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

by Brown, David Jay

  RMN: The trend of science towards reductionism led quantum physicists to the realization that the whole does not equal the sum of its parts. Now chaos theory seems to clarify this statement by saying that this is because we cannot know the sum of all the parts. What do you think are the implications of this idea in how we may arrange and organize information in the future?

  RALPH: This is exactly the reason why I said that chaos theory isn't very important, except as a kind of double negative, while on the other hand, dynamical systems theory does offer something very important. We need to understand whole systems, and whole systems cannot be understood by reduction. The terrific gains in understanding made by the reductionist scientist will, I'm sure, be used in the future to understand whole systems by means of some process of synthesis. The reduced understanding of the biochemistry of the adrenal cortex, for example, will be synthesized into models of whole systems, such as the stress response and the immune system. The technology for modeling whole systems is on the frontier of science at the moment; it is the crucial frontier for the solution of our global, planetary problems.

  Dynamical systems theory, specifically the branch called complex dynamics offers a strategy for the re-synthesis of fractionalized scientific knowledge, and an understanding of complex whole systems. Complex systems theory has replaced chaos theory on the fashion pages of the science newspapers of our day. And I think the fascination of intellectuals with complex systems theory is not going to be a short-lived flash in the pan. This is somehow the real thing. Our challenge now is the reintegration of the sciences after their dissolution in the Renaissance into an understanding of whole systems, particularly planetary systems, that is to say the hydrosphere, the lithosphere, the atmosphere, the biosphere and the noosphere.

  Within the lower spheres, a new direction called global modeling is already under way. Global modeling tries to put together reductionist models people have made for the oceans, for atmospheric phenomena, and for solar radiation. Individual models made by reductionist scientists of these different areas--the oceanographers, the atmospheric chemists, the solar physicist--are being synthesized into one global model. This global synthesis requires two things. First of all it needs models for the separate components or organs of the planetary system to be made in a common strategy so that they can relate to each other. Secondly, it requires a wiring diagram to put them together. In the field of global modeling a tremendous synthesis is now taking place, including conferences on the wiring diagram, which will provide a global model of the geosphere.

  For the sociosphere, we must start from scratch. We don't yet have many specialists producing mathematical models for society, although there are a few outstanding pioneering first steps. There are for example the archaeologists and anthropologists worrying about the demise of the Mayan civilization in Central America in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, because it was so complex and there are so many hypotheses, and it was such a controversial question, they tried to resolve it by building mathematical models. There are now a number of competing complex dynamical models for the Mayan society, taking into account the food chain, the weather, the population, and the distance between ceremonial centers.

  All these factors are built into different competing models. Then they run them and try to see which one wins the best relationship to the archaeological data. And thus a model system can be created, because Mayan civilization was relatively small. This pioneering first step might lead to similar models for larger societies--for ancient Greece, for example, or for the downfall of Rome, where many more factors and more people were involved. Navigation, naval trade, the effect of inventions like better clocks for navigating: all these things might be included in the model.

  So in the future then, as global planet models become more successful, global social modeling will begin. Then individual components have to be modeled, such as the political and economic systems of individual nations, their interactions, and so on. They have to be made into a common strategy, so they can be connected together. And then one has to extrapolate from the Mayan models and gain wiring diagrams for these different component parts, including psychological and medical factors. In the reductionist physical sciences, we wilt only have to connect existing components together, following a diagram, to get global models. For the social sciences we'll have to start from scratch.

  We're going to have to make models for the organs, do experiments in simulation with various wiring diagrams, compare with data, improve the component models, the global models, the data, and so on. After many circuits of this hermeneutical circle we might create a global social model. Then the global planet model and the global social model have to be connected together. There's also the mythological and the spiritual dimension and the understanding of the world of the unconscious. In other words, the whole thing has to take place once again in the noosphere, and then that has to be connected up. Eventually, we hope to get some kind of model for understanding what--if any--are the effects of choices we could make upon our long-range future. This may never happen, but if it did, mathematics would be of use to Gaia in creating the future, through the direct, conscious interaction with the evolutionary process. This seems to be our challenge.

  DAVID: Could you tell us how your travels in India and the experiences you had in a cave there have influenced your outlook on life and mathematics?

  RALPH: What I had done that was respected by mathematicians in the way of frontier research work was ancient history by the time I went to India and lived in a cave. So, to answer your question, I should first of all identify what I've done since then that could be regarded as mathematical. I would say that the computer revolution has presented enormous opportunities to mathematics, to the profession and to the individual mathematicians, which have not yet been seized. Many mathematicians have rejected the significance of computers, so far. But if we could say that experiments with computers represent mathematical research, you could see the evidence of my stay in India in the cave on my outlook on mathematics.

  My computer experiments involve the concepts of vibration, harmony, resonance and mathematical models for these phenomena. We would like to understand how a person is in morphic resonance with a field, if these metaphors have any function from a perspective of pattern modeling, which is what I think mathematics is all about. The processes where this kind of metaphor is proposed--whether in the Indian Samkya philosophy or in Rupert Sheldrake's theory--are always in a living, biological, mental sphere. So the data, if there are any data, would necessarily be chaotic.

  So first of all we would have to extend or map the notion of resonance from the circular sphere where the concepts first evolved in the context of chaos. When you have two strings of a guitar, you pluck one and the other one vibrates by so-called sympathetic vibration. This vibration is understood as a non-chaotic phenomenon; it is just oscillation. Each point on the string vibrates, left, right, left, right, left, right. So from this, which I'11 call the circular or periodic domain, the concepts have to be extended to the chaotic. If the two strings were chaotic instead of periodic, which means they would sound raspy and noisy instead of harmonious and sweet, then could there still be a sympathetic vibration of one caused by the nearby chaotic vibration of the other?

  I came back from India in January 1973. By January 1974 I was already involved in experiments with chaotic resonance, and this has dominated my research to the present day. For example, one discovery we made is that the Rossler attractor, which is one of the simplest of chaotic forms, does have sympathetic vibration as one of its characteristics. So after India I concentrated more on vibration and resonance, whereas before, we were involved with the general, skeletal structures of chaos. And they're related in that the theory of chaotic resonance is based upon an understanding of the skeleton, the so-called homoclinic tangles, as I've tried to explain in my picture books.

  RMN: Could you tell us about your experience with John Lilly's dolphins?

  RALPH: Well
, I think that people who live in cities are not much in tune with animals. Actual communication with an animal is a rare experience for most of us. And some people are more sensitive to animals than others. They have a favorite pet, or they just really like animals. In my case, I grew up on the edge of town in Vermont, where they have, as it is said, two seasons: winter and July. Winter is very long, and a lot of times I was outside playing in the snow, usually alone. I used to go on long treks after school and on weekends on my skis, communing with animals and trying to figure out where they had been by the study of their tracks. And to this day 1 have a special love for animals, which is one of the reasons that I'm a vegetarian. I'm not only a vegetarian, but vegetarianism has a very great importance for me. It's a big thing, not just another habit.

  Anyway, I like animals, and so I was very keen to swim with the dolphins. I had bought it, like most hippies, that dolphins are more intelligent than people. They had had the brilliance to flee to the sea a long time ago, and there they have lived in peace ever since, except for a few tuna fishermen. So I had a sort of double setup to have a good experience with these dolphins, and 1 had read a little bit about other people's experiences swimming with them. I knew that they have a very strong connection to the Orphic trinity of Chaos, Gaia and Eros. They're connected to Chaos most directly through the experience of hydro-dynamical turbulence, that is, white water.

  Now white water is the most perfect chaotic thing we have: you hear it, you see it, you feel it--it's chaos personified. Dolphins know Chaos. They also know Gaia. They can find their way over great distances in the sea, their playground is thousands of miles across, they explore it all, they know their way around. They can sing and speak to each other over tremendous distances. Through their sonar communication apparatus they have a global sense which transcends our own. And then as far as Eros is concerned it's rumored that they're loose, they're sexy and they like to get it on in the water.

  So that's the background. I went to John Lilly's place in Redwood City for a routine swim with Rosie and Joe and had a fantastic experience with them. They were very violently playful. I had communicated nothing, I was just there, and I wasn't adequately prepared for what they actually do. They like to take your hand into their mouth and press, but not too hard. You have to have some sort of faith that they're not going to bite you, because they have very strong jaws and sharp teeth. So I was kind of scared of this mouthing game. And then they had the flying body game. They would go down to the bottom of the tank, which was pretty deep, turn around, get ready and let go with their maximum acceleration and velocity, heading straight toward you, turning aside only at the last minute to brush gently against your side. It was kind of heavy; they were very heavy with me.

  I was trying to figure out what to do. Should I grab on and go for a ride? I tried that; they slowed down and became more gentle. If I played with one, the other one appeared to be jealous, but it was all a game. There were a lot of interesting things, very much like playing with people, or at least children. But J was a little scared because I'm not that great a swimmer and they were very good swimmers. My faith had flaws that day, I suppose.

  Then I decided to try a mental experiment. We know they're mental--they have memory and intelligence and language and so on. So I proposed an experiment in telepathy. I swam out of the tank into a little nook or cranny to regroup. I had this fantasy of lying still in the water, and they would both lie still as well, and one of them would face me in the water so that we were co-linear, head to head on a straight line, and then we would just exchange thought without any further ado. They were thrashing around in the water. So keeping this picture in my mind I swam out again, and they both became totally still, just as I had visualized.

  I believe it was Rosie who got into position: on a line, still, head to head and so on. And then I thought, "Okay, let's exchange a thought." Boom! Loud and clear came a thought. She said, "Do you think it's nice in this tank? Would you like to live in this tank? It's too small; it's ugly; it's dirty. We want out!" So I said, "Wow, yeah, I can understand that; I'm certainly going to get out pretty soon and I wish you could too." Then we played a little bit more and I got out. I wrote in the log book about this experience just as I told you. Later there was a revolt of John Lilly's crew over the question of conditions in the tank.

  DAVID: Have your experiences with psychedelics had any influence on your mathematical perspective and research?

  RALPH: Yes. I guess my experiences with psychedelics influenced everything. When I described the impact of India and the cave on my mathematics I could have mentioned that. There was a period of six or seven years which included psychedelics, traveling in Europe sleeping in the street, my travels in India and the cave and so on. These were all part of the walkabout between my first mathematical period and all that has followed in the past fifteen years. This was my hippie period, this spectacular experience of the gylanic revival ( G.R. wave), -after Riane Eisler-of the sixties.

  I think my emphasis on vibrations and resonance is one thing that changed after my walkabout. Another thing that changed, which had more to do with psychedelics than with India, was that I became more concerned with the application of mathematics to the important problems of the human world. I felt, and continue to feel, that this planet is really sick; there are serious problems that need to be faced, and if mathematics doesn't have anything to do with these problems then perhaps it isn't worth doing. One should do something else. So I thought vigorously after that period about something I had not even thought about before: the relationship of the research to the problems of the world. That became an obsession, I would say.

  DAVID: Why do you think it is that the infinitely receding, geometrically organized visual patterns seen by people under the influence of psychedelics resemble computer generated fractal images so much?

  RALPH: I don't know if they do, really. You know there's a theory of the geometric forms of psychedelic hallucinations based on mathematics by Jack Cowen and Bard Ermentrout. It has to do with patterns of biochemical activity in the visual cortex which is governed by a certain model having to do with neural nets. This model has geometric patterns in space-time, dynamical patterns, which are patterns that any structure of that kind would have. So these two mathematicians see psychedelic hallucinations as mathematical forms inherent in the structure of the physical brain. Now I'm not very convinced by that, but I think it's kind of an unassailable position. One cannot just argue it away on the basis of one's personal experience.

  What I think about psychedelic visuals is not so different, except that I would not locate them in the physical brain. I think that we perceive, through some kind of resonance phenomenon, patterns from another sphere of existence, also governed by a certain mathematical structure that gives it the form that we see. I can't speak for everyone, but in my experience, this form moves. Now the historic pictures that they show us don't move. And the mathematicians of fractal geometry have made movies and they don't move right. So I think that the resemblance between fractals and visuals is very superficial.

  I do have a general idea about the mathematics of these patterns. I call them space-time patterns, and they're fractal perhaps as space-time patterns. But the incredible symmetries, the perfect regularities, I think, are based on some other kind of mathematics. It is called Liegroup actions. And there are reasons why this kind of mathematical structure is associated with the brain. But even if you believed in the internal origin of these patterns in the physical brain and in the Liegroup action approach, some kind of mathematical source could be expected for these visions because they look so mathematical. They have regularity and perfection. How can an image of something perfect appear in the brain? It just doesn't make sense. So I suspect these visuals are actual perceptions.

  RMN: Dynamical systems are arranged by organizing agents called attractors. Could you explain how these abstract entities function and how they can be used in understanding trends in biological, geographical and astron
omical systems?

  RALPH: Well, attractors are organizing centers in dynamical systems only in terms of long-term behavior. They're useful as models for processes only when your perspective happens to be that of long-term behavior. Short-term effects are not modeled by attractors but by a dynamical picture called a phase portrait. Its main features are the attractors, the basins and the separatrix which separates basins. Each attractor has a basin, and different basins are separated by the separatrix.