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An Emergent Telepathic Network and Zap Oracle News
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Read the beta tester version of the sequel to Parallel Journeys, Parallel Portal. (both can be read free via the preceding links, Parallel Journeys can be found in any form on Amazon and Audible.
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I’ve been neglecting to send out newsletters for several months–been busy with deadlines for two books coming out in 2026– so there’s a lot to catch up on.
I will be giving a talk in Boulder, Jan. 23rd, at the Society for Scientific Exploration (follow link to RSVP if you’d like to attend).
The subject of the talk concerns our current evolutionary predicament, which I’ve been researching to prepare for the publication of a third edition of my book, Crossing the Event Horizon — Human Metamorphosis and the Singularity Archetype, to be published by Inner Traditions. The previous link is to the second edition, which is available free on zaporacle.com, but in a couple of months, I will have to take that down to comply with my contract with Inner Traditions. Print and Kindle versions of the first edition can be found on Amazon, and the link to the second edition also takes you to a free audio version of the first edition. I’d be grateful for any thoughts on the topic or research leads, which could include science-fiction novels that reflect the unfolding mythology I’ve been tracking since 1978.
I last spoke about the Singularity Archetype at a course at Esalen, where I was part of the teaching staff with three of my favorite writers/thinkers: Jeffrey Kripal, Joshua Cutchin, and Kevin Cann. Jeffrey has kindly offered to write an introduction for the third edition.
The other book coming out in 2026 is the sequel to Parallel Journeys, Parallel Portal. I had notes for a possible sequel when I published Parallel Journeys in 2023, but given that it took me 45 years to complete the first book, and that I was 65 when it was published, I wondered how many 45-year books I had left. Two, maybe three if I scrupulously avoided gluten? Actually, the sequel came together in months– a year with a dozen levels of editing. I won’t finalize the book until April, when I will be recording both books at the Inner Traditions audiobook studio in Vermont, so anyone who wants to read it and give feedback can still influence the book.
Here’s an abstract of my upcoming talk, but it’s also a quick summary of the content of the free second edition of Crossing the Event Horizon–Human Metamorphosis and the Singularity Archetype.
ABSTRACT:
The Singularity Archetype defines and mediates two parallel event horizons—death and the evolutionary metamorphosis of homo Sapiens. The life cycle of an individual parallels the life cycle of the species, with both culminating in a profoundly transformative event.
The individual event horizon of death may be viewed as emergency by the ego, while the “Self” (defined by Jung as the totality of all elements of the psyche) views it as an emergence. Similarly, the species’ evolutionary event horizon is viewed as an apocalyptic extinction-level event by the ego, while the Self views it as a transcendent quantum evolutionary jump.
Manifestations of the Singularity Archetype include a number of classic aspects:
A rupture of the plane of egoic, linear-time-based consciousness and emergence into consciousness and communication that transcends linear time and egoic individuality.
Telepathic consciousness and communication in which linguistic intent may be expressed visually and in richer modalities than predominantly word-based consciousness and communication. Episodic emergence scales up to a telepathic consciousness and communication networked amongst a small group or collectives of various magnitudes, while individuality is, to varying extents, conserved.
The Singularity Archetype may be experienced via NDEs, OBEs, UFO/abduction/close encounter experiences, kundalini, and psychotropic episodes. The Singularity Archetype represents a critical point where transformation, in ways impossible to fully anticipate, will massively shift human consciousness and, therefore, the nature of “reality.”
Here are some quick thoughts on the Emergent Telepathic Network:
I feel we’re getting a signal that homo Sapiens is trying to manifest a telepathic network, which may be the only adaptation that will allow us to deal with AI and other threats. I see the existential risks we create as likely an unconscious evolutionary mechanism that recognizes a need for the pressure of putting the whole genome at risk to potentiate a quantum evolutionary change, therefore, such existential threats might be paradoxically necessary medicine.
I listened to Season One of the Telepathy Tapes and most of Season Two. If we believe that autistic non-speakers are telepathically networking on “The Hill,” then we are already seeing this emergence within a subspecies. The extreme popularity of the Telepathy Tapes podcast which overtook Joe Rogan on some platforms as the most popular podcast in 2024 is its own signal from the collective.
Decades ago, I began suggesting an experiment to various friends—a group wilderness experience of people with high, existing affinity bonds undertaking a difficult wilderness excursion with no talking allowed. They start hiking together, then isolate for a few days (having them camp apart) –we did something like this in an Outward Bound school I was part of–then have the group unite in a sweat lodge that one of the members would be assigned to build, and then have everyone take an hallucinogen (ideally Ayahuasca) in the boundary dissolving environment of the sweat lodge.
Never got anyone to carry it out, but the idea is that the setup would intensify linguistic intentionality while disallowing breath-talking to encourage telepathy. Autistic, non-speaking kids spend their lives in something like this experiment, with a great need for communication through other means.
Just as the ego sees death as emergency while the self sees emergence, and the ego see apocalypse (in the conventional negative sense) where the self sees a quantum evolutionary change, so too when the ego sees the telepathic network (I’ve been using the phrase “homo gestalt” since 1978, from the brilliant, 1953, Ted Sturgeon sci-fi novel, More than Human). it sees catastrophic loss of individuality, while the self sees an inclusive transcendence of social alienation and many destructive human tendencies.
I believe group telepathy is a norm in nature, but it was a profound evolutionary development to diminish it to create individual egos. This created the greatest engine of novelty ever devised–individuality, even though much of it would be pathological. Given the democratization of lethal technology (EG open source AI and a $20,000 gene editor could allow someone to create novel pathogens that could cause an extinction-level event), we may need a telepathic network to survive. The ego ,however, fears its individuality will be annihilated in a telepathic network, and the growing use of the phrase “hive mind” suggests this fear. In contemporary mythology (especially science fiction) we see this fear expressed in, for example, The Borg of Star Trek. But in the Dune books we see an example of Homo Gestalt in which individuality is conserved. Members of the advanced Bene Gesserit Sisterhood who survive a rite called “The Water of Life” become Reverend Mothers who live in a telepathic network where they have access to all other Reverend Mothers, living or dead, or who have also survived the rite.
The new Apple TV series, Pluribus, bridges both points of view in a scenario in which all but 12 of the human population become a loving, telepathic hive mind. Lots of people are talking about this series, and the Telepathy Tapes have supplanted Joe Rogan as the most popular podcast on the planet. I’ve been tracking this idea since 1978, and this is the first time I’ve felt a large-scale emergence signal.
Zap Oracle has a new webmaster. Great thanks to Tanner Dery, who was at the helm for over twenty years. The new webmaster is an AI engineer, mathematician, and scientific polymath mutant, Lilly Fiorino, who is also developing Zap Chat, the upcoming LLM version of the Zap Oracle.
Here are some of my more notable recent podcasts:
