Simon Powell - The Psilocybin Solution

I think it is this cunning idea, which PKD used on many fictional occasions, that captures his views on the nature of VALIS. VALIS was an “outside” intelligence able to penetrate our world, revealing itself through mystical experience and through the unlikely juxtaposition of meaningfully related events. Can we possibly utilize this notion and map it onto our idea of the Other?

If we were to do this, then it would be tantamount to suggesting that the “programmer” of the Universal Computation is able to “jump into” the program, reaching in as it were to influence the state transition of the computation. Or perhaps this transcendental influence can only be felt in the psyche, in which case all theophanies would represent the manifestation of the Other as it penetrates our reality.

But what does it mean to be outside the system, outside the Universal Computation process? Can there really be an outside? It is possible to imagine that in the future we will be able to create a kind of simulated universe or an elaborate virtual-reality world that we can enter for years, if not a lifetime. And yet despite the fact that there will indeed be an outside to a simulated reality, we cannot say with certainty that there is also an outside to our present reality. If we do entertain the notion of a dimension outside of our world, we run up against the old infinite regress pit of despair, for surely the “outsides” could be continued indefinitely. In other words, if the intelligent Other exists outside our (simulated) reality, then what lies outside the Other’s dimension?

It is these dilemmas, which would appear to be insurmountable, that lead me to think that the solution to the Other cannot be found by appealing to a supernatural “outside the system” option. Indeed, we have already seen that the Other appears to represent a creative process conveyed by the mind whereby information organizes itself and takes on lifelike properties. The Other, therefore, is surely more likely to be found firmly entwined within the Universe along with ourselves (even if only as a mysterious potential expressed under certain circumstances). If we once more restrict ourselves to this one Universe, then at least our theoretical model will be somewhat constrained and more amenable to a single holistic explanation. This does not deny the existence of PKD’s VALIS; rather, it locates VALIS within our reality. Somewhere.

Could the Other somehow be connected to a highly advanced extraterrestrial intelligence? I don’t know about you, but I have a strong dislike of talk of precocious ET civilizations. Perhaps this is due in part to the often-ridiculous depictions of aliens in sci-fi movies (the film Contact, based on a novel by the late Carl Sagan, is a rare exception). Be that as it may, the notion that highly advanced life forms exist elsewhere in the Universe is far from an unacceptable idea. Indeed, NASA has spent millions of dollars funding SETI, the search for ET intelligence.

This use of the term intelligence is interesting. It is not the search for ET life, ET art, or ET real estate, but the search for the communicatory signals of some other intelligence apart from our own. The assumption is that intelligence is a universal phenomenon, a mental capacity if you like, that will be similar wherever it should arise. Furthermore, such an intelligence is presumed, like ourselves, to have a strong urge to communicate its presence across the vast depths of space in order to search for another intelligence. This is why the SETI program has sent out radio signals bearing mathematical formulas (like chemical formulas and atomic numbers). These signals are assumed to embody the sort of universal significance that an advanced ET intelligence would appreciate. If the Earth were to detect signals from some other star system, it would indicate beings similar to us. Alas, no such signals have been detected thus far.

Our assumptions about ET intelligence determine how we go about trying to establish interstellar communication. We know only of human intelligence and human thinking; it is by no means certain that an alien intelligence would be exactly like our own. If intelligence is a capacity—moreover a capacity to exhibit purposeful behavior and intentional-ity—then as intelligence evolves, so too might the intent of intelligence evolve. The intelligence of an advanced ET civilization, should one or many exist elsewhere in the Universe, might have evolved way beyond our ken, so much so that we would not recognize its presence should it be upon us already. Alternatively, an ET intelligence might be so far away as to make it a practical impossibility to establish effective communication. Although there are estimated to be untold millions of planets potentially hospitable to life in the Universe, most are millions of light years away. Should intelligent life forms on one of these planets have sent out a radio message, by the time it is received elsewhere the senders might well have become extinct.

If we put aside notions of radio broadcasts, it may still be possible to conceive of other types of communication involving radically different means. Here, I can once more look to McKenna, who suggested various alien scenarios to account for the psilocybin experience. Before I lay his ET ideas on you, I should stress that McKenna liked to oscillate in his psychedelic speculation. On the one hand, he consistently pushed for an earthbound biospherical explanation for the Other (which I will deal with later), while on the other hand, he invoked the idea of an alien intelligence as lying at the heart of the visionary state. He was led to entertain extreme speculation because of the equally extreme nature of psychedelic phenomenology. This I understand and I completely support his claim that the Other often appears distinctly alien in nature, though I am less enthusiastic about attributing this alien quality of visions to an actual ET presence.

In True Hallucinations, McKenna speculates that alien probes might have once visited our planet in the distant past and injected “seeded genes” into the prevailing ecology. These “seeded genes” are the DNA portions of plants that code for tryptamine alkaloids like psilocybin and DMT. These alien genes are carried along in the terrestrial flow of evolutionary events until they are encountered by a species open to the information that is broadcasted from the probes. The precise communication issuing from the alien probes depends on the intelligence of the particular species that encounters and consumes the “loaded” plants.

The first point to make about this controversial suggestion is that interstellar automated probes with the ability to transmit information is not a new or crass idea. A number of SETI scientists, in thinking about ET communication and the major problem of galactic distance, have concluded that one solution would be to design self-replicating probes that are able to multiply at an exponential rate during their voyages through space. Through such replication over aeons of time, the network of probes would eventually cover entire galaxies. This is an intriguing idea that has its origin in the work of Von Neumann, who, you will recall, proved that it was possible in principle to design self-replicating machines. If machines like this could be built by an advanced ET intelligence, it would offer a way to eventually make contact with other life forms in distant star systems.

McKenna has taken this idea a step further and argued that once probes of this sort locate a life-bearing planet, they do not send out binary radio broadcasts or “How do you do?” signals, but carry out a much more subtle and long-term form of communication. In McKenna’s view, the probes have engineered specific message-conducting genes whose signal becomes active after ingestion of those plants and fungi carrying the alien genes. In his final analysis, McKenna claims that once a species like our own has reached a certain point in its cultural development, then the probes will yield information on how to complete the contact.