h+ Magazine

Schwann Cybershaman, an h+ magazine writer and filmmaker, has been compiling a video series of lectures by the late Terence McKenna, the psychedelic philosopher and proto-transhumanist. Whether or not you agree with McKenna’s specific views, his breadth of knowledge and the boldness of theorizing will have you thinking about life, the universe, and everything in novel ways. The video series features previously unseen footage of McKenna taken by Cybershaman himself.

2012 is a special year for devotees of McKenna, being the year that McKenna predicted a tremendous spike in what he called novelty. His Timewave Zero theory predicted a singularity of infinite complexity and interconnectedness manifesting on December 21, 2012. Presenting this theory in the early 1970s, McKenna was one of the earlier philosophers speculating on the possibility of a singularity. Other issues explored include the role and meaning of culture, the relationship between biology and culture, and the place of individuals as patterns in the vast cosmos.

Though McKenna’s most famous idea might be that of Timewave Zero (along with the “self-transforming machine elves” purportedly inhabiting DMT-space), the Terence McKenna Omnibus, as Cybershaman’s video series is called, explores a myriad of topics besides the Timewave. Cybershaman is releasing one new video every 22nd of the month, each video 12 minutes, 12 seconds, and 12 frames in length, for a total of 12 short videos culminating in the final video being released sometime between December 12 and December 22, 2012.

The videos explore issues such as, “Who Am I?”, “Who Are They?”, “Who Are We?”, and a “History Lesson” featuring the Timewave Zero hypothesis. The hypothesis explores history as a series of resonant modes rather than just a linear timeline of events directly connected to their immediate causal ancestors.

Interested? Check out the videos below, and comment here or at Cybershaman’s website.