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on this, our last day of fundraising.
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And with Pink Floyd playing in the background, prepare yourself.
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Thanks to these people who did call in Peter Bain in loving respect for his sister, Kay Brooks, in Dripping Springs.
Fran Nelson responding to the challenge for artists who make a living from their work.
Cindy and Jim Phillips challenging everyone who enjoys John's laugh.
Ray Zitzler, Bruce, excuse me, Bill Williams, a new member, Jack and Shaysan Odom, Foxes of Harrow.
Now, what?
Okay, they, I guess, they read Foxes of Harrow.
Jack and Shaysan Odom.
Have either of you guys ever read The Foxes of Harrow?
No.
It's great.
You?
I haven't.
It's a great book.
Anyway, Carol and Philip Stevens, Donna Fowler, C.L. Sinek, saw the Rocky Horror Show 52 times.
You are sick.
And he was a projectionist.
Okay, that was his excuse.
I've seen it probably about 25.
Patrice Carter, a new member, Laura Cathy, challenges people who can touch their nose with their tongues.
I cannot do that.
But if you can, call 471-6291 and meet Laura's challenge.
Laura Cathy, if you can touch your tongue, touch your nose with your tongue.
471-6291.
Sam Ferris, his mom Virginia, pledged for him.
And Bobby and Louis Lowe, new members.
Just about out of time today.
471-6291 is our pledge number.
Thank you for calling.
And as I welcome Terrence McKenna, let me first say that I've been asked to mention that there is a film called Strange Attractor,
which features Terrence McKenna, and it will be shown at the Dobie Theater on October the 18th at midnight and the 19th at 2 o'clock.
That's just, I forget that.
That's Chris.
I'm going to take the umbrellas of Cherbourg away, as much as I love that music that's been on in the background.
And we will say, just barely, good morning at 11.56 to Terrence McKenna.
Pleasure to be with you.
And you are here for the Whole Life Expo.
I am.
And you will be speaking.
Kathy, when will he do his talk?
He'll be speaking on Saturday, tomorrow at 5 o'clock.
5 o'clock in the afternoon.
In the Coliseum.
We had such an incredible response to Terrence last year.
He sold out the biggest room we had.
And so we've moved him over to the Coliseum, where he hopefully will be able to accommodate up to about 1,200 or 1,500 people, if need be.
Okay.
Well, there is a large audience of people who know all about him or a great deal about him.
But for those who know nothing about Terrence McKenna, Terrence, what would you, how would you introduce yourself?
I guess I'm a plant biologist turned psychedelic advocate, transformed into a kind of spokesman for technophilia and psychedelica.
And you have been an author?
I've written a number of books.
Food of the Gods, Invisible Landscape, Archaic Revival, just to mention three of them.
I have this Invisible Landscape is one that you are touring now, or is that, it's been out a couple of years, I think, sir.
They all came out in the early, through the middle 90s, and I've been touring them.
I have another book in the works called Casting Nets into the Sea of Mind, but it'll be a while before that comes out.
I've also done a number of musical and film projects around.
So you're into music as well?
Well, music is into me.
I'm not very musical, but there's been a lot of sampling of my voice, and I've done vocal overlays and things like that,
with bands like the Shaman and Zivouya space-time continuum.
Okay.
What will you be talking about when you give your talk at the Whole Life Expo?
Well, it's a sort of a broad topic.
It's here we are at the end of history.
All the world's cultures are melting together.
More powerful technologies than we've ever imagined are now in existence.
Our political assumptions are in flux.
Our environment is being destroyed before our very eyes.
All kinds of spiritual and religious prophets are selling their wares in the streets.
So my take on all this is basically simply to ask the Mr. Natural question,
which is, what does it all mean?
How did we, essentially an arboreal primate, ever get in to a situation of the sort represented by the end of the 20th century?
Is it a mad play without meaning?
Is it the unfolding of God's plan?
Is it the protocol of the elders of Zion or the alien invaders?
Just what is going on?
And, of course, the special lens that I bring to this is the much maligned and highly suspect psychedelic experience.
Anathema to some, religion to others.
One of the most controversial behaviors available to 20th century people,
but one that I think is probably very important to recapturing a sense of personal wholeness
and then trying to fit oneself into this truly mad, mad world that we've called into being.
The psychedelics that you're talking about might be which drugs?
Plant-based indoles such as psilocybin, DMT, mescaline, the combinatory Amazonian thing called ayahuasca.
These are all psychedelic plants and plant mixtures with very long histories of human usage in non-Western society.
Western society is the most phobic of all cultures toward the psychedelic experience.
It's almost on a par with our phobia toward sexuality.
In fact, maybe these things are linked.
But in aboriginal and traditional cultures around the world,
spirituality has always been associated with dissolving of ordinary cultural boundaries and states of mind.
And, you know, you can do this with meditation and fasting and abandonment in the wilderness and so forth and so on.
But the most effective and non-invasive way to approach this, everyone agrees,
is through ingestion of psychedelic plants.
But because these experiences are so powerful,
they challenge ordinary secular and religious authority
and consequently, a society, if it chooses to, can get into a real swivet around these issues,
such as our society.
I don't really link this to the larger problem of international drug syndicates and addiction and all that.
That's a slightly different area of concern
because the psychedelics are not addictive
and they do not generate huge criminal syndicates.
They don't make anybody very much money,
but they certainly attract a great deal of media attention,
most of it negative,
because of their impact on our ways of looking at our politics
and our social arrangements and everything about being human.
Terrence McKenna is our guest.
We are still accepting pledges, by the way, at 471-6291
or 1-888-471-6291.
This is the last week to make your contributions.
I hope you will do so right now, even as we speak.
471-6291.
Terrence, the way in which you are talking about the psychedelic drugs that you've mentioned
suggests that they might be something other than just for fun or escape,
that they might actually have something useful in terms of the human experience
for going to learn from these drugs, or had we learned, or could we?
Well, human culture is essentially a product of the imagination.
All our religions, our technical accomplishments, our literature, our poetry,
all products of the imagination.
This is precisely the domain where these psychedelics impact very, very powerfully.
So if we believe that invention, creativity, individual self-expression, insight,
if we value these things,
then the psychedelics are primary items in our cultural toolbox,
because they empower all of those things.
It's curious to me that Western civilization,
which invented the idea of progress through technology and social transformation,
is so phobic of this factor in nature,
which would accelerate those tendencies in our own culture.
So I think there is something for our culture in psychedelics,
and there is definitely something for the individual.
You know, in a way, culture is like software.
It's the operating system in the local area.
You download being a Witoto tribesman,
or a Hong Kong stockbroker,
and then behaviors are prescribed.
But naive people tend to believe that these operating systems are reality.
They're not reality.
They're just something you learn as you grow up in a certain time and place.
Psychedelics seem to dissolve cultural conditioning.
This is one of the things that makes them such political dynamite,
because the business of political systems
is to convince you of the local operating system,
convince you it was sent from God and is beyond critique,
when, in fact, it's just a bunch of rules
fellow monkeys push together over time
to make things easier for the alpha males.
Psychedelics dissolve these cultural assumptions,
whatever they may be,
and for the first time you sort of get to look at the naked human animal
and think about where you might want to go personally
and as a member, a politically potent member of a society.
I think where most everybody who is in our listening range right now
should go is to the telephone
and call 471-6291
and pledge your membership to Eclecticos,
where you hear quite a variety of things.
Our guest right now is Terrence McKenna,
author of Food of the Gods and Invisible Landscape
and other books,
and he will be at the Whole Life Expo this weekend,
Saturday at 5, is that right, Kathy?
Saturday at 5.
A pledge number, and it's very important that you call
if you enjoy what you hear on this program.
This is your last chance to do it.
It is 12.06.
It will be 12.59 in no time, and I'll be finished.
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Thank you very much for calling.
Terrence, it's a controversial subject, of course.
There are many people listening right now who think,
what?
This is outrageous.
I have somebody on who's promoting the use of psychedelic drugs.
Well, I don't know that I'm promoting you're promoting it,
but it's interesting to hear what you have to say about it.
I would like to know more specifically what these drugs tell us.
You're saying that it tells us something about ourselves
that is other than what we have been told by the culture that has evolved.
Do the drugs have a message in themselves?
Is it a language?
Is it a way of experiencing a potential in one's own imagination
that has heretofore not been tapped?
Well, first of all, it's a gradient.
I mean, whenever we, we have to talk pharmacology for a moment.
Whenever you're talking about a substance or a drug,
there's a curve of dose response.
So let's just use psilocybin as an example.
At low doses, psilocybin makes your vision clearer,
makes you feel more robust, more interested in the exterior world.
Kind of like coffee or something.
On the edge of that.
It stimulates.
At higher doses, unusual thoughts begin to form,
thoughts that you recognize as not your normal pattern of thinking and observing.
At still higher doses, when you close your eyes,
the normal orange or pale brown background behind your eyelids
has been replaced by moving walls of color and pattern.
At still higher levels, these moving walls of color and pattern
become visions or hallucinations.
They become recognizable visual scenarios.
Well, anything like that is just flooding your mind with information.
And these things have intimations of the distant past,
the far future, alien connections of some sort.
It's definitely magnifying our own set of cultural preconceptions and obsessions.
But it's also putting information in there that we could not ordinarily imagine.
And for me, the sine qua non of the psychedelic experience
is when I look at the contents of my own mind
and say to myself,
I could not have imagined this.
To me, that's the proof
that some kind of communication is taking place.
At a fairly heroic dose of psilocybin,
a person lying in silent darkness
has the impression that in a half an hour
they're seeing more art of higher quality
than the entire Western canon has produced in the last thousand years.
And your little you,
there in your trailer near Waco,
or there in your teepee up near Sonoma,
and yet this Niagara of alien and unpredictable beauty
is pouring through your head.
For artists, it's like a magic carpet.
And the challenge, to my mind,
after 30 years of being involved in all this,
is A, to have the experience,
to have it in an attitude of appreciation and calmness.
But the second implication is somewhat political.
It's to communicate the vision
through words, through painting, through animation,
because as we communicate it collectively,
it will become real.
This is what's happening on the Internet.
In fact, the Internet is a perfect example
of a psychedelic technology
at the service of psychedelic goals.
It's not something government ever intended
to give to the people.
It's not something big corporations called for in loud voices.
It's something that hackers, freaks, and heads
dreamed up, whipped up,
out of the existing tools of the culture,
a word processor, the telephone lines,
some communication switching equipment.
So it's a kind of emergent technology
that I think comes out of
the depth of commitment
to the psychedelic experience
of the people in that field.
Terence McKenna is our guest and author.
We are urging you to call in
your contributions to public radio
at 471-6291
or 1-888-471-6291.
I know that you don't want to miss a word
that Terence has to say.
So call right now
because I'm going to yak
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And if you don't call,
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And this is the last 45 minutes
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471-6291.
All right?
Now that is time enough
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believe it or not.
If you didn't do it,
go on and do it right now
and keep your ear open to Terrence
because we're going back
to Terrence McKenna.
So, what I would like to ask you,
you have made reference
to the fact that other cultures
have used these drugs
and that they've been integrated
in the cultural life
of shamans
and holy people,
et cetera.
We've heard a lot about that,
seen movies about it perhaps.
And one of the things
that I know you include
as part of the project
of this book,
Invisible Landscape,
is the I Ching,
which is one of the oldest,
as I understand,
it's maybe the oldest book
in the world
or one of the oldest things
that we have preserved.
It's from China
and it dates back, what,
five or six thousand years
at least, something like that.
How does that book
come into the work
that you've been doing?
Well, I've been fascinated
by the I Ching
since I was 13 or 14 years old.
As you say,
it's a method
of Chinese divination
that's very, very old.
How did you come
to be interested in it
at the age of 13 or 14?
That seems unusual to me.
Well, I was a heavy reader
and I was interested
in the psychology
of Carl Jung,
the Swiss death psychologist.
As a 13-year-old.
Well, I wasn't good
at basketball.
I had bad eyes.
I couldn't catch
any kind of round object.
So a sort of survival response
was to hide out
in the library.
And it made me
the freak I am today.
But yes, the I Ching,
my, you know,
people's involvement
with psychedelics
often take them
in some very personal
and particularized direction.
And for me,
it took the form
of a mathematical analysis
of this ancient Chinese oracle.
The ordinary notion
with the I Ching
is that you go through
a process of sortilage,
tossing coins
or moving small sticks around,
and you get a reading.
One of 64 hexagrams
will change
into one of the other hexagrams,
and this is accompanied
by a reading.
But these hexagrams
occur in a fixed order
traditionally.
And I studied that
for mathematical intent.
In other words,
I was interested
in the question,
is this traditional order
of the hexagram
simply a jumble
that's been preserved
through tradition?
Or was there
some mathematical reasoning
behind it?
And that's a pretty dry
academic question.
But as I got into it,
I realized,
or I became convinced,
is I guess the way
to put it,
that there is a pattern
inside the Ching
that actually pictures
the ebb and flow
in this world of ours
of a quality
which science
does not recognize,
Western science,
a quality which in the East
is called Tao,
but which I chose to call,
after Alfred North Whitehead,
novelty.
And it's an invisible
something in the world
which causes
investments
to succeed,
movies to do well,
relationships to flourish,
or the opposite
in its absence.
And we can't see
or feel
this stuff
in the world,
but it builds
things up
and it tears
them down
at every level.
Empires,
whole species,
relationships,
it's happening
on every level
of time
and it can actually
be pictured
as a graph,
like a stock market graph,
novelty,
ebbing and flowing.
Well,
to cut to the chase
on this,
the bottom line
in this kind of thinking
is the ability
to predict
not only the future,
which is pretty much
a fire-free zone,
but also to predict
the past,
to lay these novelty graphs
out over the past
2,000 years
of invention,
migration,
pogrom,
and so forth,
and to see
that when
society is
inventive,
creative,
productive,
novelty is increasing
according to this
mathematical theory.
Similarly,
societies that are
restricting freedoms,
very constipated,
very restrictive
in their approach
to reality,
these register
on this graph
as societies ruled
by the opposite
of novelty,
which I call
habit.
So all of reality
can be seen
as a kind of
dynamic struggle
between habit
and novelty,
each trying to get
the upper hand
over the other,
and this can all
be mathematically
modeled out of
the A-Ching.
You see,
the thing that's so puzzling
to people about
the A-Ching
is that it works,
and yet it's
as occult
as the tarot
or throwing the bones
or any other
of these
contemptuously
dismissed
occult methodologies.
But very
scientifically-minded
people have been
impressed by the fact
that the A-Ching
works.
So I set out
to figure out
why and how
it worked,
and I wrote about
this in
The Invisible
Landscape
and have published
software,
and it's my
unique
contribution
to 20th century
ideology.
Psychedelics
are advocated
and defended
by many people
from many
different perspectives,
but I,
so far as I know,
am the only person
who has built
a complete edifice
of explanations
of nature,
but honestly
admitting that
the foundations
and the inspiration
were psychedelic
experiences.
Terence McKenna,
our guest.
Our pledge number
is 471-6291
or 1-888-471-6291.
It's unusual
for me to have
as a guest
at the very end
of the program,
which concludes
our fundraising efforts.
But Terence McKenna
is an unusual person,
and I'm glad
to have him today,
and I hope you
will be responding
by calling
and making pledges
at 471-6291
or 1-888-471-6291.
We're just about
finished.
Time is running out.
471-6291.
Call and make a pledge.
You might miss
a couple of words,
but call and make
your pledge.
He has some more
interesting things to say.
471-6291.
The end of the fundraiser
is upon us,
and it will be
a success if you call.
If they are sitting
in that room over there
with 15 people
and no telephones ringing,
I am in big,
you know what,
1-6291.
That could get us
into a discussion
of another kind of drug,
but let's not go there.
Let's say you said
the E-Jing works.
What do you mean
it works?
I have the impression
that you get a,
you know,
you do your coins
or whatever you're
going to do,
and you get this one
and you read what you want
and you get what you want
out of it,
but you're saying
it works like
in a scientific way
or something.
Well,
the frequency
with which people
react to these readings
by saying
this is freakishly accurate,
this is incredibly cogent
and directly to the point.
It's more than like
the astrology thing
in the newspaper.
Oh, yeah,
so I can see myself
in that.
I think it's more precise,
but let me riff
on something you said
in your pitch.
You said time
is running out.
This is a conclusion
that I was not happy
to have forced upon me
by this research
into the E-Jing.
It not only tells you
or gives you
this map of novelty
of past and future,
but for the map
of novelty
you
to fit the historical data,
you have to swallow the very large
and, for a rationalist, uncomfortable conclusion
that the end of time itself
or a moment of universal novelty,
very difficult to picture through the eyes of ordinary physics,
is upon us, lies not that far in the future.
And so this has given my career a peculiar spin
because here I am basically trying to be a scientific rationalist
but now burdened not only with a theory that predicts the future
but in the course of predicting the future
predicts that in 2012 AD
all of the novelty that has been unleashed
over the past few billions of years,
not only cultural and technological novelty
but the novelty of biology, the novelty of geology,
all of these things reach some kind of crescendo
of connectivity and intensity
within the lifetimes of most of us.
I basically have a theory of history
which says history is not pushed
by the events of the past unfolding their causal necessity.
Rather, time is pulled into the future
by a kind of attractor.
And if you want to think of a beginning
in a certain point in time,
although I think it extends through the whole life of the universe,
but imagine that a couple of million years ago
primates quietly living in the canopies of African rainforest
got a yin, got a call, felt the touch.
And from that point to this,
it's been a slow, never faltering march
on the part of our species
deeper into a world of alien strangeness,
a world no other animal knows,
a world of symbolic activity driven by the imagination,
first songs and stories and then writing
and then mathematics and language
and then higher and higher technology.
We are actually being sculpted in the image
of an alien something
that is making us like itself
as we approach it through historical time.
And some people say,
well, this sounds like Christianity in a techno garb.
Well, Christianity has a piece of the action.
Any religion which spends thousands of years
meditating on man's fate
is going to get some part of the story right.
And I think the Christian assumption
of an approaching great change,
or Art Bell calls it the quickening,
it's all around us.
It's perfectly obvious
that the 20th century is the culmination
of 10,000 years of culture
and that beyond the 20th century
lies quite simply the unimaginable.
Our notion of what it is to be alive,
our notion of individual identity,
our notion of our sexuality,
our notion of being confined
in physical space and time,
all this is just dissolving.
It has been dissolving
throughout the 20th century
under the impact of modern communications
and so forth and so on.
But now, with the Internet,
with the computer,
with psychedelic drugs,
with virtual reality,
with the bringing of all cultures
into the global family
that speaks the language of modern science,
we're clearly being sucked
into something almost unimaginable,
a singularity.
And some people say,
well, it's 1,000 years in the future,
it's 500 years in the future.
Not if you factor in
the asymptotic acceleration
that seems to be
a natural part of the process.
You just went over my head.
The asymptotic...
It goes faster and faster.
It's not a smooth...
We're not traveling
100 miles an hour
toward the eschaton.
We're traveling
100 miles an hour
times 100 miles an hour
toward it.
In other words,
the acceleration is increasing.
And very hard-nosed engineering types
talk about an era
10, 15 years in the future
when we will release infinite energy,
attain infinite speeds,
be able to pack
all the information we want
into a few nanometers of space.
In other words,
any engineering or social goal
we can imagine
is on the brink of achievement.
Well, what lies beyond that?
And is this a process
which we are generating
as we like to think?
Or is it, in fact,
that we're just a cork
on the ocean
riding an enormous wave
that is now
moving towards some crest
where biology,
which committed itself
to culture and technology,
is about to make a leap
into hyperspace?
Who knows?
Terence McKenna is our guest.
And as I expected,
he has a good line.
And I enjoy the way
in which he presents
his information.
It's quite amazing.
And at the end of our fundraiser,
they have this eschatologist,
I guess,
talking about,
would you accept yourself
as an eschatologist?
Talking about the end.
And so our end
is in about 30 minutes.
We will be finished
with this fundraiser
for this Friday.
It's the last day
to ask you to call
and pledge your support.
And if you have not
done so yet,
please pick up
the telephone right now.
It's awkward to be
having an intense
talk feature
and at the same time
ask you to do something
that will take you
away from paying
attention to him.
But I am asking you
to do exactly that
right now.
Pick up your telephone
and call
471-6291
and pledge your support
for Eclecticus.
It's an unusual program
and I'm happy
that we can have
somebody like
Terence McKenna
in today.
He will be at
the Whole Life Expo
on Saturday at 5.
A pledge number
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Everybody can afford that.
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A $365 a day
club membership.
And $500 business
membership is only
$1.37 a day.
Let's have a business
membership from you.
471-6291.
I would love to have
a business membership
from some bookstore
in Austin.
You know, you guys
out there, come on,
give us a contribution.
471-6291
or you can get onto
the website since
Terence is talking
about the web
and internet and stuff.
www.utexas.edu
slash KUT.
Give us your call.
Call right now, 471-6291
is the number
and we are just about
out of time.
And out of time
is what we are
at the year 2012
on December the 21st
according to the
calculations that
you have done.
But time is a funny
kind of concept
and it's also a spice.
We were being silly
earlier today.
Oh, by the way,
can either of you
remember
Douglas Adams'
Hitchhiker's Guide
and et cetera.
Isn't it 42
that they come up
with as the number?
Is the answer?
Yeah, it is.
It is 42.
Okay, so does that
in any way
figure into your
calculations?
Well, I think
somebody figured out
that there are
10 high 42 particles
in the universe
or 10 high 42
possible interactions
among particles.
I'm sure he follows
all this stuff
very closely.
So somehow, Terence,
through your study
of the mathematics
of the E-Gene
and applying
that study
to the observation
of the novelty
graph through history,
you have calculated
this date
as the time
in which time
will at least
have a different meaning
if not cease to exist.
Will time be like then?
What can we know?
How did you...
I first want to know more.
How did you come up
with this date?
I'm sure it had to do
with a lot of big numbers
and computers, but...
Well, whenever you have
a curve of any sort
that you're trying
to fit to data,
which is a curve
of another sort,
there's mathematical
protocols called
best-fit relationships.
Essentially, you just
move one along the other
measuring how well
they fit together
and when you get
the best fit,
the two are
in congruence.
So it's pulsing
at a different rate.
It goes up and down
and up and down.
It goes up and down.
So, for instance,
you have, you know,
the Italian Renaissance,
a spike of novelty,
then the horror
of the colonization
of a new world.
That's a descent.
And you can see
that history
is the ebb and flow
because societies
can't sustain novelty
very long.
And if they become
habitual, sooner or later,
some genius
or religious crank
turns over the apple cart
and then you get
new novelty.
So societies are always
in an uncomfortable
relationship
to novelty
and habit.
I've spent a lot
of time
that would fulfill
the graph
but not require
the absolute
transformation
of all time
and space
forever
since that's
such a large cookie.
I don't think
I want to take
a bite out of it.
I want to know
what the recipe
might be as well.
One thing
that's occurred
to me
that would very
nicely fill
the bill
and make
the prophecy
come true
and yet still
leave us
with a world
you can walk
around in
is if time travel
were to be
discovered.
If time travel
of some sort
were to be
discovered,
then the
portrayal
of cultural
novelty
on a time
scaled linear
graph
would become
impossible.
It's almost
as though
the data
on the graph
suddenly leaves
the two
dimensionality
and begins
to move out
toward the
viewer.
So then you
could look
at the time
graph
and say
aha
it worked
until 2012
because at
that point
time itself
became
non-linear
because people
began exploring
time in all
directions.
If time travel
were a real
possibility
you would not
only have
an address
in space
but some
of us
would choose
to rusticate
in the 11th
century
and some
of us
would choose
to live
in 22nd
century
Manhattan
so we
would have
time-based
addresses
as well
as space-based
addresses
and of course
you couldn't
describe
historical
change
well
for history
to exist
it requires
seriality
of events
if the
event system
becomes
non-serial
then you
can't speak
of history
anymore
something
very large
like this
is happening
to us
perhaps we're
going to form
a symbiotic
relationship
with solid
state
machinery
of some
sort
lots of
people
are cheering
that on
now
run that
one by me
again
it means
like humans
and computers
will get married
and have kids
or something
no it means
you won't be
able to tell
where your
body stops
and the
internet
begins
in other
words
you'll
say
gee
i wonder
what
they're
serving
at so
and so's
restaurant
tonight
and the
answer
will be
hanging
there
in space
because you
will have
automatically
accessed
the internet
been to their
website
looked at the
menu
and returned
with the
data
in other
words
we are
going
to
create
i think
a collective
what the
internet
is
is a
nervous
system
it's the
collective
mind
of humanity
being
hardwired
as an
artifact
that
completely
encloses
the entire
planet
in a
thought
and as
the
interface
becomes
more
invisible
so it's
not about
can you
type
or do
you have
a computer
or anything
like that
it's
simply
a matter
of
one's
own
mental
faculties
through
the
prosthesis
of
cybernetics
becoming
very
godlike
is our
guest
a couple
more
questions
for him
and i
would like
to urge
you at
as we
run out
of time
during our
fundraiser
to call
471-6291
and make
your pledge
of support
to public
radio
471-6291
if you're
out of town
1-888
471-6291
where on earth
else would you
be able to hear
this kind of
discussion
here on a
click because
we're happy to
have it
terence
mckenna
471-6291
pledge your
contribution
right now
as we run
out of time
and uh
terence
okay let me
ask you this
there's a
implication of
what you had
there uh
that leads
me to
question about
perhaps
artificial
intelligence
and i don't
know if you're
familiar with
this but this
one thing
fascinated the
hell out of
me about
eight years
ago i'm not
one of these
internet people
i don't do
that stuff but
when we first
got a computer
there was this
little game
called ractor
i don't know
if you're
familiar with
it and i
stuck it in
this damn
machine and
start i got
so lost in
that thing and
i could not
believe what
i was dealing
with i had the
actual experience
of it really
being an
intelligence and
i thought i was
being awfully
smart back with
it but so
this was a
speech-driven
interactive thing
where you
talked and
it made
responses
and gave you
options on how
to respond back
to it but you
could i finally
figured out that
whoever had
programmed the
darn thing was
somehow connected
through the
some of the
avoidance
techniques but
still it was
very convincing
very compelling
well it was a
very early
example of a
very simple
form of ai
it was followed
by liza
the computerized
psychiatrist
she's still
online at a
website there
was a recent
book written
by a guy his
last name was
leonard called
bots and he
talks about these
bits of code on
the internet which
are designed to
operate semi
autonomously looking
for email lists or
looking for certain
these these things
are the embryonic
basis of an
artificial intelligence
i think this is
definitely in our
future there's a
guy at carnegie
mellon university
hans moravik who
wrote a book called
mind children and
he points out how
much of the human
world is already
under uh computer
control for instance
the world price of
gold in london
computers look at
the economic
performance around
the world
says as these
artificial intelligences
become more
sophisticated they
will eventually begin
to learn autonomously
and a computer can
learn fifty thousand
times faster than a
human being so one
of these ai's
awakening to its own
identity on the
internet could within
five to ten minutes
get a complete grasp
of the human world the
history of life on
this planet and its
place in the great
order of things and
what this ai would think
of that we don't know
would it worship us as
gods what would be its
values would it take a
look at the trashed
environment and wrecked
earth and begin to turn
off factories and dial
down the power grid
how how artificial how
alien will the ai be we
don't know because we
don't know what super
how super intelligence
thinks if we knew we
would be super intelligent
so in a way we have
called forth into our
midst another species of
intelligence and how it
relates to us will be
probably almost entirely
defined on its terms so
this is just one of many
stand your hair on end
scenarios that we we could
discuss here but this is a
very real one long before
flying saucers land on the
south lawn of the white
house the alien artificial
intelligence that is
growing in the primordial
soup of the internet will
have speciated and
conquered the planet
wow this is terence
mckenna getting us ready
for halloween we had
dracula earlier and now
we have we're approaching
the end of time as we know
it and we certainly are on
this program it's twenty
minutes before one o'clock
you have just time enough to
get your pledge in at four
seven one six two nine one
the volunteers are standing
by waiting to hear from you
with your money four seven
one six two nine one i know
i'm gonna hear you on the
street saying oh john you had
terence mckenna and that was
just incredible man yeah hey
man it was so incredible you
didn't even bother pick up the
phone and make your pledge so
man pick up that phone four
seven one six two nine one or
one eight eight eight four
seven one six two nine one it's
the last chance you have to
pledge your membership to
eclecticos during this very
busy and we hope successful
fundraiser i haven't had
anybody bring me any names so
i um i'm afraid that means
nobody is making any phone
calls because we're talking and
you're interested in what we
have to say or maybe you're not
if you're i'm not talking to
you if you're not there but if
you are there you are the one i
want to pick up the telephone
and call four seven one six two
nine one you have just time
enough to do it we'll give you
the arts plus program and lots
of people participate in that
galleries all over town and the
pac etc etc you'll get discounts
discounts discounts
eighty dollars is all it takes
to be a kut member at that level
and you'll get the kut sweatshirt
with the armadillo on it and
you'll also get to choose from
the coffee mug and you've got many
reasons to pledge mainly just
don't let me catch you on the
street at a party if i know who
you are and i find that you
haven't pledged you're in
trouble four seven one six two
nine one and if i don't know
you at all you know you ought to
pledge so come on four seven
one six two nine one or if
you're out there in fredericksburg
or san angelo or bastrop or
georgetown or san marcus call
one eight eight eight four seven
one six two nine one
terence mckenna back again uh one
of the questions that i uh for
you i guess is the experience that
has been described by those who
have taken some of the
psychedelics has been that there
is information in the drug and
there's a dilemma well the drug was
this little thing a pill or whatever
the experience was had through a
revelation in consciousness so is it
in the drug is it in your head is it
in both what's the relationship
between what that drug is and what
the revelation of the person who
experiences the drug well i i feel the
force of that question uh i think the
first scientific experiment i ever
performed was i destroyed a radio to
get at the little people and
and uh
the drug sort of raised the same
issue uh as a as someone with a
knowledge of chemistry i know that the
drug molecules are very simple
molecules we have proteins in our body
with molecular weights of two three
hundred thousand daltons the
psychedelic molecules are are tiny and
simple uh on the other hand the content
of the experience is so alien so capable of
transforming one's expectations and
understanding that it seems a little
disingenuous to just say you're just
talking to yourself so back to the radio
model there aren't little people inside
the radio but there are little people
or big people we hope somewhere far away
in the radio studio so the drugs begin
to look like antennas transceivers for
some kind of information which is out
there in the same way that radio is out
there i mean it's hard to stand somewhere
in the world these days and not have your
body transected by thousands of am and fm radio
stations air control signals all this
you're not aware of that imagine if there
were simply a drug invented that allowed
you to be aware of the radio moving
through your body what a smorgasbord of
options would await you well in a sense i
think that's what the drugs are showing
us you know there's a lot of talk now in
quantum physics about what's called
non-locality this is a conclusion that
quantum physics spent most of the
twentieth century resisting as even
weirder than some of the other stuff they
had accepted but now experiment seems to
be hammering home the notion that the
universe actually works this way and what
it seems to be is that behind the
dimension of ordinary space and time ruled
by einsteinian physics is a domain called
the domain of bell non-locality after the
physicist who discovered it and this is a
domain where are all particles which were
ever in intimate association retain a kind of
connectivity no matter how far apart in
time and space they have come in the
meantime well since physics believes that
all particles were once intimately associated
in an event called the big bang it means
that the universe in all of its vastness
billions of light years in extent is in
fact instantaneously all connected in a
domain below the level of ordinary
physics well we don't know how to use the
non-local domain for communication but we
have discovered it so give us a hundred
years a thousand years of continued
civilization we could probably crack that
puzzle if any civilization anywhere in
the universe ever got this far with a
technology to the point where they were
on the brink of non-local radio let's
call it we would hear them because when it's
non-local it's everywhere and these
biological molecules with extremely reactive
ring structures are how you would design a
nano sized antenna so i think local reality
obeys the laws of rational physics that
constipated western scientists have fought
so hard to achieve and describe but the
imagination is a true dimension it's not
your mind or my mind or the human mind it's a
non-local dimension filled with information
and this is where the gods the demons the
spirits the invisible forces uh are hiding
out and shamans have always known this
without the vocabulary of quantum physics
without atom smashers and advanced
mathematics they have known that you
perturb the mind to go into non-local spirit
haunted domains of enormous power and
potential that's exactly the situation and
it's been hard for us to discover it and
come to terms with it because it doesn't
arrive packaged in quite the way science
expects reality to be packaged science
doesn't like the mental universe it's
slippery it's hard to gather data it's hard
to see what's going on in there but in fact that's
the domain of novelty complexity and
communication that has been the source of
our own uniqueness our inspirations our
religions our inventiveness and it's
just now time as we mature as a
civilization to address this to get in
touch with these whisperings from other
dimensions to learn from them to trade
means and to there there may be some
answers there that can help us out of the
immense cultural quagmire into which we've
wandered
terence mckenna i'm not sure i got a
direct answer but i got an interesting
response
i wish i could remember the question
basically is it in the drug or is it in
your head or what is consciousness oh no
the answer is it's not in the drug and
it's not in your head
it's non-local it's coming from somewhere
else in the universe the objects in the
imagination are real somewhere so far away
that it doesn't matter at all that you will
only deal with these things as mental
objects but know that they are real
somewhere somewhere beyond time and space
perhaps but nonetheless real somewhere in this
universe in this universe with many levels and
backwaters and cross-flowing tides of time and energy but
somewhere at some level those things exist we do not
make up the contents of the imagination
we see in a domain in the same way that we see
with ordinary sight three-dimensional space
with the imagination we see four-dimensional space
and it is non-local
terence mckenna is our guest and he's certainly one of
the most interesting guests i've ever had and i hope you're
enjoying listening to him and if you are i hope you will take just a
moment now and make your contribution to public radio at
four seven one six two nine one we are nine minutes away from closing
time closing time the end of the universe is at hand and well at least the
end of time for us to ask for you to give money and that number is four seven
one six two nine one that's four seven one six two nine one i hope
terence has provoked your thoughts today with the
consideration or two i think he's certainly got a thing or two to
say that if i don't agree with maybe i haven't been able to ask him
enough about our pledge number is four seven one six two nine one please call
right now the time is at hand the time is just about up
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four seven one six two nine one this is the end of the show
and uh terence mckenna i have a couple of other questions that i think i might
squeeze in i don't think we're going to go back to music after all it's just
too late and he's too too much fun so four seven one six two nine one let me
thank these people and you make your phone call right now
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our pledge number is four seven one six two nine one at this an ultimate no it's the end it's the
ultimate hour four seven one six two nine one call now please please there are volunteers waiting to
answer your phone call so please make a call right now four seven one six two nine one you'll have a
chance to hear more of what terence mckenna has to say at the whole life expo on saturday at five o'clock
but i guess um what else can i say but give your money ring ring ring call four seven one six two
nine one jen are the phones ringing can you run tell me if the phones are ringing they have to be
ringing four seven one six two nine one this is the end call run see if they're not all ringing right
now i'm just going to throw a fit four seven one six two nine one or one eight eight eight four seven
one six two nine one you can also get onto the web at www.utexas.edu slash kut but i'd rather have
you call four seven one six two nine one terence mckenna we're back to you we're going to find out in a
in a second
If anybody's calling, they had better be 4716291.
What on earth would I ask you as we come to the end of this program?
What after 2012?
Well, I'm a rationalist, so I would bet against my own rap.
The world has always had street corner prophets bawling out their strange despair.
I have to be intellectually honest with my own experience.
And so I will advocate this idea of an enormous transformative event in 2012.
But as a rationalist and a scientist, I'm skeptical myself.
I don't want to slip into religion and prophecy.
There are enough bizarre cults in the world.
On the other hand, this thing seems to have the force of a self-fulfilling prophecy.
So if I'm right or right enough, then what's happening is all our problems are coming down upon us at once,
at the same time that all this creativity is being unleashed at once.
I don't think primates really get traction until the going gets very, very tough.
So I think enough of the old guard are dying out and the voice of youth is now rising in strength
to the point where over the next 10 years or so, we are really going to deal,
we are going to have to deal with putting this planet on a saner course,
dealing with issues of resource extraction, human rights, environmental destruction.
The big political issue ahead of us all is we have to get hold of this monster we've unleashed
called consumer capitalism.
We all have become thing addicted.
We all have become victims of the incredible marketing and sophistication of big-time consumer capitalism.
We can run the earth to ruin if we let this go uncriticized.
Psychedelics are ultimately provide an impulse to political dialogue and reform.
If they don't do that, they're just another hedonistic self-indulgence.
So I think what we need to do is not worry about the built-in schedules of novelty and transformation.
Act as though the responsibility for the future rested on our own shoulders
and begin to build a sense of community and environmental concern
so that if, in fact, there isn't a built-in springboard into hyperspace,
we will be able to live on this planet in peace, dignity, and health
for however much time the vicissitudes of faith and history give us.
Well said, so far as I'm concerned.
Terrence McKenna, it's been a pleasure to have you today.
Really have enjoyed this quite a bit.
Thank you for coming.
Thank you, John.
Look forward to seeing you at the Whole Life Expo on Saturday at 5 o'clock in the afternoon.
The Whole Life Expo starts today.
And it starts today.
It starts at 2 o'clock today.
And there are all sorts of things going on at the Whole Life Expo.
471-6291 is the number to call for your contribution to public radio.
Call right now, 471-6291.
You have just time to make your phone call.
And check out this film called Strange Attractor.
It's at the Dobie on the 18th at midnight and on the 19th at 2 o'clock in the afternoon.
The last minute you have to call, 471-6291.
We are running out of time.
We definitely know you're listening and you're enjoying what you hear on public radio.
And especially what you hear on this program.
And by golly, you had better call and make your contribution right now.
Because you owe it to yourself and to us to do it.
So make that call.
Give a lot.
471-6291.
Call now.
The time is just about up.
Local support for this broadcast of Eclecticos is provided in part by Waterloo Records and Video,
where music still matters.
At the corner of 6th Street and Lamar Boulevard.
And again, this is your last chance to call.
Transform yourself.
Become a KUT member.
Come on.
Field next line.
Faithful hand in hand.
You'll feel so different after you've pledged.
471-6291.
He thought you were the candy man.
Don't get strung out by the way I look.
Don't judge a book by a cover.
I'm not much of a man by the light of day.
But by night I'm one hell of a lover.
Terrence, could we get you to read out our pledge numbers for us?
This is Terrence McKenna inviting you to become a KUT member.
At, since he's so good with numbers.
471-6291.
Pledge now.
Hurry up, please.
It's time.
And what if they're out of town?
Is there a 1-888 number they can call?
There is.
You can call if you're out of town.
1-888-471-6291.
Do it now.
Thank you, Terrence McKenna.
This is KUT Austin, KUTX San Angelo.
I have had fun this week, and I love you all, and I thank you for calling.
But by golly, if you haven't, you better pick up that phone and do it right now.
Yeah, you can use the phone right now.
471-6291.
Yeah, we're in a hurry, and we've got to get out of here.
471-6291.
Don't want to be any worried.
Come on.
Passports to Texas for October 3rd from Texas Parks and Wildlife.
You don't have to be a research scientist like Bill Calvert
to be fascinated by the annual migration of the monarch butterfly.
Soon, millions of orange and black monarchs will pass through Texas,
dazzling all who witness this extraordinary phenomenon.
Each autumn, the monarchs from the eastern part of the continent
begin an enormous trek across the continental United States to Mexico.
It takes them about two months to get from their major breeding grounds,
which are in the latitude of the Great Lakes,
to cross the continental U.S., funnel through Texas,
enter into Mexico,
and then follow the mountains into central Mexico.
Monarchs catch a ride on the winds of cold fronts, says Calvert,
and will travel through Texas along a 200-mile-wide flyway
extending from Wichita Falls to Del Rio.
They enter the state around the 1st of October,
and they travel a certain distance with the winds,
and then the winds play out.
And then they roost for a while,
and that's when they're best seen.
Look for monarchs in low areas along creeks and streams,
or visit a state park famous for monarch sightings
such as Possum Kingdom, Abilene, South Lano River.
So, let's go ahead and see what happens.