ZapOracle Lightning Insight
Zap in NYC, April 2026, Photo by Justin Sedelmayer
Greetings fellow mutants,
I will be on Coast to Coast AM very late “tonight” (actually the early hours of Wednesday morning). Coast is carried by some 600 radio stations and is the most listened-to overnight program in North America. This is my 13th appearance since 2005.
Listen Live
Online (free, no app): Go to WGY NewsRadio and hit the red play arrow at the top of the page — it streams the station live, and WGY carries Coast to Coast during the overnight hours. (WGY is on Eastern time. Use the table below for your zone.)
Over the air: To find the Coast to Coast AM station nearest you on AM radio, use the affiliate finder at coasttocoastam.com/stations — enter your location to see your local station.
| Time Zone | Full Show | When I’m On (2nd Half) |
|---|---|---|
| Eastern (ET) | 1:00 AM – 5:00 AM | 3:00 AM – 5:00 AM |
| Central (CT) | 12:00 AM – 4:00 AM | 2:00 AM – 4:00 AM |
| Mountain (MT) | 11:00 PM – 3:00 AM | 1:00 AM – 3:00 AM |
| Pacific (PT) | 10:00 PM – 2:00 AM | 12:00 AM – 2:00 AM |
Airing overnight into Wednesday, July 22. I’m the second-half guest, so tune in for the back half of the program.
I’ll be speaking on AI and the Singularity Archetype. We have stepped across the looking glass and are now all living in a sci-fi movie where novelty is exponential. I relate AI to the archetype I first discovered and wrote about in a philosophy honors paper in 1978 — the archetype that underlies and mediates the parallel event horizons of death and species metamorphosis (the singularity zone we are currently in, especially due to AI). For an overview, you can watch the PowerPoint presentation I gave at the Society for Scientific Exploration earlier this year.
I submitted the completed manuscript of the third edition of my singularity book, Crossing the Event Horizon: Human and AI Metamorphosis and the Singularity Archetype, to my publisher, Inner Traditions. Their timeline puts the book about a year out. It has an introduction by the great Jeffrey Kripal, one of the best minds on the planet. I’ll send a newsletter once it’s available.
Currently I’m editing the Singularity Archetype–inspired second book in my sci-fi epic series, Parallel Journeys. The sequel is called Parallel Portal. Parallel Journeys is available in every form — paperback, Kindle, and Audible (performed by me, the best version for many) — and it can also be read free at zaporacle.com. If you’d like to be a beta tester for Parallel Portal, email me at jonathanzap@hotmail.com with Parallel Portal in the subject line. Reading Parallel Journeys first would be hugely helpful but isn’t a prerequisite. Use that email to contact me about anything.
It’s been months since my last newsletter or Zap News Update, so this YouTube I just recorded in the back of my Sprinter camper (AKA Zap Force One) gives some chronology of the last few months of my life as a living context that led to the creation of a new system you can adopt to free your waking consciousness from the jaws of psychic entropy — the equipment-for-living part. It’s me speaking off the cuff for 58 minutes, so expect some white noise from the overhead AC. I erroneously say in the video that the Coast show is on Thursday — it’s not, it’s Tuesday 7/21 into the early hours of Wednesday 7/22.
Essentially, my system adapts the three-circle model — Circle of Control / Circle of Influence / Circle of Concern — which grows out of the Stoic dichotomy of control taught by Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus. I modify it slightly and assign traffic-light colors: green (go) for the Circle of Control, yellow (caution) for the Circle of Influence, red (stop) for the Circle of Concern. The Circle of Control is everything you can directly control right now — your hands, hopefully your spoken and written words, a car you are driving. The Circle of Influence is where your Circle of Control meets the outside world. You can hopefully control your car, but not the surrounding traffic conditions, though you influence the traffic as another car on the road.
Right now I am in control of the words I write and when I send this newsletter. Once sent, they enter the yellow Circle of Influence, where you are now reading them. I need to be cautious (hence the yellow) when I speak, write, or interact with other humans, so I take care to get my words right. I had enough influence to shape the writing you are reading, but I’m not in control of your attention or your reaction to it. Once I send the newsletter, if I worry about how many people will actually read it, I am wasting energy in the red Circle of Concern. I have zero control or influence there. When another person enters the room and I begin talking with them, they join me in the Circle of Influence. When we separate, they return to the Circle of Concern.
Effective people live in the Circles of Control and Influence and minimize wasting energy in the Circle of Concern. My ritual system is working well to minimize the time and energy I spend there (this is where most psychic entropy lives), and I share the details in the video to encourage you to design your own version.
Note: I use Green Circle because I’m not happy with the label “Circle of Control” — it sounds like the cabal of a supervillain (the mastermind of The Circle of Control) who lives in a secret base 500 meters beneath a live volcano, safely outside the reach of James Bond. Control is just too loaded a word for me, but feel free to use it, especially if you self-identify as a member of the supervillain persuasion.
Finally, here’s a recent Connecting with Coincidence trialogue with Jeffrey Kripal, psychiatrist Dr. Bernie Beitman (AKA Dr. Synchronicity), and me.
An Emergent Telepathic Network and Zap Oracle News
Listen to the Newsletter—all the content and more, but not the images and links given below.
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.
If you’d like to get free, very occasional Zap Oracle newsletters sent directly to your inbox, you can sign up HERE
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:
