"I want to know the thoughts of god, anything else is details" - Einstein
This was copyed and posted from an unknown source but its been on my computer for awhile. Its some interesting stuff!
PROLOGUE
WHO OR WHAT KILLED EINSTEIN?
It might be a strange question to ask, but ask it nonetheless. Who or what killed Einstein? What entity or force ended the life of perhaps the greatest mind of our era, that scientist whose name is synonymous with intelligence? Well, it was clearly not a butler who did it, nor, as far as we know, was it an assassin belonging to some sinister governmental agency. To put it bluntly, it was the reality process which killed the great Einstein. Now, although this deceptively simple answer may seem reminiscent of a Woody Allen joke, what I mean to convey is that all of us, regardless of age, sex, race or creed, are born out of, and are destined to die, within a massive on-going process consisting not only of the evolution of life on Earth but the evolution of the Universe also. It is this relentless, all-encompassing, and outrageously complex process within which we are all so intimately embedded which we term 'reality'. We might also call such a process Nature. Thus, another obvious way of answering my unusual question is to say that 'natural causes' killed Einstein. Which means that Nature killed him. Well, to be sure about it, Nature gave birth to him, gave him 76 years of existence and then summarily dispatched him.
Call it Nature or call it reality, either way they are but small words for one vast process which flows inexorably onward. Whatever one's preferred term, it most certainly is a process, a word whose Latin roots mean 'to advance' or 'move forwards', and there can be little doubt that reality is, at heart, a single universal process which has been running non-stop for some 15 or so billion years. Not bad. Pretty impressive in fact.
So what? you might ask. Well, what this book is concerned with is the ultimate point of this creative but fatal reality we find ourselves in. To put it bluntly once more, are we biologically woven into an accident or is reality somehow directed? This is quite some question, perhaps the most profound we can ask in our short earthly sojourn, and one we know to have crossed Einstein's mind while he lived. Consider, for example, a famous remark of his which went something like:
"The most incomprehensible thing about the Universe is its comprehensibility".
What Einstein meant by this sublime statement (of which there are many paraphrased versions) is that it is astonishing not only that Nature is intelligible, and not only that Nature works so well, but that Nature has somehow conspired, through a process of organic evolution, to build biological brains endowed with minds capable of understanding these things. Why? Why exactly should Nature be that way? Why should the Universe have been endowed with such a staggeringly creative capacity to construct and organise itself, even to the point of eliciting conscious human beings? Could it have been otherwise?
Whatever the case, should we believe the reality process to be essentially a mindless accident or even a series of mindless incidents, then we might conceive ourselves to be hapless mortal prisoners entrapped in the process. Or, if we instead believe reality to be purposeful and meaningful in some way then we might consider ourselves fortunate functional components of the process. Whatever you may have read let me assure you that this issue has most definitely not been settled. It is neither completely obvious that reality is a purely accidental affair, nor is it at all clear that reality is purposeful. Neither science nor religion - arguably the two dominant strands of thinking which tend to confront the fundamental nature of reality - have absolutely conclusive evidence at hand.
But if we look to science for clues - since science has enjoyed more evident practical success than religion - then clearly over the last 300 or so years since the time of Newton and the development of classical physics, science has made great headway in elucidating how reality works; not why it works but how. Because the process of reality is so obligingly intelligible and comprehensible, then we see that science has enjoyed a kind of dialogue with Nature in which information is accessed through scientific experiment. In this way, scientists like physicists, chemists, biologists, and cosmologists have acquired a wealth of information concerning the sub-atomic, chemical, biological, and astronomical aspects of reality and have subsequently built elaborate models detailing them. However, how one interprets the informational language of Nature, how one translates the objective data collated by science into a theory about the ultimate nature of reality is a subjective affair very much up for debate. Thus, our 'big question' awaits a satisfactory answer and Einstein's killer remains very much on the loose.
At heart, if we wish to know what, if anything, the reality process is really up to, we can do no more than assess all the relevant information revealed by collective science and the information or intuitive wisdom accrued via personal experience, and then attempt to form some viable theoretical overview. Absolute truths, it would seem, are all but inaccessible, and thus the true nature of Einstein's creator and killer might forever remain a mystery. But, whatever we believe about the reality process, we are, willy-nilly, most definitely all 'in it together' whether we like it or not, and it is for this terrifying or wonderful reason that I have taken it upon myself to explore by any means necessary just what it is that is driving reality, whether the driver is blind or has vision.
Before I reveal to you my particular mode of investigation, lets briefly review the status of science in relation to such a decidedly daunting issue. As it is, current scientific thought definitely veers towards a purposeless and mechanistic account of how the reality process works, an account which is, with all due respect, depressing and devoid of spirit. Although our scientific knowledge of the world reveals its microscopic and macroscopic complexity and highlights the universal mathematical precision of things like physical law, such knowledge has in effect reduced the Universe to a kind of reasonless mechanism devoid of high intelligence apart from our own. Everything from a cell to an orchid to the emergence of our species is generally reduced to a set of 'merelys'. Indeed, the more successful a scientist is in reducing whatever facet of Nature he or she is working on to 'merely this' or 'merely that', then the more warmly is their work received. To argue otherwise by, say, suggesting that Nature is purposeful in some way, is to ostracise oneself from mainstream science. Certainly it is the case that nobody will win a Nobel prize for planting purpose in Nature despite the uplifting appeal that such an intentional theory of reality would undoubtedly carry.
But is it valid to build a new and overtly optimistic theory concerning the ultimate nature of the reality process solely because our current theories are not uplifting enough? Obviously not. Such a new theory would represent whim, an artifice whose lax roots lie in an imagination galvanised into action because the consensus 'truth' about reality is perceived to be too gloomy and unpalatable. Indeed, to enthusiastically infer that the human species has some kind of special purpose in the reality process, that we are somehow at the centre of an intentional Universe, smacks of the pre-scientific beliefs confined to the pages of history books, to a time when supernatural thinking governed the minds of men. Such anthropocentric religious ideology has now been all but crushed by rational scientific thought which firmly places our kind on a mere satellite circling a mere star amongst billions. We are no more than the product of evolution, one particular species out of countless millions whose only real claim to fame is our big brains with their ability to think and direct complex behaviour.
Over a few centuries, in particular from the seminal publication of Darwin's The Origin of Species in 1859 (which can be cited as the definitive turning point in our concepts of man's place in Nature), the ideological pendulum has thus swung through 180 degrees, from a position in which humanity was the crowning glory of creation to a position in which we are but speckish organic bystanders in an essentially pointless Universal exercise of physics and DNA-orchestrated biochemistry. Life is accidental, mostly hard and then you die - a tough fact, best swallowed with a large brandy.
To revert to the ancient view in which human life, and in particular human consciousness, is considered to be somehow significant therefore seems completely out of the question, a futile move serving only to stir up false hope in a Universe that basically 'just don't give a damn'. This is especially so if our only motivation is a dislike of current scientific reasoning. Only if such a new theory were driven primarily by direct conscious experience could it possibly hope to possess validity. And not just wishy-washy conscious experience either. The experience, if it were to bear upon notions of the ultimate nature of reality, would have to be remarkably compelling and potentially accessible to all. It would have to provide incontrovertible evidence that we have some significant role to play in the reality process. But could a direct conscious experience really afford us such an insight into the 'big question'?
Well, if we keep in mind that science proceeds through verifiable experimentation in which information is gained via perceptual experience and that we depend upon our conscious experience however it should arise to build models of reality, then it would indeed appear to be a possibility. Which is to say that new forms of conscious experience might well offer us a glimpse into the biggest questions that face our mortal existence. Which brings me to the central fact permeating this book, namely that conscious experience is entirely mutable. And herein lies the hope of any new optimistic theory concerning the significance of human consciousness within the reality process.
The mutability of consciousness. What does such a concept imply? Well, first of all we should consider the fact that consciousness, whatever it is exactly, is the 'stuff' which mediates all science and, for that matter, all types of reasoning and all of our theories about the world. Consciousness can therefore be understood as the very ground of our being, the 'factor x' which makes us what we are. In order to fully engage the reader in the important point I am here trying to convey, consider the following simple thought experiment.
Imagine, if you will, that all scientists wore identical spectacles and that these spectacles determined the perceptual view of the things being scrutinised by the scientists. All the data amassed by these scientists would be related in some intimate way to the effects of their spectacles since all their perceptions will have passed through the self-same lenses. Now, it isn't pushing credulity too far to suggest that the scientists would do well at some point - possibly over their morning coffee break, or perhaps at a stage when their theories are proving to be inadequate - to reflect upon the characteristics of their shared state of 'bespectacledness'. In other words, it would be quite a breakthrough for these scientists to suddenly cease their traditional research in order to focus upon the nature of the factor mediating their research, namely, their glasses. What they would soon come to realise is that their glasses represent a subject worthy of analysis since they are, in a sense, the closest thing to them.
This imaginary situation is not unlike the real world, only this time it is our consciousness, or rather our state of consciousness, as opposed to glasses, through which we view and experience Nature. For simplicity's sake, we can call this 'normal consciousness', a kind of shared lens through which science and scientific interpretation proceeds. Thus, it is quite legitimate to reflect upon this 'lens of normal consciousness' and ask whether, perhaps, it could be altered or enhanced. In other words, one might well wonder if it is possible to improve upon the lens of normal consciousness and attain a state of mind in which the essence of Nature is more clearly discernible.
Although such a science is clearly specialised and seemingly remote from the affairs of modern culture, it was only due to their dedicated ethnomycological investigations that the Wassons learned of sacred Mexican mushrooms, sought to find them, experienced them first-hand, and thence gave psilocybin (the as yet unnamed active constituent of the mushroom, pronounced either 'silla-sigh-bin' or 'sigh-le-sigh-bin') to the West. Once discovered, ethnomycological science suddenly acquired a distinctly mystical edge allowing it to breach the domains of religion and psychology. It also provided a new impetus to mankind's enduring quest to access transcendental knowledge and there can be no doubt that Wasson's discovery and vivid description of the effects of the psilocybin were crucial in generating the subsequent cultural wave of psychedelic experimentation that soon followed in the 60's. Moreover, as we shall eventually see, the mushroom also reveals itself as the key to unveiling the secrets of consciousness and the hidden riches of Nature. Theophany, mind, and reality; these three most profound of topics are all met in some way through use of the psilocybin mushroom. But, before we jump into the deep end who, pray, was this Wasson fellow, this financier-cum-adventurer, and how had he come to penetrate the Earth's secret psychedelic dimension? Who was he to bring news of sacred fungi into the Western world?
In effect, Wasson's Life article was timed to coincide with the release of his magnum opus 2-volume book Mushrooms, Russia, and History, co-written with his wife Valentina. It is this work which fully reveals the extent of Wasson's long-standing interest in the cultural use of fungi and how he finally came to be at the door of perception marked 'psilocybin'.
With only 512 handcrafted copies luxuriously bound and printed, Mushrooms, Russia, and History stands as a rare piece of art. Indeed, by the late 70's its value had reached some $2500 making it the most valuable book in existence at that time whose author was still alive. It is a highly polished book, written in a lively style that reflects the love of ethnomycology borne by the Wasson's. It represents the distilled wisdom drawn from their extensive studies into the role that various species of mushroom played in different cultures and culminates in their discovery of the sacred mushroom ceremonies still being conducted in Mexico, a discovery important enough to warrant the further account in the more accessible pages of Life magazine.
Whatcha think?
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And the gameshow host rings the buzzer (brrnnntt) oh and now you get a face full of face!
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