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Preface
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Chapter 1.
Grassroots
Science
The increasing
predominance of big science and large institutions. Public
alienation from science. The possibility of radical research
on a budget of less than $50. How amateurs could help
revitalize science. The role of computer networks. The
continuing need for institutional science. A complementary
relationship between grassroots and institutional research.
Holistic medicine and low-cost medical research. Declining
science budgets. The popularity of dinosaurs. Psychedelic
explorations as an example of a grassroots research. Radical
research by students. The revitalizing of scientific
education.
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Chapter 2.
Psychedelics,
Computers, and Mathematics
Nearly all innovators
in computer graphics take psychedelics. Ralph's experiences
in the 1960s. Visual mathematics and psychedelic
imagination. The need for emotional involvement. Visual
metaphors and the footprints of meaning. Psychedelic
experience is made of mind but not just our minds. The
language of patterns. The decline of literacy and the rise
of visual intelligence. Television as an addictive drug.
Computer graphics and the forms of flowers and beetles.
Mathematical landscapes. Mathematics a marriage of heaven
and earth.
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Chapter 3.
What Hawaii
Tells Us About Evolution
These volcanic,
mid-oceanic islands are a laboratory for evolution in
isolation. On the islands themselves, ecosystems are divided
up by lava flows. Comparison with evolution on other island
systems and in the Amazon basin. The evolutionary importance
of variety for its own sake. Hawaii as a microcosm of the
Earth itself. Creative adaptation, morphic resonance, and
the evolution of habits. The movement of entire ecosystems.
Spores, ducks' feet, and the colonization of Hawaii. How do
migrant birds find new island systems? How did the
Polynesians find Hawaii? Contemporary cultural evolution.
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Chapter 4.
Homing Pigeons
Many animals can home
or migrate, but no one knows how. Research with pigeons has
refuted all theories based on known scientific principles.
Homing cannot be explained in terms of smell, the sun,
landmarks, or magnetism. An unknown sense or field seems to
be involved. Pigeons linked to their home by a connection
like an invisible elastic band. Can pigeons find their home
if the home is taken away from the pigeons, rather than the
pigeons from the home? Results of preliminary experiments
with mobile lofts. Does homing depend on a sixth sense or an
inherited map? How language inhibits our ability to imagine
the mind of a pigeon. The different relationship of animal
minds to time. Homing as a pulling from the future. Pigeons
and their lofts linked by morphic fields. The nature of
social bonds. The way shamans know the future. The
connection of shamanic knowledge with the knowledge of
animals.
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Chapter 5.
The World Wide
Web
What the World Wide
Web is and how it goes beyond the Internet. Worldwide
browsing and creativity. The Web as the basis of the
noosphere of the future. Boundary dissolution. But is it
just for nerds? The absence of the feminine. A vast increase
in the accessibility of information. Do we really need more
information? Research on the quality of time using databases
on sunspots, accident rates, etc. The Web's resemblance to
psychedelic experience. Creativity and self-publishing. Who
does the editing? Can the proliferation of special interest
groups have any unifying effect? Could the Web improve our
realtionship to the environment or to local communities? A
future telepathic collectivity.
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Chapter 6.
Research With
Psychic Pets
Many pets seem to know
in advance when their owners are coming home. Inexpensive
research with pets an example of grassroots science. Is
science too rigid to assimilate animal telepathy, even if
the evidence were overwhelming? The ancient shamanic roots
of communication with animals. How does telepathy work?
Morphic fields as a basis of interconnection. Resonance,
time, and precognition. Fractal wavelets. How language
deceives us about the nature of time. The advantages of
music. How animals respond to intentions. Hunting,
shamanism, and the evolution of consciousness.
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Chapter 7.
Fractals
The sandy beach and
fractal boundaries. Chaos and the Milky Way. Fractal
boundaries destroy determinism. Multiple personalities and
boundaries in the mind. Dischaos in personal relationships.
Polytheistic psychology. Fractalization and unity. Dischaos
therapy. Drugs, journeys, and the increasing permeability of
boundaries. Aboriginal cultures and openness to others. Our
obsession with privacy. Walled fortresses and fractal
labyrinths.
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Chapter 8.
Time
The Big Bang as
scientific orthodoxy's free miracle. Cosmic evolution toward
increasing complexity. The pull of a transcendental
attractor located in the future. The Omega Point. History as
the shock wave of the end of time. Myths of history. Time is
speeding up. The Judeo-Christian tradition is inherently
apocalyptic. Will the end of history be confined to the
Earth, or will it be some kind of cosmic transition? The
impact of comets. Hyperspace. The dissolution of all things.
Terence's prediction of the end in 2012 AD. Visions of the
transcendental attractor.
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Chapter 9:
The Heavens
The rediscovery of the
life of nature. The ancient sense of the sacredness of the
heavens and the Earth. The secularization of the heavens
since the seventeenth century. Consciousness in stars and
galaxies. Heavenly bliss. Modern ignorance of the heavens.
Astrologers find meaning in the sky, but don't look at it.
Angels. SETI, the search for extra-terrestrial intelligence.
Journeys out of the body. Are psychedelic visions localized?
The evolution of complexity. The loss of interest in space
exploration. Contacting the intelligences of the stars in
altered states of consciousness. Elizabethan star magic.
Modern sun worship. A new synthesis of astrology and
astronomy.
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Chapter 10.
Utopianism
and Millenarianism
The literary origins
of Utopia. Utopians hope that the virtues of the past will
be restored. The Judeo-Christian roots of millenarianism.
Millenarians believe history is about to end. Scientific
utopianism and the ideology of progress. New age Utopias.
Terence as a psychedelic Utopian. And also as a prophet of
the apocalypse. The big bang and the irrational. The
acceleration of history. The transcendental object at the
end of time. New models of time. Chaotic transformation.
Millenarian visions and self-fulfilling prophecy. The cosmic
dimension. The end in 2012?
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Chapter 11:
Father Bede's
Letter
Father Bede Griffiths,
an English Benedictine monk who lived in India, was Rupert's
teacher. His letter about our book Trialogues at the Edge of
the West. He found a lack of the sense of the mystical, or
of ultimate unity. Terence puts this unity at the end of
time. Ralph connects it with the unity of the evolutionary
process. Rupert sees it in the Holy Trinity. The
Judeo-Christian faith in God's action in historical time,
and at the end of time. Evolutionary theology. The cosmic
attractor. Indeterminacy and the structure of time.
Entelechy and the time wave. Freud and Thanatos, the death
principle. Birth throughout the universe.
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Biographies
