Any discussion of Timewave Zero must first begin with a discussion of novelty. To McKenna novelty is more than just a cute happenstance, it is a natural law—perhaps the most fundamental law in fact—for the “conservation and complexification of novelty is what the universe is striving for,” (McKenna 1994). Before jumping into Novelty Theory however, a definition of the term is in order and who better than to provide that definition than the late bard himself: “Synonyms for ‘novelty’ are ‘degree of connectedness’ or ‘complexity.’ Note that these are not terms that make a moral judgment. Novelty is not ‘good’ while entropy is ‘bad.’ Novelty is simply a situation of greater connectedness and complex organization, while entropy is the opposite of these qualities: it is less organized, less integrated, less complex,” (McKenna 1991)
But what of novelty as a law of nature? To McKenna,
It’s not a coincidence that electrons spinning around an atomic nucleus and planets going around a star and star clusters going around a gravitational center of a galaxy…observe the same kind of order on different scales and yet science would say that is a coincidence. PW Bridgeman, who was a philosopher of science, defined coincidence as what you have leftover when you apply a bad theory. It means that you overlooked something and that what jumps out at you as coincidence is a set of relationships whose casuistry, whose relationships to each other, are simply hidden from you, (McKenna 1994).
Continuing in reference to dark matter explaining the structure and organization of galaxies:
I don’t believe that 90% of the matter in the universe goes unobserved… It’s not that there’s mass missing–it’s that there’s a law missing…Why does the Milky Way tend to stay the Milky Way? The answer is: because, as a spiral galaxy, it’s a more complex organism, a more complex structure, than it is as a dissipated, homogeneous mass, (McKenna 1998a).
To McKenna, it is novelty which is the “missing” law of science that accounts for both the structure of things from atoms to nebulae and the seemingly exponential increase in technological advance seen in recent history.
The way the universe works is upon a platform of previously achieved complexity…new forms of complexity can be built that cross these ontological boundaries, in other words what I mean by that is that biology is based on complex chemistry but it is more than complex chemistry, socials systems are based on the organization that is animal life and yet it is more than animal life. This is a general law of the universe, overlooked by science, that out of complexity emerges greater complexity. We could almost say that the universe, nature, is a novelty-conserving, or complexity-conserving engine, (McKenna 1994). [Italics mine].
This perpetual creation and multiplication of complexity however, is not some homeostatic process but is in fact increasing, “each stage of advancement into complexity occurs more quickly than the stage which preceded it…Time is, in fact, speeding up,” (McKenna 1994).
McKenna’s theory seems greatly at odds with modern scientific thinking yet oddly in line with subjective experience. Things do seem to be progressing and growing increasingly complex at an ever increasing rate. The technological progress made by our culture in the last twenty years alone has been unthinkably swift. As McKenna suggests (McKenna 1998b) to try and extrapolate this forward 500 years into the future is an impossibility. If this is no mere stochastic trend, how could it be that science has somehow managed to overlook one of the main characteristics of our universe? McKenna answers,
Science is the exploration of the experience of nature without psychedelics. And I propose, therefore, to expand that enterprise and say that we need a science beyond science. We need a science which plays with a full deck, (McKenna 1994).
What is revealed through the psychedelic experience, I think, is a higher dimensional perspective on reality. And I use ‘higher dimensional’ in the mathematical sense, (McKenna 1994).
To Terence then, the psychedelic experience in a sense completes science, and it is through the psychedelic experience that Terence arrived at Novelty Theory.
I discern patterns in nature that cause me to believe that science…has overlooked very important aspects of reality that you don’t need an atom smasher or a DNA sequencer to register, (McKenna 1998b)
Through Novelty Theory, McKenna hopes to reconcile science with subjective experience through the kind of empirical method on which modern science is built. The basis from which McKenna built this theory (or more properly, the actual source of data for McKenna’s theory itself,) is the King Wen sequence of the I Ching.
[The I Ching] is a mathematical notation system… for the purpose of creating a physics of Time…based on human observation, and… it arises in a context, we presume, of shamanism and proto-Taoist values, (McKenna 1998a).
What is unusual about this approach, if not unique, is the effort to give a formal mathematical description of the ebb and flow of this quality. I might have called it Tao, but I chose instead to call it novelty to stress the fact that it is process growing toward concrescence, (McKenna 1991).
By concrescence, McKenna is using the term as defined by Alfred North Whitehead, “ ‘Concrescence’ is the name for the process in which the universe of many things acquires an individual unity in a determinate relegation of each item of the ‘many’ to its subordination in the constitution of the novel ‘one,’” (McKenna 1993). We will address more specifically what McKenna interprets this eventual concrescence as later, for now we will turn our attention to how McKenna and his brother created this map of novelty, which they call Timewave Zero.
Timewave Zero is based off of the belief that the ancient Chinese had an acute understanding of some relatively complicated astronomical phenomena such as the procession of the equinoxes and the sunspot cycles as well as “the assumption of hierarchical or resonance thinking in Chinese intellectual constructs,” (McKenna 1993) for which he attempts to illustrate in his book The Invisible Landscape. McKenna establishes that the Chinese knew the length of the lunar cycle to be 29.53 days by citing the scholarship of Joseph Needham (1965). He then suggests that it was recognized that 13 lunations equaled roughly 384 (383.89) which is equally to six (the number of lines (yao) in one of the hexagrams of the I Ching sequence) times 64 (the total number of hexograms).
At this point in the process, it is reasonable to suppose that the Chinese love of cycles, hierarchies, and resonances would have led them, having cognized the 384-day year as a hexagram, to assume that 64 x 384 [64 x 64 x 6] days was a natural division of time [approximately equal to six minor sunspot cycles]…And indeed, 384 x 64 x 64 [64 x 64 x 64 x 6] also shows interesting resonance periods [roughly 2 zodiacal ages, further multiply this number by 6 (64 x 64 x 64 x 6 x 6) and you get 25,836 years, a very close approximation of the time of the procession of the equinoxes]. In fact, several phenomena that have been found to be cyclical appear to have relationships of correspondence to the cylindrical hierarchy on one of its levels, (McKenna 1993).
McKenna then uses these patterns, which seem clear enough, and then a fair amount of fractal geometry and wave dynamics to create his Timewave Zero map of novelty. Let me take a moment to be explicit: Timewave Zero (see image below) is intended to be a map of the total novelty over time, or in the words of McKenna, “these time maps or novelty maps show the ebb and flow of connectedness or novelty in any span of time from a few days to tens of millennia,” (McKenna 1993).
The story of the universe is that information, which I call novelty, is struggling to free itself from habit, which I call entropy… and that this process… is accelerating… It seems as if… the whole cosmos wants to change into information… All points want to become connected…. The path of complexity to its goals is through connecting things together… You can imagine that there is an ultimate end-state of that process–it’s the moment when every point in the universe is connected to every other point in the universe, (McKenna 1998a).
In an interesting contrast to our Newtonian or even Einsteinian notion of time, the wave characteristic of Timewave Zero predicts a “progressive spiral involution of time toward a concrescence;” in other words, an endpoint (McKenna 1993).
Implicit in this theory of time is the notion that duration is like a tone in that one must assign a moment at which the damped oscillation is finally quenched and ceases. I chose the date December 21, 2012 A.D., as this point because with that assumption the wave seemed to be in the “best fit” configuration with regard to the recorded facts of the ebb and flow of historical advance into connectedness. Later I learned to my amazement that this same date, December 21, 2012, was the date assigned as the end of their calendrical cycle by the classic Maya, surely one of the worlds most time-obsessed cultures, (McKenna 1991).
Above is an image from the Timewave Zero program of the novelty wave over the course of 1500 years. Shown on the image are a number of significant events which were used (among many others) to help fit the wave to our Gregorian calendar. Here “novelty” is maximized when closest to the x-axis, therefore a singularity will occur at any point that the wave has a value of zero. This however, only occurs once, at December 21, 2012, at which point according to McKenna, the universe will reach a concrescence as novelty reaches a singularity. The events shown above are just a few of the many events which McKenna used to map the novelty wave.
Let me explain that we chose the end of the Mayan Calendar as the “end date” for this graph because we found good agreement between the events that comprise the historical record and the wave itself when this end date was chosen. The end date is the point of maximized novelty in the wave and is the only point in the entire wave that has a quantified value of zero [infinite novelty]. We arrived at this particular end date without knowledge of the Mayan Calendar, and it was only after we noticed that the historical data seemed to fit best with the wave if this end date was chosen that we were informed that the end date that we had deduced was in fact the end of the Mayan Calendar, (McKenna 1993).
McKenna himself remarked at his own surprise in the conjunction of the end date with the Maya calendar. After fitting the data to the past, he claimed astonishment that the end date was “not hundreds or thousands of years into the future,” (McKenna 1998a) but in 2012, in conjunction with the Maya calendar end date.
Despite initially claiming independence to the Maya calendar (“The only thing that I have in common with the Mayan calendar is that both I and the Maya took psychedelic mushrooms,”) (McKenna 1998a), McKenna grew intrigued at this synchronistic turn of events and began to speculate about the possible meaning of this correspondence:
In the early 1990’s, while in correspondence with John Jenkins, we discussed the possibility that the end-date of the 13-baktun Great Cycle was intentionally chosen by the Maya because of the conjunction of the sun with the intersection of the ecliptic and the plane of the Milky Way on December 21, 2012—the 13.0.0.0.0 of the Long Count calendar. In my revised 1993 edition of the The Invisible Landscape, I stated that the end date for my own mushroom-revealed model of the cosmos ended on the same date as the Maya calendar but that my calculation had been done by different methods than those of the Maya and without the knowledge of those methods, (Jenkins 1998).
The Maya believed, for reasons which are perhaps forever lost, or perhaps soon to be revealed, that the coincidence of the winter solstice sunrise with the part of the Milky Way that they called xibalba be would not be, as some have stated, the end of the world, but its moment of true creation, (Jenkins 1998).
Irrespective of what the Maya knew, Terence McKenna certainly appreciated the astronomical significance of the period as the possible end of the 26,000 “Zodiacal great year” and the so-called alignment with the “galactic center”:
This will occur sometime in the next two hundred years. It is difficult to be more accurate, since the term “galactic center” is ambiguous…the galaxy may by presumed to have a gravitational center, a radio center, and a spatial center…the most likely heliacal rising of the galactic center with the solstice sun occurs on December 21, 2012….That such a situation would have noticeable effects on life on earth is totally speculative, (McKenna 1993).
It is noteworthy that McKenna does not throw his full weight behind this claim of further correspondence between his theory, the Maya calendar, and the “galactic alignment.” Terence clearly went to great lengths to attempt to make his theory as empirical as possible and in lectures even went to some effort to explain the ambiguity of the concept of a galactic alignment (McKenna 1998b). What McKenna did not shy away from however, is that irrespective of the Maya Calendar, galactic alignment, or even Novelty Theory, we are in a period of great flux and change of a magnitude unparalleled in recorded history.
But the McKenna’s referred to The Invisible Landscape and their introduction of Timewave Zero as their magnum opus, clearly they believed their work to be more than merely a coincidence of the times. So what did Terence really think of Timewave Zero and the coming singularity?
My interpretation of the zero point is that it is the point at which the ingression into novelty and the degree of interconnectedness of the separate elements that comprise the concrescence will be such that the ontological nature of time itself will be transformed, (McKenna 1991).
McKenna further defines the concrescence as an achievement in which, “ego and the Tao are perceived as one, or rather, only Tao is perceived, but as though it were ego,” (McKenna 1993). This fairly abstract explanation is aided by a further expansion on the idea:
It’s reasonable to suggest that by the end of the Mayan calendar—which is in 2012 A.D.—we will be unrecognizable to ourselves, that what we take to be our creations, computers, and technology, are actually another level of ourselves…we will recover what we knew in the beginning: the archaic union with nature that was seamless, unmediated by language, unmediated by notions of self and other, of life and death, of civilization and nature. These are dualisms that are temporary and provisional within the labyrinth of history…We are not alienated and outside of the natural we are somehow the cutting edge of it. And this vast output of buildings and highways and all the things that characterize the modern world is actually a feature of the natural world, (McKenna 1991).
Throughout his career Terence was asked to expand upon his own personal opinion of what 2012 might bring but perhaps there is no articulation of his own ideas laid out any more beautifully than as he put it above. What always remained more elusive however, was a personal guarantee from Terence as to the absolute validity of his theory: “I am still willing to argue that what I put down about the I Ching is true, or that a truth is very close to the surface in all of that,” (McKenna 1998a). Or as he put it in his introduction to the 1994 edition of The Invisible Landscape:
My faith that the ideas explored here will be found to have an extraordinary explanatory and persuasive power remains unshaken. As for Truth, I will argue today—as I did in 1971 at La Chorrera—that these ideas are, in Wittgenstein’s wonderful phrase, “True enough,” (McKenna 1993).
McKenna was always very careful to avoid pegging himself down and saying, “Yes. Here it is! I’ve got all the answers,” because he knew that he didn’t. He would likely say it is for that reason that science is failing us today and it is perhaps along this vein in which he has proposed this theory in the first place, at least in the eyes of friend, colleague, and creator of the Timewave Zero software, Peter Meyer:
Perhaps the real value of Novelty Theory, at the end of the technological war-driven 20th century, is that it is a parody. It is not a scientific theory, nor is it a pseudo-scientific theory—it is a parody of a scientific theory. It basically mocks the pretensions of 20th century physical science. It purports to explain the nature of time and to elucidate the inner workings of the temporal world, yet it is obviously absurd, at least to a more than superficial examination. Novelty Theory says to us: This is what any Cartesian-Newtonian scientific theory really is—basically absurd. And since it is absurd, we should not, and do not have to, believe. This basically knocks the foundations out from under the assumptions of modern Western society, built as it is on a faith in modern physical science as being the authority as to the nature of the real world. In this sense Terence McKenna's thought is both liberating and subversive, (Meyer).
It is the above message which the user of the Timewave Zero software sees as she exits the application. McKenna is not alive today to confirm his former colleague’s conclusion, but it is not an unreasonable assumption to make. Terence often lectured on the absurdity and hypocrisy of modern science (though equally as often, its merits) and made an art of proposing ideas from the lunatic fringe and then showing them as completely plausible. McKenna was a master of using the rules of science and logic to illustrate the dangers of dogma and expectation among our modern society.
I’m more rational than I may sound, here…because I doubt. I know absolutely how flakey this sounds… I’m not here to found a cult. I just had a very wiggy experience… The problem with most people’s really wiggy experiences is that it never gets down to the nitty-gritty… and by the nitty gritty I basically mean a mathematical formula that you can then throw up on a blackboard and say to the experts, “this is what God said to me, is it horseshit or what is it?”…[but] the good thing–in my view–of what happened to me is, it actually got down to a mathematical proposition… a hypothesized law…it may turn out to be false, but it is a contender. It played in the highest class of competition of all which is in the realm of formal mathematical theory, (McKenna 1998a).
McKenna was acutely aware of the potentiality for dogma in the acceptance of his Timewave Zero theory and in his other ideas and musings as both a lecturer and writer; it is for this reason that he went to such extraordinary lengths to provide a mathematical foundation for his theory.
Certainly one of the main themes of Terence’s life’s work was to expose and subvert the cultural programming and dogma of our society. One of McKenna’s most recognizable and memorable lines is “culture is not your friend,” as he viewed our cultural programming as “the most powerful imprisoning factor in our lives,” (McKenna 1994). In fact, many of his lectures were devoted to anti-dogmatic rants which found Christianity and modern science but also the New Age movement and guruism among his favorite targets. It is the latter two which McKenna seemed especially adamant in attempting to distance himself from, and understandably so as both some of his ideas and his audience partially overlapped with the two movements which he viewed as just different flavors of cultural programming.
McKenna’s distaste for the New Age ideology is evidenced by the following quote in which he discusses the difficulty in being perceived as credible while pursuing a common academic interest:
The task of appreciating the Maya is not made any easier by the fact that the specious archaeological fantasies of the New Age have poured scorn on all ancient knowledge that does not flow from the putative founts of lost Lemuri, high Atlantis, and even more dubious realism that are far away indeed, (Jenkins 1998).
Despite his clear disdain for any New Age association, McKenna undoubtedly seems to walk that dangerous line to those unfamiliar with his work. However, to those familiar with McKenna, he provides an invaluable service as a brilliant thinker willing to stray outside of the narrow confine of what is deemed acceptable in modern society.
Just over a year prior to his death, McKenna gave a lecture in San Francisco in which summed up his later views of his work with the I Ching:
For those of you who care about my theories in this area of mathematics and deconstruction of the I Ching and analogizing to the Mayan calendar: it is a mathematical game, it is an intellectual game. I discern patterns in nature that cause me to believe that science… has overlooked very important aspects of reality that you don’t need an atom smasher or a DNA sequencer… to register, (McKenna 1998b).
The second sentence of the above quote, (which was quoted previously, in less context) betrays to us what seems likely to have been Terence’s ultimate motivation in creating his Novelty Theory. Terence recognized, quite early, that science has stripped man of his place in the universe, reduced him to a cosmic accident, and disallowed purpose from having any meaning in our universe. Novelty Theory, it seems, is McKenna’s effort to rewrite humanity back into the great cosmic play.
If you will join me in this belief that the universe works as I have described…a light comes on on the human condition… Who are we in science’s story? We are nobody. Lucky to be here. We are a cosmic accident. We exist on an ordinary star, at the edge of a typical galaxy, in an ordinary part of space and time. Essentially our existence is without meaning…But if I’m right…then we are the apple of [the universe’s] eye. Suddenly, cosmic purpose is restored to us. We left the center of the cosmic stage in the 13th century and haven’t been back since. But this idea says “No [to that notion]. People matter.” You are the cutting edge of a 13 billion year old process of defining novelty. Your acts matter. Your thoughts matter. Your purpose: to add to complexity. Your enemy: disorder entropy, stupidity, and tastelessness…suddenly then you have a morality, you have an ethical arrow, you have contextualization in the processes of nature. You have meaning, you have authenticity, you have hope, (McKenna 1998b).
Regardless of whether or not Terence McKenna believed that on December 21, 2012 a switch would flip and the universe would be forever changed, it is clear that he believed that the universe needed to change. To claim that “Terence believed this” or “Terence believed that” regarding the literality of Novelty Theory would be to miss the very point he was trying to make.
Terence McKenna passed away in early 2000 before he could ever see just exactly what kind of truth his Novelty Theory held. In the years since his death, the further complexification and integration promised in his Novelty Theory seems to have lived up to its billing, though its ultimate test still lies beyond the horizon. Will 2012 bring the monumental change that Terence and others have speculated it would? Who knows? Terence certainly did not.
Bibliography
Gabriel, Trip.
1993 Tripping, but Not Falling. New York Times 2 May. New York.
Jenkins, John Major and Terence McKenna
1998 Maya Cosmogenesis 2012. Bear & Company, Sante Fe, New Mexico
McKenna, Terence
1991 The Archaic Revival. Harper Collins, New York, New York.
McKenna, Terence and Dennis McKenna
1993 The Invisible Landscape. 2nd ed [1975]. Harper Collins, New York, New York.
McKenna, Terence
1994 From Eros to Eschaton. Lecture. Seattle, Washington
McKenna, Terence
1998(a) In The Valley of Novelty (Part 3). Podcast 29. Psychedelic Salon
McKenna, Terence
1998(b) Dream Awake. Lecture. San Francisco, California.
Meyer, Peter
Timewave Zero. Dolphin Software, Berkeley, California
