Chaos, Creativity, and Cosmic Consciousness

Sheldrake, RupertRupert Sheldrake is a biologist, a former research fellow of the Royal Society at Cambridge, a current fellow of the Institute of Noetic Sciences near San Francisco, and an academic director and visiting professor at the Graduate Institute in Connecticut. He received his Ph.D. in biochemistry from Cambridge University and was a fellow of Clare College, Cambridge University, where he carried out research on the development of plants and the ageing of cells. He is the author of more than eighty scientific papers and ten books, including Dogs That Know When Their Owners Are Coming Home; Morphic Resonance; The Presence of the Past; Chaos, Creativity, and Cosmic Consciousness; The Rebirth of Nature; and Seven Experiences That Could Change the World. In 2019, Rupert Sheldrake was cited as one of the "100 Most Spiritually Influential Living People in the World" according to Watkins Mind Body Spirit magazine.McKenna, TerenceMcKenna was a scholar of shamanism, ethno-botanist, psychedelic researcher and author of many books.Abraham, RalphRalph Abraham is the author of Dynamics: The Geometry of Behavior. He lives in California.Houston, JeanJean Houston and Robert Masters are well-known pioneers of modern consciousness research and were both among the founders of the Human Potentials Movement. They also coauthored Mind Games: The Guide to Inner Space and The Varieties of Psychedelic Experience. Jean Houston is also the author of A Passion for the Possible, Godseed, and A Mythic Life. She resides in New York.

Three of the most original thinkers of our time explore issues that call into question our current views of reality, morality, and the nature of life.

- A wide-ranging investigation of the ecology of inner and outer space, the role of chaos theory in the dynamics of human creation, and the rediscovery of traditional wisdom.

In this book of "trialogues," the late psychedelic visionary and shamanologist Terence McKenna, acclaimed biologist and originator of the morphogenetic fields theory Rupert Sheldrake, and mathematician and chaos theory scientist Ralph Abraham explore the relationships between chaos and creativity and their connection to cosmic consciousness. Their observations call into question our current views of reality, morality, and the nature of life in the universe. The authors challenge the reader to the deepest levels of thought with wide-ranging investigations of the ecology of inner and outer space, the role of chaos in the dynamics of human creation, and the resacralization of the world. Among the provocative questions the authors raise are: Is Armageddon a self-fulfilling prophecy? Are we humans the imaginers or the imagined? Are the eternal laws of nature still evolving? What is the connection between physical light and the light of consciousness?

Part ceremony, part old-fashioned intellectual discussion, these trialogues are an invitation to a new understanding of what Jean Houston calls "the dreamscapes of our everyday waking life."

Three of the most original thinkers of our time explore issues that call into question our current views of reality, morality, and the nature of life.

Chaos, Creativity, and Cosmic Consciousness
Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Foreword by Jean Houston
Preface
Chapter 1: Creativity and the Imagination
The new evolutionary cosmology. The regularities of nature as evolving habits. The basis of cosmic creativity. The cosmic imagination as a higher-dimensional attractor drawing the evolutionary process toward itself. The Omega Point. Imagination welling up from the womb of chaos. Psychedelic experience and the mind of Gaia. Gaian dreams and human history. Dark matter as the cosmic unconscious.
Chapter 2: Creativity and Chaos
The chaos revolution. Chaotic attractors as eternal mathematical realities. Indeterminism in nature. Chaos and the evolution of order. Form in the cooling process. The organizing fields of nature as related to mathematics and the cosmic imagination. Mathematical models. Attractors, attraction, and motivation. The freezing of information in crystals and in written language. The primacy of spoken language and abstraction.
Chapter 3: Chaos and the Imagination
Chaos in Greek mythology. The myth of the conquest of chaos. Fear of chaos and the suppression of the feminine. The partnership society and the rise of patriarchy. Seasonal festivals of the repression of chaos, and the creation of the unconscious. The inhibition of creativity and its relation to global problems. The Eleusinian mysteries. Creativity and Christology. Plans for the recovery of chaos and the imagination. The significance of the chaos revolution.
Chapter 4: The World Soul and the Mushroom
Randomness in the evolutionary process. The limited nature of models. The computer and chaos revolutions. Coevolution of mathematics and the material world. The mathematical landscape. Sensory qualities in the cosmic imagination. The similarities of souls and fields. The primal unified field and the fields of nature. Rebirth of the world soul. Interplanetary transfer of the human psyche via the psychedelic experience and the spores of magic mushrooms.
Chapter 5: Light and Vision
Physical light and the light of consciousness. Light and vision. The location of visual images. Mind extending from the eyes.The sense of being stared at: a new kind of field or the electromagnetic field? Hierarchy of fields in nature. Coupling between electromagnetic and mental fields. Physical light and self-luminous visions. Tryptamine hallucinogens. The world soul. Fields as the medium of divine omniscience. Gaian mind and the light of the sun.
Chapter 6: Entities
Discarnate intelligences and nonhuman entities: creatures within the human mind or truly Other? Entities and shamans. The use of language by entities. Angelic communication in the birth of modern science. The dream dimension and entities. The effect of science and humanism on entities. Nature magically self-reflecting and aware.
Chapter 7: The Unconscious
The three great bifurcations. Creation of the unconscious, the origin of evil, and the rejection of chaos. Escape from evil by the resurrection of chaos. The suppression of psychedelics, the patriarchy, and the rise of booze. Partnership and dominator drugs; the addiction to addictions. Habits and the formation of the unconscious. Holidays and the reinforcement of awareness. Prayer, magic, and astrology for enlightenment.
Chapter 8: The Resacralization of the World
Ralph's religious background. The sacred in India. Rediscovering the sacred in the West. The revival of ritual and the resacralization of music. Feminism and the archaic revival. Gothic cathedrals and animistic Christianity. The green movement, saving the Earth, the greening of God. Psychedelic churches. The resacralizing of science.
Chapter 9: Education in the New World Order
Education as initiation. The dominance of rationalism and humanism. Rites of passage. Summer camps. Testing and accreditation. Institutions and administrations. Workshops as a model for a new pluralistic and decentralized system of education. Religious initiations. Reform of existing professions. A possible pilot project.
Chapter 10: The Apocalypse
The apocalyptic tradition: a mythic model motivating religious history or an intuition of the ending of history or time? Modern millenarianism and scientific versions of the apocalypse. The possible end in 2012. The self-fulfilling quality of apocalyptic prophecy. The speeding up of history and the inevitability of planetary metamorphosis. Death and transformation on a cosmic scale. Intensifying conflict and the power of faith.
Glossary
Bibliography
About the Authors