coast to coast AM terence mckenna interview notes 5/22/97 mckenna states he believes time is a real/natural thing, not a human invention idea of pure duration, time is a thing where things are placed so they dont all occur at once, its viewed as a quality-less abstraction if you carry out a complete anaylsis its made of elemental discrete types like matter (like the elements) time is thought to be a featureless qualityless medium, but as we experience it as living feeling creatures, we experience times qualities, like times that feel different vocabulary (borrowed from alfred north whitehead) something science has missed - the universe, human life, an empire, an ecosystem, and large or small scale process can be lookd at as a dynamic struggle between 2 qualities, habit and novelty as McKenna calls them habit is repetition of established patterns, conservation, holding back whats already been achieved novelty is chance taking, exploring, the new, the never before seen if you look at large scales of time, novelty is winning point science is afraid to make: if you look back at the history of humanity, as you go backwards things become more simple/basic, as we come towards the present things become more novel and complex universal law affecting ALL processes: nature produces and preserves novelty novelty is what nature produces, represents an inherent value system in the universe humanity represents the greatest novelty ever conceived this makes a basis for ethics: "that which advances novelty is good, that which retards it is to be looked at very carefully" mckennas take on the internet when asked if it will stifle novelty: says he spends hours and hours a day on the internet. he believes its the greatest force empowering minority points of view to come along in centuries. thinks the internet is technology that elites never intended to fall into the hands of the common man were getting a much more interesting interplay between ideas internet has a lot of mutations going on in hardfware, peoples views of it, ideology, etc not only does the universe have a preference for novelty but each acceleration has proceeded more quickly than those which proceeded it sees no reason why this process would slow down believes it is exponentially accelerating leads to a kind of end of the world scenario that makes people think McKenna is insane because he says within out lifetimes itll accelerate to a point where well experience more novelty in weeks or days than was previously experienced in all of the cosmos many have noticed the phenomena of time speeding up, but most credit it to media, science, etc what mckenna is saying is its built into the laws of physics ---break--- TIMEWAVE ZERO what is going to happen when we reach what mckenna calls "timewave zero" the only way to predict whats going to happen is to look at what has happened as the "quickening" has begun to accelerate its been characterized by dissolution of boundaries between classes of people, bodies of knowledge, pools of capital, language groups, etc seems to mckenna that the ultimate novelty must be a situation where all boundaries are dissolved "i dont know wether its a virtual reality where you become god through the public utilities, or exactly what it is, but its clear to me that the human nervous system is globalizing itself - building a model of conscious thought on a planetary scale. tens of thousands of people are participating in this, none of them have a real notion of what its all about, but everyone is serving this kind of unfolding grand design and yknow i think the emergence of alphabets was part of the quickening, etc..." he has a formal mathematical theory about timewave zero that is a dualistic flow which can be portrayed like the ebb and flow of a stock price, as a line graph hes written computer programs that produce novelty waves that picture the ebb and flow of novelty by pitting known data against the waves led to a startling conclusion to even him, timewave zero is slated to collide in late 2012. like mayan calendar lol McKenna didnt know when he calculated it, but he later learned that it was the same as the mayan calendar, to the day cheng, chinese method of divination, mckenna had an interest in it bc he said a lot of people really think it works cheng has existed for thousands of years, its done by throwing 50 stocks, or sometimes coins, method of producing a hexogram, 6 broken and/or unbroken lines on top of each other, making 64 combinations certain ways each hexagram is always represented in chinese tradition mckenna discovered it was a lunar calendar(?) and said calendar was a subset in a fractal time keeping scheme more sophisticated than anything in the west he thinks that like how the west conquered the nature of matter through science, 4000 years ish ago in china a deeper analysis of time than was ever done in the west was done in china and the mathematics of it were buried in this fortune telling system, and he teased it out of it book: the invisible landscape website: www.levity.com, click on terence mckenna 2012 is where the novelty goes to 0 where it would be effectively infinite the universe has evolved in some kind of process of self metamorphosis he calls it the transcendental object @ the end of time thinks everything, like the christian revelation, will all be fulfilled in a way no one couldve predicted what does mckenna think will happen in 2012 he notes that the wave is particularly good at tracking technology what he thinks is time travel (personal unrelated thought: 2012 being the end of the world could be rationalized with a ship of theseus type thing by saying theres a concept of the world, and the exact point it stopped being that was 2012) mckenna believes the theory of the moment of the invention of the first time machine being the oldest point anyone can travel to interest in psychedelics he was raised catholic and what he kept was an enormous thirst for the paranormal ---break--- as we get closer to timewave zero we are experiencing "tachyon radiation" from it timewave zero emits so much energy that it emits faster than light speed tachyon particles or waves that are being hurdled backward in time this causes us to experience paranormal phenomena more often leading up to it this could be the mechanism behind the quickening (personal note:this seems hyperstitional lol) timewave zero will possibly be akin to a white hole or a mini big bang it will be the end of time essentially, for us at least it is not unreasonable that ETs with UFOs could visit to observe the event tachyon bombardment could have bizarre effects on nervous system: visions, physical modifications like: the clearwater virgin, mutations like the chupacabra, etc a listener (steve from witchita(withitalk reference ecks dee ! )) remarked that novelty could instead be correlated to population density as well as profit motives (personal note i feel like the profit motives part could be onto something, like instead of just the universe itself being the driving force behind the quickening, it is specifically capital that drives quickening forwards. this would also call into question the ethical system that McKenna proposed where novelty increasing is always ethical) mckenna doesnt necessarily disagree, but he dismisses the notion that nowadays isnt necessarily more novel than any point in the past calls humans culture creating creatures which i think is an interesting descriptor art asks how many hits and misses mckennas program had when it comes to correlation between the ebb and flow and major events mckenna says that its not a statistical theory, so it is correct all the time he basically claimed that 2012 is completely correct as the date for timewave zero he says the timewave isnt really compatible with normal science scientific method is built on repeatability, but timewave theory states that each moment in time is entirely unique when you understand what the timewave is saying philosophically its an enormous attack on probability theory he says in science you would take the measurement of something 1000 times and divide it by 1000, as if the time you take the measurement doesnt matter he says "science is the study of those phenomena so coarse grained that the time in which they occured does not affect them" this leaves out history, love affairs, corporate takeovers, empire building, everything interesting in society bc its all too fragile for this kind of scientific modeling novelty is a bell curve where when the wave predicts high novelty most people will experience it but some will not (ex i came up with:like on 9/11 there were ppl who lived in the middle of nowhere that didnt hear anything about it) first thing they teach in statistics isthat a coin flip is 50/50 but if that were true the coin would land on its edge every time he says that in statistics, its secondary and tertiary factors that are causing the coin to fall on either side, what mckenna thinks however is that there are zones in time in which heads are favored and zones in time in which tails is he said the idea that time is a smooth surface that can be worked with statistically is greek idealism and a careful observation of nature shows this to be inadequate he says that observing time statistically flattens it out and denies various types of time hed been working on the theory since 1971 studied philosophy lol fascinated by DMT pure form, not from lab he says taking it can recreate peoples alien abduction experiences but through an action that initieated it ---break--- he notes how it wasnt until quite recently in history that the existence of psychoactive substances was known to western cultures at all (with the peyote cactus) he believes it isnt a coincidence that in our biggest cultural crisis when were destroying the environments, rainforests, etc, that from those same rainforests come the things that could challenge our views on reality mckenna thinks that a creature/entity he refers to as "the transcendental mystery at the end of time" is reaching out to the past, and that as we come closer to meet it, we take on more and more of its characteristics, like its godlike power and ability to span across space and time he also thinks that when we do reach it there will be an effortless moment of merging and recognition (evbvanglsioen thierd impaoixt !!!111!1!!11!11! soy face) he cites the internet, virtual reality, nanotech he mentions disco balls too, and how the specks of light from a disco ball are like phenoma, and as we get closer to the disco ball there will be more and more distorted images of the transcendental mystery he mentions that DMT is one of the most powerful psychedelics, but only lasts 5 minutes he says its very different from LSD and mushrooms (regarding DMT) there is the unmistakable feeling of having gone to a place full of "self dribbling jewel basketballs" that are intelligent like badly trained rottweilers, they come bounding forward and whay theyre doing is conducting some kind of language lesson bc they have a language that you can only see he mentions how DMT can be produced by the brain and thinks that could relate to ufo sightings and abduction claims he thinks there are aliens and they can only reach us through our minds they dont have ships or holograms, but only visit us through the mind this is why he thinks the human mind has always been plagued by sprites pixies gnomes, etc he says this isnt a psychological reduction, he thinks the imagination is the largest part of us and where we will spend most of the rest of human history he thinks youd find a burst of dmt at the time of alien encounters, etc, as well as at death, where he believes a DMT trip occurs (personal note: i would imagine this relates to the zones of time thing, where the time zone that makes the DMT burst occur is either caused by or is used by the alien to contact the human.) he also thinks we penetrate into realms where we can remember almost nothing during deep dreams he thinks time travel will be invented in 2012 which makes time lose its linear quality he says the grandfather paradox would be avoided by saying the rest of the history of the universe after time machines are invented occurs instantly, making it impossible for paradoxes to occur. reverse of the big bang where the universe undergoes half of its existence in a few milliseconds mckenna thinks the "DMT creatures" must be some type of human and may be souls relates this to shamans saying youll visit ancestors ---break--- art mentions the thing about the human body losing 3/4 of an ounce of weight supposedly being the soul leaving the soul is manifested in time conscious beings have time folded into them mckenna doesnt disagree with the 3/4 of an ounce thing outright he says when we die the electric energy from the brain withdraws into what he calls hyperspace mckenna doesnt believe anything can be random says chaos theory is misunderstood by a lot of people, bc its actually a "super" kind of order where higher forms of order can appear retropsychokinesis, website that claims you can alter random numbers, and alter them through the past by for example concentrating on them being even or odd they tell people they were generating them in real time, but they were actually recorded weeks in advanced, but they can still affect the results | (personal note: definitely hyperstition) V ART LITERALLY CALLS THIS TIME TRAVEL mckenna says that what were going to discover is how you move in time isnt governed by the law of physics but by cultural programming "we are far more imprisoned by cultural conventions than we are by physical laws" mckenna says 1/20 people dont respond to DMT he says its possible dreaming is a recent thing in human evolution we shouldnt tqake for granted ---break--- culture is in the business of keeping you within predetermined answers ---break--- resonance is built into time a given moment in time is a hologramathic interference pattern of past times in resonance time wave theory lets you see how a moment is in resonance with past moments in time in the past time has a topography the structure of an atom and a galaxy are linked by an underlying architecture of the universe he believes that the 90% of matter that people think is missing (dark matter) isnt actually missing matter, but that there are missing laws of physics he says the galaxy is a SPIRAL because its the most novel thing to do, the underlying laws relating to novelty make this happen mckenna thinks the greatest breakthrough in mathematical modelling of nature has been the discovery of fractals and self similarity "time is a fractal structure that can be defined by a limited set of variables, adn that iterated on the macro scale, the micro scale, the human scale, theyre all operating under the same architectural constraints but at different scales." ---end of interview---