October 1998 The Last Interview: Novelty Theory Well novelty theory is something Ive been working on since

e the early seventies as inspired by psychedelic plant experiences in the Amazon, to attempt to look at time and really deconstruct it to understand what it is. And this has been a wild intellectual ride leading to some easily stated conclusions. One is, that novelty, which is my term or complexity or advanced organization, novelty increases as we approach the present moment. Why should the universe have a pre erence or order over disorder, especially when we have something called the !econd "aw O #hermodynamics which tells us exactly the opposite$ #he universe you and I are living in is a ar more novel and complicated place than the early universe was. Well, some people say thats %ust a conse&uence o the un olding o developmental processes. 'ut this asks the &uestion, what are developmental processes$ Why should the universe have a pre erence or order over disorder, especially when we have something called the !econd "aw o #hermodynamics which tells us exactly the opposite$ (hysicists believe the universe is running down ultimately into a state o disorder. 'ut what I see, is everywhere the emergence o more and more complex orms, languages, organisms, technologies always building on the previously achieved levels o complexity. !o that was one one o my insights. )oming out o that insight was the urther understanding that this process o complexi ication through time is not proceeding at a steady rate. It actually ollows a kind o asymptotic curve. In other words its happening aster and aster. And this was a revelation to me because it allowed me, philosophically, to contextualize the human world. And to understand that human technologies, languages, migrations, art movements, ideologies are not something different from nature, theyre the same downloads of processes that we see in the movement of continents, evolution of new species of animals except that, these human novel, emergent situations are happening much more quickly. !o I see the cosmos, i you will, as a kind o novelty producing engine, a kind o machine which produces complexity in all realms, physical, chemical, social, whatever and then uses that achieved level o complexity as the plat orm or urther complexity. Well, this explains our present circumstances, explains the rush towards all orms o new technologies in social organization in the new millennium. *We include a short video on the ideas o (ierre #eilhard de )hardin and his view o the noosphere. I you cannot see the embedded video, here is the link+ http+,,youtu.be,e-A"a".zcm/0. 'ut you dont have to be a rocket scientist to understand that i the universe is complexi ying aster, an epoch, a time will come when this rate o complexi ication is occurring so rapidly that it will become itself the overwhelming phenomena in the world o three dimensional space and time. I call this the omega point or the transcendental ob%ect at the end o history. I believe it is not that ar o . With the emergence o global internet, a human population o several billions, an electronic noosphere that we are now within the shadow o this transcendental ob%ect at the end o time. Our religions sense it, thats what gives them their apocalyptic intuitions and I think the ordinary man and woman in the street sense a kind o built1in acceleration to time itsel . We are about to become unrecognizable to ourselves as a species. Our technologies, our religions, our science has pushed us towards this or thousands o years without us awakening to what the denouement would be. Well rather than dismissing that or reading it as psychological perception or something uni&ue to our society, I took it as a basic perception about physics and have built elaborate, mathematically de ined theories around this idea and then have ound to my astonishment, incredible congruences with other work, Im thinking o the 2ayan calendar and it curious countdown type &uality towards an extremely uni&ue event, that the 2aya elt would occur in the same time rame that my own e&uations predicted, even though at the time, I wasnt aware o the 2aya.

!o what we have here is a new model o time, based on a very real intuition that I think most people share, which is, that time is speeding up, that human beings are part o that process, and that the culmination o that process, is now within the vein o historical time. In other words, I believe it will happen in 3453, in 6ecember, co incident with the same events that the 2aya placed at the end o their calendar. 7ven i I am wrong, even i its a hundred years or ive hundred years later, these are spans o time that, when compared to the li e o the planet, are ractions o a percentage. !o whether you believe as I do that we can know the precise moment o this trans ormation o the world o time or, whether you believe it is simply coming soon and ast, really does not make that much di erence. We are all gathered here at the end game o developmental processes o this planet. We are about to become unrecognizable to ourselves as a species. Our technologies, our religions, our science has pushed us towards this or thousands o years without us awakening to what the denouement would be. 8ow we stand close enough to it, that all but the most lumpen among us, must eel the tug o the transcendental and the trans ormative. http+,,www.plusultratech.com,3455,49,terence1mckenna1omega1point19a.html #erence 2c-enna explains how time is leading up to a concrescence where man will transcend his physical limitations. #he Omega (oint was a phrase coined by (ierre #eilhard de )hardin. 2c-enna was in luenced by de )hardin. At times we will place in parenthesis comments by de )hardin, which will be in parallel to 2c-enna:s statements. ;ead more+ http+,,www.plusultratech.com,3455,49,terence1mckenna1omega1point19a.html<ixzz58=>;biep Moving Beyond Matter Well irst o all, I can:t &uite imagine what we mean either. I think this is the test, to imagine what could that mean. 2aybe the bridge concept is virtual reality. Obviously, we:re on the brink o building computer assisted worlds that don:t ?really exist.? 'ut that we will experience, the way we experience dreams or the imagination. I think this is where psychedelic substances come in. !hamans have always entered into a non1physical realm o in ormation, through trance. In a way, there is nothing new here. #his is part o the archaic revival. Is the ascent into a novelty a human thing$ 8o. (art o what I discern here though is that we humans are always ready to su er guilt and take blame or everything going in the universe. I do not believe this is something we are doing. I think that we are as much corks tossed on the ocean o time as are humming birds and prairie dogs. In other words, an event o cosmic signi icance and importance is going to occur, not ar in the uture. Are we causing it$ 8o. )an we stop it$ 8o. )an we hurry it$ 8o. It:s built in to the structure o matter itsel . One way o thinking o this is that the laws o physics are evolving to permit greater reedom. (eople have said to me, well don:t you ind it a little strange that such a momentous event would occur in human history, a ter all, human history is ten thousand years wide, the planet is ive billion years old, pretty unusual coincidence that human history would be happening when this cosmic event happens$ 8o. #hat:s completely wrong. @umans history is being caused by the nearby presence o this event. In other words, i you think o the event as something which has shells o in luence, some o its shells o in luence reach so ar back in time that they drag li e out o the primitive oceans. !ome o its shells o in luence reach so ar back in time that they de ine the emergence o the hominid line out o the higher primates. !ome shells reach back to 7gypt. !ome to medieval times. As you approach the present it becomes stronger and stronger. I would argue that the presence o human civilization on this planet is the strongest evidence we have that matter and organizational processes are about to make some kind o a leap, to a new order o being. What history is, is the twenty1 ive thousand year transition zone. 'e ore you enter the zone, you:re an animal. A ter you leave the zone, you:re a god. 'ut or twenty1 ive thousand years, you:re kind o an animal and kind o a god. /ou:re constantly being swamped by your animal nature, then great teachers are appearing and dragging people back to the right line and we are schizophrenic in history. A riend o mine once said that history is the shockwave the precedes the eschaton. And I absolutely believe

that. I believe as historical processes intensi y it:s reasonable to believe that we are closer to the eschaton. I my ideas seem strange to someone, I ask them, can you imagine this planet in ive hundred years, given the propagation o ordinary o historical and scienti ic rates o un oldment and discovery$ )an you imagine this planet in a thousand years$ 8o, no one can imagine that. 'ecause processes are now in play, which so totally rewrite the script, that no one can imagine can hundred years or two hundred years in the uture, because the discoveries that will have been made in that time will so totally rewrite the human experience that sel and the environment that we cannot see deep into the uture. #his indicates to me that the uture is exploding in an asymptotic un oldment into a kind o cultural superspace. Our own ba lement at the impossibility o conceiving any real uture, given the political, social and technological orces in play, is proo that o that. Definition of Eschaton and Concrescence Well, let:s go back to eschaton irst. 7schaton is a good word out o theology. It simply means the last thing. #he last thing is the eschaton. It is everything become one thing. Aor theologians, it:s Bod. Aor someone o a more materialist bent, it might be something else, but the eschaton is the last thing. 7schatology is the study o the time o the last thing. )oncrescence is a little tricker concept. I took it rom Al red 8orth Whitehead. )oncrescence is the idea o something that grows together. It concrescess. It becomes more dense more connected, more de ined in space and time. When I talk about the transcendental ob%ect at the end o time, or the coming o the eschaton, or hypernovelty, I mean that the process o the human and biological concrescence o intent reaches some kind o maximum. )oncrescence is the end o the process o becoming. 'ecoming is not true being. #rue being exists at the concrescence. #he kind o being we experience 1 becoming, is a partial state o being, much like history is a partial state o concrescence. @istory, de initely places us outside the world o biological intent 1 the animal mind. 'ut, history does not bring us into the presence o the eschaton. It:s a partial process and concrescence is what waits at the end. #he eschaton is the concrescence. Question+ But we really can't have any way of knowing what experience that is going to be? 8o, and the reason why is because asking that &uestion is like asking a man looking 7ast at 3A2 to describe the coming sunrise. @e can:t, because it is literally over the event horizon o the uture. When we look into the uture, we see that the 7ast is streaked with a rosy dawn, but, we cannot conceive o the day that is about to come. All we can see the dim glow o some kind o eschatological promise. Ask me this &uestion in 3454, and I:ll have a di erent answer. Question+ Back to this question of physics, and your description of the two things which you think are left out of their models !he way that you describe it is so self"evident and simple that in the fact that everything in complexification is speeding up #ould you talk $ust a little bit about the relationship between the world of the physicist and their effort to define reality and why they're not including in their models these aspects that you spoke about in their models? #he main reason physicists are not riendly towards a progressive concrescent model like this, is because you would have to give credit to biology or being a stage higher than chemistry. /ou would have to give credit to human history as a stage higher than biology. (hysicists study physics. I you study physics, there is no biology. /ou don:t have to deal with issues o biology when you study physics. #here is something called biophysics, but it:s not well received in physics or biology. %#e include a video as an introduction to what biophysics is !he attitude towards this specialty may be changing since &c'enna's time (f you cannot see the embedded video, here is the link) http)**bit ly*kv+x#,http+,,www.youtube.com,watch$vC@44x%1O>DgoE eatureCplayer.embedded !o physicists, tend to discount biology. 7ven though, li e on this planet is F.>G billion years old, physicists discount it. #hey call it an epiphenomena. #hen when you talk to sociologists, they give no credit to physics. !cience has compartmentalized nature in order to analyze it, and there is no theory o nature, as such.

#hat:s really what I:m o ering. I:m o ering a theory which covers physics, chemistry, geology, biology, sociology, linguistics, the whole thing. In other words, not saying man is some special category, not saying that we need arti icial divisions, but that over the entire domain o known phenomena, #his A., tendency to complexi y through time and '., aster and aster HspeedI can be discerned. We need a theory o everything. (hysics talks about theories o everything, but none o these theories o everything address biology, let alone sociology and linguistics, and you know, the phenomena o human beings. Question) #hat is the Archaic .evival? Well, there is a way o looking at the entire 34th century, beginning with (ablo (icasso bringing masks back rom A rica and showing them around in Arench ca es in 5J59, beginning with Areud:s discovery o the unconscious, and =ung:s elaboration o those discoveries, and then every phenomena o ma%or importance that you care to mention in the 34th century, Aascism, Abstract 7xpressionism, ;ockn;oll, sexual permissiveness, psychedelic drug taking, rave culture, body piercing, =azz, the list is endless. What do all these things have in common$ #hey are reversions to archaic behaviors. #hey represent re%ection o the 7dwardian gentleman with his white man:s burden, and represent instead that or us to survive and live with ourselves, we have to re1empower archaic values. As the century un olded the understanding o what this re1empower might mean has changed. =ung and Areud discovered the unconscious, discovered that we are not all ladies and gentlemen, but that there is a cannibal lurking within. Albert @o man:s discovery o "!6 demonstrated that, that inner wilderness is accessible to most people through chemistry. %#e include a video of &c'enna speaking about this archaic revival (f you cannot see the embedded video, here is the link) http)**youtu be*/!01s2di3p4#hen still later, it was understood that the key ingredient in active !hamanism is psychedelic plants, psychedelic experiences. And, in a way, that closed the loop between the impulse towards the archaic and the impulses o modern science and modern medicine. #he key is the psychedelic experience, that:s what makes the !haman a !haman. #hat:s what made the archaic, in act archaic. !o people like Areud and =ung, and the surrealists and the 6ada, and the Abstract 7xpressionists all o these people were very close to the mark. #he !haman is the paradigmatic igure. And the psychedelic experience, seems to be the anticipatory experience o this eschaton that we:re headed towards. When psychedelics were irst being discussed, it was thought that they would prepare people or death. In a sense, they probably do. 'ut, in the same way that they prepare people or death, they prepare people or trans ormation. It gets you use to the idea that the world is not what it appears to be. It gets you use to the idea that the world is somehow animate, intelligent and preceding along its own agenda. %#e include an explanation given by &c'enna about the differences between schi5ophrenia and shamanic visions (f you cannot see the embedded video, here is the link) http)**youtu be*/6gl7$d8g9:!o, in a way, !hamans have always been, anticipations o some uture state o mankind. #hey:re the masters o language. #hey:re the ones who are telepathic with the animals. #hey:re the ones who can see into the uture. !o, this archaic nostalgia gets real ocused once you realize that it is the !haman and his or hers shamanic techni&ues, that con ers on them, the extra1historical dimension. #hat is how you get out o linear history. #hat is how you visit the realm o the ancestors. #hat is how you travel into the uture. #hat:s how you break up the tyranny o 8ewtonian serial time. ...Hthe InternetI is the greatest orce empowering marginal and minority points o view to come along in centuries. In other words, be ore the Internet, the great establishment ideas already had the machinery o media to communicate their position. What has happened is that the common man has gotten into the game with technology that I don:t think was ever intended to all into their hands. 2c-enna 5JJJ We are caged by our cultural programming. #his is the most imprisoning actor in our lives. I we could train ourselves, simply to remember our dreams, psychedelics would become obsolete. 2c-enna, "ecture 7ros and the 7schaton