Chaos, Creativity, and Cosmic Consciousness

Rupert Sheldrake, Ph.D., the author of several books including Seven Experiments That Could Change the World, A New Science of Life, and The Rebirth of Nature, lives in England. Terence McKenna (1946-2000) was the author of Food of the Gods and The Archaic Revival. Ralph Abraham, a Ph.D. in mathematics and a professor at the University of California, is the author of Dynamics: The Geometry of Behavior; he lives in California.

• Chaos, Creativity, and Cosmic Consciousness Illustrations Acknowledgments Foreword by Jean Houston Preface Chapter 1: Creativity and the Imagination The new evolutionary cosmology. The regularities of nature as evolving habits. The basis of cosmic creativity. The cosmic imagination as a higher-dimensional attractor drawing the evolutionary process toward itself. The Omega Point. Imagination welling up from the womb of chaos. Psychedelic experience and the mind of Gaia. Gaian dreams and human history. Dark matter as the cosmic unconscious. Chapter 2: Creativity and Chaos The chaos revolution. Chaotic attractors as eternal mathematical realities. Indeterminism in nature. Chaos and the evolution of order. Form in the cooling process. The organizing fields of nature as related to mathematics and the cosmic imagination. Mathematical models. Attractors, attraction, and motivation. The freezing of information in crystals and in written language. The primacy of spoken language and abstraction. Chapter 3: Chaos and the Imagination Chaos in Greek mythology. The myth of the conquest of chaos. Fear of chaos and the suppression of the feminine. The partnership society and the rise of patriarchy. Seasonal festivals of the repression of chaos, and the creation of the unconscious. The inhibition of creativity and its relation to global problems. The Eleusinian mysteries. Creativity and Christology. Plans for the recovery of chaos and the imagination. The significance of the chaos revolution. Chapter 4: The World Soul and the Mushroom Randomness in the evolutionary process. The limited nature of models. The computer and chaos revolutions. Coevolution of mathematics and the material world. The mathematical landscape. Sensory qualities in the cosmic imagination. The similarities of souls and fields. The primal unified field and the fields of nature. Rebirth of the world soul. Interplanetary transfer of the human psyche via the psychedelic experience and the spores of magic mushrooms. Chapter 5: Light and Vision Physical light and the light of consciousness. Light and vision. The location of visual images. Mind extending from the eyes.The sense of being stared at: a new kind of field or the electromagnetic field? Hierarchy of fields in nature. Coupling between electromagnetic and mental fields. Physical light and self-luminous visions. Tryptamine hallucinogens. The world soul. Fields as the medium of divine omniscience. Gaian mind and the light of the sun. Chapter 6: Entities Discarnate intelligences and nonhuman entities: creatures within the human mind or truly Other? Entities and shamans. The use of language by entities. Angelic communication in the birth of modern science. The dream dimension and entities. The effect of science and humanism on entities. Nature magically self-reflecting and aware. Chapter 7: The Unconscious The three great bifurcations. Creation of the unconscious, the origin of evil, and the rejection of chaos. Escape from evil by the resurrection of chaos. The suppression of psychedelics, the patriarchy, and the rise of booze. Partnership and dominator drugs; the addiction to addictions. Habits and the formation of the unconscious. Holidays and the reinforcement of awareness. Prayer, magic, and astrology for enlightenment. Chapter 8: The Resacralization of the World Ralph's religious background. The sacred in India. Rediscovering the sacred in the West. The revival of ritual and the resacralization of music. Feminism and the archaic revival. Gothic cathedrals and animistic Christianity. The green movement, saving the Earth, the greening of God. Psychedelic churches. The resacralizing of science. Chapter 9: Education in the New World Order Education as initiation. The dominance of rationalism and humanism. Rites of passage. Summer camps. Testing and accreditation. Institutions and administrations. Workshops as a model for a new pluralistic and decentralized system of education. Religious initiations. Reform of existing professions. A possible pilot project. Chapter 10: The Apocalypse The apocalyptic tradition: a mythic model motivating religious history or an intuition of the ending of history or time? Modern millenarianism and scientific versions of the apocalypse. The possible end in 2012. The self-fulfilling quality of apocalyptic prophecy. The speeding up of history and the inevitability of planetary metamorphosis. Death and transformation on a cosmic scale. Intensifying conflict and the power of faith. Glossary Bibliography About the Authors

"A book for all those who seek to quest beyond the limits of the ordinary. Three fine thinkers take us plunging into the universe of chaos, mind, and spirit. Instead of leaving us lost, they bring us back with startling insights and more wonder than we knew we had."