the future was postponed so long that now the breaking of the longjam is going to look like Apocalyse

"Eternity is in love with the creations of time....[all of them.]" - William Blake

Totally forgot about Web 2.0 Expo until I got a note from Tara, then another from Brian. Ooops! Had every intention of going when I heard about it last year. One of those must attend events, I muttered to myself. (Well I guess not, seeing as reality has me in New Orleans.)

I am less interested in cyberspace these days than I am hyperspace.*

"Apparently McLuhan was right. It's technology that shapes culture more than anything else. The politics, the art, all this is derivative of what technologies are in place." - Terence McKenna

And what are the technologies of hyperspace?, I wonder. (I'm certainly not the first to ponder.)

Mathematics is one. Imagination another. (Ay, there are more...) Though I think both the beauty of mathematics and the imaginal have been languishing far too long in a dark age:

"Grown-ups like numbers. When you tell them about a new friend, they never ask questions about what really matters. They never ask: 'What does his voice sound like?' 'What games does he like best?' 'Does he collect butterflies?' They ask: 'How old is he?' 'How many brothers does he have?' 'How much does he weigh?' 'How much money does his father make?' Only then do they think they know him.

If you tell grown-ups, 'I saw a beautiful red brick house, with geraniums at the windows and doves on the roof,' they won't be able to imagine such a house. You have to tell them, 'I saw a house worth a hundred thousand dollars.' Then they exclaim, 'What a pretty house!' That's the way they are. You must not hold it against them. Children should be very understanding of grown-ups."  - Antoine de Saint-Exupery

To get you in groove of hyperspace, I'll introduce Terence McKenna chatting about his novelty theory which I recommend brushing up on (the referenced inteview with McKenna is a good start). The future McKenna speaks of may go into hyperdrive in 2012, yet it's happening, happens, happened right Now:

"I'm kind of inclined to the hard positions, I mean, why not, you know? And what a hard position is is not that this is a social transformation, not that this is a political dispensation, but that in fact it's a crisis in physics itself. And that we didn't cause it and we're not responsible for it. We're just being pulled along by something on the scale of an earthquake. And that it affects physical law...

[T]hey [the Singularists] take all these engineering curves--curves of energy release, curves of speed, curves of population, curves of information densification--and reach exactly the same conclusion, that some time between 2010 and 2020, life becomes unrecognizable...

And the trick, I mean, the motivation for my career, why I do this rather than stay home in Hawaii where it's very pleasant, is I think a lot of people are anxious. This causes anxiety, all this. It needn't. It isn't a bad thing. It's scary because the future was postponed for so long that now the breaking of the logjam is going to look like Armageddon. But it isn't Armageddon. [I prefer Apocalyse myself; the etymology of apocalyse meaning Revelation; hmmm, Illumination.] What lies beyond all this I think, is the first authentic human civilization. These are the pre-pre- times. You know Gandhi was once asked what he thought of Western Civilization and he said "It sounds like a veddy good idea." So, that's my idea of how the future will look back at this scene." - Terence McKenna in interview, "CYBERDELIC: Hootenanny talks with Terence McKenna" (my best guess is this is a 1998 or 1999 interview)

images from Khunrath’s “Amphitheatrum sapientiae” (1604) and is reproduced as figure 145 in Jung, Psychology and Alchemy,  p. 291 (via paper, "Spiritual Alchemy: Interpreting Representative Texts and Images" by Karen-Claire Voss); wow wow wow, check out how beautiful math is at this blog, Not Quite Perfect, this Spiral Wave is one of tons

p.s. * One def of hyperspace: Multidimensional space beyond the three dimensions that we can easily represent. Another twist: N-dimensional space (hyperspace): Extension of regular three-dimensional space to n-dimensions, reflecting more complex multivariable situations. Hyper- indicates higher dimensional space than 3-d, e.g. hyperplane.

Comments

[Peter]

I also believe the change is accelerating. 2020 feels a little bit to soon but still I'm optimistic enough to believe that the "tipping point" for the 3rd state of the noosphere might occur in my life time... after all it is due for like 2000 years... :)

[Tom Guarriello]

It's interesting that at this year's TED Conference, Phillipe Starck gave a very exciting talk in which he alluded to a similar vision: a world in which the story is completely changed from the current scarcity-driven narrative. You should keep an eye out for his talk's appearance on the TED website.

[Evelyn Rodriguez]

Peter, Thanks! I think of Teilehard much these days. McKenna's charts pegged the date as precisely Dec 21, 2012, (and purportedly McKenna was NOT aware of the Mayan calendar at the time) and in that interview said the technical singularity folks (I've gone to many of their conferences, such as Accelerating Change - often held at Stanford) were in same ballpark as far as timeframe.

I used to think this was all baloney, especially the 2012 date, and didn't give it any second thought. Anyhow, even if it is so, seems irrelevant to 2007. But, and, this is hard to articulate, I've been having 'visions' and direct experiences for lack of a better term that have lead me to same conclusions. And to sense that it is relevant right now - in Henry Adams predictions, we are right at cusp of Ethereal Phase which precedes the asymptotic singularity that McKenna and others speak of.

So, yes, the noosphere is way closer than 2020.

Prophecies of Teilehard de Chardin, McLuhan, Buckminster Fuller, McKenna, Rupert Sheldrake, Henry Adams, Matthew Fox, William Irwin Thompson etc have been much on my mind of late.

Tom, Thanks so much, I wasn't aware of Starck's talk. I'm linking to your summary in the meantime:

http://www.truetalkblog.com/truetalk/2007/03/one_beat_tedste.html

Here's a snippet from Tom's notes (thanks!)
"Furthermore, while nobody is "obliged to be a genius," Starck said, we are all obliged to participate in the development of our species; to take up the duty of vision to raise ourselves toward civilization and away from barbarism. (Whew! What the hell, Phillipe? Tell us about shoes or something, will ya?) No, he kept on. The point is, that at different points in our evolutionary cycle the task of humanity differs. At some moments (like now) "people like me, or like artists, are acceptable" because of the luxury of having barbarism at bay (foreshadowing Steven Pinker's talk about the relative calm of the current moment when compared with any other point in human history). At other moments, it's not. "We are almost gods now," he said and soon we will be able to hand our children a world in which they can take advantage of all the progress which we've made and say to them, "now, write a new poetry, a new story," the only requirement being that their story be different from ours."

[Nadine]

Douglas Buchanan also keeps a very interesting blog here:

http://gatesofhorn.com/node

I started reading him when I was looking for something a little "deeper" than The Secret. His posts, like yours, take several readings to "get" and even then, I'll go back days, sometimes months later and catch something I missed the first 6 or 7 times around!

At any rate, he had a post awhile ago about 2012 and listed the date as October 28, 2011. How unexpected it would be if the date snuck up on us several months early!

http://gatesofhorn.com/blog/blueprints_of_life_2_numerology

I imagine (do I?) that we'll know when it gets here and just experience it. In the meantime, the concept of stewardship has been on my mind, as it relates to the environment and parenthood. It'll be interesting to see where it goes...

[Evelyn Rodriguez]

Thanks, Nadine, for the pointer to Buchanan. I have no idea of precise dates and precise events myself.

Time, space, dimensions get squishier these days anyhow. Einstein said, "The distinction between the past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion." Truly, this is true.

Yep, I believe this too: "I imagine (do I?) that we'll know when it gets here and just experience it."

I'm glad that you are looking for something deeper than "The Secret." If you should be in the Bay Area, look up Llellewyn Vaughn-Lee (http://www.goldensufi.org). He talks about how the inner (and imaginal) planes have been polluted through the ages by baser wishes and imaginings. While it's not the singularity (yet), the Ethereal Age, as I'll call it, has begun. There is some truth to the magick alluded to in "The Secret" but it is to be intended for beauty, and grace, and peace. More soon.

Also recommend Llewellyn's books, Working With Oneness, and Spiritual Power, as well as William Irwin Thompson's Darkness and Scattered Light.

[Nadine]

Many thanks!

As I travel this path, I am less surprised by synchronicity, to wit:

1. I found the goldensufi site a few months ago after a very, I dunno, "deep" meditation where I heard the music of the spheres for the first time...

2. I listened to a lovely interview about the beauty of Einstein this morning...

3. We are in the process of creating a butterfly garden...

4. I discovered Friedrich Froebel today...

[Evelyn Rodriguez]

It's all synchronicity, we don't always notice that it's all fluxing in flux though.

Ah, Llewellyn Vaughn-Lee is amazing in person, and even his writings cannot keep up with the frequency of accelerating changes; that's why best to hear him speak.

I'd also recommend David Wilcock, http://www.divinecosmos.com - though, he doesn't tap into how to use imagination as much, he does talk lucidly of the changes.

Hmmm, just noting, why I am not referencing women. There are women too, but many speak or act rather than record. Judith Linden in New Orleans comes immediately to mind. Also, Pavarthi at Saraswati River Yoga School in New Hope, PA.

Hmmm, the music of spheres, yes.

[Dzeni]

Thanks for linking to my blog :) I'm thrilled that you liked my work and deeply appreciate your kind words.