WEBVTT 00:02.860 --> 00:38.030 Welcome. I'm Jeffrey Mishlove. Today we're going to examine the nature of time and the 00:38.030 --> 00:43.490 relationship between time and the human mind. With me in the studio is Terence McKenna, 00:43.610 --> 00:48.870 a specialist in shamanistic traditions and also hallucinogens. Terence is the co-author 00:48.870 --> 00:53.890 with his brother Dennis of Psilocybin, the Magic Mushroom Grower's Guide, and also the 00:53.890 --> 00:59.710 Invisible Landscape, Time, Hallucinogens, and the I Ching. In addition, he is the developer 00:59.710 --> 01:05.510 of a computer software program called Time Wave Zero and is the founder of Botanical Dimensions, 01:05.630 --> 01:11.550 a non-profit organization devoted to preserving hallucinogenic plants as used by native peoples 01:11.550 --> 01:16.330 throughout the world. Welcome, Terence. It's a pleasure to be here. It's a pleasure to be with 01:16.330 --> 01:23.290 you again. You know, shamanistic peoples and early peoples throughout the entire world have 01:23.290 --> 01:29.330 all been involved in systems of what we call divination. It could be throwing bones or using 01:29.330 --> 01:29.690 the E.T. 01:29.710 --> 01:35.550 Ching or looking at the entrails of animals or clouds of smoke, but each system seemed 01:35.550 --> 01:42.510 to involve some sort of a unique way of linking the human mind with the very nature of time 01:42.510 --> 01:48.990 itself in order to understand cycles of time and understand perhaps even to predict the 01:48.990 --> 01:55.830 future. Yes, well, it's certainly true that preliterate and aboriginal peoples have had 01:55.830 --> 01:59.690 an obsession with time. However, it's an obsession shared. 01:59.710 --> 02:06.830 By the historical societies as well, time seems to be the dimension about which we have 02:06.830 --> 02:13.850 the greatest anxiety, perhaps because it's the dimension into which we see with the least 02:13.850 --> 02:20.730 clarity. Numerous peoples throughout the world have dealt with this lack of clarity 02:20.730 --> 02:29.590 as far as time is concerned by developing various methods of divination or sortilage, as it's 02:29.590 --> 02:29.690 called. 02:29.710 --> 02:37.110 The Maya, to this day, practice sortilage of a very complicated sort in the highlands 02:37.110 --> 02:43.550 of Guatemala. African peoples have complex divinatory systems. 02:43.550 --> 02:50.610 We don't have to even mention the enormous sales of the E. Ching and pterodacts and astrology 02:50.610 --> 02:52.150 products here in the United States. 02:52.150 --> 02:59.590 Yes, the E. Ching is the divinatory system, ni plus ultra. It seems to very 02:59.590 --> 03:07.430 early have captured the imagination of Western orientalists, James Legge and Richard Wilhelm. 03:07.430 --> 03:13.350 Their translations made it available to the Western world, and the psychologist Carl 03:13.350 --> 03:20.890 Jung, in inventing and discussing the phenomenon that he called synchronicity, popularized 03:20.890 --> 03:25.830 the E. Ching by using it as an example of this particular phenomenon. 03:25.830 --> 03:29.470 And I know in the literature today, especially in transpersonal psychology, there's a lot 03:29.470 --> 03:35.110 of psychotherapists who use the E. Ching as a regular part of their practice. 03:35.110 --> 03:41.470 And parapsychologists have found striking evidence that the coincidences of tossing 03:41.470 --> 03:45.470 the coins in the E. Ching do have psychological validity. 03:45.470 --> 03:50.950 Yes, well, the thing which amazed me about the E. Ching and caused me to become 03:50.950 --> 03:59.350 so deeply involved with it is this fact that it seems to work against all rational expectation 03:59.350 --> 04:07.630 and the carrying out of this random ritualistic activity seems then to give a reading which 04:07.630 --> 04:12.050 is in fact applicable to the unique situation. 04:12.050 --> 04:20.010 Now Jung's explanation of this was what he called acausal connectedness or synchronicity. 04:20.010 --> 04:28.070 This was simply the idea that it was possible for there to be a coincidence of congruence 04:28.070 --> 04:35.450 between an internal state, a psychological state, and an exterior event. 04:35.450 --> 04:40.850 An obvious example of this would be you think of someone you haven't thought of for years 04:40.850 --> 04:45.850 and an hour later in the mail a letter arrives from them. 04:45.850 --> 04:52.850 And Jung was fascinated by these kinds of apparent coordinations of the interiorized 04:52.850 --> 04:57.350 psychic sphere and the exterior three-dimensional objective. 04:57.350 --> 04:57.850 Yeah. 04:58.070 --> 05:00.030 It's a very subjective world. 05:00.030 --> 05:09.030 My approach was, went somewhat deeper than Jung's in that I felt that I had looked at 05:09.390 --> 05:16.390 many divinatory systems with the notion that I was looking at artifacts of culture, productions 05:19.030 --> 05:26.030 of the human mind that were to a large degree arbitrary. My involvement with the E. Ching 05:26.590 --> 05:27.350 led me very slowly. 05:27.350 --> 05:30.750 very slowly and reluctantly to the conclusion 05:30.750 --> 05:35.750 that this was not simply a product of a cultural mentality 05:37.010 --> 05:41.450 or the stance of a particular people in a time and a place, 05:41.450 --> 05:45.650 but rather that the ancient Chinese had somehow 05:45.650 --> 05:50.010 gotten a leg up even on modern physics 05:50.010 --> 05:53.670 and had produced a theory about time 05:53.670 --> 05:58.670 that was in fact objectively possible to correlate 05:58.770 --> 06:00.470 with our own experience. 06:00.470 --> 06:03.890 In other words, a theory of time much more akin 06:03.890 --> 06:07.250 to a physicist's description of it 06:07.250 --> 06:10.070 than a shaman's description of it. 06:10.070 --> 06:12.870 And you mentioned in your introduction 06:12.870 --> 06:17.690 this time wave zero software that we've developed. 06:17.690 --> 06:21.550 What we've done is simply to formalize 06:21.550 --> 06:23.670 the notion of the Tao. 06:23.670 --> 06:27.850 To make a deep study of the mathematics inherent 06:27.850 --> 06:32.850 in the structure of the sequence of the I Ching. 06:32.990 --> 06:36.210 See, most people are quite familiar with the fact 06:36.210 --> 06:39.150 that the I Ching is composed of hexagrams. 06:39.150 --> 06:41.230 Hexagrams have six lines. 06:41.230 --> 06:44.270 They may be broken, they may be unbroken. 06:44.270 --> 06:47.430 Less well known is the fact that there is 06:47.430 --> 06:52.430 a very ancient tradition, even before the Han Dynasty, 06:52.770 --> 06:53.650 of a particular, 06:53.670 --> 06:58.190 a particular sequence being the correct sequence. 06:58.190 --> 07:00.930 It's called the King Wen sequence. 07:00.930 --> 07:03.210 And while it has been agreed upon 07:03.210 --> 07:06.130 by all scholars commenting on the matter 07:06.130 --> 07:09.630 that the King Wen sequence is somehow primary, 07:09.630 --> 07:13.350 no one had ever explained how it was ordered. 07:13.350 --> 07:16.430 You mean the order of hexagrams from one to 64? 07:16.430 --> 07:17.310 That's correct. 07:17.310 --> 07:22.310 Why is the first one the hexagram with all solid lines? 07:22.310 --> 07:27.310 Why is the second one the hexagram with all broken lines? 07:27.630 --> 07:29.550 And so forth and so on. 07:29.550 --> 07:33.970 I carried out an exhaustive mathematical analysis 07:33.970 --> 07:37.010 of the properties of the King Wen sequence 07:37.010 --> 07:40.850 and reached a number of conclusions, 07:41.830 --> 07:45.970 such as it is not a random sequence. 07:45.970 --> 07:48.910 It was very, very carefully constructed 07:50.090 --> 07:51.410 to conserve certain mathematics. 07:51.410 --> 07:54.210 It was very, very carefully constructed to conserve certain mathematical goals. 07:54.210 --> 07:58.670 For instance, the number of lines that break 07:58.670 --> 08:02.190 as you transit from one hexagram to another 08:02.190 --> 08:05.190 is arranged and controlled in such a way 08:05.190 --> 08:06.930 that when you're all done, 08:06.930 --> 08:11.290 you have a ratio of even to odd of three to four. 08:12.590 --> 08:17.050 Yet this is achieved without any breakages, 08:17.050 --> 08:20.510 first order of different breakages of magnitude five. 08:20.510 --> 08:21.410 Yet this is achieved without any breakages, first order of different breakages of magnitude five. 08:21.410 --> 08:23.450 Now you're beginning to lose me a little bit. 08:23.450 --> 08:27.250 Yes, well, what this all means very simply 08:27.250 --> 08:30.010 is that the King Wen sequence 08:30.010 --> 08:34.190 was constructed by minds the equal 08:34.190 --> 08:38.590 of research mathematicians working in the world today. 08:38.590 --> 08:41.250 It sort of reminds me of the builders 08:41.250 --> 08:43.130 of the great Greek temples 08:43.130 --> 08:46.770 who used the mystical rectangle. 08:46.770 --> 08:49.770 Proportion and symmetry seems to be the central concern here. 08:49.770 --> 08:50.770 Proportion and symmetry seems to be the central concern here. 08:50.770 --> 08:51.410 Proportion and symmetry seems to be the central concern here. 08:51.410 --> 08:52.170 Proportion and symmetry seems to be the central concern here. 08:52.170 --> 08:56.210 You see, we have inherited from our fascination 08:56.210 --> 08:59.770 with Eastern philosophy the idea of Dao, 08:59.770 --> 09:02.830 and Dao in the East is a concept 09:02.830 --> 09:06.770 which antedates the introduction of Buddhism into China 09:06.770 --> 09:09.070 by many, many centuries. 09:09.070 --> 09:13.230 Dao is the notion of a flux 09:13.230 --> 09:15.510 which comes and goes, 09:15.510 --> 09:20.510 a transient medium which builds structures up 09:20.510 --> 09:23.270 and pulls them apart 09:23.270 --> 09:27.510 according to its internal dynamic. 09:27.510 --> 09:31.270 Now, because these notions were introduced to the West 09:31.270 --> 09:34.630 by mystics and philosophers 09:34.630 --> 09:37.250 and people with an interest in metaphysics, 09:37.250 --> 09:39.530 it wasn't immediately grasped 09:39.530 --> 09:41.910 that a philosophy of this sort 09:41.910 --> 09:45.550 could be a mathematical formalism, 09:45.550 --> 09:47.810 that if we're talking about a medium 09:47.810 --> 09:49.730 which comes and goes, 09:50.510 --> 09:53.270 we're talking about a wave mechanical phenomenon. 09:53.270 --> 09:56.870 Well, science in the West for the past 150 years 09:56.870 --> 09:59.550 has developed a powerful set of techniques 09:59.550 --> 10:01.750 for dealing with wave phenomena. 10:01.750 --> 10:03.230 And you seem to be suggesting then 10:03.230 --> 10:06.350 that the 64 hexagrams of the I Ching 10:06.350 --> 10:09.230 in their mathematical relationship one to the other 10:09.230 --> 10:12.350 as you go through the sequence describes a wave form. 10:12.350 --> 10:16.570 A wave form which is experienced in the world 10:16.570 --> 10:20.510 by human beings as time and history. 10:20.510 --> 10:22.750 You see, it's almost as though, 10:24.310 --> 10:28.030 in Western science we're pretty confident 10:28.030 --> 10:31.070 that there are approximately 100 elements, 10:31.070 --> 10:33.110 physical elements to matter. 10:33.110 --> 10:34.470 That's right, different atoms. 10:34.470 --> 10:36.950 That's right, that are incommensurable. 10:36.950 --> 10:39.110 They are somehow primary. 10:40.030 --> 10:43.650 The Chinese looked not at the world of matter, 10:43.650 --> 10:47.950 energy and space, but the world of time 10:47.950 --> 10:50.310 and carried out a very rigorous analysis. 10:50.310 --> 10:54.650 Of their own perception and discovered to their amazement 10:54.650 --> 10:58.590 that time is actually composed of elements. 10:58.590 --> 11:01.530 And as we have then, if I can extrapolate 11:01.530 --> 11:04.490 from what you're saying, the periodic table of elements 11:04.490 --> 11:08.490 in Western chemistry which defines not just 100 elements, 11:08.490 --> 11:12.650 but a relationship between them, cycles and patterns. 11:12.650 --> 11:15.090 Bonding relationships, that's right. 11:15.090 --> 11:16.890 Families of chemicals. 11:16.890 --> 11:19.910 So we have, in other words, families of ways of life, 11:19.910 --> 11:21.530 ways of looking at time. 11:21.530 --> 11:25.190 Well, the hexagrams are the elements 11:25.190 --> 11:28.390 in the Chinese physics of time. 11:28.390 --> 11:33.390 They created a science that reinforces primary perceptions 11:34.790 --> 11:38.990 that we all have, but for which we have no science. 11:38.990 --> 11:40.910 For instance, I'm sure you've noticed 11:40.910 --> 11:45.010 that every day is rather like every other day. 11:45.010 --> 11:47.330 Nevertheless, I'm sure you've also noticed 11:47.330 --> 11:49.810 that some days are radically different 11:49.810 --> 11:51.090 than others. 11:51.090 --> 11:55.010 Well, this sameness but different rule 11:55.010 --> 11:58.750 applies on all levels in a temporal hierarchy. 11:58.750 --> 12:02.590 Centuries are rather like each other, 12:02.590 --> 12:05.370 and yet occasionally a century will come along 12:05.370 --> 12:07.170 that is quite anomalous. 12:07.170 --> 12:12.170 We call this sameness and difference nesting fractal. 12:13.170 --> 12:15.850 This is a new branch of mathematics. 12:15.850 --> 12:18.610 And quite simply, what the Chinese discovered, 12:18.610 --> 12:19.450 Mm-hmm. 12:19.810 --> 12:24.810 circa 3000 B.C. was the fractal nature of time, 12:25.250 --> 12:30.150 that the rules of expression of temporal elements 12:30.150 --> 12:34.150 which govern the rise and fall of dynasties 12:34.150 --> 12:39.150 also govern the rise and fall of love affairs and moods. 12:39.670 --> 12:42.130 Now, you're describing this in mathematical terms, 12:42.130 --> 12:43.650 and I'd like to come back and ask you 12:43.650 --> 12:45.630 to define the term fractal in a moment, 12:45.630 --> 12:47.850 but I'm also curious about how you seem 12:47.850 --> 12:49.690 to be going back and forth 12:49.810 --> 12:51.890 between something purely quantitative 12:51.890 --> 12:53.610 and something qualitative. 12:54.610 --> 12:57.390 Well, that's the interesting thing, you see. 12:57.390 --> 13:01.490 The Chinese understood that these temporal elements 13:01.490 --> 13:06.490 were, in a sense, creating interference patterns 13:06.830 --> 13:10.770 with each other, much in the way that pure tones 13:10.770 --> 13:14.910 struck out on a keyboard will, through their interference 13:14.910 --> 13:19.690 with each other, create a melody so that, for instance, 13:19.810 --> 13:24.650 if I find myself sitting in Hadrian's hamburger joint 13:24.650 --> 13:28.770 enjoying a burger, by this theory, 13:28.770 --> 13:31.690 there would actually be a relationship between 13:31.690 --> 13:35.870 that act and the emperor Hadrian's campaigns 13:35.870 --> 13:39.890 in Britain before the fall of the Roman Empire. 13:39.890 --> 13:43.850 This is the amazing thing which James Joyce used 13:43.850 --> 13:47.410 and understood in the construction of his literary works, 13:47.830 --> 13:49.690 that a man leaving his home, 13:49.810 --> 13:57.110 in Dublin on a day in 1905 to buy kidneys to fry for breakfast is in some 13:57.110 --> 14:04.750 mysterious way actually repeating the peregrinations of the hero Odysseus 14:04.750 --> 14:10.590 around the Mediterranean in his campaign to destroy Troy and return to his 14:10.590 --> 14:16.810 faithful wife allegory is what we're talking about but allegory has never 14:16.810 --> 14:22.430 been taken seriously by science analogical reasoning is definitely 14:22.430 --> 14:29.350 de classe in the better laboratories but in this ancient Chinese way of looking 14:29.350 --> 14:37.570 at things everything was caused by its analogical resonances with past and 14:37.570 --> 14:43.630 future events which had the same temporal elements embedded in them now 14:43.630 --> 14:46.710 it's difficult to go into this without resorting 14:46.710 --> 14:46.790 to the theory of the ancient Chinese way of looking at things now it's difficult to go into this without resorting to 14:46.790 --> 14:53.090 at least charts and diagrams if not puzzling equations with sigmas embedded 14:53.090 --> 14:56.990 in them let me step back for a moment because we've been talking very 14:56.990 --> 15:01.790 intensively about the I Ching which is one system a very popular and profound 15:01.790 --> 15:06.510 and highly respected system of this type but there are other comparable systems 15:06.510 --> 15:11.930 for example there's astrology that's right astrology is another one of these 15:11.930 --> 15:16.690 systems that seeks to define pre potent relationships in 15:16.690 --> 15:25.690 nature that can be known by man in order to ease movement into the future the 15:25.690 --> 15:33.130 success of astrology I think is borne out by its persistence it is after all 15:33.130 --> 15:39.010 one of the most persistent of human intellectual tools it was developed four 15:39.010 --> 15:46.590 or five thousand years ago but it I think what troubles modern human 15:46.590 --> 15:52.710 beings about astrology is that it is a mechanistic system it's like a group of 15:52.710 --> 15:58.590 cogs and wheels which all can turn at given rates and therefore their end 15:58.590 --> 16:03.430 states can be predicted but then we're dealing again with the nature of nested 16:03.430 --> 16:09.310 cycles well we have a strong intuition of free will and this is why I think 16:09.310 --> 16:16.490 quantum physics with its probabilistic notion of determinists 16:16.490 --> 16:23.290 has been so attractive to the modern mind my conclusions looking at the Ching 16:23.290 --> 16:29.930 have been that it is not possible to know the future for if it were possible 16:29.930 --> 16:35.730 to know it life would be a determinism and thinking would be divorced from 16:35.730 --> 16:43.370 meaning and we would be out of business but what is possible to know about the 16:43.370 --> 16:46.370 future is levels of knowledge 16:46.490 --> 16:53.930 novelty which future states will fulfill by the happenstance of unpredictable 16:53.930 --> 17:00.710 events now this is a formal way of saying we know where the road goes but 17:00.710 --> 17:04.970 we don't know what the scenery looks like I think where the future is 17:04.970 --> 17:10.510 concerned we can know where the road goes but we cannot know what the what 17:10.510 --> 17:15.290 the scenery will look like people who have looked at my theory have said well 17:15.290 --> 17:21.270 these time maps that your computer draws you're trying to get rid of the 17:21.270 --> 17:28.290 future and as a matter of fact a map of time no more eliminates the future than 17:28.290 --> 17:33.510 a map of South America eliminates the need to go there it simply gives one a 17:33.510 --> 17:38.010 better handle on one's destination now you mentioned quantum physics a moment 17:38.010 --> 17:41.690 ago yes in quantum physics there there are a number of different notions 17:41.690 --> 17:45.290 related to the future one is a notion of multiple universes 17:45.290 --> 17:51.710 another yes and another is a notion of everything is probabilistic and while we 17:51.710 --> 17:56.270 can't know with any certainty what will happen we can state with various 17:56.270 --> 18:00.510 probabilities what what the possibilities are how does this relate 18:00.510 --> 18:05.850 to to your view of the time in the future well I think that at the 18:05.850 --> 18:12.050 macro physical level things are rather rigidly determined with the exception of 18:12.050 --> 18:15.270 living organisms so my interpretation of quantum physics is that the future is 18:15.290 --> 18:22.770 a physical thing the future is simply a 18:22.770 --> 18:28.530 physical thing and not something that doesn't exist and the future is something 18:28.530 --> 18:33.570 that exists and so what it shows us with any kind of a characterization of 18:33.570 --> 18:38.330 what biology is and how it relates to quantum physics and time is really 18:38.330 --> 18:43.670 biological systems are amplifiers of quantum mechanical indeterminacy they are 18:43.670 --> 18:45.070 a way of taking the 18:45.070 --> 18:48.830 is life consciousness and self-reflection. 18:48.830 --> 18:50.990 And you see this described in the I Ching. 18:50.990 --> 18:55.990 Yes, I think the I Ching is an abstract modeling system 18:56.830 --> 19:00.070 for breaking this down to its simplest elements 19:00.070 --> 19:02.670 and then seeing how it works. 19:02.670 --> 19:05.230 Now, we're accustomed to thinking of science 19:05.230 --> 19:09.970 as linear progress from the distant past to the present. 19:09.970 --> 19:14.530 What I'm suggesting is that at least in the matter of time, 19:14.530 --> 19:19.530 the Chinese of the pre-Han period had a much more true 19:20.510 --> 19:25.510 and formally applicable notion of time than we ourselves do. 19:27.050 --> 19:31.110 We have failed in our effort to assimilate time 19:31.110 --> 19:34.850 into our physics because of our obsession with matter 19:34.850 --> 19:36.530 and the release of energy. 19:36.530 --> 19:38.690 Now, there's some scholars who suggest 19:38.690 --> 19:41.730 that the African Yoruba people with their system 19:41.730 --> 19:43.570 of divination called Ifa, 19:43.570 --> 19:44.530 which has a cycle of time, 19:44.530 --> 19:49.530 a cycle, I think, of 244 or 264 various myths and stories, 19:51.250 --> 19:53.310 is even more sophisticated than the I Ching, 19:53.310 --> 19:55.130 which has only 64. 19:55.130 --> 19:56.250 Have you looked into that? 19:56.250 --> 19:58.150 I have looked into it. 19:58.150 --> 20:01.990 What makes the I Ching so powerful in my mind 20:01.990 --> 20:06.550 is that it appears to be an exact analogy 20:06.550 --> 20:10.530 to the mechanism of DNA. 20:10.530 --> 20:14.510 There are 64 codons which code for amino acids. 20:14.510 --> 20:17.610 There are 64 divinations in DNA. 20:17.610 --> 20:20.010 There are 64 hexagrams. 20:20.010 --> 20:22.790 There are 8 primary hexagrams. 20:22.790 --> 20:25.830 There are 8 indispensable amino acids. 20:25.830 --> 20:30.830 I felt that really the I Ching is 20:30.870 --> 20:35.110 like mankind's best shot at this 20:35.110 --> 20:39.490 because it has this reflection in the biological matrix 20:39.490 --> 20:41.650 out of which consciousness emerged. 20:41.650 --> 20:43.170 In other words, the various ancient divinations, 20:43.170 --> 20:44.350 in other words, the various ancient divinations, 20:44.350 --> 20:44.490 In other words, the various ancient divinations, 20:44.510 --> 20:51.910 systems may all reflect a striving of human beings towards this intuitive understanding 20:51.910 --> 20:57.750 of the cyclical nature of time and the relationship between mind and the flow of time, and yet 20:57.750 --> 21:01.330 the I Ching may have just sort of hit the nail on the head better than the others. 21:01.330 --> 21:07.870 Well, it's like looking at a 17th century description of the motion of the planets or 21:07.870 --> 21:15.750 a 20th century description. These are basically refinements. But yes, I think that the I Ching 21:15.750 --> 21:23.690 represents a primary perception of the organization of mind, time, and matter. And I'll even tell 21:23.690 --> 21:29.950 you how I think they got a leg up. I think basically there is a tradition in Central 21:29.950 --> 21:37.870 Asia of the so-called stilling the heart techniques vis-à-vis yoga. These are techniques where 21:37.970 --> 21:45.010 vital functions are suppressed, breathing becomes very minimal, all exterior inputs 21:45.010 --> 21:53.510 are suspended, and eventually I think the Chinese sages who practiced this form of meditation 21:53.610 --> 22:02.690 noticed a flux at the center of the stillness which they called Dao and which they set out 22:02.870 --> 22:07.870 to phenomenologically describe, not knowing whether it was physics or whether it was the 22:07.870 --> 22:16.830 organism or deity? And they did not prejudge this question. They simply gave a phenomenological 22:16.830 --> 22:25.410 description of the transcendental flux that they encountered in states of deep yogic ecstasy. 22:25.410 --> 22:33.050 And lo and behold, it turns out that this is the perfect technique for studying time. Time is not 22:33.050 --> 22:38.590 a phenomenon where you build machines with eight-kilometer diameters that cost trillions 22:38.590 --> 22:47.170 of dollars. Time is a phenomenon to be studied by attending dinner parties, perhaps, or pursuing 22:47.170 --> 22:53.950 love affairs, or watching the passing of the seasons, activities much more commiserate with 22:53.950 --> 23:02.270 our vision of the Taoist sage than the white-coated scientist of the present world religion of science. 23:02.890 --> 23:03.030 So, I think that this is a phenomenon that we need to study. 23:03.030 --> 23:09.430 So, really, I think it was an involvement in organism and in the human experience. 23:09.510 --> 23:15.510 In other words, the laboratory for studying time would not so much be our observatories or our systems of 23:15.510 --> 23:21.190 quartz clocks, but rather looking inside of ourselves, observing our own organism. 23:21.490 --> 23:28.870 That's exactly precise, and the workings of our own psychology. To my mind, the greatest commentator 23:28.870 --> 23:32.670 on time in the 20th century, after Albert Einstein, 23:32.670 --> 23:40.950 would certainly have to be Marcel Proust. Proust understood more about the time we experience 23:40.950 --> 23:47.150 and was able to communicate it than any person who has ever lived. And that's within the 23:47.150 --> 23:53.590 confines of what most people consider a fairly effete, highbrow literary project. 23:53.710 --> 23:54.650 Swan's Way. 23:54.890 --> 23:58.590 Well, the entirety of Remembrance of Things. 23:58.590 --> 23:59.150 Yes. 23:59.990 --> 24:02.650 Well, I haven't read that, so you've got me a bit in the dark. 24:02.670 --> 24:08.350 We have about five minutes left, so could you summarize that point or amplify it a bit? 24:08.350 --> 24:15.230 Well, I think the point we're trying to make here, that I have been involved with over the past few years, 24:15.230 --> 24:23.710 is that a revisioning of time would assuage much of what is called modern anxiety. 24:23.710 --> 24:32.510 And that we have limited the categories we were willing to entertain in dealing with this problem. 24:32.510 --> 24:40.190 And that we must genuflect to the ancient Chinese and take a page from their notebook in this matter. 24:40.190 --> 24:50.190 The I Ching, as a divinatory system of great age, reflecting the dynamics of our own genetic material, 24:50.190 --> 24:56.190 and also, though I didn't mention this this evening, it also has deep calendrical properties, 24:56.190 --> 25:02.350 can be used to keep track of time, lays a basis for an understanding of this 25:02.350 --> 25:13.870 curious phenomenon called synchronicity, the coincidental meshing of interior psychic events and exterior events in the real world. 25:13.870 --> 25:24.110 It lays a basis for us to understand the unity of ourselves with the real world that our present approach makes difficult to discern. 25:24.110 --> 25:31.790 So, whereas Carl Jung, the great Swiss psychiatrist who wrote, incidentally, the preface to Richard Wilhelm's book of the I Ching, 25:31.790 --> 25:38.350 and postulated this theory of synchronicity, well, Jung didn't really provide any mechanism for synchronicity. 25:38.350 --> 25:44.350 He simply said it works this way, that the mind seems to be related to these events, 25:44.350 --> 25:48.350 and he found an enormous therapeutic benefit from that understanding. 25:48.350 --> 25:54.750 What you're suggesting is that the potential mechanism behind the Jungian notion of synchronicity 25:54.750 --> 25:58.110 has to do with the structure of time itself. 25:58.110 --> 25:58.910 That's right. 25:58.910 --> 26:01.230 And you must be suggesting, therefore, 26:01.230 --> 26:01.710 that the human mind has to do with the structure of time itself. 26:01.710 --> 26:01.790 That's right. And you must be suggesting, therefore, that the human mind has to do with the structure of time itself. 26:01.790 --> 26:02.350 And you must be suggesting, therefore, that the human mind has to do with the structure of time itself. 26:02.350 --> 26:07.390 At this very deep level that the sages discovered from stilling their organism, 26:07.390 --> 26:11.310 that the mind has a parallel structure, an isomorphic structure. 26:11.310 --> 26:13.790 That's exactly the central point. 26:13.790 --> 26:16.350 The mind arises out of matter. 26:16.350 --> 26:20.190 This is why the I Ching works in both worlds. 26:20.190 --> 26:22.750 One is the reflection of the other. 26:22.750 --> 26:31.710 The key to healing the apparent dualism lies in studying the temporal mechanics indicated by the I Ching. 26:31.710 --> 26:35.710 And I believe we've done this formally, mathematically. 26:35.710 --> 26:39.710 Terence McKenna, you're taking the provocative position that the I Ching, 26:39.710 --> 26:43.710 which some people view as religion and other people dismiss as superstition, 26:43.710 --> 26:46.270 is actually a science. 26:46.270 --> 26:50.110 And I gather that your computer software package, Time Wave Zero, 26:50.110 --> 26:53.390 proposes to be the demonstration of that. 26:53.390 --> 26:55.390 We believe it does demonstrate it. 26:55.390 --> 27:01.630 Of course, ultimately, it will be up to our colleagues to judge the worth of our case. 27:01.630 --> 27:03.630 Terence, it's been a pleasure. 27:03.630 --> 27:05.630 Thank you very much for being with me. 27:05.630 --> 27:08.990 Well, it's been a pleasure to be here, Geoffrey, and discuss this with you. 27:08.990 --> 27:12.990 It's not an easy subject, believe me. 27:12.990 --> 27:16.190 And thank you very much for being with us.