Program Notes
Guest speakers: Terence McKenna, Ralph Abraham, and Rupert Sheldrake
(Minutes : Seconds into program)
03:08 Terence McKenna: “Another way of thinking of it (the Knot of Eternity) is it’s the nexus of connectivity. It’s a place where everything is cotangent, as the mathematicians say. Everything is connected, and I think that’s the place we are growing toward.”
07:30 Ralph Abraham: “If a present moment is between a past that’s familiar and a future which is completely different, then that’s a very special moment.”
10:18 Rupert Sheldrake: Begins a brief explanation of his theory of morphic resonance.
16:08 Terence: “The great successful conspiracies, the Catholic church, capitalism, the Communist Party of China, Zionism, these things don’t call themselves conspiracies. They call themselves historical social movements.”
17:07 Terence: “The task of discerning shit from Shinola looms very large at the end of history.”
20:52 Ralph: Tells about the experience he and Rupert had in a crop circle.
23:53 Rupert: Tells about being arrested while inspecting a crop circle.
27:33 Terence: “I think we’re going to have to come to terms with as the world moves toward this concrescence of novelty is that it gives off spurious reflections of itself.”
28:54 Terence: “The truth will be beautiful, and it will be simple. And it will be persuasive to those who doubt it. So don’t get into some closed loop of viviology. Make the truth seduce you. Don’t be thereby seduced by error.”
31:10 Rupert: Talks about ley lines.
33:49 Terence gives an update on his current thinking about the Timewave (Novelty Theory).
34:17 Terence: “We have created social institutions such as consumer capitalism that are so unfriendly to our innate humaness that they are actually redesigning us, these social systems, to be more brutal, less caring, more acquisitive, more fetishistic, than we naturally would be. And, again, the antidote to this is an awareness of your immediate environment and the tricks that are being run on you and the ways in which we are being manipulated. Man is not bad. Humanity is not flawed. What is flawed are ideologies and social systems that distort humaness for purposes usually of commerce or conquest… . Culture is an intelligence test.”
42:47 Rupert: “I think that the suppression of ritual forms of violence can lead to an outbreak of sacrificial killings by crazed maniacs.”
43:20 Terence: “Well, it’s not a good idea to fear anything. Technology is prostheses. Technology is tools. We’ve always been defined by our tools. There is nothing about us that would be human if it weren’t for our tools. Language is a tool. The cutting edge is a tool. Social organization is a tool… . Shamanism is simply a technology.”
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Transcript
00:00:00 ►
Greetings from Cyberdelic Space.
00:00:19 ►
This is Lorenzo, and I’m your host here in the Psychedelic Salon.
00:00:23 ►
And I don’t know about you, but this last hit of Mercury retrograde has really caused havoc around here.
00:00:30 ►
It started for us with a front tire blowout in the fast lane of the freeway
00:00:34 ►
and then progressed to a loss of internet connectivity for a week or so.
00:00:39 ►
I’ll say a little more about all this at the end of today’s program,
00:00:42 ►
but first I want to play a talk that I hadn’t
00:00:45 ►
planned on podcasting until later this year. I know that I told you that the next trialogue
00:00:50 ►
between Terrence McKenna, Ralph Abraham, and Rupert Sheldrake would be the one that I believe
00:00:56 ►
to be their final trialogue, which was held in June of 1998. But due to circumstances,
00:01:02 ►
I’ve decided to play a program that is only labeled
00:01:05 ►
Triolog Mini
00:01:07 ►
this is from one of the tapes
00:01:10 ►
in the box of cassette tapes
00:01:11 ►
that Ralph Abraham loaned to me
00:01:13 ►
for podcasting
00:01:14 ►
and it appears to be a stand-alone session
00:01:17 ►
that was directed by questions
00:01:19 ►
from the audience
00:01:20 ►
I don’t know when it was recorded
00:01:22 ►
but Rupert mentions that they were in Santa Cruz.
00:01:26 ►
And in the background, it sounds like they’re at a lunch of some kind on the day after a weekend of trilogues.
00:01:32 ►
But that could just be my overactive imagination making that up.
00:01:37 ►
I edited out long questions that couldn’t be heard very well, but the speakers generally repeated them, so you won’t actually miss much of what was said.
00:01:46 ►
Also, there were a couple of little gaps of silence that appeared in the tape for no apparent reason.
00:01:52 ►
Maybe they were using Nixon’s secretary to make the recording.
00:01:58 ►
That’s an obscure history reference for you to look up on your own if you don’t get it.
00:02:02 ►
But all in all, I think this recording has a kind of homebrew quality
00:02:06 ►
that has a certain charm of its own.
00:02:09 ►
The beginning of the tape was garbled a bit,
00:02:11 ►
but probably because the recorder was old and the tape was slipping.
00:02:14 ►
That’s just my guess.
00:02:16 ►
So I cut that part out too,
00:02:18 ►
but basically it was Ralph telling the audience
00:02:20 ►
that the three of them would do a trialogue
00:02:22 ►
based on questions from the audience
00:02:24 ►
that he hoped would be general in nature.
00:02:27 ►
And the first question had to do with the knot of eternity.
00:02:31 ►
And if you’re wondering what the knot of eternity is, well, you’re not alone,
00:02:35 ►
because Ralph then added a proviso that it might be helpful if the questions were also something
00:02:40 ►
that could be used to launch a trialogue.
00:02:43 ►
We’ll begin with Terrence stepping in and explaining the genesis of that question.
00:02:48 ►
So let’s join him.
00:02:55 ►
I think the question is about the t-shirt I’m wearing.
00:03:01 ►
Which I’m not sure Ralph realized that’s what the question was about.
00:03:06 ►
What t-shirt? This t-shirt. which I’m not sure Ralph realized that’s what the question was about what do you share? this to you
00:03:07 ►
well I’m not a
00:03:12 ►
Buddhist but I’m interested in
00:03:14 ►
the knot of eternity
00:03:15 ►
because
00:03:17 ►
another way of thinking of it is it’s the
00:03:20 ►
nexus of connectivity
00:03:22 ►
it’s a place where everything
00:03:24 ►
is cotangent as the mathematicians say.
00:03:28 ►
Everything is connected.
00:03:30 ►
And I think that’s the place that we’re growing toward.
00:03:35 ►
That’s what all the complexification in biology and culture is about,
00:03:41 ►
is this mysterious super-connected dimension
00:03:45 ►
that lies ahead of us in the future.
00:03:49 ►
So that’s what that’s all about.
00:03:52 ►
Along those lines, can you address the fascination we have
00:03:55 ►
with years ending in zeros and millennialism
00:03:59 ►
and certain Christian fascination with the end of the world?
00:04:03 ►
The question is can we address the certain fascination with the end of the world? The question is, can we address the certain fascination
00:04:07 ►
that people have with years ending in three zeros
00:04:11 ►
and stuff like that?
00:04:18 ►
I think personally that the word millennium
00:04:22 ►
has been misunderstood not only by
00:04:25 ►
ordinary people walking around reading in the newspaper but also a famous
00:04:29 ►
authors of big books about the millennium and it doesn’t really have
00:04:33 ►
anything to do with the number but certainly numbers have a fascination but
00:04:41 ►
I think that the fascination with the year 2000 is just a bunch of hype.
00:04:48 ►
And I don’t, but you know better than I do, I don’t believe that people are fascinated by the year 2000 under the heading millennium.
00:04:55 ►
But let me just ask you, how many people are fascinated by the year 2000?
00:05:03 ►
See, Terrence and a few followers now on the other hand
00:05:10 ►
if you were interested in 2048
00:05:12 ►
now there’s a power of two
00:05:13 ►
that’s an interesting number
00:05:14 ►
the question is
00:05:24 ►
about an idea we discussed yesterday
00:05:29 ►
concerning bifurcations in general, a mathematical notion,
00:05:33 ►
and the possible emergence of a new species.
00:05:35 ►
That is something we talked about a lot yesterday,
00:05:38 ►
so I’ll ask Rupert.
00:05:42 ►
I’m afraid I’ve forgotten this discussion.
00:05:46 ►
What do you mean by that, Ralph?
00:05:47 ►
We didn’t talk about the emergence of new species.
00:05:50 ►
I think I’m going to interpret the question freely, if I may.
00:05:55 ►
We talked about, so first of all,
00:05:59 ►
we discussed evolution from different aspects,
00:06:02 ►
particularly the difference between
00:06:07 ►
biological evolution like the descent of man from apes or whatever and the the
00:06:13 ►
evolution of species like those pro bites and stuff on one hand and the
00:06:18 ►
evolution of individual consciousness and world cultural history or in other
00:06:23 ►
words culture civilization social transformations in other words which
00:06:28 ►
completely different thing but there is a foot around the land a kind of a
00:06:34 ►
optimistic belief that all different kind of evolution follows similar rules
00:06:39 ►
and that’s called generally the lution theory therefore we tried to extrapolate more or less from the
00:06:47 ►
sequence of events which results in a biological evolutionary quantum leap
00:06:53 ►
with a possibly similar sequence of events that results in a quantum leap in
00:06:59 ►
social evolution. And then we went on to say that we’re interested in this
00:07:05 ►
because we believe that probably we are in such a quantum leap right now.
00:07:10 ►
And therefore, and Eric touched on this in his brilliant introduction
00:07:15 ►
about our present moment between the past and the future,
00:07:20 ►
that if the present moment is between a past that’s familiar
00:07:24 ►
and a future which is completely different,
00:07:26 ►
then that’s a very special moment.
00:07:28 ►
And because we are in such a moment
00:07:29 ►
and we don’t want to be afraid of it,
00:07:31 ►
we have to understand if there is a universal process
00:07:35 ►
of evolutionary jump,
00:07:38 ►
and we knew about it,
00:07:39 ►
then we’d have a better understanding
00:07:41 ►
of where we are right now in the present moment
00:07:43 ►
and therefore a better chance of creating a future for this next after the leap, whatever it is.
00:07:51 ►
But I made that up.
00:07:52 ►
I don’t know if it had anything to do with yesterday or not.
00:07:57 ►
I think we have to go on to another question.
00:08:00 ►
I’m sorry if I didn’t do an adequate job with that one.
00:08:02 ►
I’m sorry if I didn’t do an adequate job with that one.
00:08:08 ►
Could you talk about globalization in some kind of context?
00:08:10 ►
Maybe not context, maybe another one.
00:08:21 ►
But how either you or all of you feel globalization is either destroying or evolving or stimulating something else?
00:08:25 ►
So the question is, can we talk about globalization? Is it okay if I just shorten it to that,
00:08:27 ►
giving the partners the greatest latitude to do this?
00:08:34 ►
Thanks ever so.
00:08:39 ►
Well, I mean, globalization means change.
00:08:43 ►
It means boundary dissolution.
00:08:46 ►
On one level, it means the creation of a global monoculture of values,
00:08:51 ►
which is certainly less rich than a culture of aboriginal and unique human societies.
00:09:01 ►
The problem is no one wants to live in a museum diorama in order to support somebody
00:09:07 ►
else’s idea of political correctness. So all over the world, what people want to do is join up with
00:09:14 ►
consumer culture and values, generally speaking. On the other end of the spectrum, those values
00:09:22 ►
are mutating faster than they ever have before,
00:09:26 ►
producing all kinds of new technologies, socially empowered groups that previously had no voice.
00:09:35 ►
So is the situation, yes. Is there gain? Yes.
00:09:39 ►
The outcome of all this is going to be a diminishing of the power of culture to mold people’s lives
00:09:49 ►
and an empowering of eccentricity, marginality, and individuality.
00:09:56 ►
So whether you call this win or lose, there’s something there for everybody, I think.
00:10:04 ►
Now here’s a leading question which is address to Rupert would you
00:10:09 ►
tell us about your current research with morphogenetic fields yes well all right
00:10:18 ►
have probably not everyone knows what this is all about so I have to give a
00:10:21 ►
very brief thumbnail sketch. I put
00:10:25 ►
forward a theory that all living systems and all organized systems like galaxies,
00:10:30 ►
stars, planets, molecules, crystals, clouds, animals, ecosystems, societies, etc. These
00:10:37 ►
self-organizing systems are organized by invisible fields, morphic fields within
00:10:42 ►
and around the system and that these fields have a kind of inherent memory given by the process I call morphic
00:10:48 ►
resonance. A giraffe today tunes in to all giraffes in the past and draws on a
00:10:53 ►
collective giraffe memory. A crystal today tunes into the memories of similar
00:10:59 ►
crystals in the past and that’s why crystals keep crystallizing the same way.
00:11:03 ►
When new crystals are made this isn’t what happens, it as a habit builds up in
00:11:07 ►
nature. So the idea is that the laws of nature are more like habits, the universe
00:11:12 ►
has a memory and this idea of course is controversial. There are two ways
00:11:18 ►
of testing it. One is to test the morphic resonance aspect which is to look for
00:11:22 ►
memory effects in nature. The other way is to look for memory effects in nature and
00:11:25 ►
the other way is to look at the morphic fields which connect things together in
00:11:29 ►
space and I’ve been working on both kinds of tests in my earlier books like
00:11:35 ►
at the presence of the past I summarized tests mostly in psychology for morphic
00:11:41 ►
resonance trying to see whether the collective human memory people learn
00:11:44 ►
something in one place can they learn the same thing quicker in
00:11:47 ►
another? I can’t here summarize the many experiments that have been done but most
00:11:53 ►
of them have given positive results supporting the morphic resonance
00:11:56 ►
hypothesis. Some have given non-significant results. Usually tests
00:12:01 ►
where one’s looking at the memory effects from millions of people in the
00:12:04 ►
past,
00:12:10 ►
for example, to do with written scripts like Hebrew, those give positive results, whereas those that involve a few people, 50 to 100 people learning something new now,
00:12:15 ►
sometimes give positive results, sometimes they’re not significant.
00:12:18 ►
It’s too weak to detect with small samples reliably.
00:12:23 ►
However, recently it’s come to light that
00:12:25 ►
where bodies of data like IQ test data exist over many years, since 1910 standard IQ tests
00:12:34 ►
have been administered. Mysteriously, the average score has been going up and up and
00:12:38 ►
up all over the world. It’s only recently become clear that this is the case. It’s called the Flynn effect after its discover of Flynn.
00:12:46 ►
And
00:12:48 ►
Nobody can explain it because people aren’t getting smarter. No other measure shows that people are getting smarter all over the world.
00:12:55 ►
They’re just getting better at doing IQ tests.
00:12:59 ►
And this I think is because they’re tuning in by morphic resonance to all the millions of people who’ve done these tests before.
00:13:06 ►
Attempts by psychologists to explain this phenomenon have failed,
00:13:10 ►
and Flynn confesses himself baffled.
00:13:13 ►
I predicted this effect on the basis of morphic resonance years ago.
00:13:17 ►
I discuss it in my 1988 book, The Presence of the Past.
00:13:20 ►
And I think that this is the most impressive piece of psychological evidence
00:13:25 ►
because it involves the largest scale set of data
00:13:28 ►
and it wasn’t collected by me so it’s not in dispute
00:13:31 ►
that there’s a special pleading on my part.
00:13:36 ►
In relation to Morphic Fields, I must keep this brief,
00:13:39 ►
I’m looking at the bonds between people and people, people and pets.
00:13:45 ►
These social bonds, the way that members of a social group are connected together by fields.
00:13:50 ►
And one of those research projects is going on right here in Santa Cruz.
00:13:55 ►
There are two main centers for this research in the world,
00:13:57 ►
one London, where I live, and the other, Santa Cruz.
00:14:02 ►
Indeed, this gives me a wonderful opportunity to put in an appeal, which I was hoping to
00:14:07 ►
have a chance to make this evening, to those of you who live around here. We’re studying,
00:14:13 ►
among other things, psychic pets. Dogs that know when their owners are coming home and
00:14:17 ►
go to the door and wait before someone comes in. Cats that anticipate the arrivals of their
00:14:22 ►
owners. Pets that pick up their owners’ intentions telepathically, like cats that know the arrivals of their owners pets that pick up their owners intentions telepathically
00:14:26 ►
like cats that know when they’re going to be taken to the vet and disappear
00:14:29 ►
and dogs that know when they’re going to be taken for a walk
00:14:33 ►
and get excited even before anyone’s moved
00:14:35 ►
or picked up their lead or anything like that
00:14:37 ►
the person who’s doing that research here in Santa Cruz
00:14:41 ►
is very keen to get in touch with people who have dogs or cats
00:14:44 ►
or cockatiels or other pets that do this kind of thing.
00:14:48 ►
And so if any of you do and would like to take part in these experiments, please talk
00:14:52 ►
to David Brown afterwards, who’s working with me on this project here in Santa Cruz.
00:14:57 ►
And David is here.
00:15:00 ►
So if you stay around here, David, so those who can’t see you will know where to find
00:15:04 ►
you at least.
00:15:06 ►
Afterwards, that would be a big help.
00:15:10 ►
Can you speak on the idea of conspiracy, is the question.
00:15:15 ►
And the answer is yes.
00:15:21 ►
This might be an opportunity for sort of a mini-log.
00:15:26 ►
Yes.
00:15:27 ►
I think.
00:15:27 ►
Tempest is the future.
00:15:33 ►
Is that a yes or a no?
00:15:35 ►
It’s a cautionary note.
00:15:39 ►
Well, I think this is the kind of subject on which Terence has most to say.
00:15:43 ►
I think this is the kind of subject on which Terence has most to say.
00:15:51 ►
Well, I may have the most to say.
00:15:52 ►
I’m not sure it’s what you want to hear.
00:16:02 ►
Conspiracy theory generally seems to me to be, it flattens reality. It betrays its true complexity.
00:16:08 ►
The great successful conspiracies,
00:16:11 ►
the Catholic Church, capitalism,
00:16:14 ►
the Communist Party of China, Zionism,
00:16:19 ►
these things don’t call themselves conspiracies.
00:16:23 ►
They call themselves historical social movements.
00:16:27 ►
If you bill yourself as a conspiracy,
00:16:29 ►
it’s almost dead certain that whatever you’re about,
00:16:34 ►
it’s of no consequence.
00:16:38 ►
I think there’s a tendency to not think as clearly as we might
00:16:46 ►
because the current reigning paradigm of political correctness,
00:16:51 ►
which is relativism, dictates that we never criticize each other
00:16:56 ►
no matter how preposterous and ontologically unanchored
00:17:00 ►
our vision of the world might be.
00:17:04 ►
So, you know, the task of discerning shit from Shinola
00:17:09 ►
looms very large at the end of history.
00:17:15 ►
And I, just one piece of advice, and then I’ll let this subject go.
00:17:19 ►
If you’re confronted with extraordinary claims
00:17:22 ►
of pro bono proctologists from other star systems
00:17:28 ►
making unannounced house calls or stuff of that ilk,
00:17:35 ►
with the face on Mars, so forth and so on, palladium channeling,
00:17:39 ►
the way to handle this stuff is thoroughly check out the messenger.
00:17:41 ►
to handle this stuff is thoroughly check out
00:17:43 ►
the messenger.
00:17:46 ►
Thoroughly check out the messenger
00:17:48 ►
with questions such as
00:17:50 ►
how many convictions
00:17:51 ►
for grand theft auto
00:17:53 ►
that you have in your life
00:17:56 ►
and so forth
00:17:58 ►
and so on. And I think if we examine
00:18:00 ►
the messenger, much
00:18:02 ►
of the mysterious facts
00:18:04 ►
that haunt our
00:18:05 ►
speculations will be seen to be
00:18:08 ►
something less than
00:18:09 ►
rock-solid stuff.
00:18:12 ►
Gimme.
00:18:15 ►
No, the same
00:18:16 ►
thing can’t be said for DMT.
00:18:18 ►
DMT is not an idea.
00:18:20 ►
It’s not a position.
00:18:21 ►
It’s an experience. If you want to know what
00:18:23 ►
DMT is about, get some and smoke it.
00:18:27 ►
It is unambiguously what it is.
00:18:31 ►
Ideas are the truth.
00:18:35 ►
You can kick the tires.
00:18:37 ►
You can look at the odometer.
00:18:39 ►
The truth doesn’t need spin doctoring, advanced men,
00:18:43 ►
hyphola, promo, or advanced publicity.
00:18:47 ►
And things which do require that are usually bogus.
00:18:58 ►
I have to confess that we’ve duped it out on this one before, and last time Terrence won.
00:19:09 ►
confess that we duked it out on this one before and last time Terrence won. But there is possibly a conspiracy theory as an attempt to explain something that looks like a conspiracy and
00:19:15 ►
one possible explanation is a conspiracy, but although there’s no conspiracy, nevertheless
00:19:21 ►
you have, we have, we all have the experience of seeing a kind of coordination
00:19:27 ►
among events in different spheres in different times that Jung called synchronicity.
00:19:32 ►
We could say that there are kind of space-time patterns in experience that defy ordinary explanation.
00:19:40 ►
And when such a space-time pattern occurs, then we seek an explanation such as some paranormal telepathy,
00:19:48 ►
a precognitive dream, or some other kind of magic, or even an illusion.
00:19:55 ►
Now, the conspiracy is an explanation for a synchronistic event that is perceived as a synchronistic event
00:20:06 ►
by people who perceive it.
00:20:08 ►
We don’t know what is actually going on,
00:20:10 ►
but we think that there’s a pattern,
00:20:12 ►
like he pulled the trigger,
00:20:14 ►
he fell over, something like that.
00:20:17 ►
So, to turn some credit here,
00:20:20 ►
not only there’s no conspiracy,
00:20:22 ►
but there’s nothing that even appears like a conspiracy,
00:20:26 ►
but the idea, the impression that there is a synchronicity
00:20:30 ►
is, as a matter of fact, a kind of a mass insanity,
00:20:35 ►
an illusion which is taken up as a, you know,
00:20:39 ►
like the Shroud of Turin or something.
00:20:41 ►
It’s the illusion, and then there’s the explanation.
00:20:44 ►
So we had, the last time we duped it out on this
00:20:47 ►
was, I believe, in the context of the famous crop circles.
00:20:52 ►
Now, crop circles are much better known in England
00:20:54 ►
than they are in California
00:20:56 ►
because they mostly occurred in England.
00:20:58 ►
But in California, we like to pride ourselves
00:21:00 ►
that we know what’s going on in England.
00:21:03 ►
And so one time I flew over to England to experience a crop circle,
00:21:06 ►
and Rupert and I flew down, having heard the news that one had recently appeared.
00:21:12 ►
We flew down the motorway in his car, and we experienced a fresh crop circle,
00:21:18 ►
and we had a kind of epiphany there, I would say, on several different levels.
00:21:22 ►
And we came back rather
00:21:25 ►
softened in our skepticism about the crop circles now what crop circles are
00:21:31 ►
is I mean on some abstract level that we’re talking about is the
00:21:35 ►
synchronistic kind of thing where this crop circle here this crop circle there
00:21:39 ►
this sort of space-time pattern in the occurrence of things for which there is
00:21:43 ►
no rational explanation it seems and we softened to the idea that this was not the illusion
00:21:51 ►
but was an actual synchronicity of somehow the earth was speaking to us by
00:21:56 ►
bending its hair
00:22:05 ►
I pity this.
00:22:08 ►
Well, we’ve got you now, Terrence.
00:22:15 ►
Because at that time, Terrence said, his explanation of this was a conspiracy theory.
00:22:19 ►
He said the British Army did maneuvers at night.
00:22:24 ►
He had a conspiracy theory, so he tore it up.
00:22:26 ►
Would you like me to, since I’m sitting here
00:22:27 ►
what I actually said was
00:22:33 ►
since the British
00:22:36 ►
air defense
00:22:38 ►
authorities did not seem
00:22:40 ►
alarmed by the crop circles
00:22:42 ►
that they must know more
00:22:44 ►
than we do
00:22:44 ►
because that
00:22:47 ►
part of England is scattered over with NATO bases thermonuclear weapons depots
00:22:52 ►
and I don’t think mi5 would be tolerating you know a penetration of
00:22:58 ►
British airspace without at least investigating As far as the crop circles are concerned,
00:23:05 ►
I cornered an expert on these matters,
00:23:09 ►
John Michel,
00:23:11 ►
who’s no hard-edged reductionist,
00:23:15 ►
and I asked him, I said,
00:23:17 ►
John, what’s going on in southern England?
00:23:19 ►
And after hemming and hawing,
00:23:21 ►
he said, rural British fun.
00:23:27 ►
And I think that
00:23:27 ►
is what’s
00:23:28 ►
going on
00:23:29 ►
again if you
00:23:29 ►
want to
00:23:29 ►
understand the
00:23:30 ►
crop circles
00:23:31 ►
go to
00:23:31 ►
Devon and
00:23:32 ►
drink in
00:23:32 ►
the bars
00:23:33 ►
and read
00:23:34 ►
the bulletin
00:23:35 ►
boards and
00:23:36 ►
listen to
00:23:36 ►
what the
00:23:37 ►
locals are
00:23:37 ►
saying and
00:23:38 ►
if you can
00:23:39 ►
survive that
00:23:39 ►
experience with
00:23:40 ►
your belief in
00:23:41 ►
the extra
00:23:42 ►
normal origin
00:23:43 ►
of crop
00:23:44 ►
circles then my family has a bridge
00:23:46 ►
over the Hudson River that we will sell you cheese first of all I should add one detail
00:23:54 ►
Ralph left out about this epiphany in the crop circle with the we went to my wife to a purse
00:24:01 ►
Ralph and I went to see it we We got a bit tired walking around.
00:24:05 ►
There were lots of crop circles.
00:24:06 ►
And when we were in the middle of the newest one,
00:24:09 ►
we felt like a rest.
00:24:11 ►
We’d been walking, it was a hot day.
00:24:12 ►
We lay down in a sort of three-fold spoke pattern
00:24:15 ►
around the centre of the circle just for a short rest.
00:24:18 ►
And no sooner had someone commented
00:24:21 ►
what a quiet day it is,
00:24:23 ►
how we could actually be making this and no one would know,
00:24:26 ►
when there was a distant buzz in the air, a helicopter came nearer and nearer,
00:24:30 ►
then descended over the crop circle and circled round above.
00:24:33 ►
On the side of it we read the single word, police.
00:24:37 ►
And shortly afterwards the helicopter landed, police cars approached with sirens blaring from all sides and we were arrested.
00:24:45 ►
They thought at last they’d found the crop circle perpetrated. Our attempt to convince them
00:24:56 ►
that we were merely inspecting them for scientific reasons cut little ice until a jeep arrived
00:25:02 ►
out of which jumped a German Baron with about 10 German
00:25:05 ►
photographers who immediately said Rupert came up to me and turned to the
00:25:10 ►
police and said if there’s one scientist in England who can explain these it’s
00:25:13 ►
Dr. Sheldrake. The police melted away. However we had a discussion about crop circles, Terence’s conspiracy theory and so on, in our first volume of Triologues.
00:25:26 ►
You can read it there, you can see a picture of one.
00:25:28 ►
After that, John, Michelle and I together organised what we thought would be the definitive experiment to get to the bottom of this.
00:25:36 ►
An essay in literal grassroots research.
00:25:48 ►
We got a German magazine to put up prize money, a £3,000 prize.
00:25:51 ►
We got the Guardian newspaper to sponsor the contest.
00:25:55 ►
And we formed an organising committee, of which I was chairman,
00:25:59 ►
to sponsor the first international crop circle-making contest,
00:26:02 ►
which was held in southern England.
00:26:05 ►
We had a fixed design containing all the features supposedly most difficult to hoax.
00:26:07 ►
We invited the sceptics to submit an entry
00:26:10 ►
and invited them to nominate a judge.
00:26:13 ►
They refused.
00:26:14 ►
On the grounds this was a set-up,
00:26:16 ►
no one could possibly make a cycle of such complexity
00:26:18 ►
that we’d loaded the contest.
00:26:21 ►
They’re still going on.
00:26:22 ►
There’s still a mystery,
00:26:23 ►
but I think the mystery is somewhat less than before before we don’t need to conspiracy theory to explain it
00:26:37 ►
the question is is it my imagination or is there an increase in weirdness in the world well the quickening well several things are going on first of all yes there is greater
00:26:54 ►
weirdness in the world also the media is a system for amplifying anomaly. All it reports are data points
00:27:07 ►
which depart from predictable curves.
00:27:11 ►
And the faster it can report these things
00:27:14 ►
and the greater such things there are
00:27:16 ►
that can be reported,
00:27:18 ►
the more fascinating the world is.
00:27:20 ►
Thus, the more media is sold,
00:27:22 ►
the more toothpaste moved.
00:27:26 ►
And it is true that complexity is densifying,
00:27:30 ►
but one of the things that I think we’re going to have to come to terms with
00:27:35 ►
as the world moves toward this concrescence of novelty
00:27:40 ►
is that it gives off spurious reflections of itself.
00:27:46 ►
The number of cults will multiply.
00:27:48 ►
The number of channelings multiply.
00:27:51 ►
The number of messiahs and healers moving among the people
00:27:54 ►
will multiply and multiply.
00:27:57 ►
They are caused by the proximity of the anomaly
00:28:02 ►
that they are in fact false images,
00:28:06 ►
distorted images of it.
00:28:08 ►
This is why yesterday I was pleading for
00:28:10 ►
Occam’s razor, clear thinking,
00:28:13 ►
rules of evidence,
00:28:15 ►
because, you know, if hearsay
00:28:16 ►
and excited rumor
00:28:18 ►
is all it takes to sway you
00:28:20 ►
toward believing in a twelfth planet
00:28:23 ►
or aliens trading coaxial cables for fetal tissue
00:28:27 ►
or all the you’re just going to be a victim you’re going to be a mark somebody’s picking
00:28:34 ►
your pocket you know we can do better than that in the great centers of academic thinking and
00:28:40 ►
technical innovation than to spawn people who support
00:28:46 ►
unanchored and unhinged
00:28:48 ►
and tasteless
00:28:50 ►
and over-designed
00:28:52 ►
speculation.
00:28:53 ►
The truth will be beautiful
00:28:55 ►
and it will be simple
00:28:58 ►
and it will be persuasive
00:29:00 ►
to those who doubt it.
00:29:02 ►
So don’t get into some closed
00:29:04 ►
loop of ideology.
00:29:06 ►
Make the truth seduce you.
00:29:08 ►
Don’t be thereby seduced by error.
00:29:12 ►
Wow, thank you.
00:29:18 ►
Would you address the quickening part?
00:29:21 ►
Yeah, I have a,
00:29:22 ►
I’d like the Rupert to speak on.
00:29:25 ►
There’s, I think, the
00:29:26 ►
morphogenetic grid,
00:29:28 ►
ley lines in England,
00:29:30 ►
the Akashic records, which is
00:29:32 ►
the universal mind of memory
00:29:34 ►
in the universe, and
00:29:36 ►
the paradigm shift and the harmonic
00:29:38 ►
convergence, and
00:29:40 ►
interdimensional walls growing
00:29:42 ►
thinner and thinner,
00:29:44 ►
Gerald White and Nicola Tesco.
00:29:50 ►
Everybody could hear that, yes?
00:29:53 ►
Well, there’s a lot of questions here.
00:29:57 ►
Let me start with the harmonic convergence.
00:29:59 ►
August 1987, I believe it was.
00:30:03 ►
I remember it well, because I was invited to a gathering in Glastonbury, England,
00:30:08 ►
to celebrate this turning point in human consciousness.
00:30:12 ►
And although I’d met Jose Arguelles, with Terence probably,
00:30:17 ►
the significance of it wasn’t at all clear to me.
00:30:21 ►
And so when I arrived there, I asked the organisers of this event,
00:30:30 ►
what’s the programme? And they said, well, first we’re having the talk on the significance and meaning of the harmonic convergence. And so I’m delighted. I said,
00:30:34 ►
I’m really longing to hear what that is. And I said, who’s giving the talk? And they said, So it was really a case of the blind leading the blind.
00:30:51 ►
So I can’t say very much about that.
00:30:53 ►
Now, of the list of other phenomena, let’s just take one.
00:30:59 ►
Choose which one.
00:31:00 ►
Okay.
00:31:01 ►
The morphogenetic grid and its relation to ley lines in England and the world
00:31:06 ►
and the interdimensional barriers growing thin.
00:31:08 ►
I think you can get that.
00:31:09 ►
Okay.
00:31:10 ►
Well, let’s just stick to ley lines.
00:31:13 ►
There are these…
00:31:14 ►
In England, there are places…
00:31:16 ►
If you join together ancient sacred sites, they often line up.
00:31:21 ►
And so sometimes you can see a series of church steeples or monuments on the horizon
00:31:28 ►
and they form a line. And these are called ley lines. Some people think they’re power
00:31:32 ►
lines that join ancient sacred places. I was asked to give a talk on morphic resonance
00:31:39 ►
and ley lines at the Ley Hunters Lute, the annual gathering of lay hunters. And I didn’t really understand lay lines,
00:31:47 ►
so I thought I’d ask the audience what they understood.
00:31:52 ►
And the big question, it seemed to me, is are lay lines made?
00:31:55 ►
Are they man-made, or are they really there?
00:31:58 ►
In other words, do people line up sacred sites,
00:32:00 ►
and then because you’ve got sacred sites aligned,
00:32:03 ►
it sort of charges the land between
00:32:06 ►
them so you create a ley line or other lines going across the landscape which people identified by
00:32:13 ►
geomantic means and then built sacred sites on well it turned out there was a great diversity
00:32:18 ►
of opinion and i asked for a vote on the subject um among the audience it was about 50 50 among
00:32:24 ►
lay hunters who devote their lives to
00:32:26 ►
the subject. So there’s no consensus here. And of course, those who’d like to bring about
00:32:30 ►
a consensus will say, well, couldn’t it be both? Yes, it could. There could be features
00:32:36 ►
of the landscape, geomantic features of the landscape, peculiar powers of places which
00:32:40 ►
people were able to recognize in methods not unlike those of Feng Shui today. We know that in Europe people practiced the same kind of thing. They
00:32:49 ►
could pick out special places and it’s probably the case they also tried to
00:32:53 ►
align sacred places to create these systems. One is the St. Michael line
00:32:59 ►
going from the west of Ireland right through to Delos and through to Carmel in Israel,
00:33:07 ►
or Lebanon, wherever it is.
00:33:09 ►
It goes right through Europe, and it goes through some of the most significant and important sacred places.
00:33:14 ►
Jean-Michel has written books on this subject.
00:33:17 ►
They’re probably in the store somewhere.
00:33:19 ►
But the question as to whether they’re made, how they’re created,
00:33:24 ►
and what the significance of these geomantic power spots is.
00:33:28 ►
I don’t know the significance of this
00:33:29 ►
and how it might line up with other spots on the West Coast or elsewhere.
00:33:34 ►
But I think if one’s interested in geomancy and so on,
00:33:38 ►
Santa Cruz is quite a good place to begin.
00:33:47 ►
The request for an update on the timeline well very briefly
00:33:49 ►
the novelty theory
00:33:53 ►
still predicts that
00:33:55 ►
this anomalous
00:33:57 ►
singularity of connection
00:33:59 ►
will occur in
00:34:01 ►
2012 at the winter solstice
00:34:04 ►
congruent to the end of the Mayan calendar.
00:34:07 ►
The mathematics were thoroughly attacked
00:34:09 ►
a couple of years ago
00:34:11 ►
by a young British mathematician named Watkins
00:34:15 ►
and brilliantly defended
00:34:17 ►
by an American mathematician named John Sheliak.
00:34:21 ►
In the course of that contretemps,
00:34:24 ►
I had to admit that I had made errors
00:34:28 ►
in the original scoring method by which I derived the wave.
00:34:34 ►
And when those errors were corrected,
00:34:37 ►
the values shifted on approximately 3%.
00:34:40 ►
So it wasn’t a knockout punch.
00:34:43 ►
In fact, for all but the aficionados this is a
00:34:46 ►
mathematical detail that they need never brush up against bottom line novelty theory is mathematically
00:34:53 ►
more robust than ever and continues to predict uh the increasing levels of connectivity and novelty leading to some kind of encounter with a singularity
00:35:07 ►
approximately 14 years in the future.
00:35:11 ►
This is all in my books and writing and is supported by Mac and PC friendly software
00:35:18 ►
that you can see at my website.
00:35:21 ►
Thanks for asking. How many?
00:35:25 ►
Adrenaline increasing activity.
00:35:27 ►
Adrenaline increasing activity is a result of the human race not being evolutionary
00:35:34 ►
ready for the sedentary lifestyle that we have.
00:35:44 ►
Well, I think what you’re implying is
00:35:46 ►
we’re designed to defend small tribal groups of people
00:35:49 ►
in a hunting gathering situation
00:35:51 ►
and we’re crowded into cities by the millions
00:35:54 ►
and does this increase violence
00:35:56 ►
and the answer is it’s a contributing factor
00:35:59 ►
but I encountered an old friend recently
00:36:02 ►
and I asked him what have you been doing
00:36:04 ►
and he said I founded something called the Rocky Mountain Center for the Study of Media Violence.
00:36:10 ►
And he explained to me something which I had never understood,
00:36:13 ►
because you always hear that violence in media is used to sell things.
00:36:20 ►
But none of us are violent people.
00:36:22 ►
We’re all turned off by violence.
00:36:24 ►
So how is violence used to sell things?
00:36:27 ►
He said, well, how it works is in the evening news,
00:36:31 ►
which is where all the ad revenue is made,
00:36:33 ►
because that’s where most local stations are most watched,
00:36:37 ►
the most violent, disgusting, and value-denying and denigrating story
00:36:44 ►
is pushed right before the main commercial break.
00:36:49 ►
And so your desire to get away from this horrible information
00:36:54 ►
is satisfied when the cut is to the product
00:36:59 ►
and there is an unconscious flood of relief associated with the product.
00:37:07 ►
We are being manipulated.
00:37:10 ►
We have created social institutions such as consumer capitalism
00:37:14 ►
that are so unfriendly to our innate humanness
00:37:18 ►
that they are actually redesigning us, these social systems,
00:37:32 ►
essentially redesigning us, these social systems, to be more brutal, less caring, more acquisitive, more fetishistic than we naturally would be.
00:37:45 ►
And again, the antidote to this is awareness of your immediate environment and the trips that are being run on you and the ways in which we are being manipulated. Man is not bad.
00:37:48 ►
Humanity is not flawed. What is flawed are ideologies and social systems
00:37:52 ►
that distort humanness
00:37:55 ►
for purposes usually of commerce or conquest.
00:38:00 ►
And until you figure out that this is going on,
00:38:02 ►
we’re all going to be run like rats through a maze.
00:38:06 ►
Culture is an intelligence test,
00:38:08 ►
and when you pass that test,
00:38:10 ►
you don’t give a shit about culture.
00:38:13 ►
Could we indeed, Terrence, boil this down to a no?
00:38:16 ►
Yes.
00:38:20 ►
Well, I think that Terrence’s McLuhan-esque theory is more or less correct,
00:38:27 ►
but it doesn’t answer the question.
00:38:28 ►
The question is, do we need more or less, if I can paraphrase again,
00:38:32 ►
in order to have a peaceful, cooperative, planetary society in the future,
00:38:38 ►
do we need some kind of evolutionary leap or not?
00:38:45 ►
Actually, the question was,
00:38:46 ►
do you think that everyone craves crisis and craves violence
00:38:50 ►
because we don’t walk down the street
00:38:52 ►
having to worry about a lion jumping out and eating us
00:38:55 ►
and we’re just not ready for life?
00:38:57 ►
Do you know what I mean?
00:38:57 ►
People go to work every day, they come home,
00:38:59 ►
they watch TV, they go to bed.
00:39:00 ►
It’s so predictable.
00:39:01 ►
Do you think that we’re not evolutionarily ready
00:39:03 ►
for such a predictable lifestyle that’s what I
00:39:06 ►
think are we not evolutionary ready so that means we could hope for an
00:39:12 ►
evolutionary leaf following which we would be evolutionary ready that means
00:39:16 ►
that we contrary to what chance has said that everything is okay with us I
00:39:21 ►
disagree with that I think that we don’t have the intelligence or the biochemistry of anything which is
00:39:27 ►
evolved to the point that the human species is able to have a stable
00:39:31 ►
sustainable peaceful loving planetary society in the future there’s no way we
00:39:37 ►
need to change and we’re hoping that that change the color you believe very
00:39:42 ►
leap or maybe America will take place.
00:39:45 ►
That’s what I think, and that’s why I go around doing what I do,
00:39:50 ►
is that I’m trying to participate in the precipitation of some kind of change following which the future would be possible,
00:39:58 ►
because I don’t think the species we have now is going to make it.
00:40:02 ►
Well, I think if I were doing a research program on violence, I’d compare different societies.
00:40:09 ►
I lived in India for a long time, and most Indian society, although people live very
00:40:14 ►
crowded in traditional cities, like the old city of Hyderabad, where I lived, there’s
00:40:19 ►
not a very high level of violence.
00:40:21 ►
And in Indian villages, there’s remarkably peaceful atmosphere.
00:40:24 ►
People don’t block their houses. You don’t get attacked on the streets. high level of violence and in Indian villages there’s remarkably peaceful atmosphere. People
00:40:25 ►
don’t block their houses, you don’t get attacked on the streets. Many traditional societies
00:40:29 ►
have very little violence. On the other hand there are some traditional societies like
00:40:34 ►
Malaya where I’ve also lived where you can have extremely peaceful, happy looking people
00:40:39 ►
in villages and suddenly someone will run amok. Amok is a Malay word. And when they
00:40:45 ►
run amok, they go into an orgy of violence. They usually do it with machetes because they
00:40:50 ►
don’t have handguns everywhere there, as they do in some other places. But they run
00:40:56 ►
amok and they’ll chop off anyone in sight, kill members of their family. It’s very like
00:41:01 ►
these shooting frenzies that break out here in the United States. And I think that if one’s looking at the comparative psychology of violence,
00:41:09 ►
there’s a lot to be learned by looking at the way it occurs in other societies. Right
00:41:13 ►
now, we tend to look at it as an isolated by the media test. But different cultures
00:41:18 ►
have different ways of dealing with this and of the way in which violence breaks out. I
00:41:23 ►
was in Portugal recently,
00:41:28 ►
and I was staying in a hotel overlooking a large structure,
00:41:31 ►
round structure, and I thought I’d go and have a look what it was.
00:41:33 ►
It turned out to be the local bullring,
00:41:37 ►
and there was a big poster saying,
00:41:39 ►
University Bullfight Week at the Catholic University of Lisbon versus something else.
00:41:42 ►
These universities field their own bullfighting teams.
00:41:46 ►
And, now, this was an alien concept to me.
00:41:49 ►
We never had a university bullfighting team in Cambridge.
00:41:56 ►
In those cultures, the Hispanic in Portugal and Spain,
00:42:01 ►
they have institutionalized spectacle kind of thing
00:42:03 ►
fully displayed on a limited scale.
00:42:06 ►
In terms of the bloodshed, the killing of bulls,
00:42:09 ►
I think, although I think it’s cruel and unnecessary,
00:42:13 ►
a far larger number of bulls are killed for hamburgers every day,
00:42:17 ►
behind closed doors, under conditions that I’d rather not know about.
00:42:21 ►
I don’t eat hamburgers or meat, I must say,
00:42:24 ►
partly because I don’t like that idea, but it may be better to have it up front and out in the open and have real
00:42:29 ►
adrenaline release through ritualized violence and ritualized sacrifice, which all traditional
00:42:35 ►
cultures are based on ritualized blood sacrifice of one kind or another. And the Christian
00:42:40 ►
Holy Communion is a mutated form of a blood sacrifice, central to our own culture.
00:42:45 ►
So I think that the suppression of ritual forms of violence can lead to an outbreak of sacrificial killings by crazed maniacs,
00:42:54 ►
because it somehow sanctions forms within an ordered system and no longer possible.
00:43:01 ►
Should technology be cleared by human society or embraced or both?
00:43:07 ►
Thanks.
00:43:20 ►
Well, it’s not a good idea to fear anything.
00:43:23 ►
Technology is prosthesis.
00:43:25 ►
Technology is tools.
00:43:27 ►
We’ve always been defined by our tools.
00:43:31 ►
There is nothing about us that would be human if it weren’t for our tools.
00:43:37 ►
Language is a tool.
00:43:39 ►
The cutting edge is a tool.
00:43:41 ►
Social organization is a tool.
00:43:41 ►
Cutting edge is a tool.
00:43:44 ►
Social organization is a tool.
00:43:47 ►
Mercilliad wrote a book called Shamanism,
00:43:50 ►
The Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy.
00:43:53 ►
Shamanism is essentially a technology.
00:43:58 ►
I think we should simply take it as given that we are the kind of creature
00:44:00 ►
that downloads its ideas into matter
00:44:03 ►
and thereby creates a history for itself
00:44:06 ►
out of the consequences of that act.
00:44:10 ►
And fear is not appropriate.
00:44:13 ►
Consciousness and attention to the effects is appropriate.
00:44:19 ►
Well, we have over a million years of dependence on technology,
00:44:23 ►
so there’s not much we can do about it now.
00:44:30 ►
Given the new research in genetic biology,
00:44:35 ►
is it possible to create a human ideal for the future and I pass evolution.
00:44:48 ►
Can we clone people?
00:44:51 ►
No, not clone people.
00:44:52 ►
We genetically engineer people
00:44:57 ►
bypassing evolution to create the future.
00:45:01 ►
The aim of breeding a super race of people
00:45:04 ►
using standard techniques was
00:45:06 ►
called eugenics and it was very fashionable among geneticists in the earlier part of the century.
00:45:12 ►
It got a very bad name when it was applied on the large scale by Hitler in order to produce
00:45:17 ►
a master race by having stud farms of blonde women, SS officers and so on, to produce a new master race of perfect
00:45:26 ►
Aryan specimens. Eugenics went out of fashion after the Second World War precisely because
00:45:33 ►
of its abuse by the Nazis and by others. It’s reared its head again in a modern form in
00:45:41 ►
the context of genetic engineering, as you rightly point out, there are some people in the genetic engineering world who are fanatical eugenicists,
00:45:49 ►
who think they can purify and uplift the human race.
00:45:53 ►
This is not a new idea.
00:45:55 ►
It used to say that we needed smarter people for the improvement of the human race,
00:46:00 ►
and this should be achieved by artificial insemination or natural insemination.
00:46:04 ►
The sperm donors should be people who were Nobel Prize winners
00:46:10 ►
and so on. Sir Julian Huxley was an example of that kind of eugenicist. When he
00:46:15 ►
described the ideal sperm donor it remarked was remarkably like Sir Julian Huxley. in the modern context though you can’t engineer in genes very easily in fact
00:46:34 ►
it’s extremely difficult to do what genetic engineering really means in
00:46:39 ►
practice in the human realm is a series of tests for defective genes or genes
00:46:44 ►
you don’t like.
00:46:46 ►
And then within vitro fertilization, you have dozens of embryos.
00:46:49 ►
You test the embryos.
00:46:50 ►
You kill all the ones that you don’t like.
00:46:53 ►
It’s basically selective abortion in practice.
00:46:56 ►
And with amniocentesis and selective abortion for Down syndrome and spina bifida,
00:47:01 ►
we already have this on a mass scale.
00:47:03 ►
They’re trying to produce yet more effective methods of selective abortion using these modern techniques of genetic diagnosis.
00:47:11 ►
Now, whether you think that’s a good thing or not depends on where you’re coming from.
00:47:15 ►
Personally, I’m not very keen on it. And because any question of improvement of the human race
00:47:21 ►
depends on what you think is a better kind of humanity.
00:47:25 ►
And chances are you’ll think it’s something rather like an improved, idealized version
00:47:29 ►
of yourself.
00:47:30 ►
And so I think that the eugenic dream is not something that can be realized today in the
00:47:38 ►
human realm.
00:47:39 ►
In the animal realm, through genetic engineering and cloning of animals like high milk yielding cows and stuff.
00:47:47 ►
It will be practiced quite soon.
00:47:49 ►
It will be another step towards the mechanization
00:47:51 ►
and industrialization of agriculture through factory farming.
00:47:55 ►
I’m glad I became a vegetarian a long time ago.
00:47:57 ►
I don’t want to support that kind of industry.
00:48:01 ►
But there’s nothing inherently wrong with cloning
00:48:05 ►
because it’s already used in the plant kingdom
00:48:07 ►
every potato you eat is a clone
00:48:09 ►
every apple you eat
00:48:11 ►
is a clone
00:48:13 ►
because these are propagated by
00:48:15 ►
cuttings or vegetative lists
00:48:17 ►
so cloning has always been used in the plant kingdom
00:48:19 ►
so when people get very excited
00:48:21 ►
about cloning, there’s nothing
00:48:23 ►
inherently bad about that,
00:48:29 ►
or else most of traditional agriculture and horticulture would be dismissed.
00:48:32 ►
But in the animal realm, I’m very suspicious of it.
00:48:35 ►
Let’s go to another question.
00:48:42 ►
Saying little of that, stop making sense.
00:48:47 ►
In terms of your nodding, could you explain this?
00:48:56 ►
Well, I don’t know. I did glossolalia last night at the rave, so my credentials for not making sense are in good order. Nevertheless, it struck me recently with considerable force
00:49:06 ►
that it’s very interesting that when we think clearly,
00:49:10 ►
our thoughts can be mathematically defined through symbolic logic.
00:49:16 ►
That’s how machines think as well.
00:49:20 ►
Machines use symbolic logic.
00:49:23 ►
So, no, it isn’t just that we are making up sense. When you are making sense, you are running clean code that expresses symbolic logical theorems and propositions. That’s why we can communicate with machines and why the output of machines makes sense to us.
00:49:47 ►
Because symbolic logic is a universal language understood by people and machines.
00:49:54 ►
When we don’t make sense, the machines can’t understand us and we cannot mathematically formalize our thinking
00:50:01 ►
because it has been what is called nonsense. But isn’t that just a circle?
00:50:06 ►
Well, except that
00:50:08 ►
the fact that mathematical
00:50:09 ►
logic is in there
00:50:11 ►
indicates that this is
00:50:14 ►
not a circle going on in some
00:50:16 ►
unanchored psychological
00:50:17 ►
dimension. There is real
00:50:20 ►
truth there. Our minds
00:50:22 ►
apprehend it and we know this
00:50:24 ►
because that truth can be freely
00:50:26 ►
transferred and transformed between us and our machines using the formal languages of
00:50:32 ►
mathematics.
00:50:33 ►
It’s just internal consistency.
00:50:35 ►
Yes, you’re right about that.
00:50:38 ►
Well, I think this mathematical, logical, computer-assimilable form of making sense is very limited.
00:50:46 ►
In most cultures, what gives a basic sense are the myths, the patterns of the society.
00:50:52 ►
And that’s true in our culture too.
00:50:54 ►
There’s a kind of sense that’s made in each country by the natural myths.
00:50:59 ►
It makes sense of history.
00:51:00 ►
We make sense of our role through the stories we tell about ourselves and our personal myths. And don’t think there’s anything wrong with this i think we have to be like that it’s
00:51:09 ►
the only way it can be so in science paradigms models of reality are what makes sense of
00:51:14 ►
phenomena if they fit into the paradigm they make sense to a lot of people in modern biology dna
00:51:20 ►
genetic engineering the bottom line from new products make a great deal of sense. It fits with all these paradigms.
00:51:26 ►
Whereas things like psychic pets don’t make sense because there’s no money in it,
00:51:32 ►
there’s no research on it, it doesn’t fit in to this mechanistic model of reality.
00:51:37 ►
And there are many scientists who have totally dismissed the very possibility,
00:51:40 ►
in spite of the fact that many pet owners experience these abilities on a daily basis.
00:51:45 ►
So we can see many examples of what makes sense and doesn’t make sense,
00:51:49 ►
and it depends on your map.
00:51:50 ►
Terence will hasten to add that not all maps or models are equally good,
00:51:54 ►
and I would agree with that.
00:51:56 ►
We have to look at them, we have to test them.
00:51:58 ►
And in science, one of the points of science is testing different models or theories of reality
00:52:03 ►
to see which makes the best sense in accordance with what actually happens.
00:52:07 ►
But you can’t usually know until you’ve done the experiment, at least if they’re plausible hypotheses.
00:52:12 ►
The best sense that I have is that it’s time to stop.
00:52:19 ►
So, do psychic pets make sense in your model of reality?
00:52:23 ►
For what it’s worth, they do in mine.
00:52:25 ►
Mainly because I’ve witnessed quite a few instances of that kind of behavior.
00:52:30 ►
And just because that phenomena doesn’t fit in today’s mainstream scientific view of the world doesn’t mean it isn’t real.
00:52:36 ►
After all, mainstream science has now declared that over 90% of the universe is composed of dark matter and dark energy.
00:52:43 ►
Neither of which are actually understood very well, if at all.
00:52:48 ►
And if our greatest scientists still don’t have any clues about the vast majority of stuff in this universe,
00:52:54 ►
it seems possible that they may have also missed one or two other little areas, like psychic pets.
00:52:59 ►
But that’s a discussion for another day.
00:53:02 ►
Today, I’ll be happy if I can just get this podcast online.
00:53:06 ►
As I mentioned in the beginning of this program, I’ve been experiencing Mercury retrograde in all its glory.
00:53:13 ►
But in an hour from now, the cable installation guy will be back for his third try at getting my new internet connection operating.
00:53:21 ►
You know, it’s been over a week now since our roommate moved out and his DSL connection
00:53:25 ►
left with him. Even though we had the cable connected a few days before disconnecting the
00:53:30 ►
DSL line, it still isn’t working, which means that I’ve had only spotty email service for over a week
00:53:36 ►
now. In fact, I’ve only been able to get five or six emails sent out during all that time,
00:53:42 ►
and my inbox is just brimming with hundreds of messages to be downloaded and read, so hopefully there isn’t anything too pressing
00:53:49 ►
waiting for me.
00:53:50 ►
But if you haven’t heard back from me and expect to, well, don’t give up hope, as I
00:53:55 ►
should be able to dig out from under this backlog in the next few weeks or so.
00:54:00 ►
Like many people, I get a little weird when I don’t have access to my email, and so I
00:54:04 ►
was quite relieved when a little cosmic giggle pointed out the foolishness of my stress.
00:54:10 ►
What happened was that last Saturday night I went out to dinner with Matt Palomary,
00:54:14 ►
who you’ll remember from a couple of podcasts ago,
00:54:17 ►
and we were joined by Werner Binge and a couple of other science fiction writers.
00:54:22 ►
As I was leaving the house, I noticed a piece of paper in the pocket of the trousers I was wearing.
00:54:27 ►
And I hadn’t worn them in quite a while, mainly because I seldom go out much anymore.
00:54:32 ►
And while I must have put that paper in there the last time I wore that pair of pants,
00:54:36 ►
I don’t have any memory of seeing it before.
00:54:39 ►
And here’s what I’d written on it.
00:54:41 ►
Gradually, computers are forming an exoskeleton for humans. It began with the
00:54:46 ►
pocket watch binding our consciousness to time. Then these little machines migrated to our wrists.
00:54:52 ►
Before long, our wristwatches, our mechanical timekeeping devices, morphed into machines
00:54:58 ►
operated by digital computers. Then other computers began to cover our bodies as well.
00:55:03 ►
First came pagers, then cell phones and wireless PDAs.
00:55:07 ►
A few pioneers are now using wearable computers.
00:55:10 ►
Some people are implanting chips that are directly wired to their body’s nervous system.
00:55:15 ►
The most common one is known as the pacemaker.
00:55:17 ►
And these computer-enhanced humans now get into automobiles that are also regulated by computers.
00:55:23 ►
Some are even connected to orbiting satellites
00:55:26 ►
that are controlled by yet more network computers.
00:55:29 ►
PDAs are beginning to schedule meetings for us
00:55:31 ►
without the insertion of human action.
00:55:34 ►
The day is rapidly approaching
00:55:35 ►
when we will have to make a conscious decision
00:55:38 ►
to break free from the shackles our machines
00:55:41 ►
are already trying to impose upon us.
00:55:44 ►
And for most of us, the fatal part of our addiction to machines
00:55:48 ►
begins with a compulsion to constantly check our email.
00:55:54 ►
Now isn’t that an interesting little synchronicity to find that thought about email
00:55:58 ►
just when I was having email withdrawal anxiety?
00:56:02 ►
Since the paragraph is from a book I wrote in 1999,
00:56:06 ►
I thought it somewhat remarkable to have it float to the surface just then.
00:56:10 ►
But now that I’m telling this story,
00:56:12 ►
it doesn’t seem quite so remarkable to me anymore.
00:56:16 ►
So I guess we’d better move on.
00:56:17 ►
I’ll have to catch up on mentioning some of the email you’ve sent
00:56:21 ►
when I do next week’s podcast,
00:56:23 ►
assuming that I’ve regained access to my email by then, that is.
00:56:27 ►
But before I go, I do want to mention one more thing,
00:56:30 ►
and that is that there’s a new podcast that’s now coming out from the Cannabis Podcast Network.
00:56:36 ►
And in case you missed it two weeks ago, every other Friday is now Freak Out Friday,
00:56:40 ►
which means that a new installment of Psychonautica comes out.
00:56:44 ►
Freak Out Friday, which means that a new installment of Psychonautica comes out.
00:56:50 ►
And this is a podcast hosted by Max Freak Out and KMO of the Sea Realm.
00:56:53 ►
And tomorrow we’ll get to hear their second program in this series,
00:56:56 ►
which includes an interview with yours truly.
00:57:00 ►
Actually, KMO did the interview with me a couple weeks ago,
00:57:04 ►
and so I have to admit that I don’t really remember what we a man, I’m a man dopefiend.co.uk or better yet, you can subscribe to all of the Cannabis Podcast Network programs
00:57:27 ►
under a single free subscription through iTunes.
00:57:31 ►
And if you happen to be listening to this podcast from the Psychedelic Salon
00:57:35 ►
through a click to listen button,
00:57:37 ►
you can also subscribe to this series through iTunes.
00:57:40 ►
Just go to the podcast directory in iTunes
00:57:42 ►
and search for Psychedelic Salon and then click the free subscription button.
00:57:47 ►
Well, I guess I’d better get out of here and prepare this podcast for uploading in the event that my internet connection actually begins to work today.
00:57:54 ►
You know, Mercury is now direct.
00:57:57 ►
But before I go, I should mention that this and all of the podcasts from the Psychedelic Salon are protected under the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike 2.5 license.
00:58:08 ►
And if you have any questions about that, just click on the link at the bottom of the Psychedelic Salon webpage,
00:58:14 ►
which you can find at matrixmasters.com slash podcasts.
00:58:18 ►
If you still have questions, just send them to lorenzo at matrixmasters.com.
00:58:24 ►
I want to also thank my friends at Chateau Hayouk
00:58:27 ►
for the use of their music here in the salon.
00:58:30 ►
And thank you for joining me here today.
00:58:32 ►
It’s really good to be with you again.
00:58:35 ►
And until next week, this is Lorenzo,
00:58:37 ►
signing off from Cyberdelic Space.
00:58:40 ►
Be well, my friends.