Time Wave Zero

Terrance McKenna considered his Time Wave Zero theory the most important idea he ever had, which is significant considering how many brilliant ideas he had.

To explain TWZ here is impractical as it would fill many books. The general idea is that time is similar to a fractal or a self-similar bifurcating tree. Saying that alone should shed some light on how complex an idea TWZ is, as we need only look at the complexity of fractals or binary math.

Brief Background:

Terence McKenna was a multidisciplinary thinker who delved into the mysteries of virtual reality, techno-paganism, artificial intelligence, evolution, extraterrestrials, ancestral worship, and the intricacies of aesthetics. Philosophically and spiritually, he found inspiration in influential figures such as Marshall McLuhan, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, and the doctrines of Christian Gnosticism. McKenna remained skeptical of organized religion and guru-based spiritual awakenings.

Despite his hesitation to define his beliefs rigorously, McKenna saw psychedelic substances as genuine “transdimensional journeys” that allowed individuals to connect with entities that could be extraterrestrials, ancestors/ghosts, or earth spirits. He believed that using these plants was beneficial for human health and a crucial component of the ancestral journey, a practice reverently honored by our forebears. To explore the importance of using psychedelic substances safely, McKenna advocated the use of compounds that were already well-established and easily metabolized by humans.

In his exploration of time and space, Terence McKenna proposed an innovative graphical software tool to calculate the progression of interconnectedness or “novelty,” which he coined as “Timewave zero.” This software utilizes mathematical formulas to depict the increase in complexity over time. The graph from Timewave Zero is a fractal, meaning that the pattern remains consistent regardless of scale change. As we travel deeper into the time fractal vie the passage of time, the fractal overlay becomes more and more complex to the point where they are no longer distinguishable. This can be considered as some sort of time wave singularity. At this point, a ‘novelty’ occurs, a change in reality, and something new that has not existed before is introduced. In the past, these novelty moments were events such as the formation of the sun or earth, the origin of life, multicellular life, a surge in evolution (a la Cambrian Explosion), marine animals emerging to land, the first mammals, and so on. According to McKenna, 2018 will be a new novelty moment of tremendous impact. Given that auto-emergent AI was developed in 2017 with the introduction of ‘transformers,’ as described in the Google research paper, which is the founding document of modern artificial intelligence, it may be that this grand novelty moment that will change all of reality as much as did the creation of the Sun is AI.

The original Timewave Zero software can still be downloaded from fractal-timewave.com, although you’ll need a DOS system to run it. That site is an excellent TWZ resource, even for its age.

A more modern version can be downloaded here, but it requires compiling, and is not even slightly user friendly with nothing in the way of documentation :/

McKenna describes the overall ideas in this video, and you can read his original paper on the concept here.

Terence McKenna - Timewave Zero

Terence Mckenna Timewave zero explained in under ten minutes

As for Tholonia…

This is posted here because TWZ is more than just fundamental to the tholonic concept; it originates from the same source. I recognized this fact years ago and reached out to Terrance. We corresponded briefly, but he soon after died. When I wrote him, I had no idea he was in the process of dying from a brain tumor.

Unlike McKenna, I did not converse with an alternative intelligence who explained this concept. I wish I had, as I have many questions. These concepts were shown to me in my early years, but I could not recognize them for what they were. We can all relate to this as we all live in a multidimensional miracle of existence, yet rarely do we see it as such.

I am not a stranger to psychedelic and entheogenic experiences, but they are not common in my life, primarily because it takes me months, sometimes years, to understand and integrate such an experience. For me, the integration of the experience is far more valuable than the experience itself.

The turning point for me was when I, like McKenna, took a heroic dose of homemade psilocybin mushrooms while inside a large pyramid in the woods at the foot of a mountain that hosts the Karma Triyana Dharmachakra Tibetan Buddhist monastery in upstate New York. I don’t know if any of that is relevant, but it may be.

It was the first time I had taken mushrooms, and to be honest, I took way more than I should have. What I was “shown” would take years to even slightly understand. For the following 12 years, I consciously and unconsciously processed this experience. Eventually, an order began to form out of the chaos, an order I could understand enough to explain, and an order that was wholly consistent with not only reason but, with a few very minor adjustments to our definition of “science’, possibly provable.

I began to write down what I was understanding, which did not come out nearly as coherently as I would have liked but coherent enough to keep writing. I spent the better part of a year every day, all day, writing, testing, rewriting, retesting, etc. I had just begun receiving my Social Security pension, and, living in Argentina, I could dedicate 100% of my time to this without the distractions of work or social interactions… except to tango dancing, which I did religiously.

The culmination of this work was version 1.0 of the book THOLONIA, The Mechanics of Existential Awareness, and it was a royal mess, but at least it was written down. Today, the book is in version 7. I assume somewhere around version 23, it will begin to look like what it should look like.

This website is intended to be a central location of notes, ideas, material, experiments, and, one day, a community. However, I go to some lengths to avoid advertising, promoting, or distributing its whereabouts.

THOLONIA attempts to pick up where McKenna left off. I do not think for a moment that I can compare in intelligence, experience, or knowledge to Terrance, but I do not have to build a path that others of his stature can travel.

When I first heard of McKenna and Time Wave Zero in the 90s, I was especially fascinated by its relationship to the I Ching. I read his interpretation of the I Ching, and while it is fascinating, I have reason to believe it needs to be presented in a slightly different form, given the context. I say this because I have been studying the I Ching in earnest since I randomly pulled a book off the shelf in my mother’s library in the early 70s. Inevitably, it seems, one can’t explore this realm of alternative yet ancient understanding without bumping into the I Ching. In writing the book THOLONIA, there was so much information related to the I Ching that I had to start another book to integrate it. That book is still a work in progress, but Part 1 of this 2-part opus is at least in draft and available.

The fact that TWZ and Tholonia both find expression in the I Ching is one of the details that support the idea that wherever I am ‘downloading’ my data from is the same source that feeds McKenna’s theory. Several other details are also supportive, besides the fact we achieved a certain clarity of concepts via whatever intelligence speaks through the most ancient life form on the planet, mushrooms.

In my case, much of my experiences and knowledge, long before I ever did shrooms or any entheogenic substance, was due to the spontaneous out-of-body experiences I started having at age 6. These experiences were the fuel and fodder that later would form the idea of THOLONIA.

Given the connection between THOLONIA and TWZ, it is worth exploring as it may shed light on new ideas or errors in the tholonic model.