Mavericks of the Mind: Conversations with Terence McKenna, Allen Ginsberg, Timothy Leary, John Lilly, Carolyn Mary Kleefeld, Laura Huxley, Robert Anton Wilson, and others… (33 page)

The basin is, in fact, their principal metaphor. So the ball rolls down to the bottom. It doesn't matter where you throw it in, or at what speed you throw it in, or by what route it takes--what this model does is tell you where it's going to end up. This kind of mathematical modeling is extremely appropriate, I think, to the understanding of biological morphogenesis, or the formation of crystals or molecules, or the formation of galaxies, or the formation of ideas, or human behavior, or the behavior of entire societies. Because all of them seem to have this kind of tendency to move towards attractors, which we think of consciously as goals and purposes. But, throughout the natural world these attractors exist, I think, largely unconsciously. The oak tree is the attractor of the acorn. So the growing oak seedling is drawn towards its formal attractor, its morphic attractor, which is the mature oak tree.

RMN: So, it is like the future in some sense.

RUPERT: It's like the future pulling, but it's not the future. It's a hard concept to grasp, because what we think of as the future pulling is not necessary what will happen in the future. You can cut the acorn down before it ever reaches the oak tree. So, it's not as if its future as oak tree is pulling it. It's some kind of potentiality to reach an end state, which is inherent in its nature. The attractor in traditional language is the entelechy, in Aristotle's language, and in the language of the medieval scholastics. Entelechy is the aspect of the soul, which is the end which draws everything towards it. So all people would have their own entelechy, which would be like their own destiny or purpose. Each organism, like an acorn, would have the entelechy of an oak tree, which means this end state--entelechy means the end which is within it--it has its own end, purpose, or goal. And that's what draws it. But that end, purpose, or goal is somehow not necessarily in the future. It is in a sense in the future. In another sense it's not the actual future of that system, although it becomes so.

RMN: Perhaps the most compelling implication of your hypothesis is that nature is not governed by eternally fixed laws but more by habits that are able to evolve as conditions change. In what ways do you think the human experience of reality could be affected as a result of this awareness?

RUPERT: Well, I think first of all the idea of habits developing along with nature gives us a much more evolutionary sense of nature herself. I think that nature-the entire cosmos, the natural world we live in--is in some sense alive, and that it's more like a developing organism, with developing habits, than like a fixed machine governed by fixed laws, which is the old image of the cosmos, the old world view.

Second, I think the notion of natural habits enables us to see how there's a kind of presence of the past in the world around us. The past isn't just something that happens and is gone. It's something which is continually influencing the present, and is in some sense present in the present.

Thirdly, it gives us a completely different understanding of ourselves, our own memories, our own collective memories, and the influence of our ancestors, and the past of our society. And it also gives an important new insight into the importance of rituals, and forms through which we connect ourselves with the past, forms in which past members of our society become present through ritual activity. I think it also enables us to understand how new patterns of activity can spread far more quickly than would be possible under standard mechanistic theories, or even under standard psychological theories. Because if many people start doing, thinking, or practicing something, it'll make it easier for others to do the same thing.

RMN: And the way different discoveries are found simultaneously.

RUPERT: Yes. I mean, that's another aspect. It will also mean things that some people do-will resonate with others, as in independent discoveries, parallel cultural development, etc.

RMN: When you were talking about the individuals' destinies being ruled by some kind of morphic field of their own. Individuality--does that resonate through their ancestral heritage and their environment?

RUPERT: Well, it was in a quite limited sense that I was using the term. When you're an embryo there's a sense in which the destiny of the embryo is to be an adult human being. There's a sense in which the growth and development of an embryo and a child are headed toward the adult state. That's a relation to time, of heading towards an adult or mature state that we share in common with animals and plants. This is a basic biological feature of our life.

Then there's a sense in which there is a kind of biological destiny that's common to all animals--you know, having children and reproducing. Not everybody does it, but it's obviously pretty fundamental. Most people do it. If they didn't we wouldn't have a population problem, and that's something that's pretty fundamental to the human species today. Then there's the more psychic, or personal, or spiritual kinds of destinies. Here one gets a whole variety of opinions as to what these are.

RMN: Could you expand on that?

RUPERT: The thing is that most of us aren't at all original. We mostly take on opinions from the available variety on the market, and when you come to the question of individual destiny, you know, there's several traditional theories. One is that when we die, that's it, everything just goes blank, and so the only purpose of life is to enjoy it while it's happening. There's nothing beyond. This is the classic materialist or Epicurean view of life.

Then there are those who think that after death we go into a kind of underworld, and our destiny is to join the ancestors, and that basically we're just cycled back into a kind of eternally cycling pool of life. This is found in traditional societies where it's not believed that things change much over time, so the ancestors are constantly being recycled among the living, and they're a living force. But people don't have any individual destiny other than becoming merged with the ancestors. So that would be another option.

Then there's the reincarnational theories, that you're reincarnated, and that the ultimate destiny is liberation from the wheels of reincarnation. The boddhisatva ideal in Buddhism is to become liberated and then help others to become liberated. But if you don't aspire towards that end, which is the ultimate human end, namely liberation, then through karmic activities and involvement with this life you'll simply be reborn and keep being reborn until you move towards this end or goal which may take many lifetimes to achieve.

Then there's the view you find among Christians and Moslems, which is that there's another realm after this life in which you can undergo continued development or some further destiny, different destinies, depending on how you behave and what you want in this life. So, I mean there are many choices, and that's one of the areas in which choice or freedom comes in. We choose which of these kinds of destiny we want to align ourselves with. Or if we don't think about it or don't choose, then we just fall to the lowest common denominator.

DJB: What types of research experiments do you think need to be done that would either prove or disprove the existence of morphic fields?

RUPERT: Well, I outline quite a number of them in my books. There's a series of experiments that can be done in chemistry with crystals, in biochemistry with protein folding, in developmental biology with fruit fly development, in animal behavior with rats, in human behavior through studying rates of learning tasks that other people have learned before. So there's a whole range of tests, the details of which I suggest in my books, which could be done to test the theory in a variety of areas: chemistry, biology, behavioral science, psychology. Some of these tests are going on right now in some universities in Britain. There's a competition for tests being sponsored by the Institute of Noetic Sciences, tests to be done by students. The closing date's in 1990. So these are just some of the tests that I'd like to see done to test the theory.

DJB: Could you tell us about any current projects on which you're working?

RUPERT: Well, I'm doing two main things at present. One is that I'm helping to coordinate research on morphic resonance, organizing tests in the realms of chemistry and biology. And secondly I'm writing a book called
The Rebirth of Nature
. It's a book about the ways in which we're coming to see nature as alive, rather than inanimate, and how this has enormous implications: personally for people in their relationships with the world around them; collectively, through our collective relationship to nature; spiritually, the way this leads to a reframing or re-understanding of spiritual traditions, and politically through the Green Movement, which is now an influential political force, especially in Europe.

Moving from the exploitive mechanistic attitude to a symbiotic attitude, we realize that we're not in charge of nature, we're not separate from nature and somehow running it. Rather we're part of ecosystems, and part of the world, and our continued existence depends on living harmoniously with the planet of which we're a part. It's an obvious thing, this Gaian perspective, but it hasn't been taken seriously in politics. But now it is being taken seriously, and so I would say the idea of nature as alive has become a very important force in our society through its political manifestations as well as its scientific ones.

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Singing Songs of Ecstasy

With Carolyn Mary Kleefeld

Few people have devoted their lives to the creative arts as passionately as Carolyn Mary Kleefeld. For over thirty years, Carolyn’s inspiring books and mesmerizing art exhibits have helped to guide us out of our mental and emotional cul-de-sacs into sublime states of mystical transcendence. Carolyn is the author of ten books, which showcase her award-winning poetry, prose, paintings, and drawings in various complementary combinations.

Fueled by a need for creative expression and a lifelong fascination with psychological and spiritual transformation, Carolyn is the author of five poetry books that explore these archetypal themes. Her first poetry collection,
Climates of the Mind
, received the rare honor of being translated into Braille by the Library of Congress, a dream realized for Carolyn.
Climates
, as well as a number of Carolyn’s other books, have been used as inspirational texts in universities and healing centers, and commencing in the Fall of 2010, will be featured, along with the writings of seven other acclaimed women authors, in a permanent course, “The Other Half of the Sky: Eight Women Writers,” to be taught at Swansea University in Wales. Carolyn’s poetry has been translated into Romanian, Arabic and Korean.

The Alchemy of Possibility: Reinventing Your Personal Mythology
, which combines Carolyn’s visual art, philosophical prose, and poetry, and
Soul Seeds: Revelations and Drawings
, a collection of Carolyn’s philosophical aphorisms, including thirteen pen and black inkdrawings, from which a chapter was nominated for the 2008 Pushcart Prize, both serve as oracular tools, much like the I Ching or the Tarot. Carolyn’s most recent poetry collection,
Vagabond Dawns
, from which a poem was nominated for the 2009 Pushcart Prize, includes a CD of Carolyn reading selected poems, with musical accompaniment by Barry and Shelley Phillips, who have played for Coleman Barks in his readings of Rumi.

Carolyn has also created an extensive and diverse body of paintings and drawings, ranging in style from romantic figurative to abstract expressionism. Featured in books, magazines, and a line of fine art cards, her art can also be found in collections at the United Nations, as well as numerous museums, galleries, and hospitals throughout the world, and in the collections of Ted Turner and many others, including the estates of Laura Archera Huxley and Timothy Leary. In 2008, the Frederick R. Weisman Museum of Art at Pepperdine University exhibited a twenty-five year retrospective of Carolyn’s paintings and drawings, and published an exhibition catalog,
Carolyn Mary Kleefeld: Visions from Big Sur
, with art from the exhibit and a commentary by museum curator and director, Michael Zakian, Ph.D. Dr. Zakian also selected a number of Carolyn’s paintings for the museum’s permanent collection.

Carolyn’s painting “Neuro-Erotic Blast-Off” appeared on the cover of my first book,
Brainchild
, and we have worked together on many creative projects over the years. I wrote supporting material for two of Carolyn’s books—
The Alchemy of Possibility
and
Soul Seeds
—and her painting “Dionysian Splendor” was featured on the cover of the
MAPS Bulletin
that I edited about psychedelics and technology in 2008. Her sublimely beautiful artwork also appears on the cover of the second edition of this book.