What do you think?
Rate this book
256 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1993
The Other plays with us and approaches us through the imagination and then a critical juncture is reached. To go beyond this juncture requires abandonment of old and ingrained habits of thinking and seeing. At that moment the world turns lazily inside out and what was hidden is revealed: a magical modality, a different mental landscape than one has ever known, and the landscape becomes real. This is the realm of the cosmic giggle. UFOs, elves, and the teeming pantheons of all religions are the denizens of this previously invisible landscape. One reaches through to the continents and oceans of the imagination, worlds able to sustain anyone who will but play, and then one lets the play deepen and deepen until it is a reality that few would even dare to entertain. (p. 112)
Over a period of a few minutes, I had passed from weary, disgruntled skeptic to ecstatic believer. Looking back on it, I believe that, for me, this was the critical juncture. Why did I not question Dennis more closely? Was I some, how self-hypnotized? Did the unfamiliar setting, the restricted diet, the strain and expectations push me into a place where I was unable to resist participation in the world of my brother’s bizarre ideation? Why was I unable to maintain my detached and skeptical viewpoint? In some sense this willing suspension of disbelief is the crux of the matter—and, I believe, of many a “close encounter” situation. (p. 112)
We were among the first to achieve contact with this Other species. It was the real thing. We had come to the equatorial jungle to explore the dimensions glimpsed in tryptamine ecstasy, and there, in the darkness of the heart of the Amazon, we had been found and touched by this bizarre and ancient life form that was now awakening to the global potential of a symbiotic relationship with technical humanity…. I saw gigantic machineries and worlds of vegetable and mechanical forms on scales inconceivably vast. Time, agatized and glittering, seemed to pour by me like living superfluids inhabiting dream regions of terrible pressure and super cold. And I saw the plan, the mighty plan. At last. It was an ecstasy, an ecstasis that lasted hours and placed the seal of completion on all of my previous life. At the end I felt reborn, but as what I knew not. (p. 157)
It was during those velvet, star-strewn, jungle nights that I felt closest to understanding the tripartite mystery of the philosopher’s stone, the Alien Other, and the human soul. There is something human that transcends the individual and the transcends life and death as well. It has will, motive, and enormous power. And it is with us now. (p. 149)
I suspect that when we inspect the structure of our own deep unconscious we will make the unexpected discovery that we are ordered on the same principle as the larger universe in which we arose. (p. 200)
Imagining what happens in the presence of a singularity is, in principle, impossible and so naturally science has shied away from such an idea. The ultimate singularity is the Big Bang, which physicists believe was responsible for the birth of the universe. We are asked by science to believe that the entire universe sprang from nothingness, at a single point and for no discernible reason. This notion is the limit case for credulity. In other words, if you can believe this, you can believe anything. It is a notion that is, in fact, utterly absurd, yet terribly important to all the rational assumptions that science wishes to preserve. Those so-called rational assumptions flow from this initial impossible situation. (p. 198–199)
The timewave seems to give a best fit configuration with the historical data when the assumption is made that the maximum ingression of novelty, or the end of the wave, will occur on December 22, 2012. Strangely enough this is the end date that the Mayans assigned to their calendar system as well. (p. 200, emphasis mine)
My story is a peculiar one. It is hard to know what to make of it. The notion of some kind of fantastically complicated visionary revelation that happens to put one at the very center of the action is a symptom of mental illness. This theory does that, and yet so does immediate experience, and so do the ontologies of Judaism, Islam, and Christianity. My theory may be clinically pathological, but unlike these religious systems, I have enough humor to realize this. It is important to appreciate the intrinsic comedy of privileged knowledge. (p. 202)
My position is interesting but not enviable. Because the major idea to emerge out of this experience is the timewave and the computer software that supports it, I am in the absurd position of being either an unsung Newton or completely nuts. There is very little room to maneuver between these two positions. The timewave paints a radical picture of how time works and what history is. It provides a map of the global ebb and flow of novelty over the next twenty years and it also makes a prediction of a major transformational event in 2012. This is only as far in the future as La Chorrera lies in the past. It is soon. (p. 225)