"There are processes, nuclear waste build-up, urbanization, land disturbance, there are processes which, if allowed to run on indefinitely, would wre… - Terence McKenna

Virtual reality is a fairly new concept to us; but once you grok it, it seems clear that any civilization that was capable of starflight and longevity extension, and so forth and so on, would also have a full VR toolkit under control. Well then, that means that when we go looking for the extraterrestrial, what will be the footprint? Perhaps vanished races are all around us, but downloaded into solid-state matrices that we have only recently come to the point where we could even recognize that possibility.

What you see, I think, is the morphogenetic field. The invisible world that holds everything together. Not the net of matter and light, but the net of casuistry—of intentionality, of caring, of hope of dream—of thought. That all is there, but it has been hidden from us for centuries because of the exorcism of the spirit that took place in order to allow science to do business. And that monotonous and ill-considered choice has made us the inheritors of a tradition of existential emptiness. But that has impalded to us to go back to the jungles and recover this thing. … The question is: can we dream a dream that is sufficiently noble that we give meaning to the sacrifices that have been made to allow the 20th century to exist? … I am convinced that if there were no shamanic pipeline, there would be no higher life, as we know it, on this planet. … We are all cells of a much larger body, and like the cells of our own body, it is hard for us to glimpse the whole pattern of the whole of what is happening. And yet, we can sense that there is a purpose, and there is a pattern …

There are vicissitudes in all things.