Light Of Nature Day 2

So we are organically meeting together and going to absorb some information from the other world,

and I'm real proud to introduce Terence McKenna.

I do want to mention this is a benefit for Botanical Dimensions and KPFK.

If you didn't see the promotional material at the back of the room,

you might look at it during the intermission.

Botanical Dimensions is the real world kind of real politic response to all the issues that we deal with

that Kat and I hammered out over the last 11 years, really.

And what it boils down to is a plant rescue project built around a 20-acre botanical garden in Hawaii.

And what we're doing there is trying to bring in plants that are threatened in the warm tropics.

Either the extinction of the species is threatened or the knowledge of its medicinal or herbal or shamanic use is in danger of being lost.

There are a lot of fancy organizations, World Wildlife Fund, Earth Watch, Earth First, that are saving the rainforest or at least fighting that battle legally

and by getting huge tracts of forest in the tropics made into reserves.

Nobody really even cognizes or is focused on saving ethnobotanical lore.

In other words, the very subtle relationship between Aboriginal people and botanical resources in their environment.

So that's something we're doing.

What was touched on last night and which is sort of one of the centerpiece themes of this point of view

is the felt presence of some kind of alien intelligence

that is somehow cotangent to the human experience

for different people in different ways

with varying degrees of intensity in different times and places.

And though, you know, at the bedrock of my take on things is the notion that there is really finally a mystery

wrapped in an enigma, that there is no resolution.

Nevertheless, as you close distance with this mystery,

there are a series of analogical metaphors

that don't really suggest themselves

but that are communicated to you by the other.

And one of these analogical metaphors

is the presence of this alien intellect,

this organized other

that is folklorically present in tradition

as fairies, gnomes, elves, djinns, afrites, sprites, tree spirits, that sort of thing

and anecdotally present

in rural cultures throughout the world

as the poltergeist and the milk-souring fairy

and the thing seems to reside in a curious area

that is not epistemically clearly defined for the culture.

In other words, the question of is it real or not

is thought to be sort of tasteless.

I mean, you would intuitively sense

if you were drinking in an Irish pub, I think,

and people began to spin leprechaun stories

that the question, is it real, is a real bring-down.

You know, it isn't really like that

because the question, is it real,

is ultimately can be shown to be infantile in any situation.

I mean, is the Bank of America real?

What are, you know, immediately you realize

that there are just assumptions skating over the mystery.

But this felt presence of the other

I choose to talk about so much

because it was for me

such an astonishing personal surprise.

My, I was raised Roman Catholic

and indulged in the kind of theological fiddle-faddle

that that involves

and then grew out of that

into atheism, into agnosticism

and by the time I got to college

I was reading Jean-Paul Sartre

and Husserl and these people

and pretty much the main, had followed

my intellectual ontogeny

had followed historical philogeny

and I had arrived in the 20th century.

And then, having thought I had absorbed

the lessons of LSD

which seemed to me to be

to reinforce and confirm

the theories of Freud

concerning the dynamics of the psyche

that it was about repressed memory

repressed desire

sexual neurosis

parental, you know,

follow-ups in the projection

of the parental energy patterns

and this kind of thing

and then someone came to me

one rainy February evening in 1967

and really a mad person

a kind of a social menace

an intellectual criminal

this guy had said to me

only months before

we must live as if the apocalypse

has already happened

and here he was on my doorstep

and he wore these little black suits

that he buttoned up to the throat

anyway

he came in and he said

something that you might be interested in

and brought out

a sample of dimethyltryptamine

that he had somehow come into contact with

and I said

well

what is it?

and he said

well

it's this short acting

it's a flash

he said

and I said

how long does it last?

that was my first mistake

he said

oh it doesn't last long

so I said

okay

we'll do it

and we did it

and

I discovered

I had

I guess it's called

a peak experience

or a core revelation

or being born again

or having your third eye opened

or something

which was

it was a revelation

of an alien dimension

of a brightly lit

inhabited

non-three-dimensional

self-contorting

sustained

organic

linguistically intending

modality

that couldn't be stopped

or held back

or denied

I mean

I sank

to the floor

I couldn't move

and

this

disystolic

hallucination

of tumbling forward

into these fractal

geometric spaces

made of light

and then I found myself

in the

sort of

auric equivalent

of the Pope's

private chapel

and

and there were

insect elf machines

proffering

strange

little tablets

with strange writing

on them

and I was

aghast

completely

appalled

because

the transition

had been

a matter

of seconds

and

my

entire

expectation

of the nature

of the world

was just being

shredded

in front of me

I've never

actually

gotten over it

and

you know

it all went on

I mean

they were

speaking

in some

kind

there were

these

self-transforming

machine elf

creatures

were speaking

in some kind

of colored

language

which

condensed

into these

rotating

machines

that were

like

Fabergé

eggs

but crafted

out of

luminescence

superconducting

ceramics

and

liquid crystal

gels

and all

this stuff

was just

so

weird

and so

alien

and so

unenglishable

that I felt

like it was

some

a complete

shock

I mean

the literal

turning

inside out

of the

intellectual

universe

and I

had

come to

this

fair

I thought

fairly

intellectually

prepared

you know

I mean

a kid

but nevertheless

double Scorpio

art history

major

Hieronymus Bosch

fan

Moby Dick

William Burroughs

you know

and

and it was

as I came

down

and this

this went

on for

like two

or three

minutes

this

situation

of

discontinent

orthogonal

dimensions

to reality

just

engulfing

me

and then

as I

came

out of

it

and the

room

sort of

reassembled

itself

I said

I can't

believe it

it's

impossible

it's

impossible

that

I mean

to call

that a

drug

is

ridiculous

I mean

it just

means

that you

just

don't

know

you

just

don't

have

a

word

for

it

and

so

you

putter

around

and

you

come

upon

this

very

sloppy

concept

of

something

goes

into

your

body

and

there's

a

chain

it's

not

like

that

it's

like

being

struck

by

noetic

lightning

and

the

other

thing

about

it

which

astonished

me

was

there

is

no

clue

in

this

world

you

know

in

the

carpets

of

central

asia

in

the

myths

of

the

maya

in

the

visions

of

an

archembelo

or a

frangelico

or a

bosch

there

is not

a hint

not

a clue

not

an

atom

of

the

presence

of

this

thing

and

when

you

look

at the

religious

hierophanies

of the

human

species

it

doesn't

have

the

same

vibe

it

doesn't

have

the

same

charge

religion

is

all

about

dissolving

into

unitary

states

of

love

and

translinguistic

oceanic

unity

and this

sort of

thing

this

was not

like

that

this

was

more

multiplistic

than

the

universe

that

we

share

with

each

other

it

was

almost

like

the

victory

of

neoplatonic

metaphysics

everything

had become

made

out of

a

fourth

dimensional

tesseractual

mosaic

of

energy

so

I

was

just

quite

knocked

off

my

goal

of

understanding

this

there

was

really

no

choice

you

see

and

I

don't

know

how

it

hits

other

people

I

mean

there

is

there

are

many

things

that

can

be

said

about

introducing

a

chemical

into

your

body

they've

shown

that

certain

people

are

fifty

thousand

times

more

sensitive

to

the

us

are

our

complement

of

synaptic

receptors

for

psychoactive

alkaloids

so

that

you

know

there

may

be

something

to

the

notion

that

the

Celts

tend

to

be

poets

the

you

know

certain

people

certain

peoples

tend

to be

expressive

in

certain

artistic

modes

or

certain

senses

seem

to be

accentuated

for

certain

human

subgroups

but

whatever

the

explanation

for

how

it

hit

me

I

felt

that

it

was

like

a

call

there

was

no

turning

back

from

trying

to

understand

that

because

there

is

no

place

for

it

in

our

world

and

yet

it

is

overwhelmingly

existentially

real

you see

and

easily

accessed

I'm

not

peddling

that

you

have

to

go

to

some

place

in

India

with

poor

sanitation

and

put

yourself

at

somebody's

feet

for a

dozen

years

or

something

like

that

the

enunciation

of

the

presence

of

this

dimension

should

inspire

some

kind

of

coming

to

terms

with

it

I

mean

it's

preposterous

that

and

prop

up

all

these

reductionist

guys

and

trot

them

out

to

give

the

statistics

on

the

distribution

of

G-type

stars

and

all

this

sort

of

thing

because

the fact

is

what

blinds

us

to the

presence

of

alien

intelligence

is

linguistic

and cultural

bias

operating

on

ourselves

the

world

which

we

perceive

is

a

tiny

fraction

of

the

world

which

we

can

perceive

which

is

a

tiny

fraction

of

the

perceivable

world

you

see

so

we

operate

on a

very

narrow

slice

based

on

cultural

conventions

so

the

important

thing

if

synergizing

progress

is the

notion

to be

maximized

and I

think

it's

the

notion

to be

maximized

is to

try and

locate

the

blind

spot

in

the

culture

the

place

where

the

culture

isn't

looking

because

it

dare

not

because

if

it

were

to

look

there

its

previous

values

would

dissolve

you

see

and

I

think

that

place

is

the

psychedelic

experience

as it

emerges

out

of

nature

and

as

human

societies

interact

with the

psychedelic

experience

in

nature

they

inevitably

secrete

the institution

of

shamanism

like a

pearl

around

this

umbilicus

or this

nexus

point

or this

loci

of

interdimensional

data

flow

which is

really

what it

is

it's

the

point

that

under

certain

conditions

which

have to

do

with

these

molecules

that

have

evolved

in

these

species

which

have

this

weirdly

quasi

symbiotic

relationship

to our

species

you

punch

through

the

veil

you

know

Melville

said

if you

would

strike

through

the mask

and that's

what's

done

you

strike

through

the mask

of the

coordinates

of apparent

reality

and then

this thing

is there

which

to me

is a

miracle

it

transcended

any miracle

I could ever

ask for

because it

not only

had the

quality

of a

miracle

as I

imagined

it

it had

the quality

of a

miracle

as I

could not

have

imagined

it

was

entirely

charged

with

the energy

of the

other

it

had the

ambiguity

of a

pun

a kind

of

zany

impossible

improbable

hysterical

revelation

of the

joke

the

self

contradiction

the

provisional

nature

of it

all

but it

really is

a Marx

Brothers

movie

in some

sense

so I

pursued it

first

to

Nepal

and

involvement

with

pre-Buddhist

shamanism

in Tibet

because I

first

the thing

that puzzled

me most

I guess

because I

was an

art historian

was this

absence of

the theme

in the

artistic

productions

of humankind

and I

felt that

maybe there

was a trace

of it

in the

artistic

conceptions

of the

old

pantheon

of Tibetan

shamanism

and that

central Asian

Tibetan

shamanism

had actually

created

astronauts

of inner

space

that had

gotten

good

recon

on this

same

area

you know

the

Dharma

Palas

the

guardians

of

the

Dharma

are

not

Buddhist

deities

per se

they are

autothenous

Tibetan

folk

demons

that

protect

the

Dharma

by virtue

of the

fact

of having

been

overcome

in

magical

battles

by

great

Buddhist

saints

who

came

to

Tibet

in fact

there

are

or

were

before

the

Chinese

occupation

monasteries

in Tibet

where the

vow of

fealty

to the

Dharma

on the

part

of the

Dharma

Pala

had to

be

renewed

by the

monks

every

hours

or

the

thing

would

be

on

its

own

and

bust

up

the

countryside

I'm

just

telling

you

what

they

told

me

so

it

seemed

to me

that

this

raw

sense

of the

shamanically

accessed

demonic

realm

was

there

and

I

also

saw

traces

in

Hellenistic

Gnosticism

and

alchemy

but

such

thin

traces

so

I

went to

Nepal

immersed

myself

in that

and

decided

ultimately

that

it was

inaccessible

I wasn't

sure whether

it was

there or

not

and

then

I

placed

myself

in the

context

of

nature

by

moving

my

sphere

of

operations

to

eastern

Indonesia

to

the

climaxed

continental

rainforests

of the

ancient

continent

of

Sundaland

you see

Indonesia

was a

continent

until as

recently as

120,000

years ago

and then

with the

melting of

the glaciers

and the

subsidence

of this

continent

it became

a vast

group

of islands

and I

think

that

it was

my

good

fortune

or the

fortune

of my

fate

because

it was

prudent

for me

at that

time

in the

late

60s

to remain

outside

the

United

States

and so

I sort

of had

to become

the hero

I had

pretended

to my

friends

that I

was

which

I wasn't

I had

an around

the world

air ticket

and was

entirely

a preppy

poseur

but

suddenly

return

was not

a possibility

and so

I became

and my

apologies

to Buddhists

in the

audience

a professional

butterfly

collector

and I

pursued this

blood sport

for many

months

in these

remote

montane

jungles

of eastern

Indonesia

and that

was

where the

the missing

link in

the quest

for the

resolution

of the

meaning of

DMT

and spirit

fell into

place

because I

saw

what most

of us only

see on

National

Geographic

specials

which is

the real

fact of

the rainforest

the real

fact of

organic nature

and how

nature

is

communication

not only

are the

species

that comprise

the biota

linked by

pheromones

and

acoustical

signals

and

color

signals

and all

of these

various

methods

by which

communication

is seeping

around

in fact

nature

ultimately

resolves itself

into

a self

reflecting

syntactical

metasystem

and

you can

pursue this

right down

to the

DNA

working as

it does

with

nucleotide

sequences

that code

code

right

that means

arbitrarily

assigned

code

for certain

amino acids

it means

that

organic

objects

are

essentially

utterances

in

three

dimensional

some kind

of universally

distributed

linguistic

intent

this is what

it means

when it says

in the beginning

was the word

nature

is that

word

this

infinitely

self

adumbrating

fractal

syntactical

hallucination

that

has an

infinite

number

of facets

for

potential

regarding

and self

regarding

and

then

you know

might

invoke

here

Gödel's

incompleteness

theorem

which as

I'm sure

many of

you know

was

Kurt Gödel's

brilliant

contribution

to

theoretical

mathematics

where he

showed

that

the

possible

set

of

true

formal

statements

generated

by any

formal

system

was

exceeded

or

exceeded

the

possible

set

of true

formal

statements

which

the rules

of that

system

allowed

he showed

this for

simple

arithmetic

showed

that

and what

this

means

friends

is that

what was

called

truth

up until

the beginning

of the

20th

century

is

absolutely

impossible

that's

what

Gödel's

incompleteness

theorem

secures

it shows

that there

is no

ultimate

closure

in an

effort

to

describe

and

so

in a

way

my

take

on

nature

and

culture

and

man

is

that

human

language

is

a

meta

linguistic

system

generated

out of

the

necessary

formal

incompleteness

of nature

you see

it's that

nature

is a

self-describing

genetic

language

and yet

out of it

arises

something

which is

not

formally

predicted

by its

constraints

and rules

there's a

symmetry

break

there

and a

so-called

emergent

property

comes into

view

this

emergent

property

is

our

unique

ability

to

provisionally

code

sound

to meaning

so that

we then

can freely

command

and reconstruct

the world

we imagine

that we

do this

for our

own

purposes

of

communication

the

analysis

that I'm

suggesting

would

seem to

indicate

that

actually

we do

it

because

we are

complicated

enzyme

systems

that are

moving

linguistic

charge

around

inside

some

kind

of

meta

system

very

important

for

the

emergence

of

new

order

out

of

nature

you see

and I

talked about

this a little

last night

the fact

that it

is

contrived

provisional

is very

interesting

it

it doesn't

arise

out of

the

gene

structure

rather

it is

agreed

upon

by

individuals

who are

living

at the

time

that

the

linguistic

structure

whatever

it is

emerges

into

consciousness

well

since

individuals

are

replaced

the

thing

is

much

more

in

genetic

component

of

an

organism

is

a

physical

structure

stabilized

by

atomic

bonds

possibly

stabilized

by

a

phenomenon

like

room

temperature

superconductivity

in

the

way

nature

works

is

to

conserve

the

genes

and

so

molecular

machinery

has

been

created

to

do

that

but

there

is

no

mechanism

in

nature

with

the

same

kind

of

binding

force

that

conserves

meaning

is

some

kind

of

freely

commandable

open-ended

self-evolving

system

the

rules

are

that

there

are

no

rules

meaning

consequently

addresses

itself

to

a

much

larger

potential

modality

of

expression

than

the

genes

the

genes

basically

repeat

themselves

over

and

over

almost

like

homeric

poetry

where

the

idea

is

that

it

be

memorized

and

repeated

and

that's

what

sexuality

is

about

is

memorizing

and

repeating

gene

structures

handing

on

parts

of

the

story

but

the

epigenetic

the

creation

of

linguistic

systems

where

meaning

can be

freely

commanded

allows

very

rapid

evolution

of

cultural

norms

and

what

I

suggested

last

night

and

want

to

say

more

about

tonight

is

that

this

process

is

mediated

by

plants

it

is

synergized

in

human

beings

by

plants

of

all

sorts

I

mean

we

are

obsessed

with

drugs

and

short

term

spectacular

effects

but

think

about

the

effect

on

a

culture

of

the

presence

or

absence

of

say

sugar

or

the

presence

or

absence

of

coffee

what

human

culture

can

essentially

be

seen

to

be

is

a

series

of

plant

established

developmental

creodes

for

a

higher

mammal

the

first

fact that we are omnivorous lays us open for the formation of these weird relationships to things

in our food chain. Everybody is taught in school that the renaissance, the close of the middle

ages, the rise of urban culture all had to do with the search for spices, right? Bringing spices

back to Europe. Well, why was it so important, you know, that a drive to simply broaden the palette

of Europe is given credit for the redefining of post-medieval civilization? Very strange.

Hoffman and Ruck and Wasson showed that the Eleusinian Mysteries, which were the philosophical

and experiential linchpin of the ancient world's cosmology, the Hellenistic cosmology, was a cult

of ergotized beer. There, every September at Eleusis, this mystery was carried out, and everyone

who was anyone participated in it, and you only got to do it once in your life, so you had only one

take. The point is clear. As you look at human culture in all times and places, the way in which

our cultural institutions have been molded by these so-called tertiary compounds in plants is very

suggestive. It seems to me that the felt presence of the other, the alien intelligence, the being from

outer space, is actually co-present with us on this earth, and that the problem is not the finding

of it, but the recognizing of it when it is seen, in the same way that I think in the present cultural

crisis, everyone is crying, answers, answers. We have to have answers. The fact is, we have the answers.

The question is to face the answers. You know, the answer to self-empowerment lies in the psychedelic

experience. The answer to dissolving the hierarchically imposed set of mythical conventions that disempower

us lies in the psychedelic experience. Because what is really happening is a return to the primacy

of feeling. And feeling is not something you can convey to people the way you convey facts to them.

Facts can be handed down every week through Time magazine and the latest issue of Science News and Nature.

But feelings will not lend themselves to that marketable, hierarchically distributed system. And consequently,

feelings represent a backwash against that. Yet feeling is the modality in which we all operate.

So as long as we are under the umbrella of the print-created linear post-medieval institutions that promote the myth

of the public, the notion of the atomic individual, the notion that we are all alike, basically, then we are going to be

unempowered. The amazing thing to me about the psychedelic experience is that it can be kept under wraps.

That people don't insist. That somehow we are leaving it to experts to figure it out. But did you know that the experts are not allowed to work it out?

That in this particular area, the entire human race has been relegated to an infantile status.

It is not professionally possible to do work with these things. Nevertheless, our cultural crisis is deepening. Deepening mainly because we have very poor connections

connections between our fragmented and autonomous psychic structures within ourselves as individuals and within ourselves as a society.

Our whole problem is that we can't communicate with each other. We can't express intention.

The psychedelics are sitting there waiting to unify us, to introduce us to the trans-linguistic intention, to carry us forward into a realm of appropriate cultural activity, which is, to my mind, the realm beyond history.

Beyond history lies effortless and appropriate cultural activity. And nature has preceded us, as it always does, by laying out models that can be followed to realize this.

As an example, and by request, I'll point out that the 19th century had a titular animal. Its titular animal was the horse, idealized as the steam engine, the iron horse.

And Marx talked about the locomotive of history, and there was this whole focusing on the horse archetype, which in the 20th century gave way to the titular animal, the raptor, the bird of prey, as exemplified by high-performance fighter aircraft as the kind of ultimate union of man and machine in some kind of glorification of the completion of the

of a certain set of cultural ideals of a certain set of cultural ideals, you see.

Well, in thinking about this, and in thinking about how language is the cultural frontier of our species, I went to nature looking for models of how we might move beyond the bird of prey, which when you think about it, it is the American symbol.

It was also the symbol of the Third Reich. And a lot of creepy scenes have actually been into birds of prey. When Alaric the Visigoth, not even birds of prey, when Alaric the Visigoth burned Eleusis, it was the crow fluttered on his battle standard as the greasy smoke swept by.

So these dark birds have been with us. Anyway, in looking for a new titular animal and drawing the conclusion of what it would mean, I was drawn to look strangely enough at cephalopods, octopi, because I felt that, first of all, they are extremely alien.

The break between our line of development in the phylogenetic tree and the mollusca, which is what a cephalopod is, is about 700 million years ago.

Nevertheless, and many of you who are students of evolution know that when they talk about parallel evolution, they always drag out the example of the optical system of the octopi.

Because, isn't this astonishing, it's very much like the human eye, and yet it developed entirely independently, and this shows how the same set of external factors impinging on a raw gene pool will inevitably sculpt the same organ to the same end, and so forth and so on.

Well, the optical capacity of octopi is one thing. What interested me was their linguistic organization.

They are virtually entirely nervous system. First of all, they have eight arms in the case of the octopods, and ten arms in the case of the squid, the decapods.

And so, coordinating all these organs of manipulation has given them a very evolved nervous system.

Then they have this highly evolved ocular system. But what is really interesting about them is that they communicate with each other by changing the color and texture of their skin and their physical shape.

You may have known that octopi could change colors, but you may have thought it was camouflage or something very passive like that.

It isn't that. It isn't that at all. They have a vast repertoire of traveling bars, dots, blushes, merging pastels, herringbone patterns, tweeds,

mottled this and that, can blush from apricot through puce into dove gray and on to olive, do all of these things, communicating to each other.

That is what this enlarged optical system is for, is to be able to see each other.

The other thing which they can do, besides having these chromatophores on the surface of their skin,

is they can change the texture of the skin's surface, can make it rugose, populate, smooth, lobed, rubbery, runnled, so forth and so on.

And then, of course, being shell-less mollusks, they can hide arms and display certain parts of themselves and carry on a dance.

Well, when you analyze what is going on here, what at first seems like merely fascinating facts from natural history,

begins to take on a more profound aspect, because it is an ontological transformation of language that is going on in front of you.

Note that, by being able to communicate visually, they have no need of a conventionalized, culturally reinforced dictionary.

Rather, they experience pure intent of each other without ambiguity,

because each octopod can see what is meant.

This is very important, can see what is meant.

And I think that this heralds, or could be made to herald,

a transformation in our own definitions of language and communication.

What we need is to see what we mean.

It's not without consequence or implication that when we try to communicate the notion of clarity of speech,

we always shift into visual metaphors.

I see what you mean.

He painted a picture.

His description was very colorful.

It means that when we intend to indicate a lack of ambiguity in communication,

we shift to visual analogies.

This can, in fact, be actualized.

And, in fact, this is what is happening in the psychedelic experience,

is that we discover, just under the surface of human biological organization,

the next level in the organization of language.

It's the ability to generate some kind of acoustical hologram

that is manipulated by linguistic intent.

Now, don't ask me how this happens,

because nobody knows how it happens.

At this point, it's magic.

Nevertheless, the fact is, it does happen.

You can have this experience.

It represents a synesthesia in the presence of ongoing communication.

It is, in fact, telepathy.

It is not what we thought telepathy would be,

which, I suppose, if you're like me,

you imagine telepathy would be hearing what other people think.

It isn't that.

It's seeing what other people mean.

And them also seeing what they mean.

So that once something has been communicated,

both parties can walk around it and look at it,

the way you study a Brancusi or a Giacometti in an art gallery.

By eliminating the ambiguity of the audio signal

and substituting the concreteness of the visual image,

the membrane of separation that allows the fiction of our individuality

can be temporarily overcome, you see.

And the temporary overcoming of the illusion of individuality

is a much richer notion of ego death

than the kind of white light, null states that it has imagined to be.

Because the overcoming of the illusion of individuality

has a political consequence.

Political consequences.

The political consequences are

that one can love one's neighbor, you see.

Because the commonality of being is felt.

Felt.

Not reasoned toward or propagandized into

or behaviorally reinforced, but felt.

This is why there is this persistent notion

which tracks these psychedelic compounds

of a new political order based on love,

which is, you know, I mean, it was a hard thing to say in the panhandle in 1965.

It's not easy to say in heavy metal L.A. in 1987.

But it seems to be the fact of the matter

that love, which poets have celebrated for eons as ineffable,

may in fact have certain ineffable dimensions attached to it.

But it may in fact be more effable than we had previously cared to imagine.

And it's the invoking of the effability of love

has to do with discovering the shared birthright,

the atemporal dimension that is co-present with this reality,

and that is a vast reservoir of anchoring,

existential anchoring for each and all of us in our lives.

So my response to feeling the political pull of this,

feeling the power to transform language

that resided in these things,

was to go to the people who I thought would know most about it,

the shamans for whom hallucinogenic shamanism

has never been an issue,

for whom the notion that you're supposed to do it on the natch

is a patent absurdity.

I mean, if you're serious about doing it on the natch,

I suggest you eliminate all food

because this notion of the pristine self

somehow riding above the muck of the world

carrying on a spiritual evolution

is absolute foolishness.

I mean, we are made of the stuff of the world.

people who do not confront the presence of the hallucinogenic possibility

are turning their back on their birthright

in the same way that if you do not experience sex

throughout your life,

you are turning your back on your birthright.

I mean, after all, we could argue that

to allow another person to touch you

is to not do it on the natch, right?

But, dear friends, we're slicing too close to the bone here

to take that approach.

It's much better, I think, to open to the world.

The world is communication.

Nature is the great teacher.

All human gurus are simply distillations

of the wave of nature that is coming at you.

So, you can just short-circuit the whole human boil down

and go straight to the executive suite

by putting yourself under a tree in the wilderness.

I mean, they all have said this,

but they need to be taken more seriously

on the subject of their own expendability.

Me too.

Going to the Amazon with these kinds of notions

and looking at what had been achieved there,

I came to have a vision then

of the future that could be.

That we are sort of hurling ourselves

into a new stone age

where the fruits of the prodigal wandering

that I discussed in such detail last night

can be used to infuse new meaning

into that paradise.

The imagination of man and woman

is so incomparably rich

and exerts such an attraction on us

as the builder monkey

that we have to honor that.

We cannot demonize that

and preach a kind of naturalism

that if actually put in place

would cause the starvation

of tens of millions of people.

We have passed the point

where some kind of Luddite reform

can save us.

It's only, I think,

very self-indulgent elites

that can preach voluntary simplicity

because a lot of people

are experiencing involuntary simplicity

and unless you're one of them

it rings rather hollow

to be told that Zen values are best.

So, I think that reinserting ourselves

into nature

is inspiration for cultural design.

That's what it is.

It's not flight from the design process

but a reinvigoration of it

and some of you may be aware

of the concept of nanotechnology

where everything is built

at the molecular level.

We, by studying the mechanisms

of the cell

and the immune system

and DNA

we begin to have a picture

of how molecules and atoms

are the machine parts

of a microcosmic world

that if we were elf chemists

we could make our way into

and create anything

that we could imagine.

I mean, I can foresee a world

where all machines

will be made by DNA-like polymers

that will code base materials

into larger and larger aggregates.

The miniaturization

of our world

is a great frontier.

As culture

becomes more enveloping

its physical manifestation

should become less material.

So the ultimate notion

is of the world

turned back

to the form it held

let's say

35,000 years ago

where people live

in an environment

of entirely climaxed

natural perfection.

However,

behind their eyelids

lies

a culturally

and consensually

validated

data phase space

that is culture

civilization

turn each of us

into a telepathic aquarium

that has a direct pipeline

to the general ocean

of mind and being.

This is possible.

In fact,

it's not only possible

it may be

the only

decent solution

to download ourselves

into another dimension.

And I want to note

in passing

the collapse

of Max Headroom

and what a tragedy

I think that is

that his last show

was last night.

This was

a weird

force

for cultural transformation

but to be applauded

if anybody here tonight

has anything

to do with it

I wish them luck.

But this sort of notion

you know

people

the Max Headroom people

and the William Gibson people

have a very high tech

take on this

because they're interested

in accentuating

this tight

blue jeans

cyberpunk

kind of notion.

But in fact

the worlds

that they describe

will have many

many

different

social

subgroups

and social

ecosystems

forming in them

what the future

really means

is

choice

to become

who we are

to flower out

to find

our own way

McLuhan saw

all this

twenty years ago

he said

that the

rise of global

electronic feudalism

would create

an atomistic

fragmentation

of culture

it may well

be that within

fifty years

the largest

organizational entity

on the planet

will be

corporations

with a few

million

loyal employees

and all

larger

social institutions

will have

disappeared

because they

don't command

loyalty

in a

social

environment

where direct

experience

has become

empowered

and this

empowering

of direct

experience

this return

to the

feminine

this

legitimizing

of the

presence

of the

vaster

regions

of the

unconscious

these are

all

aspects

of this

emerging

paradigm

of the

spirit

understanding

and

imagination

in the

light

of nature

which is

what this

two night

party

has been

called

is

a

definition

of the

spirit

understanding

and imagination

in the

light of

nature

in other

words

true

understanding

poetic

imagination

standing

as a

mirror

before

nature

as

object

will

cause

the

hologrammatic

presence

of the

spirit

to

magically

appear

it

will

be

then

seen

to be

a

kind

of

emergent

quality

of the

situation

that was

previously

masked

simply

because the

elements

had not

fallen

into the

correct

arrangement

and I

think

you know

as we

move

forward

through

time

over the

next

twenty-five

years

there

will

be

many

profits

of the

transcendental

object

at the

end of

time

many

takes

the

important

thing

I think

is to

recall

Gödel's

incompleteness

theorem

and to

always

recognize

the

provisional

nature

of the

metaphysical

goods

that you're

going to

be sold

nobody

has the

faintest

notion

of what's

going on

it's important

to keep

that in

mind

if you

have that

in mind

everything

else

then the

game

proceeds

much

more

cleanly

what is

ahead of

us

the

essence

of

it

is

its

unknowability

its

promise

is

transformation

its

theater

of

occurrence

is

the

here

and

now

we

are

not

waiting

for it

to

begin

it

has

already

happened

for

us

and

our

job

is

to

understand

how

that

can

be

so

Plato

said

time

is

the

moving

image

of

eternity

my

notion

of

shamanism

is

it

is

that

state

of

mind

which

accrues

to

those

who

have

seen

the

end

by

cultivating

this

notion

of

closure

with

hyperspace

imaged

as

the

archaic

return

to

the

world

of

the

pre-cultural

ambiance

we

can

have

an

anticipation

of

the

still

in

Eden

it

is

we

who

have

undergone

the

fall

and

the

recurso

and

now

the

laden

prodigal

returns

to

beat

at the

doors

of

the

manorial

home

the

birthright

and

within

I

think

lies

the

beginnings

of

true

civilization

we

are

the

forerunners

of

a

truly

moral

and

ethical

human

society

the

deepest

aspirations

however

badly

mangled

and

mishandled

by our

traditions

nevertheless

still

have

the

potential

for

archetypal

fruition

within

them

the

torch

that

has

been

passed

from

generation

to

generation

ad

infinitum

back

into

the

distant

past

is

alive

and

by

some

strange

quirk

of

the

metaphysical

machinery

it's

our

great

privilege

to

live

through

this

symmetry

break

this

revelation

of the

next

level

of the

open

ended

mystery

and

I

think

that

the

to

it

with

an

open

mind

a

sense

of

caring

a

sense

of

wonder

and

a

sense

of

real

grounded

intellectually

firm

hope

so

that's

all

I

want

to

say

this

evening

I

think

we'll

break

for

about

minutes

and

then

we'll

have

questions

thank you

very much

okay

well now

comes

my

favorite

part

of

these

things

which

is

the

period

where

there's

interaction

because

I

think

you know they're really this is really a group process every one of you to some

degree has taken upon yourself the role of the Magellan in the living room and

probably every one in this room has at some time or another gazed upon things

no other human eye has ever beheld and you know the psychedelic dimension is

not yet a science we're more like explorers comparing our crudely drawn

maps and hastily scrawled journal notes to try and together get a picture of

this new continent in the imagination so I'm yours sir you have said in your

book about the that the mushroom was genetically engineered for producing

cytosine by telling intelligent what do you think now about the possibility of

us making that a game within those genes producing cytosine in other kind of

organisms like fungial plants I don't know about animals oh well interesting

question I think it's in the question was I've described the mushroom as

genetically engineered by some other agency for the production of psilocybin what

do I think about the possibility of human beings being able to genetically

manipulate organisms to produce psychedelic compounds I think that the

technology and theory has reached the stage where if there's an enterprising

graduate student within the sound of my voice the way to go is to locate the gene

for psilocybin in the mushroom genome and to translate it via standard

techniques to E coli to Escherichia coli and then you would have a easily grown

bacterium which would be a chemical factory for pouring out psilocybin so if any of you

are aspiring genetic pharmacologists this this would be a fine thing I might

elaborate on the answer some of you who are not familiar with the premise the

reason I suggested that the mushroom might have been engineered and be in fact an

artifact of an alien intelligence was number one of course the informational

content of the trip but number two the fact that psilocybin is for phosphoryloxy and

and dimethyltryptamine the only for phosphorylated indole known to occur in nature you

know out of thousands and thousands of compounds and organisms only one for

phosphorylated compound is known so this suggests that it is artificial or at least

highly unusual you know they're all every week the science magazines are full of

the talk of strategies for locating and identifying extraterrestrial life well a very obvious practical and

scientifically reasonable way to proceed would be to look at the DNA of various life forms on

earth and see if there are any where there is a wild statistical departure from the norm

and whenever you get an organism which is producing or has genes that no other

organism has this is highly suggestive you know because evolutionary types evolve

incrementally out of each other so you would expect that there would be a relative

smoothness in the expression of genetic products that one fungus would be rather

like its taxonomic near relatives one a menasperm or member of the ruby AC would be chemically similar to another in fact of course we do find subtle chemical variations but the presence of a four phosphorylated indole in a fungus like that is very suggestive and what one of the there's an interesting book by

by Cyril Purnampurama called perspectives on the problem of extraterrestrial communication and he outlines there what he believes would be a general strategy for extraterrestrial contact that any kind of species would have to operate against if it were to seriously conduct a search through space and the

model has a ship which at a certain distance from its origin planet it must replicate itself and then at a certain distance replicate again and then again in order to keep the density of ships constant as the sphere of the area being explored expands there have to be more and more of these ships and these ships could be as small as a human's

as an animal cell they don't have to be thought of as Star Trek type ships but the point is this ship contains a message that you have to read and call in because there are so many planets and star systems to be surveyed that the only way such a survey could be conducted is if there were a message in the

in the ship qua organism such that in the gene swarm of an alien planet it would eventually be read by an organism on this planet and that organism would act to do the things necessary to call the central switchboard and then they would say aha we have contact in sector alpha sub n 362

a logical world that we assume to be natural may in fact be the artifacts of a much higher intelligence

intelligence here yes would you speak on the timeline a little oh what a what a kind question there to lead me to my favorite subject well it has to do with why you know people do this for different reasons why people take psychedelic plants and and what lies behind it always and what always lay behind it for me from that very first DMT trip

to you at the beginning was the notion my god this stuff has historical significance it's really important or nobody knows about this carrying with it the notion we are discovering it if we could bring it back somehow it would change the world perhaps people are bringing it back

some sort of fashions or fashions or fashioning mathematical descriptions of reality

I never had that aspiration I just simply defined myself as more humbly than that as a consumer

of ideology as an intellectual who would learn what has been said and done and proposed but

After the DMT experience, I realized that there is unclaimed stuff out in those dimensions.

You know, James Joyce says in Finnegan's Wake,

Up in the end, prospector, you sprout all your worth and woof your wings.

Well, the key word is prospector.

A prospector is a rock hunter.

I wanted to prospect for the alchemical stones.

For the lapis philosophorum, and I conceived it as an idea.

And the timeline, I mean, I think it would come differently for each of us.

For me, it was this incredibly formal, aesthetically symmetrical,

and therefore satisfying idea about what time is.

That the Tao is something which could be mathematically described as a flux of a quality in time.

A quality that I named novelty.

And once I had enunciated it for myself, I saw that that was the part of the world that we have no description for.

We have, science gives us descriptions for what is possible.

But we have no descriptions for what, out of the set of the possible, undergoes the actual formality of occurring.

Why are certain things selected to come to be?

And I saw then the notion of the Tao, which is generally presented as a kind of intuitive notion.

You're not supposed to demand too much hard-edged clarity.

You say, just flow with it, man.

You know, flow with it.

Well, when someone says flow to me, I think of equations which would describe flow.

Flow as a dynamical system, which therefore can be mathematically modeled.

And what the timeline is, is a seeing that the very largest patterns which describe the whole birth, evolution, and death of the universe

are repeated at successively shorter and shorter spans of time.

And down into the quantum mechanically and micro-electronically cognizable realms of time.

The realm of the nano and the picoseconds.

And studying the Ching, which I saw then as a kind of phenomenological description of time

produced by the Oriental mind, completely unencumbered by our particular set of cultural conventions.

I mean, certainly having its own set of peculiar conventions, but not ours.

That there is a pattern in nature, not in three-dimensional space, but in time.

A pattern in time on many levels that reproduces itself and can be known, can be formally described.

And once known, can be seen to control the ebb and flow of connectedness.

Or the forward and backward surge of novelty.

And I thought that this was a great insight.

Since it was the only one I had, I could hardly sell it short.

And what pleased me most about it was, you know, a rap is a rap.

It's as good as the rapper.

But here was a mathematically formal idea that could stand on its own,

be examined in the absence of the rapper,

be examined by critics who were as hostile as they cared to be.

It's a tool.

It's in a long line of tools that stretches back toward the first chipped flint

and stretches forward toward the soul made manifest as starship

and alchemical transformation.

But it was the tool that I came upon.

And what is always put against the psychedelic experience is they say,

well, big deal, what's ever come out of it?

So I was pleased that here was a concrete notion that came out of it.

Richard.

Yes, along the line of this time wave,

can you give us a reading of our current time in the not-too-distant future?

I would be only too happy.

The question is, would I care to prophesy based on this timeline?

Yes, one of the assumptions built into the theory is that time is a series of nested resonances

and that each time is composed of resonance with previous and future times on varying levels.

The time we are living through, I call the Roman twilight,

simply because we are living through a period that is in resonance with the time of the last Roman emperors.

And I think if you look at it carefully,

you can begin to see the way this theory proposes to be analogical

and yet formal at the same time.

What was happening in the decades immediately preceding the fall of Rome?

A progressively weakened series of self-indulgent propagandists ruled the greatest empire on earth

with a more and more shaky hand

as they succumb to gonorrhea, mercuric poisoning,

various occult pursuits, millenarian obsessions, and so forth.

Meanwhile, in the East, in Byzantium, a new civilization was unleashing itself.

And if you think of those events which unfolded over a few hundred years as telescoped into a few years in our own era,

you see that with the rise of Gorbachev and the continued mismanagement of the American empire

under the crypto-fascist series of rotating bimbos and buffoons

that we have suffered through.

But what is happening is an empire is being betrayed into eclipse

by self-indulgence and stupidity and bad management,

and its cultural adversary is in ascendancy.

Now, Byzantium never conquered Rome.

It doesn't happen like that.

But what ended was the Roman world of indulgent, cohesive imperialism.

And what it was replaced with was a rise in religious fundamentalism,

a stricter and more Puritan kind of morality,

the rise of epidemic diseases,

and a vast economic retrenchment which initiated what we call the Dark Ages.

Now, in the present situation of the 20th century,

these themes are being recapitulated at an extremely rapid rate.

So their Dark Age is for us a tough three or four years, fortunately.

You know, it's said history occurs first as tragedy, then as farce.

We are the heirs of the vast tragedy of extended history

who live through the curiously mediaized and dehumanized farce of the recapitulation of these themes,

so that, you know, because the very notion that the last ten Roman emperors could be symbolized by someone like the present chief executive

cannot fail to bring a small smile to any open mind, I think.

So what I see happening between, or over the next 24 years, really, is first this retrenchment,

which, hell, it may be upon us, judging by the market's performance Thursday and Friday.

I may not be doing prophecy at all.

This may be recap at this point.

But whether that is a technical move or the actual beginning of the unraveling of the overbought Western capitalistic system,

I can't say, but I will say that by 1989, by mid-1989, by the time the next presidential ritual has been enacted,

it will be clear, I think, that we have entered into a whole new kind of temporal domain,

a kind of temporal domain that will appear superficially to be fairly bleak,

because what it will be, it will be highly chaotic, highly novel, and tending to oscillate wildly around the mean.

So, in other words, there will be no clear trend visible.

There will appear to be progressive surges and then losing of ground,

and then progressive surges and losing of ground.

And this will go on through, till the mid-90s.

Around 1996, 97, the resonance pattern will have shifted,

and we will be occupying a relationship to the late-high middle ages

and the emergence of the new social forms created by the emergence of the mercantile class and the bourgeois.

In other words, private wealth, cities, end of cultural insularity,

a restarting of the economic machinery, and a kind of new flowering,

but still under the shadow of these fundamentalist forces

that will have come into ascendancy in the previous Dark Age.

Then, in 1998, we come into that area,

which is in resonance with the period of the discovery of the new world,

1492, in other words,

and the exploration of the new world and its subjugation over about 150 years,

which followed from that,

will be what will be going on as we close out the millennium.

What the discovery of the new world will mean

in terms of our reenactment of these great themes

is anybody's guess.

It could be the vindication of my style of rap,

a nearby inhabited dimension filled with alien intelligence,

or it may be the vindication of a more orthodox sort of expectation

of extraterrestrial contact,

or perhaps, ultimately, the launching of large telescopes into orbit,

which will confirm for us the existence of oxygen-rich, water-heavy worlds

around nearby stars.

I mean, that alone would make an intellectual revolution

that would leave our world unrecognizable to itself.

We have to recall that as recently as 500 years ago,

the continent that we're inhabiting was unknown.

It was something talked of by wild-eyed dreamers.

You know, it was an impossibility, a psychedelic dimension.

Everyone knew that when you sailed west far enough,

there'd be monsters, and that was the end of it.

It was literally the unconscious.

Now, you know, we deal in the real estate of that unconscious,

and there is no reason why our children should not deal

in the real estate of the psychedelic dimension

that we are discovering and confirming

over the next 10 years or so.

Let me carry this through to the end,

because the good part comes at the end.

After the turn of the century,

the acceleration of the unfolding of these resonances

becomes more and more intense,

and eventually we reach the super-compression of modern times.

This is why I proposed to you last night

the term compressionist for this school of thought

that myself and Sheldrake and Frank Barr

and Ralph Abraham represent,

because we all are talking about

the dense nesting of concrescent systems,

and ultimately, in my own point of view,

the emergence of a transcendental object

at the end of time.

And the end of time is not far off,

as Joyce says in The Wake.

It may not be as far off as ye wish to be congealed.

It is, I think, within the lifetimes of all of us,

there will be an ontological transformation

of the human mode.

So I think the transcendental object is emerging.

Once it has emerged,

there will be no big deal about it,

in the same way that we look back

at the emergence of language,

and nobody jumps around or gets excited about it,

or only a few philosophers do.

And yet the fact that we possess language

is the thumbprint of God upon our species.

It's an impossible break

with previous animal organization.

You can talk all you want

about Coco the talking gorilla

and this and that,

but then you turn to a poem by Andrew Marvel

and you realize, you know,

there is an ontological break here.

There is not an even progress.

So, as we anticipate this thing,

it could be anything.

It could be the visible language

that I indicated as a possibility

earlier this evening.

It could be emergence

in an extraterrestrial mind.

It could be the transcendental emergence

of all and everything.

The Tao made flesh,

the actual collapse of the state vector

into some kind of mysterious completion.

But it's much more rational

to place this kind of singularity

at the end of a complex evolutionary process

like the life of the universe

than at the beginning,

which is the scientific approach

to just say,

well, everything sprang from nothing

for no reason in a single instant,

and please don't ask questions about that

because our map begins

one ten trillionth of a picosecond

after that happened.

We don't talk about that.

Well, isn't this somewhat begging the question

for an intellectual enterprise

that purports to offer an explanation

of how things came to be?

So, the transcendental object,

which suggests to me

a negative Kazuestry,

a purpose in the universe

that is focusing and drawing everything toward it.

And in fact, I've said,

history is the shockwave of eschatology.

History, which lasts 10,000 years,

is this microsecond

of ultra-complex experience

where the penetration of the natural world

by the transcendental object

each exists cotemporaneous with the other

for a historical or geological microsecond.

And then the two terms are merged

and all opposites are dissolved

and somehow the gift is claimed,

the pearl is restored,

and the project is ended.

We are living through that moment,

a 10,000-year rush

from chipping of stone flint

to walking through the violet doorway

of a self-generated hyper-dimensional vehicle

that carries us to our true home.

No wonder it leaves an explosive set of eddies in its wake.

I said last night,

this is what happens

when a culture prepares to depart for the stars.

This is not business as usual.

This is something else entirely.

And it's the intellectual adventure

and challenge of our time

for each of us to understand this

in terms relevant to ourselves

and the people immediately around us.

And so this is the inspiration

for time wave zero.

This is what it maps.

This is the odd thing in the map

that when the time map came through,

it wasn't only a map of historical process,

but there was the transcendental object mapped into it

and all of its sub-reflections could be seen.

This is what Christ was about.

This is what Buddha was about.

This is what your most enlightened moment was about.

You, each of you, and me.

It is, you know,

the hyper-dimensional, particulate reflection of Godhead

scattered back through the flatter plane

of this lower-dimensional slice of experience.

I mean, it's hard to say it any clearer than that.

Here.

Something is happening.