00:57:05] it's the most original thing that I have done. The rest is the descriptive diaries of an explorer, [00:57:05 - 00:57:13] well footnoted, which I share with you gladly. But this other thing was actually the logos [00:57:13 - 00:57:20] from on high. That was what my particular relationship to the spirit was based around [00:57:21 - 00:57:28] the revelation of this particular idea because I had no interest in the I Ching, still less in [00:57:28 - 00:57:38] mathematics and all of the disciplines that impinged on this notion. But somehow I was chosen [00:57:38 - 00:57:45] virtually because I was standing around when the decision was made. I mean, I really believe that. [00:57:49 - 00:57:56] And these things only mean something as they are communicated. But you see, we have great anxiety [00:57:56 - 00:58:04] about the future. And if there were in fact fractal maps of the future, then that anxiety [00:58:04 - 00:58:12] would leave us and would leave us free. And in one sense, I think that's the transcendental [00:58:12 - 00:58:20] object. It's the manifestation of the spirit. The spirit is with us throughout historical time and [00:58:20 - 00:58:30] space, but it is concretized at history's end. Well, that's all I have to say. We're five minutes [00:58:30 - 00:58:44] over. I appreciate your being here very, very much. Thank you. [00:58:44 - 00:58:54] [applause]