True Hallucinations Part 11

"So you are a real gypsy, then. And an outsider by your dress and beard. I like this. We like this young man, don't we, Rani?" It was the first time that he had addressed his companion during the entire conversation. She replied with a nod, never taking her eyes off me. "Ja, good. So now we eat. And tomorrow we talk more. I will expect you to join us here at breakfast." And with that he applied himself to his water buffalo steak with a ferocious intensity.

Later we returned to the hotel together, but by then the electricity had been turned off in that part of town and we had to give our slightly sloshed attention to picking our way along the muddy, rutted streets. There was no further serious conversation. As we parted in the atrium of the hotel he turned to me. "You must call me Karl. Jetzt wir sind freunden. You understand?" I nodded yes and we parted.

Breakfast was another story. Whatever contribution the beer had made to the evening's conversation it must have been minimal, because within a few minutes of sitting down to breakfast he was fully wound up all over again.

"Last night you spoke of your ambitions to visit the Amazon. This is a commendable dream. But believe me, I know the Amazon well, a jungle the size of a continent; it is not like these islands here. Here you do well to stay with the priests and to make your expeditions, one week, two weeks into the forest. But in Amazonas to do serious work you will have sustain yourself in the field for perhaps months. You will need a boat, equipment, bearers. Believe me, I know. It is not for shoemakers. Therefore I make you a proposal. You have said your work is nearly completed here, that you are going soon to j.a.pan to earn money for South America. Give up this plan and do instead the following.

FEMMI, as it turns out, has a deep interest in the Brazilian Amazon. Two years ago I was part of a resource a.s.sessment team that made some interesting discoveries. As it happens we are sending our people back for a serious second look. Our teams are thirteen in number and some of these are natural scientists such as yourself. The new team is nearly formed but Bock-ermann, if he approves of you, would accept my recommendation that you join the team as the thirteenth member. You will be well paid, and our expectations are only that you would complete the monograph that you have already planned. You see, by having scientists with us we can write off part of our tax liability, and anyhow we are believers in the worth of pure science. This plan must be cleared with Singapore, but if they agree then you would go there nearly immediately. You would meet Bockermann.

We give you dental check up, complete physical, new eyegla.s.ses, two weeks of tennis to get you physically in shape. The cruise liner Rotterdam will call in Singapore in one month. We will ship three speedboats specially outfitted, all our equipment, and the team on the Rotterdam. In Rio you will continue training two weeks at the Krosnopolski Hotel, where they have excellent tennis courts. And I tell you something else, my father's old cook is the chef there! We fatten you up some and then we give you your dream of the Amazon. Well, what do you say?" He sat back, evidently very pleased with himself.

I was caught completely off-guard. He was right about the Amazon being difficult for one person. Wallace himself had said as much. He had thrown in with the botanist Richard Spruce and the

discoverer of animal mimicry, Walter Henry Bates, in order to do his Amazon exploring.

But I was not whom I must seem to Heintz. I was no academic. I was an international fugitive with a price on my head. And also, I thought, what about my hippie girlfriend studying dance back on Bali, who was a.s.suming we would travel on to j.a.pan together?

To mention any obligation to another person seemed almost ungrateful in the circ.u.mstance. And what about the n.a.z.i connection? Did I really want to go off with a bunch of ex-SS types to the Amazonian rain forest? On the other hand I was running out of money. And my lady friend had a penchant for torrid affairs carried on in my absence.

As for the n.a.z.i matter, I was confused. I knew that Max Planck was supposedly the only person ever to stand up to Hitler, telling him to keep his hands off the pure science of the Inst.i.tute. Heintz had also gone far out of his way to let me know that his brother, also part of FEMMI, was married to what he described as "a Nigerian lady so black she is almost blue," and his own choice of women was definitely non-Nordic.

I thought to myself. "Here is the knock of fate and opportunity. What now, McKenna?" I looked from his face to hers. They both seemed truly expectant. "This is a generous offer, extraordinary really."

"Then you accept?"

"Yes."

"Excellent. You have chosen well. You are no shoemaker. This I like."

"Yes. Thank you. As you know, I am returning to Bali this afternoon. I have collections and obligations there that I must attend to. Also I confess that I am without much money."

"This is no problem. Set your affairs in order in Bali. I will cable Singapore to arrange money for your air pa.s.sage from Bali to the home office. There is only one thing." At this his steely gaze became even harder and he fixed me in a glacial stare. "You must be interviewed by Bockermann himself. He can see into the soul of a human being. If there is one iota of falsity in your character or your story he will detect it. Then there is no deal.

This is terribly important, we must have no shoemakers!" The schmiss had become an angry line once more.

This last speech was heart sinking. "No deal. I understand." But I was thinking, "Oh s.h.i.t, what have I gotten myself into." We shook hands on it, and I left to pack my things at the hotel and hurry to the airport.

My mind was in turmoil on the flight back to Bali. One by one the Lesser Sunda Islands slid past beneath me, and as they did, so did my doubts and my objections to Heintz's offer. "This has the feeling of fate," I thought to myself. "Play it out, give it a chance, and see what happens."

Over the next week I made my arrangements. I told the story to the freaks of Kuta Beach and most people encouraged me. My lady friend even supported me. We had agreed months before that Bali might be the parting of the ways for us. Each day I walked to Poste Restante in Denpasar expecting to find my tickets and the five hundred dollars in travel money that Heintz had promised. Three days went by, then five, and then seven.

On the morning of the seventh day, I awoke with the conviction that I had been had. It had all been some kind of weird mind game. I decided that Heintz must be nuts, a weirdo whose idea of fun was to get American freaks to buy into his secret n.a.z.i mega- corporation fantasy and then drop them into reality just to see how far they would fall. Of course there was another possibility; that somehow they had been able to check up on me and had discovered my false history. That I was sure would put me in the shoemaker cla.s.s and effectively cook my goose. Anyway, I had certainly made an a.s.s of myself by telling everyone in Bali that I was about to board the Rotterdam for a corporate- sponsored trip to the Amazon. I had to endure lots of good-natured kidding for the next couple of weeks as I returned to my original plan, outfitting myself for a final Indonesian collecting expedition out to Ambon and Seram in the Moluccas.

And there the matter rested. I buried the whole episode in a tomb in the back of my mind marked "Weird People You Meet on the Road." But it was an unquiet grave. A year later, in the aftermath of La Chorrera, I decided that it had been a precursive reflection of the true craziness that did finally find me in the Amazon. It had been an antic.i.p.ation, a wavering in the time

field, a kind of living prophetic dream, an instance of the cosmic giggle. But it wasn't the last I would see of Herr Heintz either.

A year after the events at La Chorrera and two years after my visit to Timor, in the spring of 1972, I was in Boulder, Colorado. I had returned from South America to settle my legal status and try to put life on the road behind me. Dennis and I were working together on the ma.n.u.script of The Invisible Landscape and spending a lot of time at the university library, studying the various disciplines that had to be mastered if our ideas were to stand a chance of being taken seriously.

One day I was scanning the student newspaper when I came upon a startling announcement. A full page had been reserved to announce that the University of Colorado, in a.s.sociation with the Max Planck Inst.i.tute for Neurophysiology, would co- sponsor the next meeting of the World Congress of the Neurosciences. At the words "Max Planck Inst.i.tute" my attention sharpened and I read on. Seven hundred scientists from around the world would be converging in Boulder for ten days of meetings and seminars. All the greats would be in attendance: Sir John Eccles, John Smythies, Solomon Snyder, and all the rest, the G.o.ds of the very Valhalla that we dreamed of conquering. The catch was that all the meetings would be closed to the general public with the single exception of the opening address, which would be t.i.tled "Autocatalytic Hyper-cycles" and would be delivered by the then-reigning star in the world of neuroscience, Manfred Eigen of the Max Planck Inst.i.tute.

I was familiar with the outlines of Eigen's ideas. Autocatalytic hypercycles seemed to me an obvious necessary correlative to the ideas that I was working out concerning the timewave and the way in which it was expressed and reflected in living organisms. This was something that Ev, Dennis, and I simply had to attend. However, I did not give the Planck Inst.i.tute much thought, as it is the major, pure science research outfit in Germany with hundreds of researchers on its payroll. The lecture was to be held on campus in the Physical Science Lecture Hall, a barrel- shaped enclosure that placed the lecturer at

the bottom of a deep well surrounded on three sides by tiers of seats, somewhat in the manner of an old style operating theater. There had apparently been a black tie dinner for the invited speakers before the lecture, and as we filed in to take our places I was impressed that the usually dowdy science crowd had dressed to the nines for the event.

There was a babble of languages. From where I sat I could hear German, Italian, j.a.panese, Russian, a smattering of Hindi, Spanish, and Chinese.

As my eyes roved over the crowd, I suddenly experienced something very close to a physical jolt. There, less than fifty feet away from me and nearly directly across the intervening open s.p.a.ce, sat Dr. Karl Heintz! I felt absolute amazement. Heintz! Here!

Could it be? Somehow I must have betrayed my agitation to him, for as I watched in near disbelief I saw him move his hand to the pocket of his jacket and with a faultlessly smooth motion remove his name tag and drop it into his pocket. He did not even interrupt the animated German conversation he was carrying on with the person sitting to his right.

I looked away, trying to pretend that I was unaware of him, had noticed nothing. The house lights dimmed and Manfred Eigen, magnificent with his swept back shock of white hair, began his lecture.

My mind raced. Was it all true then? Here he was! This was a Planck Inst.i.tute event. It must all be true. He recognized me! And he was intent on concealing his ident.i.ty! I felt completely weird as I scribbled a note outlining the situation and handed it to Dennis and to Ev. They both responded with looks that said plainly "Are you losing it, or is this a joke?" I sat there in the dark pondering the situation. Whatever Eigen was saying I would have to get it off Dennis's hand-held tape recorder later. I finally figured, nothing ventured, nothing gained. I knew there would be an opportunity to approach him immediately following the lecture. That was when I would make my move.

While Eigen brought his talk to a brilliant conclusion, I fidgeted. As the applause died down and the lights went up, people began to move toward the exits. Heintz was about fifty feet away talking animatedly to a couple of rather toad-like colleagues. But I could see that he was watching me, and as I began to approach he excused himself and began to move toward me. It was transparently

clear to me that this maneuver was executed to make certain that we would be alone and our conversation unheard when we met. I moved directly into his oncoming path.

"Dr. Heintz. I believe that we met on Timor." I extended my hand. Ignoring my outstretched hand, he smiled broadly, but the schmiss perceptibly reddened.

"Heintz? Heintz? My name is not Heintz. And I have never been in Kupang."

Then he turned quickly and rejoined his departing colleagues, adding to their animated a.s.sessment of Eigen's performance. The word "Kupang" rang in my ears. The b.a.s.t.a.r.d was rubbing my nose in it!

As the king said to Mozart, "So there you have it." Madman, a creature of my fevered imagination, a charlatan, or the tip of a n.a.z.i iceberg of scheming dreamers? To this I have no answer. That's how it is with the cosmic giggle.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN.

SAY WHAT DOES.

IT MEAN?.

In which I attempt to link our experiences to a science that is anything but normal.

THOUGH HAVING LEFT the Amazon, this wild and woolly tale continues on a little further. It is time to try to distill some conclusions out of the ideas that were generated in La Cho-rrera. A model of the world is a way of seeing, and to a.s.similate the timewave theory that was forced upon us there is to see the world differently. My approach has been to grant the possibility that the theory is true. It may someday be disproved, but until then, I shall believe it, albeit with tongue in cheek. Perhaps, if it is given a hearing, others will strengthen and contextualize the idea. Many good ideas simply perish for lack of a context. But this idea proposes a fundamental reconstruction of the way in which we see reality. And it can be taught. It fulfills my spiritual aspirations because it is understanding, simply and purely understanding.

The theory elaborated in the wake of the experiment at La Chorrera doesn't deny any body of knowledge; it augments. There is an argument for it on the physical level, though the idea is very complicated, touching as it does on areas involving quantum physics, submolecular biology, and the DNA structure. These notions are

laid out with what is hoped is care and attention in The Invisible Landscape.

While what Dennis did in the Amazon may not have caused the idea that I developed, I have the strong intuition that it did. In the wake of the experiment, my ordinary private concerns were replaced with such utterly strange musings that I could not recognize them as products of my own personality. He performed his experiment and it seemed as though I got a kind of informational feedback off my DNA, or some other molecular storage site of information. This happened precisely because the psychedelic molecules bound themselves to the DNA and then behaved in the way that we had expected; they did broadcast a totality symbol whose deep structure reflects the organizational principles of the molecules of life itself. This totality entered linear time disguised, in the presence of ordinary consciousness, as a dialogue with the Logos. The Logos provided a narrative voice able to frame and give coherency to the flood of new insights that otherwise would have overwhelmed me. My task became to unearth and replicate the symbolic structure behind the voice and to discover if it had any significance beyond myself and my own small circle of acquaintances. I felt as if I was creating a file system for a newly revealed world of infinite variety. The timewave is a kind of mathematical mandala describing the organization of time and s.p.a.ce. It is a picture of the patterns of energy and intent within DNA. The DNA unfolds those mysteries over time like a record or a song. This song is one's life, and it is all life. But without a conceptual overview one cannot understand the melody as it plays. The timewave theory is like the score of the bio-cosmic symphony.

I am interested in disproving this theory. A good idea is not fragile and can withstand a lot of pressure. What happened at La Chorrera cannot be explained away; rather it asks simply to be explained. If it is not what I say it is, then what is the concrescence, the scintilla, the encounter with the wholly Other? What does it really represent?

Is it, as it appears to be, an ingression of a higher-dimensional epoch that reverberates through history? Is it a shock wave being generated by an eschatological event at the end of time? Natural laws are easier to understand if we a.s.sume that they are

not universal constants, but rather slowly evolving flux phenomena. After all, the speed of light, which is taken as a universal constant, has only been measured in the last hundred years. It is pure inductive thinking to extrapolate the principle of the invariance of the speed of light to all times and places. Any good scientist knows that induction is a leap of faith. Nevertheless, science is founded on the principle of induction. That principle is what the timewave theory challenges. Induction a.s.sumes that the fact that one did A, and B resulted, means that whenever one does A, B will always result. The fact is that in the real world no A or B occurs in a vacuum. Other factors can intrude into any real situation sending it toward a different or unusual conclusion.

Before Einstein, s.p.a.ce was thought to be a dimension where one put things; it was a.n.a.logous to emptiness. Einstein pointed out that s.p.a.ce is a thing that has a torque and is affected by matter and by gravitational fields. Light pa.s.sing through a gravitational field in s.p.a.ce will be bent because the s.p.a.ce through which it travels is bent. In other words, s.p.a.ce is a thing, not a place where you put things.

What I propose, in a nutsh.e.l.l, is that time, which was also previously considered a necessary abstraction, is also a thing. Time not only changes, there are different kinds of time. And these kinds of time come and go in cyclical progression on many levels; situations evolve as matter responds to the conditioning of time and s.p.a.ce. These two patterns condition matter. Science has long been aware of the patterns of s.p.a.ce-we call these "natural laws"-but the patterns of time? That is another consideration entirely.

Matter has always been a.s.sumed to epitomize reality, but it actually has some qualities more nearly like thought. Changes in matter are defined by two dynamic patterning agencies that are in a co-relationship: s.p.a.ce and time. This idea has certain axioms, one of which is taken from the philosopher-lensmaker Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibnitz.

Leibnitz described monads, which he envisioned as tiny particles that are infinitely reduplicated everywhere in the universe and contain all places within themselves.

Monads are not merely here and now; they are everywhere all the time, or they have all s.p.a.ce and time within them, depending on your point of view. All monads are identical, but they interconnect to build up a

larger continuum while at the same time maintaining their individual, unique perspectives. These Leibnitzian ideas antic.i.p.ated the new field of fractal mathematics, an exotic example of which is my idea of a temporal pattern.

Ideas such as this offer a possible explanation for the otherwise mysterious mechanisms of memory and recall. Destruction of up to 95 percent of the brain does not impair memory function. It appears that memory isn't stored anywhere; memory seems to permeate the brain. Like a hologram, all of the memory seems to be in each part.

Similarly, one can take a holographic plate of Mount Fuji and cut it in half; when a half is illuminated, the entire image is present. One can do this again and again: the holograph is made up of a nearly infinite number of tiny images, each of which in combination with its fellows presents one image.

This "holographic" aspect of memory has been a.s.sumed to be of central importance by such thinkers as David Bohm and Karl Pri-bram. But it was Dennis and I who went so far as to suggest that this form of organization could be extended beyond the brain to include the cosmos at large.

Quantum physics makes similar p.r.o.nouncements when it states that the electron is not somewhere or sometime; it is a cloud of probabilities and that is all one can say about it.

A similar quality adheres to my idea of time and the comparison of time to an object. If time is an object, then the obvious question to be asked is what is the smallest duration relevant to physical processes? The scientific approach would be to keep dividing time into still smaller increments in order to find out if a discrete unit exists. What one is looking for by doing this is a chronon, or a particle of time. I believe the chronon exists, but it is not distinct from the atom. Atomic systems are chronons; atoms are simply far more complicated than had been suspected. I believe that atoms have undescribed properties that can account not only for the properties of matter, but for the behavior of s.p.a.ce/time as well. Chronons may not be reducible to atoms, but I suspect that what we will find is a wave/particle that composes matter, s.p.a.ce/ time, and energy. The chronon is more complicated than the cla.s.sical Heisenberg/Bohr description of atomic systems. The chronon has properties that make it uniquely capable of functioning as a

fundamental const.i.tuent of a universe within which minds and organisms arise. So far we have been unable to define the dynamic properties that would allow a particle to partic.i.p.ate as a necessary part of a living or thinking organism. Even a bacterium like E.

coli is a staggering accomplishment for the atom of Heisenberg and Bohr.

The Heisenberg/Bohr model allows us to simulate the physical universe of stars, galaxies, and quasars; but it doesn't explain organisms or mind. We have to overlay that atomic model with different qualities in order to represent more complex phenomena. We must imagine an atom with new parameters if we wish to understand how we could exist, how thinking, tool-using, human beings could arise out of the universal substratum.

I don't claim to have done this yet. But I do believe that I have stumbled upon an intellectual avenue that could be followed to achieve this understanding. The key lies in cycles of temporal variables nested in hierarchical structures, which generate various kinds of fractal relationships unfolding toward often surprising kinds of closure.

The person who has laid the most firm foundation for understanding this sort of notion philosophically is Alfred North Whitehead. Nothing we have suggested is beyond the power of his method to antic.i.p.ate. Whitehead's formalism accounts for minds and organisms and a number of phenomena poorly resolved by the Cartesian approach.

Other visionary thinkers are probing these areas. Chaotic at-tractor dynamics is the idea that any process can be related through a mathematical equation to any other process simply by virtue of all processes being part of a common cla.s.s. The overthrow of a dictator, the explosion of a star, the fertilization of an egg-all should be describable through one set of terms.

The most promising development in this area has been the emergence of the new evolutionary paradigm of Ilya Prigogine and Erich Jantsch. Their work has achieved nothing less than a new ordering principle in nature-the discovery and mathematical description of dissipative self-organization as a creative principle underlying the dynamics of an open and multi-leveled reality. Dissipative structures work their miracle of generating and preserving

order through fluctuations-fluctuations whose ultimate ground is in quantum mechanical indeterminacy. If you had a perfect understanding of the universe, you would be able, by applying this insight, to tell a man how much change was in his pocket. Since this amount is an accomplished fact, it would be, at least in principle, possible to calculate. What is important is to understand the true boundaries of reality, not the probable boundaries of possible future events. Although boundary conditions operate on the future, they are probabilistic constraints, not absolutely determined fact. We a.s.sume that ten minutes hence, the room we are in will still exist. It is a boundary condition that will define the next ten minutes in our s.p.a.ce/time coordinate. But we cannot know who will be in the room ten minutes hence; that is free to be determined.

One may ask if we can really know that the room will exist at any future moment. This is where induction enters the picture, since in truth we cannot know with certainty. There is no absolutely rigorous way of establishing that. But we can make the inductive leap of faith that has to do with acc.u.mulated experience. We project that the existence of the room will remain a boundary condition, but in principle in the next ten minutes there could be an earthquake and this building might not be left standing. However, for that to happen, the boundary condition will have to be radically disrupted in some unexpected and improbable manner.

What is so curious is that such a thing could occur. That is what the timewave allows one to predict, that there are conditions under which events of great novelty may occur. There is, however, a problem with it. Because we suggest a model of time whose mathematics dictate a built-in spiral structure, events keep gathering themselves into tighter and tighter spirals that lead inevitably to a final time. Like the center of a black hole, the final time is a necessary singularity, a domain or an event in which the ordinary laws of physics do not function. Imagining what happens in the presence of a singularity is, in principle, impossible and so naturally science has shied away from such an idea. The ultimate singularity is the Big Bang, which physicists believe was responsible for the birth of the universe. We are asked by science to believe that the entire universe sprang from nothingness, at a single point and for

no discernible reason. This notion is the limit case for credulity. In other words, if you can believe this, you can believe anything. It is a notion that is, in fact, utterly absurd, yet terribly important to all the rational a.s.sumptions that science wishes to preserve. Those so-called rational a.s.sumptions flow from this initial impossible situation.

Western religion has its own singularity in the form of the apocalypse, an event placed not at the beginning of the universe but at its end. This seems a more logical position than that of science. If singularities exist at all it seems easier to suppose that they might arise out of an ancient and highly complexified cosmos, such as our own, than out of a featureless and dimensionless mega-void.

Science looks down its nose at the apocalyptic fantasies of religion, thinking that the final time can only mean an entropic time of no change. The view of science is that all processes ultimately run down, but entropy is maximized only in some far, far away future. The idea of entropy makes an a.s.sumption that the laws of the s.p.a.ce-time continuum are infinitely and linearly extendable into the future. In the spiral time scheme of the timewave this a.s.sumption is not made. Rather, final time means pa.s.sing out of one set of laws that are conditioning existence and into another radically different set of laws.

The universe is seen as a series of compartmentalized eras or epochs whose laws are quite different from one another, with transitions from one epoch to another occurring with unexpected suddenness.

To see through the eyes of this theory is to see one's place in the spiral scheme and to know and antic.i.p.ate when the transition to new epochs will occur. One sees this in the physical world. The planet is five or six billion years old. The formation of the inorganic universe occupies the first turn of the spiral wave. Then life appears. If one examines this planet, which is the only planet we can examine in depth, one finds that processes are steadily accelerating in both speed and complexity.

A planet swings through s.p.a.ce two billion years before life appears. Life represents a new emergent quality. The instant life gets started, a mad scramble is on. Species appear and disappear. This goes on for a billion and a half years and then suddenly a new emergent property takes the stage: thinking species. This new epoch of

mind is brief in comparison to what preceded it; from the dumb confrontation with chipped flint to the starship is one hundred thousand years. What could that era be but the ingression of a new set of laws? An emergent new psychophysics is allowing our species to manifest very peculiar properties: language, writing, dreaming, and the spinning of philosophy.

Like rattlesnakes and poplar trees, human beings are made by DNA. Yet we trigger the same energies that light the stars. We do this on the surface of our planet. Or we can create a temperature of absolute zero. We do these things because, though we are made of mush and mud, our minds have taught us how to extend our reach through tools. With tools we can unleash energies that normally only occur under very different conditions.

The center of stars is the usual site of fusion processes.

We do such things using mind. And what is mind? We haven't a clue. Twenty-thousand years from nomadic hunting and gathering to cybernetics and s.p.a.ceflight. And we are still accelerating. There are yet more waves to come. From the Model-T Ford to the starship: one hundred years. From the fastest man on earth being able to move thirty miles per hour to nine miles per second: sixty years.

Most puzzling are the predictions the timewave theory makes of near term shifts of epochs made necessary by the congruence of the timewave and the historical record. The timewave seems to give a best fit configuration with the historical data when the a.s.sumption is made that the maximum ingression of novelty, or the end of the wave, will occur on December 22, 2012. Strangely enough this is the end date that the Mayans a.s.signed to their calendar system as well. What is it that gives both a twentieth-century individual and an ancient Meso-American civilization the same date upon which to peg the transformation of the world? Is it that both used psychedelic mushrooms? Could the answer be so simple? I don't think so. Rather, I suspect that when we inspect the structure of our own deep unconscious we will make the unexpected discovery that we are ordered on the same principle as the larger universe in which we arose. This notion, surprising at first, quickly comes to be seen as obvious, natural, and inevitable.

The a.n.a.logy that explains how this might be so is provided by looking at sand dunes. The interesting thing about such dunes is that they bear a resemblance to the force that created them, wind. It is as if each grain of sand were a bit inside the memory of a natural computer. The wind is the input that arranges the grains of sand so that they become a lower-dimensional template of a higher-dimensional phenomenon, in this case the wind.