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which we ordinarily use the term "transcendental."
This idea is basically Catholicism with the chrome stripped off. It restates Teilhard de Chardin's idea of the Omega Point, the Telos attracting
and drawing history into itself. What I'm interested to consider is that most delicate of all questions in prophetic systems of this sort: What is
the role of humanity in all of this? Science evades this issue by setting us down somewhere between the big bang and the heat death of the
universe, imagined millions of years in the future. Science completely marginalizes human experience. We are told that we live on a typical
planet around a typical star at the edge of a typical galaxy, and that we are animals of a complex type, easily identified with other typical
forms. My notion is to take seriously the apparent vectoring in of universal intent on the human world and at the same time try to keep away
from the pitfalls of religion.
I think that history is the shockwave of eschatology. This is a concept we've not sufficiently entertained, but which we will be forced to
entertain as the planetary crisis created by modernity builds toward some kind of climax. What I mean by saying history is the shockwave of
eschatology is something like this: If this planet were a planet of hummingbirds, woodchucks, giraffes and grasslands, then Darwinian
mechanics as modified by molecular biology would be sufficient to explain what's going on. The fly in the ointment of that simple schema is
ourselves. We represent some other order of existence. My notion is that out of the broad moving stream of animal evolution, a species was
selected, or fell victim to the terminology can
vary the influence of an attractor pulling in the direction of symbolic activity. This is what we've been involved in through chant, magic,
theater, dance, poetry, religion, science, politics, and cognitive pursuit of all kinds, occupying, for all practical purposes, less than 25,000
years; a blink of an eye on the cosmic scale. This is the shockwave which precedes eschatology. An analogy can be seen in the undisturbed
surface of a pond. If the pond begins to churn, it indicates some protean form moving beneath the surface, about to make its presence visible.
This is the appearance of history on the surface of nature, a churning anticipation of the emergence of the concrescence, or the transcendental
object at the end of time. It's been anathema to discuss this in secular society, even as a part of "New Age" secularism, because it's always
been the province of beastly priests and their hideously hierarchical and constipated religions. Decent people have tended to turn away from it.
In fact, this is some kind of primary intuition about our actual circumstance. The reason it's important is because we now are in a situation of
planetary crisis, where you don't have to be an enthusiast for Whiteheadian metaphysics or psilocybin, or the more arcane metaphors of
Terence McKenna, to realize that we are approaching our limits. It's inconceivable to speak of 500 years in the human future. History is a self-
consuming process, and all we need do at this point is extrapolate any of a number of curves. Here are some of my favorites: The spread of
epidemic, sexually transmitted diseases, the proliferation of thermonuclear weapons, the dissolution of atmospheric ozone, the rise in world
population. When these curves are extrapolated, it's very clear that we've taken business as usual off the menu. Rather than seeing this as a
situation driven by the momentum of bad historical decisions, I'd prefer to believe that what we're witnessing is something like a birth;
something that's built into the laws of physics. We are literally on a collision course with an object that we cannot precisely discern, lying just
below the event horizon of rational apprehendability; nevertheless, our cultural east is streaked with the blush of rosy dawn. What it portends,
I think, is an end to our fall, to our so-
journ in matter, and to our separateness. It lies now so close to us in historical time, by virtue of our having collapsed our options in three-
dimensional space, that you need only close your eyes, have a dream, take a shamanic hallucinogen, practice yoga, and there you will see it.
It's an attractor which has been working on the species for at least a million years. I maintain that it is actually a universal attractor, and we
represent a concrescence of complexity that is truly transcendental.
James Joyce said, "If you want to be phoenix, come and be parked, up ne'ant prospector, you spout all your worth, and woof your wings, the
end is nearer than you might wish to be congealed."1 I'm carrying this same notion, because I think that otherwise we're going to be
victimized by an enormous pessimism arising out of the bankruptcy of science, positivism, and ordinary politics. The ride to the end of
history is going to be a white-knuckled experience. I offer this metaphor in the hope that it may make the trip to the transcendental object,
glittering at the end of time, an easier ride.
Rupert: Thank you. I'd like to know what you mean by "Eschaton."
Terence: Ah yes, let me fill in the footnotes. The Greek word eschatos refers to the last things, the final things. The Eschaton is a neutral way
of naming what some call the Buddha Matraiya , some people call it the UFO intervention at the end of history, and some call it the second
coming. It's the last thing; the Eschaton. What I think is happening is that all boundaries are dissolving; between men and women, between
society and nature, and ultimately the boundaries between life and death. We are going truly beyond ambiguity, beyond syntax. We've been
trapped in a kind of demonic simulacrum for 25,000 years, created out of language. Now the accelerating process of involuted connectedness
characterizing this Whiteheadian progression of epochs toward the concrescrence, is in fact being fulfilled.
Ralph: This sounds a little more optimistic than I've heard you before. You've accepted the big bang fantasy of science, and then reflected it
into a similar event coming in the near future, about which you're concerned with the "when." You haven't mentioned the date this time.
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