Terence McKenna - Time and the I Ching

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hello and welcome I'm Jeffrey mishlove today we're going to examine the nature of time and the relationship between time and the human mind with me in the studio is teren McKenna a specialist in

shamanistic Traditions and also hallucinogens Terren is the co-author with his brother Dennis of siloc cybin the magic mushroom Growers guide and also the invisible landscape time

hallucinogens and the iching in addition he is the developer of computer software program called time wave zero and is the founder of Botanical dimensions a

nonprofit organization devoted to preserving hallucinogenic plants as used by native peoples throughout the world welcome Terren it's a pleasure to be here it's a pleasure to be with you

again you know shamanistic peoples and uh early peoples throughout the entire world have all been involved in systems of what we call divination it could be

throwing bones or using the e or looking at the entrails of animals or clouds of smoke but each system seemed to involve some sort of a unique way of linking the

human mind with with the very nature of time itself in order to understand cycles of time and understand perhaps even to predict the

future yes well it's certainly true that uh preliterate and Aboriginal peoples have had an obsession with time however it's an obsession shared by the

historical societies as well time seems to be the dimension about which we have the greatest anxiety perhaps because it's the dimension into which we see

with the least Clarity uh numerous people throughout the world have dealt with this lack of clarity uh as far as time is concerned

by developing various methods of divination or sortage as it's called the Maya to this day practice sortage of

a very complicated sort in the highlands of Guatemala uh African peoples have complex divinatory systems and we don't

have to even mention the enormous sales of the iching and toox and astrology products here in the United States yes

the iching is the divinatory system NE Ultra it seems to very ear have captured the imagination of Western

orientalists James leg and Richard vilhelm their translations made it available to the Western world and the

psychologist Carl yung in inventing And discussing the phenomenon that he called synchronicity popularized the iching by using it as an example of this

particular phenomenon and I know in the literature today especially in transpersonal Psych ology there are many psychotherapists who use the eing as a regular part of their practice and

parapsychologists have have found striking evidence that the coincidences of of tossing the coins in the iching do have uh psychological validity yes well

the thing which amazed me about the eing and caused me to become so deeply involved with it is this fact that it

seems to work against all rational expectation the carrying out of this uh random ritualistic activity seems then

to give a reading which is in fact applicable to the unique situation now yung's explanation of this was what he

called uh acausal connectedness or synchronicity this was simply the idea that it was possible for there to be a

coincidence of uh congruence between an internal State a psychological State and an exterior event uh an obvious example

of this would be you think of someone you haven't thought of for years and an hour later in the mail a letter arrives from them and Yung was fascinated by

these kinds of apparent uh coordinations of the interiorized psychic sphere and the exterior three-dimensional objective

world my Approach was uh went somewhat deeper than yung's in that I felt that uh I had looked at many divinatory

systems with the notion that I was looking at uh artifacts of culture uh Productions of the human mind

that were to a large degree arbitrary my involvement with the iching LED me very slowly and reluctantly to

the conclusion that this was not simply a product of a cultural mentality or The Stance of a particular people in a time

and a place but rather that the ancient Chinese had somehow gotten a leg up even on Modern physics and had produced a

theory about time that was in fact objectively uh possible to correlate with our own experience in other words a

theory of time much more akin to a physicist's description of it than a Shaman's description of it and uh you

mentioned in your introduction this time wave zero software that we've developed we what we've done is simply to

formalize the notion of the Dow to make a deep study of the mathematics inherent in the structure of the sequence of the

iching see most people are quite familiar with the fact that the iching is composed of hexagrams hexagrams have six lines they may be broken they may be

unbroken less well known is the fact that there is a very ancient tradition even before the Han Dynasty of a

particular sequence being the correct sequence it's called The King when sequence and while it has been agreed upon by all Scholars commenting on the

matter that the king when sequence is somehow primary no one had ever explained how it was ordered I mean the order of hexagrams from 1 to 64 that's

correct why is the first one the hexagram with all solid lines Why is the second one the hexagram with all broken

lines and so forth and so on I carried out a exhaustive mathematical analysis of the properties of the king win

sequence and reached a number of conclusions uh such as it is not a random sequence it was very very

carefully constructed uh to conserve certain mathematical goals for instance uh the

number of lines that break as you trans it from one hexagram to another is arranged and controlled in such a way that when you're all done you have a

ratio of even to odd of 3 to four uh yet this is achieved without any breakages uh first order of different

breakages of magnitude five now you're beginning to lose me a little bit yes well what what this all means very

simply is that the king WI sequence was uh constructed by Minds the equal of research mathematicians working in the

world today it sort of reminds me of uh the Builders of the great Greek temples who used the uh mystical rectangle

proportion and symmetry seems to be the central concern here you see we have in inherited from our fascination with

Eastern philosophy the idea of Dao and da in the East is a concept which anti dates the introduction of Buddhism into

China by many many centuries da is the notion of a flux which comes and goes a

transient medium which builds structures up and pulls them apart according to its

internal Dynamic now because these notion were introduced to the west by Mystics and philosophers and people with

an interest in metaphysics it wasn't immediately grasped that a philosophy of this sort could be a mathematical formalism that if we're talking about a

medium which comes and goes we're talking about a wave mechanical phenomenon well science in the West for the past 150 years has developed a

powerful set of techniques for dealing with wave phenomena and you seem to be suggesting then that the 64 hexagrams of the iching in their mathematical relationship one to the other as you go

through the sequence describes a waveform a waveform which is experienced in the world by human beings as time and

history you see it's almost as though uh in Western science uh we're pretty confident that there are approximately

100 elements physical elements to matter that's right different atoms that's right that are incommensurable they are somehow

primary the Chinese looked not at the world of matter energy and space but the world of time and carried out a very

rigorous analysis of their own perception and discovered to their amazement that time is actually composed of elements and we have then if if I can

extrapolate from what you're saying the Periodic Table of of elements in Western chemistry which defines not just 100 elements but a relationship between them

cycles and and patterns bonding relationships that's right families of chemicals so we have in other words families of ways of looking at time well

the hexagrams are the elements in the Chinese physics of time they created a science that reinforces

primary perceptions that we all have but for which we have no science for instance I'm sure you've noticed that every day is rather like every other day

nevertheless I'm sure you've also noticed that some days are radically different than others well this samess

but different rule applies on all levels in a temporal hierarchy Cent centuries are rather like each other and yet

occasionally a century will come along that is quite anomalous we call this sameness and difference nesting fractal

this is a new branch of mathematics and quite simply what the Chinese discovered Circa 3000 BC was the fral nature of

time that the rules of expression of temp Elements which govern the rise and fall of dynasties also govern the rise

and fall of love affairs and moods we now you're describing this in mathematical terms and I I'd like to come back and ask you to define the term fractal in a moment but I I'm also

curious about how you seem to be going back and forth between something purely quantitative and something qualitative well that's the interesting

thing you see the Chinese understood that these temporal elements were in in a sense uh creating interference

patterns with each other much in the way that pure tones struck out on a keyboard will through their interference with each other create a

Melody so that for instance uh if I find myself sitting in Hadrian's hamburger joint enjoying a burger by this Theory there would would

actually be a relationship between that act and the emperor Hadrian's campaigns in Britain uh before the fall of the

Roman Empire this is the amazing thing which James Joyce used and understood in the construction of his literary works

that a man leaving his home in Dublin on a day in 1905 to buy kidneys to fry for

breakfast is in some mysterious way actually repeating the paragr of the hero Odus around the Mediterranean in

his campaign to destroy Troy and return to his faithful wife allegory is what we're talking about but allegory has

never been taken seriously by science analogical reasoning is definitely day class in the better Laboratories but in

this ancient Chinese way of looking at things everything was caused by its analogical

resonances with past and future events which had the same temporal elements embedded in them now it's difficult to

go into this without resorting to uh at least charts and diagrams if not puzzling equations with sigmas embedded in them well let me step back for a moment uh because we've been talking

very intensively about the iching which is one system a very popular and profound and highly respected system of this type but there are other comparable systems for example there's

astrology that's right astrology is another one of these systems that seeks to Define prepotent relationships in

nature that can be known by man in order to ease movement into the future uh the

success of astrology I think is is uh borne out by its persistence it is after all one of the most persistent of human

intellectual tools it was developed four or 5,000 years ago um what it I think what troubles

modern human beings about astrology is that it is a mechanistic system it's like a group of cogs and wheels which all can turn at given rates and

therefore they're ins stes can be predicted but then we're dealing again with the nature of nested Cycles well we have a strong intuition of Free Will and

this is why I think quantum physics with its probabilistic notion of uh of determinacy has been so attractive to

the modern mind my conclusions looking at the Ching have been that it is not possible to know the future for if it

were possible to know it life would be a determinism and thinking would be divorced from meaning and we would be out of

business uh but what is possible to know about the future is levels of novelty which future States will

fulfill by the happen stance of unpredictable events now this is a formal way of saying uh we know where the road goes but we don't know what the

scenery looks like I think where the future is concerned we can know where the road goes but we cannot know what the what the scenery will look like

people who have looked at my theory have said well these time maps that your computer draws you're trying to get rid

of the future and as a matter of fact a map of time no more eliminates the future than a map of South America eliminates the need to go there it

simply gives one a better handle on one's destination now you mentioned quantum physics a moment ago and in in quantum physics there there are a number of different Notions related to the

Future one is a notion of multiple universes another the wheer notion yes another is a notion of of pro everything is probabilistic and while we can't know

with any certainty what will happen we can state with various probabilities what what the possibilities are how does this relate to to your view of the time

in the future well I think that at the macr physical level things are rather rigidly determined with the exception of

living organisms so my interpretation of what biology is and how it relates to quantum physics and time is really

biological systems are uh amplifiers of quantum mechanical indet miny they are a way of taking the the

smidgen of indeterminacy that exists at the at the microphysical level and coaxing it into a kind of macrophysical

Cascade which is life Consciousness and self-reflection and you see this described in the iching yes I think the

iching is an abstract modeling system for breaking this down to its simp simplest elements and then seeing how it works now we're accustomed to thinking

of science as linear progress from the distant past to the present what I'm suggesting is that at least in the

matter of time uh the Chinese of the prean period had a much more true and

formally uh applicable notion of time than we ourselves do we have failed in our effort to assimilate time into our

physics because of our obsession with matter and the release of energy and there are some Scholars who suggest that the African Yuba people with their system of divination called epha which

which has a cycle I think of 244 or 264 various myths and and stories is is even more sophisticated than the iching

which has only 64 do have you looked into that I have looked into it um what makes the E Ching so powerful in my mind

is that it appears to be an exact analogy to the mechanism of DNA there are 64 codons which code for

amino acids in DNA uh there are 64 hexagrams there are eight primary

hexagrams there are eight indispensable amino acids I felt that uh really the

iching is like Mankind's best shot at this because it has this reflection in the biological Matrix out of which

Consciousness emerged in other words the various ancient divination systems may all reflect a striving of of human beings towards this this intuitive

understanding of the cyclical nature of time and the relationship between mind and and the flow of time and yet the ich Ching May have just sort of hit the nail on the head better than the others well

it's looking it's like looking at a 17th century description of the motion of the planets or a 20th century description these are basically refinements but yes

I think that uh uh the iching represents a primary perception of the organization of Mind time and matter and I'll even

tell you how I think they got a leg up I think basically there is tradition in Central Asia of the so-called stilling

the heart techniques vis a yoga these are techniques where vital functions are suppressed breathing becomes very

minimal all exterior inputs are suspended and eventually I think the Chinese sages who practiced uh this form

of meditation noticed a flux at the center of the Stillness which they called Dao and which they set

out to phenomenologically describe not knowing whether it was physics organism or deity and they did not

prejudge uh this question they simply gave a phenomenological description of the transcendental flux that they

encountered in states of deep yogic ecstasy and lo and behold it turns out that this is the perfect technique for studying time time is not a phenomenon

where you build machines with 8 kilm diameters that cost trillions of dollars time is a phenomenon to be studied by

attending dinner parties perhaps or uh pursuing love affairs or watching the passing of the seasons activities much

more commiserate with our vision of The Da a sage than the white coated scientist of the present world religion of science so

um really I think it was an involvement in organism and in The Human Experience in other words the laboratory for studying time would not so much be our

observatories or our systems of quartz clocks but rather looking inside of ourselves observing our own organism that's exactly precise and the workings

of our own psychology to my mind the greatest common Ator on time in the 20th century after Albert Einstein would

certainly have to be Marcel PR uh PR understood more about the time we experience and was able to communicate it than any person who has

ever lived and that's within the confines of what most people consider a fairly eat highbrow literary project

Swan's way well the entirety of of a remembrance of things yes well I haven't read that so you've got me a bit in the dark here and we we have about 5 minutes left so could you

summarize that point or amplify it a bit well I think the point we're trying to make here that I have been involved with over the past few years is that a

revisioning of time would uh assuage much of what is called modern anxiety and that we have limited our the cat

atories we were willing to entertain in dealing with this problem and that we must genuflect to the ancient Chinese and take a page from their notebook in

this matter the iching as a divinatory system of great age reflecting the Dynamics of uh our own genetic material

and also though I didn't mention this this evening it also has deep calendrical properties can be used to keep track of time lays a basis for an understanding of

this curious phenomenon called synchronicity the coincidental uh meshing of interior psychic events and exterior events in

the real world it lays a basis for us to understand the unity of ourselves with the real world that our present approach makes difficult to discern so whereas

Carl Young the great Swiss psychiatrist who wrote incidentally the preface to Richard vilhelms uh book of the iching and postulated this theory of synchronicity well well Jung didn't

really provide any mechanism for synchronicity he he simply said it works this way that that the mind seems to be related to these events and he found an

enormous therapeutic benefit from that understanding what you're suggesting is that the potential mechanism behind the yungan notion of synchronicity has to do

with the structure of time itself that's right and and you must be suggesting therefore that the human mind at this very deep level that the sages discovered from stilling their organism

that the mind has a parallel structure an isomorphic structure that's exactly the central point the Mind arises out of

matter this is why the iching works in both worlds one is the reflection of the other the key to Healing the apparent

dualism lies in studying the temper mechanics indicated by the eing and I believe we've done this formally mathematically Terren McKenna you're

taking the provocative position that the iching which some people view as religion and other people dismisses Superstition is actually a science and and I gather that your computer software

package time wave zero proposes to be the demonstration of that we believe it does demonstrate it of course ultimately it will be up to our colleagues to judge

the worth of our case Terren it's been a pleasure thank you very much for being with me well it's been a pleasure to be here Jeffrey and discuss this with you

it's not an easy subject believe me and thank you very much for being with us

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