Mc Kenna talks about why IChing – the Chinese ancient theory of chaos, or differently, of why things happen the way they happen is relevant today and juxtaposes the Western approach to the matter. In short, according to McKenna the IChing theorists were asking questions regarding the time and the Western civilisations – about the matter or what are things made of. Probability theory, causal unfolding and logical necessity are according to him not satisfying enough if it comes to the social spectrum of the human beings.

He argues that IChing is very sophisticated and not at all primitive and that people’s role is to educate themselves on this more holistic and unified approach to the universe and how it works. He believes that it is an insight to the structure of nature.

His conclusion on the IChing is that, where you are in space has as much of an influence of what’s going to happen as when you are in time. “When there are times of novelty and opportunity chance taking is relayed well. In times of resistance and habit chance taking can be fatal or at least tragic.” It’s the lack of a dualism between the internal and external worlds in Chinese philosophy that creates this holistic way of understanding the world.

“The world is far stranger place than the cheerful world of rational materialism inherited from the 19th century”.

Novelty Theory – time flow is conceived of as a shifting boundary or tension between the habit and the novelt – and the unfolding of this is DAO.

He used, as he’s saying shamanic techniques and rational methods, using deliberate disorder of the senses. Novelty according to McKenna, is the complexity that is approaching faster and faster as the time goes by. His theory was that time is actually speeding up and that it is measured by the number of events happening in a fraction of time, always building up on the previous complexities and happening faster and faster. Human movements are not different from nature, except for happening much quickler than the movement in nature.

In this sense novelty (complexity) is the way the universe creates newer forms of complexity that are happening faster and faster. He believed that the emergence of all those complexities is not far off and that we are in the “shadow of the transcendental object at the end of time”. Summarising, according to McKenna we are now participating in the final moment of life as we know it and humans should accept that they are a part of this exhilarating developmental process that will make us unrecognisable to each other.