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McKenna’s Sci-Fi Ideas



I have really been coming back to this quote from Terence McKenna a whole lot lately:

So, a few weeks ago I was meditating in my usual fashion, and I began to get this “new idea”, which was so weird that I immediately shifted into, “This is not the truth, this is not a transmission about the nature of reality. This is a plot for a science fiction novel that I should write!” I tried to hold that as my defence, that was my shield against the onslaught of this thing.

Been feeling this same sort of thing more and more lately as my revelations and observations about the world reach a sort of new peak of… well, of something. And I have been noticing this same thing happening to me when it hits. All of a sudden, you’re inundated with this sort of over-arching picture which dances around in front of you, pretending to explain this or that about the world. And you have the choice of either taking it completely literally at face value and then running off and saying: “THIS IS HOW IT IS! I FIGURED IT ALL OUT!” But that moment inevitably fades after the initial rush, and what you’re left with tends to be really fertile ground for some fun speculative imaginings, ie science-fiction as he describes above.

Looking around online though, it seems that most people when they start having these types of revelatory experiences happen to them that they never take that next step, and just plunge right on in because its so radical and so different from what they knew or thought before. But that seems to be precisely the point of coming across these sorts of BIG IDEAS - is they are supposed to test your resolve, your powers of discernment and most importantly challenge you to change and grow in new ways.

Or at least, that’s my take on it lately…

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7 Reader Responses

  1. David Says:
    November 21st, 2006 at 3:11 pm

    Tim, on the subject of science-fiction and fact becoming ever-closer:

    check out www.steorn.com

    These guys have had some media exposure, but the explosion in interest will happen if they deliver what they say they will next year:

    1) a product validated by a scientific jury
    2) products ready for market

    The circumstantial evidence seems to be building that if this is a hoax/scam, it is so baroque, complex and perverse as to strain credibility (ahem).

    If this is real and you don’t buy into the conspiracy theories that it will be buried, the civilized world is about to be rocked to its foundations.

  2. SubstanceM Says:
    November 21st, 2006 at 3:48 pm

    But that seems to be precisely the point of coming across these sorts of BIG IDEAS - is they are supposed to test your resolve, your powers of discernment and most importantly challenge you to change and grow in new ways

    I agree that this is how it has happened with me.
    Whether or not it is SUPPOSED to be that way, I dunno.
    I am certainly glad that’s how I have and am approaching it.
    Exposure to more and more of these kind of alternative ideas that spring from the ether or from extrapolation, and other people’s misplaced zeal for their subject, helps to steer you down the “wait a minute, that’s not a complete theory” path

  3. Tim Boucher Says:
    November 21st, 2006 at 5:47 pm

    helps to steer you down the “wait a minute, that’s not a complete theory” path

    Right, and thats just the thing: there is no “complete” theory, no system that takes it account all variables perfectly

  4. speedbird Says:
    November 22nd, 2006 at 8:00 am

    Time for a bit of sharing. A few years ago I came across a Big Idea, which haunted me for so long that eventually I quit paid work for six months to draft a novel on the subject. Thing is, that didn’t stop the Big Idea being true… just allowed me to get on friendly terms with it. True, that is, not in a literal laws-of-physics sense, but in a ‘that’s how people see the world’ sense.

    The thing with Big Ideas, I think, is that if you turn and face them head on they’ll disappear (or worse, give you a nasty burn). You see them out of the corner of your eye, and you have to move very slowly and quietly not to scare them off. Just let them hang around there, aware of them but not looking directly at them.

    This, I think, is subtly different from the ‘a-ha!’ experience when an explanation of the physical world by someone else suddenly makes sense, and loose ends of thought crystallise into a coherent whole. Seeing the Big Idea for yourself is another thing. You know it’s there, but you don’t look at it. Eventually you begin to realise that other people have been aware of it before. Perhaps other cultures from other times have named it. The threads of thought slowly begin to assemble themselves into… something.

  5. Tim Boucher Says:
    November 22nd, 2006 at 3:18 pm

    You see them out of the corner of your eye, and you have to move very slowly and quietly not to scare them off. Just let them hang around there, aware of them but not looking directly at them.

    Very interesting - this is almost an exact word for word duplication of what I said about “nature spirits”

    http://www.timboucher.com/journal/2006/09/29/are-plants-conscious/

  6. Tim Boucher Says:
    November 22nd, 2006 at 3:23 pm

    A few years ago I came across a Big Idea,

    More importantly: what was the idea??

  7. speedbird Says:
    November 23rd, 2006 at 5:16 am

    Interesting indeed! The road you are travelling is your own - but I guess we’ve seen some of the same landmarks…

    I’ve seen odd things in the garden (a glimpse of a child with a head made of flowers was particularly weird), and a good friend of mine knew people who swore they’d met the Green Man. But I’ve sensed stranger things out in the wilds.

    Are plants conscious? Not sure… I’d argue they have intrinsic value, because they distinguish themselves from their environment. (I’m loosely following the first couple of chapters of Robin Attfield’s ‘A Theory of Value and Obligation’ here.) Is that the same as consciousness? Possibly.

    Legend is full of stories of fantastic creatures and spirits. One day I asked myself seriously: ‘where did they all go?’. I sang at school: ‘When a Knight Won His Spurs’, which assured me that all the dragons were dead. I’ve always felt that that was a terrible shame (and that my feelings were somehow contrary to the intention of the piece!).

    Is that what happened to all the fantastic creatures and spirits of the world? We killed ‘em off? Hey, maybe some of them were scary and dangerous, but was their extinction worth the cost? What a grim scenario. Was I proud that St. George is the patron saint of my home country, he with his lance and the serpent at his feet? I wasn’t so sure.

    Then one day it struck me: they’re not dead at all, they’re just hiding. For a long while I thought ‘asleep’, but that didn’t quite ring true: no, they’re awake, but hiding. They’re hiding because they’re scared silly. What they’re hiding /behind/ is the modern world. This is the cause of much strife.

    That felt so right that it creeped me out and I filed it away… but it wouldn’t go away… once you start looking you start seeing them everywhere, with the properties that legend ascribes to them. Not like an image on a screen, but askance, out of the corner of your eye.

    We fence round the wild places of the world, saying ‘this is dangerous, don’t go here’. But that’s where the interesting things are… and it suits them that we build our walls, draw our maps, distort our vision. They like it and they actively encourage it, because they’ve suffered in the past at our hands. This must change, I think. We must make peace. It won’t be easy, for among them I sense there are desctructive, consuming forces, black like night, black like the smoke from a furnace… but it must be done. Maybe we do it one at a time for now.



SURROUND YOURSELF WITH STRENGTH.