The Invisible landscape: Mind hallucinogens and the I Ching. My review

The Invisible landscape by Terence and Dennis McKenna is a very original and unusual book. From a daring shamanistic experiment with hallucinogenic compounds they arrived at insights about a holographic temporal wave (called "time wave zero") based on a fractal of cycles which they could derive from the I Ching.

The first part of the book is about the experiment the brothers McKenna undertook in La Chorrera in the Amazon in which they took a mixture of Ayahuasca and hallucinogenic mushrooms. This led to an enhanced perception of the so-called audible effect during such experiences. Interestingly the book attacks the induction based method of science to replace it with a holographic theory of mind and existence. This is a necessary step to come to their speculative theories about how the audible effect could have been generated by intercalation of neurotransmitter-like hallucinogenic tryptamine compounds in DNA or RNA in conjunction with ESR signals thereby generated, which might have been the cause of the sounds.

The second part of the book is about the insights gathered during this experiment in relation to how the I Ching pattern is related to a nested fractal of time waves.

Although the present day understanding how neurotransmitters and their hallucinogenic mimics has shown that these interactions occur via protein based receptors in the synaptic membrane, effects of intercalation in nucleic acids are not to be excluded. Unfortunately as of yet nobody has tested whether the proposed ESR effect does occur in vivo.

The idea of recurrent waves of novelty in a kind of nested time fractal is plausibly explained and demonstrated on the basis of key events in evolution and history. The calibration point of 21-12-2012 as end point of time wave zero apparently seems to have been too much of a wishful thinking association, as our current state of affairs shows that novelty waves are continuing as usual and have not yet culminated in a singularity.

Interestingly, the book shows how hallucinogenic compounds from plants and mushrooms can reveal archetypical information which relays the collective unconscious via the neurological level to the genetic level and vice versa. This strongly reminds me of Leary's "neurogenetic circuit" and the more modern insights disclosed in Tsang's "Fractal Brain Theory".

Finally, not the least important, this book not only speaks about the Eschaton as a universal and fractal morphogenetic field, which unfolds the predispositions of space and time, but also as the Eschatological scheme in which the advent of a final time, a time of concrescence of the density of novelty ingression results in the culmination of the human process resulting in the completion of the perfect artifact in which spirit and matter achieve a perfect union whereby the Transcendent object at the end of time stands revealed as the transcendent subject, which is also the Eschaton, thus implicitly arriving at the union of knower, knowing and known (in my interpretation). A challenging denial of simple materialistic reductionism, in which matter is merely a standing wave form of all-encompassing light of spirit, leading to a visionary apotheosis where matter and spirit/mind are no longer mutually exclusive grounds of existence but different sides of the same coin.

A fascinating journey through the realms of shamanism, showing that the insights of the shaman are not schizophrenic or psychotic rantings but a true mastery, a supra normal level of ability where the adept has conquered the demons of the multiplicity of forms and emerges as a messenger between the realms of spirit and matter.

Insights, which will make you travel through biology, chemistry, physics, general systems theory, psychology, evolution, history, semiotics and semantics.

From insectoid cybernetics to hypercomplex technology showing us a foretaste of the inner divinity we may one day reveal in ourselves.

A book I will not easily forget. A journey of concrescence to reveal the perfect artefact as form of the self.