My Blog

this Tuesday night in NYC: Amazing physics presentation!!

daniel_pinchbeck — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 16:15:19 GMT

We had a sudden opportunity to set up a New York City appearance for physicist Nassim Haramein this Tuesday night. I have been compulsively watching Haramein's DVD set, "Crossing the Event Horizon", available at www.theresonanceproject.org , for the last months, and recommending it to friends. Haramein has advanced the thesis that the geometrical structure of the vacuum - the underlying structure of space and time -- is a three-dimensional fractal, a double star tetrahedron. He believes that a lost antediluvian civilization possessed this knowledge and used it as the basis for a science that may exceed, in many respects, what our science has yet created. His thesis is spectacular and compelling, and his presentations are electrifying. He lives in Hawaii, so this is a rare opportunity to catch him in NYC. Please come to the event Tuesday night (details below) and pass it onto your friends who might be interested. Nassim’s work can profoundly change the way you think about reality. ** In a rare local appearance, scientist Nassim Haramein will be presenting an evening multimedia seminar in NYC. This presentation will take place on Tuesday, April 22, 2008 at Wild Project, 195 East 3rd St, New York, NY 10009 (between a/b), at www.thewildproject.com. Doors open at 7:30 pm for this 8pm talk. Admission is $20. First come first served, so come early to reserve your spot! At this presentation, Haramein will premier his newly published and groundbreaking physics paper “Scale Unification—A Universal Scaling Law for Organized Matter,” co-authored with Michael Hyson, PhD & Elizabeth Rauscher, PhD. Scientist Nassim Haramein has received international acclaim for his multimedia presentations, which are thought provoking, educational and entertaining for the layman and physics enthusiast alike. His lifelong exploration into the geometry of spacetime has resulted in a new and exciting comprehensive Unification theory, which leads to a coherent understanding of the fundamental structure and model of the Universe. In these extraordinary presentations, Nassim takes you on a mind expanding journey through humanity's evolution, the sciences of physics, chemistry and biology, and then to the wisdom and codes of the ancients. As he weaves together all these elements an exciting unified tapestry develops, which may prove to be one of the most important scientific, philosophical and technological discoveries of our time. Nassim Haramein has been giving lectures and seminars around the world on unification theory for over 20 years. His public lectures help everyone understand and get excited about the way the universe works, from consciousness to physics. His popular DVD set, “Crossing the Event Horizon: Rise to the Equation”, is selling out internationally. In addition, Mr. Haramein is the Director of Research at The Resonance Project Foundation, a non-profit dedicated to the advancement of physics, chemistry, biology, geology and archeology for the purpose of unification. Any way you look at it, he is transforming the foundations of physics and bringing us across “the event horizon” to a new cycle of existence. His riveting theories will change your view of the universe and your existence in it. Presented by Reality Sandwich (www.realitysandwich.com) and The Resonance Project Foundation, a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization (twww.theresonanceproject.org)

Evolver Salon, next Sat, Feb 2

daniel_pinchbeck — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 12:54:00 GMT

EVOLVER: WAKE UP AND DREAM Saturday February 2, 8pm - 4am www.realitysandwich.com What happens when America's most visionary city starts building a new world by living out its dreams? Take an overnight journey into a realm of new possibilities with otherworldly music, performance, ideas, art and alchemy. Drift through a labyrinth of rooms full of enchanted activities, glowing and pulsing artwork, exotic performers, magical chill caves, futuristic playgrounds, and endless spontaneity. Featuring: Globesonic's (Fabian Alsultany & Derek Beres) electrifying melting pot of Afro-beat, tabla, drum 'n bass, global trance, dub, hip-hop, and house. Haj (Resident DJ of Sub Swara & Freek Factory) and his "low-end monkey business that's more about journey than genre." Hercules' (Safetycan) Hobo Tech, Freshstep and Deep Electrofunk. Glass Bead Collective's "Spaceship Inflatable," Peripheral Media Projects' {E}volutionary {E}volver Printing, Scott Draves' "Electric Sheep," Blinky Art by Fort-Da/Image Node, Dr. Brainwave's "Mind Machine," Face Painting by Kostume Kult & Friends, "Gastronome Cache-Cache: The Masked Meal," Bill Kennedy's gaggle of dream geese, Future Unincorporated's "Poll of the Future" by Cassie Thornton, "Entheogenic Plants of the World" with Nat Bletter, chakra balancing with Lisa Paul Streitfeld, "Restoring the Revelation Dream" with Rodger Kamenetz, C. Eule Dance: "Flight of Fantasy" with video by Yuliya Lanina, ecstatic drumming with Jay Michaelson, hula-hoop instruction with Stephanie Radia, "INFINITY" mannequin installation with Kundalini Couture/Wearable Art by Selma Karaca and video by John Knowles., "Chakracise" with Kiana Love, interactive light installation by Seej, Michael Robinson's "Universus" project, video art by Love Intelligence Group and The Housewives' Guide to AnatomyD… And, of course, that bold beautiful dreamer – YOU! Evolvitorium, 8:30p: "Asanas and Ayahuasca" In this talk Sharon Gannon (co-founder of Jivamukti Yoga) and Reality Sandwich's Daniel Pinchbeck (author of "2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl") compare and contrast yoga and shamanism and how these ancient techniques might just save our world today. Opening "Body Prayer" by Jivamukti co-founder David Life. Communion Square Cafe: Courtney Weber - MC and Astro Hour with musical accompaniment by Eric Holloway, sitar and Sufi poetry with Dawoud Kringle and Asad Khan, Divine Drum & Bass Hip Hop with Naada, fantastical storytelling by Martin Dockery, David Life live, Jessica Star's Burner-Country music, Michael Brownstein's "Must Not Sleep," and Bill Kennedy on the mike. Yummy vegan food, sumptuous smoothies, & fair trade coffee. Dreamy Costumes Highly Encouraged! 18+ with ID or all ages with a parent. No alcohol will be served. You'll need to take off your shoes when entering the dream so don your funkiest socks or slippers. This is the first in a series of freakishly fun experiments from Reality Sandwich. Their goal is to spread ideas, connect people and reinvigorate life with creativity and spirit. As the seasons change, expect more invitations to participate in reality-changing events. If we can build it here, we can build it anywhere. So, let's get together, New York, and start dreaming. Saturday, Feb 2, 8p (doors) to 4a 841 Broadway, 2nd Floor (between 13th & 14th St. at Union Square) $15 advance tickets, $20 door Tickets: http://www.jivamuktiyoga.com/fms/event_fm.html www.realitysandwich.com / www.jivamuktiyoga.com

Alien Nation

daniel_pinchbeck — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 01:34:37 GMT

Below is the opening of my latest column for “Conscious Choice”, on the extraterrestrial presence as explored in recent books by Steven Greer, who founded The Disclosure Project, and Richard Hoagland, who discovered the infamous “face” on Mars. Hope you enjoy it. Yours, Daniel Conscious Choice December 2007 “Alien Nation” While writing my books, I discovered that I was able to keep an open (if skeptical) mind, while exploring subjects that make most people flinch, whether shamanism, psychedelics or crop circles. These days, I continue to find myself curious about ideas and possibilities that lie even further out on the fringe, partially because of personal experiences I have had, ranging from UFO sightings to inexplicable manifestations. I seem to go through a process in absorbing a new pattern of information, first entertaining it as a vaguely humorous possibility and then slowly acclimatizing myself to it with increasing seriousness. Lately, two new books have been tantalizing my worldview, suggesting new vistas of possibility. The books are Steven Greer’s Hidden Knowledge, Forbidden Truth, and Dark Mission: The Secret History of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration by Richard Hoagland and Michael Bara. Both books discuss extraterrestrials, alien technology and secret government cover-ups, but from different angles. While Hoagland and Bara both offer the perspective that NASA is an occult organization that has concealed its findings of alien artifacts on the moon and elsewhere, Greer makes the case that there are numerous benevolent species of intelligent alien life, at a much higher stage of development than us, surrounding the Earth and ready to make contact when we are ready. Hoagland and Mara’s book is a weird, yet fascinating compendium of geometrical postulates and jarring details. Greer’s work, if true, is the best news that humanity has ever received. Link to the entire piece: http://consciouschoice.com/2007/12/prophetmotive0712.html

When the Other Shoe Drops

daniel_pinchbeck — Sat, 24 Nov 2007 03:47:34 GMT

Hi folks, Please check out my new essay on Reality Sandwich, "When the Other Show Drops", looking at hard evidence for an approaching financial meltdown in the US, and providing a meta-analysis of the situation we are entering. The piece is currently at the top of the page at http://realitysandwich.com , and you can also reach it directly here: http://www.realitysandwich.com/when_other_shoe_drops Below is a short excerpt from the essay. I am hoping that the comments following the essay on the Reality Sandwich site will stimulate a serious debate about the issues raised in the piece. Hope you find time to check it out. Yours, Daniel Right now, we appear to be approaching a severe breakdown of the US financial system, with deep repercussions for the global economy. The ongoing meltdown of the subprime mortgage market is, according to this hypothesis, stage one of this process, and a crisis in personal debt will be the second stage - the dropping of the other shoe. Below, I have enclosed a summary of the economist David Martin's recent speech to The Arlington Institute, a futurist think tank in Virginia. Two years ago, Martin made a speech at Arlington where he foresaw the subprime mortgage market meltdown with impressive acuity (a transcript is available on the Arlington's website). His analysis of the credit landscape suggests that mass defaults on personal debt, starting in December, are going to overwhelm the capacity of banks and insurers, who will not be able to find bailouts. Bank insolvencies would lead to the failure of the privately held Federal Reserve. Currently, OPEC and China are shifting their holdings out of US currency, and the Euro is becoming the reserve currency around the world. Martin proposes that by March we will be entering an entirely transfigured economic landscape. The logic of his argument seems compelling to me. As bank failures and mass defaults begin to mount up, people are going to need interpretive tools to understand their new situation, in order to react to it practically and deal with it psychologically. During a crisis, there is the potential for a major opening of awareness and compassionate understanding, or for a large-scale retraction into fear-based belief systems and Fundamentalisms. Sometimes you have both at the same time. The imminent economic plunge, if it happens, cannot help but act as a multi-generational wake up call. These days, when I talk to people – especially people in their twenties – I often find myself stunned by their ignorance of the economic and social situation that surrounds them. And yet, I grew up with the same attitude of jaded indifference and the senseless assurance that nothing about politics, economics, or the environment had any real meaning, or would ever affect me in any tangible way. This jaded indifference is the result of intensive conditioning by the media – the phenomenon of the "flattered self" brilliantly described in Thomas De Zengotita's book Mediated – and an alienated education system which "produces subjectivities" that fit the status quo. These manufactured subjectivities are cut off from any sense of responsibility for the social reality or the life-world that sustains them, and they are carefully conditioned to identify with this alienation as a mark of pride -- celebrities like Mick Jagger and Jack Nicholson, or their younger iterations, are patron saints of cynical hipness and smug narcissism. The concept of the "production of subjectivity" is a major one for Negri and Hardt, who see it as the most important form of production in post-industrial civilization.

Reality Sandwich ingredients

daniel_pinchbeck — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 04:29:36 GMT

Hi folks, I wanted to alert you to some great stories that have appeared recently in Reality Sandwich. The magazine is really humming these days, with audience growing rapidly. We are running 3 -5 new pieces a day, most of them short news items with one or two features. VISION AWARD ACCEPTANCE SPEECH We just published an acceptance speech by Dr. Stanislav Grof, famed Czech researcher into LSD psychotherapy and non-ordinary states of consciousness. Grof was the recipient of the Vision Award from former Czech president Vaclav Havel. The speech is a great introduction to Grof's extremely essential research. Here is a short excerpt: "It seems to be my destiny – or karma, if you wish – to be involved in research of areas that are subjects of great controversy in science and society. My unconventional professional career started here in Prague more than fifty years ago when I volunteered as a beginning psychiatrist for a session with LSD-25, diethylamide of lysergic acid. My preceptor, Docent Roubicek, received this fascinating experimental substance from the Swiss pharmaceutical company Sandoz. The incredibly powerful psychedelic effects of this ergot alkaloid had been discovered by Dr. Albert Hofmann, who accidentally intoxicated himself while working on its synthesis. The research project of Docent Roubicek required a combination of the pharmacological effect of LSD with exposure to a powerful stroboscopic light oscillating at various frequencies. This combination evoked in me a powerful mystical experience that has radically changed my personal and professional life. It had such a profound effect on me that research of the heuristic, therapeutic, transformative, and evolutionary potential of non-ordinary states of consciousness has become my profession, vocation, and personal passion for the rest of my life." read the rest here: http://realitysandwich.com/node/655 THE BIG LIE: PARSING THE MYTHOLOGY AND ICONOCLASM OF ZEITGEIST, THE MOVIE Reality Sandwich Charles Shaw's first feature is a fascinating deep dive into the "Zeitgeist" phenomenon. Here's an excerpt: "We humans are myth-driven creatures. Our mythologies help define us and shape us and provide us with the context of our lives, so that we may navigate through our days and make sense of a world that at times appears so overwhelming, out of control, and full of the unknown. Within our social archetypes we find personalities we can identify with, or demonize, and in our religious and historical myths we find the universal stories and symbols we teach each other to provide a common lineage and purpose, and the basic social ordering principles upon which our culture is based. This mythic understanding is at the heart of the revelations in the wildly popular “mythumentary,” Zeitgeist: the Movie, a multi-million download phenomenon since its free release on the Internet last spring that examines how American culture is built around a tripartite, or three layered, myth of god, country, and prosperity. This myth structure serves the function of indoctrinating every citizen with the following belief system: they are the favored people of the One True God, Jesus Christ, living in the greatest nation in the world, The United States of America, under the One True, fair and just economic system of market capitalism protected by a legal system based in private property." Read the rest here: http://realitysandwich.com/node/636 * Don't miss this feature on using electronic media to communicate with spirits and ghosts: http://realitysandwich.com/node/627 The Ghosts in our Machines John Topp Can we use our technology to talk to spirits and send messages back in time? * Also this piece by "RoseRose" is on Google as the first psychedelic superpower: http://realitysandwich.com/node/591 Google and the Myceliation of Consciousness RoseRose Let me introduce myself. I am RoseRose, doing business on Google Earth 2007 as an alien paleoanthropologist from another timeframe, studying the heirloom code of Homo Sapiens. I’m focusing on your critical position at the beginning of the psychedelic age, with the emergence of the first psychedelically informed superpower: Google. * Please read them and let me know what you think. Yours, Daniel

My book tour schedule (Updated) and new Conscious Choice column

daniel_pinchbeck — Mon, 10 Sep 2007 04:19:49 GMT

Hi folks, Below is my updated tour schedule, followed by the first half of my new column for Conscious Choice Magazine. Hope to see you on the road. Yours, Daniel http://2012thebook.com/tour_schedule.html Come Meet Daniel Pinchbeck on his Fall 2007 US Book Tour Brooklyn, NY September 10 Barnes & Noble 7:00 PM 106 Court Street Brooklyn, NY (718) 246-4996 New York, NY September 11 McNally Robinson 7:00 PM 52 Prince Street New York, NY 212-274-1160 Boulder, CO September 13 Boulder Bookstore 7:30 PM 1107 Pearl St. Boulder, CO 80302 303-447-2074 Denver, CO September 14 The Tattered Cover 7:30 PM 2526 E. Colfax Colfax, CO 80206 303-322-1965 Lake Forest Park, WA September 15 Third Place Books 6:30 PM 17171 Bothell Way NE Lake Forest Park, WA 206-366-3316 Seattle, WA September 17 Elliott Bay Books 7:30 PM 101 S. Main Street Seattle, WA 206-624-6640 Seattle, WA September 18 Barnes & Noble #2573 7:00 PM 2700 N.E. University Village Seattle, WA 98105 206-517-4107 Portland, OR September 19 Powell’s/Burnside 7:30 PM 1001 W. Burnside Portland, OR Sonoma, CA September 20 Readers Books 7:30 PM 127 E. Napa Street Sonoma, CA 95476 (707) 939-1779 Calistoga, CA September 21 Copperfield’s Books 7:00 PM 1330 Lincoln Avenue Calistoga, CA 94515 707-942-1616 Sebastopol, CA September 22 Copperfield’s Books 7:00 PM 138 N. Main Street Sebastopol, CA 95472 707-823-2618 San Francisco, CA September 24 Booksmith 7:00 PM 1644 Haight Street San Francisco, CA 94117 Santa Monica, CA September 25 Barnes & Noble #2575 7:30 PM 3rd St. Promenade 1201 3rd Street Santa Monica, CA 90401 310-260-9110 W. Hollywood, CA September 26 Bodhi Tree 7:30 PM 8585 Melrose Avenue W. Hollywood, CA 90069 310-659-4428 Austin, TX September 27 Book People 7:00 PM 603 N. Lamar Austin, TX 78703 512-472-5050 Life During Wartime by Daniel Pinchbeck Since my early memories of watching the Watergate hearings on my grandmother’s couch when I was a kid, I always felt alienated and disenfranchised from the political process. Although I participated in the occasional protest, even that activity seemed like a meaningless and almost nostalgic gesture to me. My impression of politics was of a rigged spectacle of manufactured consent, a system that only allowed for compromise or capitulation to the corporate and financial interests that pulled the puppet strings of power. From this perspective, the rise of George Bush seemed natural and inevitable. After the dissolution — by many accounts, the targeted destruction — of the Radical Left in the early 1970s, many progressives abandoned any hope of transforming the system and turned to other pursuits, from Buddhism to academia to business to literary and creative endeavors. Younger people like myself followed in their footsteps. Despite our uneasy awareness of the destructive effects of U.S. policies across the world, many of us felt that the most meaningful and important work we could do was to change ourselves and actualize our individual potential. Seeking personal and spiritual fulfillment, we abandoned the sphere of politics to the bureaucrats, PR flacks and corrupt sycophants who seemed to thrive in it. In recent years, we have witnessed an accelerating degeneration of the U.S. political system, from rule of law to rule by force. Most of us have avoided confronting the shocking meaning of this change. As Al Gore writes in The Assault on Reason, the executive branch, with the complicity of the legislative and judiciary branches, has dismantled much of the separation of powers carefully guaranteed in the U.S. Constitution. At the same time, we have embarked on a “War on Terrorism” that can never be won since our enemy is not a state but potentially anyone who chooses violent means of resistance, along with seemingly unending wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. We are facing a new situation, and it is critical we understand the full parameters of what is taking place. The bestselling Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire, by Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, offers a valuable analysis of current sociopolitical trends. Negri and Hardt are bidding to be the Marx and Engels of our time. Beneath the current crisis of political legitimacy, they see an enormous potential for liberation: the possibility of constituting a global democracy, a planetary “society without a state,” with a new set of institutions, legal codes, and social systems. Hardt and Negri base their analysis on a number of factors. Following Marx, they believe that changing forms of material production shape human consciousness. In recent times, there has been a shift in emphasis from industrial goods — cars, food, clothing, etc. — to the “immaterial production” of software, media, ideas, images and affective relationships. Immaterial production tends to be a collaborative and communal process, and one that directly impacts and reshapes our social reality. For instance, a software advance in computer networks or mobile phones gives us new ways to connect with each other, while a popular new film might imprint a new style of interacting. Realizing that conditions have changed since Marx’s vision of class struggle and a revolutionary proletariat, Hardt and Negri postulate a global multitude of individuals that communicate through the shared space of the commons and could organize themselves through distributed networks. Our increasingly networked society points toward a new global orchestration that would eliminate the need for a centralized state apparatus. For this to happen, the multitude would have to realize a shared political project — not just demonstrating against the powers-that-be, as in the massive international protests against the Iraq war, but self-organizing into a truly constitutive body. Although they admit they do not know how this takes place, Negri and Hardt theorize that “insurrectional activity” is no longer divided into successive stages, as in the revolutions of the modern era, but “develops simultaneously.” They note, “Resistance, exodus, the emptying out of the enemy’s power and the multitude’s construction of a new society are one and the same process.” (read the rest of my column at http://consciouschoice.com/2007/09/prophetmotive0709.html)

Burning Man talks

daniel_pinchbeck — Mon, 20 Aug 2007 19:10:18 GMT

Daniel Pinchbeck’s talk schedule for Burning Man, 2007 Weds 5:00 - 6:30 pm: “Sex and Social Control, Tantra and Liberation”: Open Discussion At Palenque Norte, in the Interactive Yurt Gallery at the PodCluster, 7:30 and Intertidal. Thursday 6:00-7:30 pm: SHIFT camp, 5:00 and Esplanade. PANEL: “Global Shift in Human Consciousness” Sasha & Anne Shulgin Lady A Neidpath - Women's Visionary Congress Bob Jesse - Griffin Psilocybin Study/Council on Spiritual Practices Harold Linde , Director of “The 11th Hour” Daniel Pinchbeck Others Friday 3:30 - 5 pm: Talk “The Underdog World Revolution” – Entheon Village, 2:30 and Arctic Theme: “The current mismanagement of global resources, economics, and environment creates a compelling argument for a necessary change in elites. In the limited time before we pass the chaos point of biospheric collapse, how do we bring about systemic transformation on a global level? What type of social infrastructure can replace the nationstate?” Sunday 4:30 – 6 pm: Panel “Alien Dreamtime” – Entheon Village, 2:30 and Arctic Graham Hancock William Henry Daniel Pinchbeck Other surprise special guests

Post Modern Times (plus more)

daniel_pinchbeck — Wed, 01 Aug 2007 23:06:22 GMT

Hi folks, Please check out this short film. I have been working on it for a while. I think it is a brilliant work of animation, directed by Joao Amorim of Curious Pictures. If you like it, please forward it to your friends and networks: http://postmoderntimes.com/ "Welcome to Postmodern Times, a series of short animated films presenting new ideas about global consciousness and techniques for social and ecological transformation. Our first episode, "Toward 2012", introduces the project, explaining concepts from the best-selling book, "2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl" (Tarcher/Penguin, 2006) by Daniel Pinchbeck, in the author's own voice. Future segments will focus on shamanism, sustainability, alternative energy systems, the Mayan Calendar, quantum physics and synchronicity, human sexuality, and a host of other subjects." Also, my new Conscious Choice column has just been posted. I have enclosed the first few paragraphs below. The entire piece is here: http://consciouschoice.com/2007/08/prophetmotive0708.html August 2007 | Prophet Motive The Sexual Revolution, Take Two By Daniel Pinchbeck For the last few years, I have been exploring the nature of sexuality, love, and relationships, both personally and philosophically. When I separated from my last partner, I realized that I did not feel that monogamy was working for me as a model. Yet I also knew that I craved long-lasting, deep, and sustainable relationships. Since then, I have sought to reconcile my conflicting yearnings, and wondered if other models of relationships are possible or desirable. Just as we are undergoing a second stage of the process of shamanic initiation that was curtailed at the end of the 1960s, we have entered a wiser and more integrated phase of the Sexual Revolution that crested thirty-five years ago. A more conscious approach to erotic relationships requires a sympathetic awareness of the differences between men and women, and an acceptance of individual distinctions as well. In the 1950s, the scandalous Kinsey Report on human sexuality revealed the vast variety of human sexual experience, and showed that a huge number of people sought intimate contact outside of the confines of their marital relationships. The opening of sexuality in the 1960s led to deflationary decadence in the disco culture of the 1970s, and a pop cultural ambience of constant stimulation and insatiation that the philosopher Herbert Marcuse called "repressive desublimation." We are still struggling with millennia of negative conditioning — Judeo-Christian guilt, shame, and original sin — around the subject of sexuality. We also belong to a culture that denigrates bodily pleasure and intimacy. In our culture, infants are separated from their parents as soon as they are born and placed in hospital nurseries. In tribal and aboriginal cultures, infants tend to be almost inseparable from their mothers' bodies for the first years of their life. As Robert Lawlor notes in his book Earth Honoring, absence of touch in early life may have long-lasting psychological consequences: For aboriginal peoples, happiness is a natural state of being. For denizens of the modern industrialized world, happiness tends to be a distant and almost unattainable goal. ** Also a new feature is up on Reality Sandwich about urban homesteading, also an interview with Alex Grey. http://www.realitysandwich.com/node/443 Become an Urban Homesteader Homegrown Revolution On our little urban farm in the heart of Los Angeles we produce food, hack our house to generate power and recycle water, plot revolution and build community. You can too. Trust us, once you eat a sweet tomato still warm from the sun, or an orange-yolked egg from your own hen, you will never be satisfied with the pre-packaged and the factory-farmed again.

John Major Jenkins, Erik Davis, and myself on 2012

daniel_pinchbeck — Mon, 16 Jul 2007 03:19:25 GMT

I suspect many of you will enjoy the comments on Erik Davis' new essay on the Dreamspell, at Reality Sandwich. The dialogue is between myself, Erik, John Major Jenkins, and others. Of course anyone is invited to join. Here is a direct link: www.realitysandwich.com/node/358 From Erik's comments: Valuable systems can come out of this fusion of number and the visionary imagination, and I think some of Arguelles' stuff is sometimes powerful. Clearly a numerological/archetypal system like the I Ching is an amazement. And I enjoy reading some of your speculations as well. But I don't understand what is gained by arguing and believing that the wizards of a rather bloody jungle culture foretold our moment of rising c02 levels and suicide bombers and Burning Man. It seems to me that *we* constellate our archetype of apocalypse--and that the whole memetic industry of 2012 speculation is too often a symptom of that process, rather than a clarification of it. From Jenkins' comments: Can the galactic alignment, which empirically occurs in the alignment zone 1980 to 2016 AD, trigger change and shifts in consciousness? I don't know, maybe. Why don't scientists take a look? Because they are so turned off by how the 2012 topic is constantly framed through distorted filters - scientists can't even get a handle on what the galactic alignment is. Kudos to Ben Anastas at the New York Times for framing the topic in, finally, a more or less accurate way, and giving some acknowledgment to the pioneering work I've done. Now, having said all that, in regard to the changes happening on the planet, isn't it interesting that the galactic alignment - a once in a 26,000-year alignment - happens during an exceedingly bizarre period of human history (1980 - 2016 AD)? The ancient Maya encoded into their traditions a belief that such a time would be attended by transformation and renewal, but, following the teachihg in their creation myth, the outcome is ultimately a function of to what degree we, and all beings suffering from ego limitation, can sacrifice our illusions - the illusions that keep consciousness fixated to states of self delusion. That topic is best reserved for another day. From my comments: I am not sure that “*we* constellate our archetype of apocalypse.” From a nondual perspective, it is happening both within and outside of us - for instance, on the cosmological level as the “galactic alignment” that fascinated the Mayans. From a Jungian perspective, we have two choices when archetypal processes are constellating in the collective: We can be their unconscious victims, or we can consciously work with the archetypes and seek to embody their positive and transformative aspects. We can choose to be creative participants in the process or to reject and ignore it entirely, but this decision may have real consequences for us, as individuals and as a society.

The Times They Are a Changin'

daniel_pinchbeck — Mon, 02 Jul 2007 08:48:47 GMT

Yesterday, the New York Times Magazine ran a feature on 2012, which should bring a new wave of attention to these prophetic concepts: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/01/magazine/01world -t.html?pagewanted=1&_r=2 While the Times maintains a typical skeptical tone, there is a lot of information and some provocative ideas (for Times readers) in the piece. I also recommend Richard Merrick's new feature at Reality Sandwich, on the possibility of using the Zero Point Field to access an unlimited supply of energy: http://www.realitysandwich.com/ I am also pasting the Times story below: The New York Times July 1, 2007 The Final Days By BENJAMIN ANASTAS Steven from Arizona — a caller on “Coast to Coast AM” late one night in February — had slipped into a future reality and caught a glimpse of the devastation that was coming when the supervolcano under Yellowstone erupted. James in Omaha, on the other hand, was worried about the likelihood of a magnetic pole shift, while Rod from Edmonton had recently spoken to a member of the Canadian Parliament about the global-warming crisis and couldn’t believe what he had heard. “We’re coming to an end time beyond anything that anybody has ever imagined,” Rod said with a trembling urgency. “The scientists right now, they’re not even studying the real causes. The Kyoto treaty and CO2 have nothing to do with anything.” “Coast to Coast AM” is an overnight radio show devoted to what its weekday host, George Noory, calls “the unusual mysteries of the world and the universe.” Broadcast out of Sherman Oaks, Calif., and carried nationwide on more than 500 stations as well as the XM Radio satellite network, “Coast to Coast AM” is by far the highest-rated radio program in the country once the lights go out. The guest in the wee hours that February morning was Lawrence E. Joseph, the author of “Apocalypse 2012” — billed as “a scientific investigation into civilization’s end” — and he came on the air to tell the story of how the ancient Maya looked into the stars and predicted catastrophic changes to the earth, all pegged to the end date of an historical cycle on one of their calendars, Dec. 21, 2012. “My motto tonight,” Noory intoned at the beginning of the program, “is be prepared, not scared.” What followed was a graphic recitation of disaster scenarios for 2012, including hurricanes, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions caused by solar storms, cracks forming in the earth’s magnetic field and mass extinctions brought on by nuclear winter. The only hopeful note of the night was struck when an unnamed caller asked Joseph what he thought about recent Virgin Mary apparitions in Bosnia. “I love it,” the author answered. “That’s positive. You don’t need to be a devout Christian to admire the Virgin Mary. She’s a blessing to us all.” When I reached Noory by phone at his program’s studio in California, he told me, “I’m a staunch believer that we are in an earth cycle.” As 2012 approaches, “Coast to Coast” has been devoting more and more programming to prophecies of doom and the signs and wonders that are thought to be harbingers of the coming end time: U.F.O. sightings, crop-circle formations, disappearing honeybees and flocks of migratory birds that fall from the sky. “There’s no question the planet is changing,” Noory said. “And the fact that the Mayans had an end date and their history talks of change, I find that fascinating.” But it isn’t just on the lower frequencies, late at night, where people are waiting on the Mayan apocalypse. Daniel Pinchbeck, author of the alternative-culture best seller “2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl” — and a guest on “Coast to Coast AM” — has introduced a young and savvy audience to the school of millenarian thinking that has gathered around Mayan calendrics. To do so, he has employed viral marketing and a tireless schedule of public appearances at bookstores, art spaces, yoga studios and electronic-music festivals. When Pinchbeck appeared on “The Colbert Report” last December to promote his book, the host confronted him in front of a life-size manger scene: “You have been called a new Timothy Leary. Why do we need another one of those?” Over breakfast at Cafe Gitane in Manhattan, Pinchbeck told me recently that “there’s a growing realization that materialism and the rational, empirical worldview that comes with it has reached its expiration date.” A youthful 41, with long, drooping hair and heavy-framed designer eyewear, Pinchbeck exudes a languid fervency that is equal parts Jesuit and Jim Morrison. His BlackBerry sat face up on the table, the screen dark, beside his bowl of organic fruit, yogurt and granola. “Apocalypse literally means uncovering or revealing,” Pinchbeck went on, “and I think the process is already under way. We’re on the verge of transitioning to a dispensation of consciousness that’s more intuitive, mystical and shamanic.” Far from its origins, divorced from its context and enlisted in a prophetic project that it may never have been designed to fulfill, the Mayan calendar is at the center of an escalating cultural phenomenon — with New Age roots — that unites numinous dreams of societal transformation with the darker tropes of biblical cataclysm. To some, 2012 will bring the end of time; to others, it carries the promise of a new beginning; to still others, 2012 provides an explanation for troubling new realities — environmental change, for example — that seem beyond the control of our technology and impervious to reason. Just in time for the final five-year countdown, the Mayan apocalypse has come of age. Light and darkness — heavenly forces and a corrupted earth — are the twin engines of apocalyptic movements. For Christians awaiting rapture or Shiites counting the days until the Twelfth Imam appears, the trials and injustices of the known world are a prelude for the paradise that we can imagine but can’t yet achieve. Judging by the sheer number of predicted end dates that have come and gone without the trumpets blowing and angels rushing in, we are a people impatient to see our world redeemed through catastrophe — and we are always wrong. Gnostics predicted the imminent arrival of God’s kingdom as early as the first century; Christians in Europe attacked pagan territories in the north to prepare for the end of the world at the first millennium; the Shakers believed the world would end in 1792; there was a “Great Disappointment” among followers of the Baptist preacher William Miller when Jesus did not return to upstate New York on Oct. 22, 1844. The Jehovah’s Witnesses have been especially prodigious with prophetic end dates: 1914, 1915, 1918, 1920, 1925, 1941, 1975 and 1994. Any religious movement with an end-time prophecy is certain to attract followers, no matter how maniacal or fringy (witness the Branch Davidians). For those who want to go online and get the latest tally of bad news, there is a nuclear Doomsday Clock and the Rapture Index. If you remember living through Y2K, that was another millenarian moment — except our computer systems were redeemed by the same code writers who corrupted them in the first place. Who dreams of the apocalypse? Why do they dream of it? Polls indicate that up to 50 percent of Americans believe that the Book of Revelation is a true, prophetic document, meaning they fully expect the predictions of “Rapture,” “Tribulation” and “Armageddon” to be fulfilled. There is a paradox built into end-time theologies in that imminent catastrophe often brings comfort; according to Paul S. Boyer, an authority on prophecy belief in American culture and an emeritus professor of history at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, the apocalypse is an appealing idea because it promises salvation to a select group — all of whom share secret knowledge — and a world redeemed and delivered from evil. “The Utopian dream is a big part of the Western tradition,” Boyer told me, “both the religious and secular forms. But the wicked have to be destroyed and evil has to be overcome for the era of righteousness to dawn.” This is as true in the New Age as much as in any other one. Rumors of global crisis, the distrust of institutional authority, the ready availability of esoteric lore, the existence of individuals drawn to abstruse numerical schemes, the urge to assuage anxieties with dreams of social transformation — wherever these elements exist, apocalyptic thinking is likely to flourish. The year 2012 first entered the public consciousness two decades ago this August with the Harmonic Convergence organized by José Arguelles, the author of a number of esoteric books about the Mayan cosmos and his experiences with telepathically received prophecies. With a penchant for promotion going back to the first Whole Earth Festival in 1970, which he organized, Arguelles promoted the convergence as an earth-changing event requiring 144,000 participants — the number echoed Mayan mathematics and the Book of Revelation — to free the planet from the dissonant influence of Western science and synchronize with the “wave harmonic of history” set to culminate in 2012. Mayan civilization, to Arguelles, was not entirely Mayan: It was originally a “terrestrial project” managed by a race of “galactic masters” from “star bases.” He saw the convergence as a stage, ordained by prophecy, in a march to the end foreseen by the ancient calendar makers: “Somewhere in that far and distant time, when armies clashed with metal and chemicals released the fire of the Sun, the wonder of Maya would burst again, releasing the mystery and showing the way that marks return among the patterns of the stars.” Large crowds, some perhaps oblivious to the apocalyptic undertones of the event, did end up gathering at “focus locations” around the world — Stonehenge, Mount Shasta and Bolinas in California, even Central Park — and extensive media coverage of the meditating and dancing masses lent Arguelles and his project an eccentric authority. The New Age had discovered its own eschatology — with a mysterious, mythical people the controlling intelligence — and 2012 joined the lexicon of “energies,” transcendental meditation and crystals. By 1991 Arguelles was popularizing his own calendric system, which he branded Dreamspell, as a corrective to our mechanized time (dismissed, in mathematical shorthand, as “12:60,” the ratio of solar months to minutes in an hour). Inspired by the tzolk’in, the 260-day prophetic calendar utilized by the ancient Maya and common throughout Mesoamerica, Dreamspell functions as a daily oracle, replacing linear time with a “loom of resonances” that users navigate with a “galactic signature” based on the day of their birth. More than just an astrological sign, this signature is a tool for meditation and, as the latest edition of Arguelles’s calendar promises, “your password in fourth-dimensional time.” Arguelles, under the aegis of his fief, the Foundation for the Law of Time, has lobbied tirelessly for the universal adoption of his calendar — now called the 13-Moon 28-day Calendar — by posting communiqués on the Web and arranging audiences with Mayan elders and members of the Vatican. Lately he has been designing large-scale telepathic experiments in conjunction with a Russian laboratory in Novosibirsk and other groups affiliated with his Planet Art Network. “The post-2012 world will be a world of universal telepathy,” Arguelles wrote me recently from New Zealand, where he has gone to prepare for the transition. Since 1993, when he claims to have received a new prophecy in Hawaii, he has been calling himself Valum Votan, Closer of the Cycle. “We’ll be literally living in a new time,” Arguelles said, “by a 13-month, 28-day synchronometer that will facilitate our telepathy by keeping us in harmony with everything all the time. There will be a lot fewer of us, with simple lifestyles, solar technology, garden culture and lots of telepathic communication.” As for the many who “have not evolved spiritually enough to know that there are other dimensions of reality,” Arguelles predicts they will be taken away in “silver ships.” With Arguelles drifting into even more occult realms — his last book, “Time and the Technosphere,” spun elaborate new theories around 9/11 — he has been supplanted in the New Age conversation by the next generation of Mayan-calendar mystics with their own theories about the coming transition. This new generation does not typically think that space aliens guided the Maya and prides itself on its reverence for Mayan culture and tradition. Carl Johan Calleman, author of “The Mayan Calendar and the Transformation of Consciousness,” is a former cancer researcher from Sweden whose calculations have led him to a controversial end date of his own devising: Oct. 28, 2011. As Arguelles’s closest spiritual heir in the Mayan-calendar movement, Calleman has been active in promoting a regular mass-meditation event called the Breakthrough Celebration and other more focused projects including the Jerusalem Hug, which gathered 5,000 people around the walls of the Old City on May 21 to harness constructive energies and create a “cascade of peace.” While his interest in 2012 is not exclusively focused on the Mayan calendar, Chet Snow — a past-lives regression therapist and author from Sedona, Ariz. — tracks the impending consciousness shift on his Mass Dreams Newsletter, organizes annual crop-circle and sacred-site tours and gathers the disparate camps of the 2012 movement together for conferences devoted to ancient mysteries and the paranormal. When I asked Snow why he thought people were turning to alternative ideas and explanations like the ones espoused at his conferences, he told me the answer was a simple one. “The pillars of our expectations about the future in the West have started to crumble,” he said. “Religion, politics and economics — none of it is working any more. So when you hear about the ancient Maya and this changeover in 2012 involving solar cycles and astronomical events, you say, ‘Huh, maybe I need to connect with that.’ ” If the Mayan calendar seems like an unlikely timing device for our salvation — whether it arrives through global catastrophe or telepathic rainbow around the earth — its animating role in the 2012 phenomenon is entirely consistent with popular notions of the “mysterious” Maya that have persisted for over a century. The Maya were just one of the peoples to thrive in Mesoamerica before the Spanish conquest of the 16th century, but the civilization’s florescence — spanning the period called the Maya Classic, between 300 and 900 A.D. — was especially bright and spectacular. After growing into a loose confederation of rival city-states that spread across the Yucatan peninsula and extended as far as Chiapas in the west and Honduras in the east, the Mayan civilization fell into a rolling decline that ended with the almost complete abandonment of their cities. The so-called Mayan collapse is a continued source of speculation and a major reason why the Maya have captured the imagination of 19th-century travelers, 20th-century archaeologists and generations of popular fantasists who have connected the Maya to everything from intergalactic colonies to the lost island of Atlantis to Teutonic gods from fire-breathing spaceships. The Mayan sites attract small armies of New Age pilgrims every year, hoping to plug into a stone socket of timeless indigenous wisdom; tens of thousands gather for the spring equinox at Chichén Itzá alone to watch the shadow of a snake slither down the steps of the Temple of Kukulcin. In the introduction to his book “Maya Cosmogenesis 2012: The True Meaning of the Maya Calendar End Date,” John Major Jenkins describes his first visit to Tikal, the vast ruin in the Guatemalan rain forest that thrived as an urban center at the pinnacle of Mayan civilization. Jenkins, perhaps the most lucid figure in the subculture of 2012 prophets, writes of the “bone-jarring 16-hour bus ride on muddy and dangerous roads” that carried him to a “sprawling former metropolis” of pyramids, palaces, residences, ball-courts and scores of engraved monumental stones, or stelae, decorated with intricate, otherworldly images and hieroglyphs. “Sitting on the stone steps of the Central Acropolis,” Jenkins recalls, “I looked around me at the towering sentinels of stone, their upper platforms stretching above the jungle canopy like altars to the stars, and I listened carefully to the wind whisper messages of a far-off time, and of another world.” Jenkins wasn’t the first 22-year-old traveler with spiritual yearnings to encounter the sublime at a Mayan archaeological site, but he is one of the few who has found a life’s vocation in the process. As harmonically as Jenkins was struck in Guatemala by the larger mysteries of the Maya, however, it was the calendar that really seized him — specifically the fact that there were Maya living in the highlands who still followed the same day count as their distant ancestors. (A common misconception is that the Maya “disappeared” when their cities emptied; there are six million Maya currently living in the states of Central America, a number far larger than population estimates of Mayan civilization during the Classic period.) “Here was an unbroken tradition,” Jenkins told me when I went to visit him at his home in Windsor, Colo., one afternoon in late March. We sat in a pair of lawn chairs in the backyard while a neighbor passed back and forth on a noisy tractor. “It’s a lineage going back 2,000 years,” he said, oblivious to the racket. Jenkins, now 43, is difficult to distract when talking about the Mayan calendar and 2012. After years of working as a software engineer to support his research and writing books and papers in his spare time, 2012 is now Jenkins’ full-time job. Influenced by the work of the pioneering psychedelic writer Terence McKenna — whose Timewave Zero system, based on computer analysis of the I Ching, also shows history to be culminating on Dec. 21, 2012 — Jenkins argues that ancient Maya “calendar priests” were able to chart a 26,000-year astronomical cycle called “the precession of the equinoxes” with the naked eye. He fixed the 2012 end date to coincide with a “galactic alignment” of the winter-solstice sun and the axis that modern astonomers draw to bisect the Milky Way, called the galactic equator. In the alchemical tradition, Jenkins notes, eclipses signify the “transcending of the opposites.” During the period around 2012, Jenkins says, the galaxy will provide the opportunity for the rebirth of creation and a reconciliation of “infinity and finitude, time and eternity.” The Maya knew it, and just like an alarm clock, they set their calendar to coincide with the occasion. Jenkins and his fellow travelers in the 2012 movement have chosen a particularly arcane source of secret knowledge in Mayan calendrics. The Maya calendar keepers are known to have charted the cycles of the moon, the sun, Mars and Venus with an accuracy that wouldn’t be duplicated until the modern era. Like most premodern societies, the Maya conceived of history not as the linear passage of time but as a series of cycles — they called them “world age cycles” — that would repeat over and over. To capture these cycles, the Maya employed what scholars call the long-count calendar, a five-unit computational system extending forward and backward from their mythical creation day, which is calculated to have fallen on either Aug. 11, 3114 B.C. or Aug. 13, 3114 B.C. All the current hoopla is due to the mathematical fact that the current world-age cycle on the long count, which began in Aug. 3114 B.C., is about to reach its end, 5,126 years later, on a date given in scholarly notation as 13.0.0.0.0 — which falls, not quite exactly, on Dec. 21, 2012. Enter the apocalypse. I asked Jenkins how he viewed the passing of one world-age cycle into another in December 2012, and he paused. It was a little bit like asking a seismologist what he thinks about earthquakes. As much as Jenkins has made a place for himself in the 2012 discussion through his independent research on the Maya and precession, he has made an even greater impact by applying academic rigor to the theories of his contemporaries and exposing, in his books and on an extensive Web site, their inconsistencies with established Mayanist scholarship. Jenkins was the first to reveal a major flaw in the synchronization between Arguelles’s Dreamspell and the Mayan day count, and he has been involved in an extensive, long-distance feud with Calleman since 2001 over their differing approaches to interpreting the Maya and over Calleman’s belief that the end time will be in 2011, not 2012. When I first spoke to Jenkins on the phone, he told me, “I think of myself as leading the charge for clarity and discernment.” “2012 is such a profound archetype,” Jenkins went on. “Here we are five and a half years before the date, and already there’s so much interest. Personally, I think it’s about transformation and renewal. It’s certainly nothing as simplistic as the end of the world.” But what about the connection many people see between the approach of 2012 and environmental crisis? I asked. What about the popular link between the Maya and end-time prophecy? “A lot of people are talking about apocalypse right now,” he said, “but there’s a deeper meditation that can and should happen around the end date.” Jenkins — bearded, in a T-shirt and jeans — is originally from Chicago, and traces of a flat Midwestern accent remain in his voice. He looked and sounded beleaguered by the mention of apocalypse. “At any end-beginning nexus — at the dawn of a new religion or a spiritual tradition — you have this amazing opening,” he said. “Revelations come down. There’s a fresh awareness of what it means to be alive in the full light of history.” To scholars monitoring the 2012 movement from their posts in academia — and some do — this latter-day apotheosis of the Mayan calendar is a source of frustration and an opportunity for deeper reflection. Or sometimes, just an opportunity. Anthony Aveni, an archeoastronomer and professor at Colgate, has a history with 2012 going back to the Harmonic Convergence, when he was interviewed on CNN to provide some perspective. “I got an offer from a literary agent to represent me the same day,” he told me. “So I’m grateful to José Arguelles for that.” Aveni is critical of Jenkins’s approach and his galactic-alignment theory. “I defy anyone to look up into the sky and see the galactic equator,” he said. “You need a radio telescope for that, and they were not known anywhere in the world that I’ve heard of until the 1930s.” The real question, to him, is how an obscure, culturally circumscribed issue like the end date of one Mayan long-count cycle could manage to gain such traction in the wider world. “Jenkins and Calleman and Arguelles are the Gnostics of our time,” Aveni said. “They’re seeking higher knowledge. They look for knowledge framed in mystery. And there aren’t many mysteries left, because science has decoded most of them.” John Hoopes, an archaeologist at the University of Kansas, is more complimentary of Jenkins’s research, even if he doubts the validity of his major conclusions, including the galactic-alignment theory. “John Jenkins has done his homework on the ancient Maya,” he told me, “and he’s thought about their culture a great deal. Arguelles and Calleman largely disregard what we know the Maya believed.” Still, like most Mayan experts, Hoopes is not convinced that the Maya would have considered the end of a world cycle to be an apocalyptic event; one cycle could be subsumed into the next without a hiccup in the system, let alone a rupture in the count of days. In the wider discussion around 2012, Hoopes sees a parallel to the debate going on in Kansas about teaching evolution and intelligent design in the public schools. It is an issue he takes so seriously that he has included the 2012 phenomenon in a course he developed called “Archaeological Myths and Realities,” which explores how science and history are manipulated to serve a religious or political agenda. Other examples include Nazi archaeology and the recently heralded ancient “pyramids” in Bosnia. Referrring to occult interpretations of the Maya, he says: “What’s interesting is how this fosters community in the New Age movement, and elsewhere, the same way that the anti-evolutionists have coalesced around intelligent design. I’ve started using the terms ‘religious right’ and ‘spiritual left.’ ” Toward the end of my visit with Jenkins in Colorado, we drove from his home in Windsor to Denver — about 50 miles south — to meet his wife, Ellen, for dinner and a screening of “2012: The Odyssey,” a documentary that Jenkins appears in along with José Arguelles and other authorities on 2012. Jenkins had written me a long, discouraged e-mail message that morning about an item he found on an academic message board, linking to an article about 2012 from USA Today. The article included a description of Jenkins’s galactic-alignment theory without citing him as the source, and to make matters worse, the scholar who posted the link quoted a description of the galactic alignment and asked, “Anyone want to speculate about what this means?” To Jenkins, it was further confirmation that his work is generally ignored inside a scholarly community that he has looked to for guidance and cited tirelessly in defense of the “authentic” Mayan tradition. He told me, as we drove past new housing developments going up where pastures had once been, that he had gone to conferences to meet the most important Mayanists and had been sending out papers and links to his Web site to selected scholars for years, but his attempts at making contact were usually ignored. “When you fund your own trip to do fieldwork by putting it on MasterCard,” he said, “and then they really don’t want to engage in a discussion with you, it’s kind of like ... wrong universe, I guess.” I asked him if he thought this might have something to do with some of his more speculative theories, like his assertion that the Maya had practiced pranayama — yogic deep breathing — based on the posture of Maya kings in certain paintings and carvings, which appears similar to full lotus. “It’s the assemblage of evidence that leads to my reading,” he insisted. “It’s not magically projecting something onto the images. But ultimately there is some guesswork involved. How often can you be 100 percent sure of anything?” By the time we drove up to the Oriental Theater in the Berkeley Highlands section of Denver, his spirits had lifted again. The Oriental is a handsome, Persian-themed theater from the 1920s that has recently been refurbished after a long decline; it retains elements of both the glamour of its distant past and the seediness left over from its middle age as an adult theater. Now the Oriental is an arts center with a regular schedule of film screenings and live entertainment. “Look at that,” Jenkins said with a gesture at the marquee, making sure that I saw the big “2012” in black numerals. While Jenkins mingled with the early arrivals inside the lobby, I sat at a cafe table with his wife, a social worker at a hospital in Boulder, and Gina Kissell, director of the Metaphysical Research Society, a local group that offers workshops and programs in comparative religion and spirituality. The society was a sponsor of the screening that night, and Kissell, an ebullient woman in a sequined top, was thrilled about the turnout. I asked her about 2012 and what it meant to her, and she started in without hesitating: “To me it’s all about a movement toward enlightenment. We say compassion over competition. This whole shift in consciousness is going to wipe away everything negative. Armageddon isn’t what it used to be, you know?” Kissell told me that she had recently tried spending 21 days without having a negative thought: “It’s really hard! I tried, but I didn’t make it through the second week.” Inside the theater, it was a festive scene. The seating sections were all full except for the balcony; a pair of waitresses roamed the aisles taking drink and sandwich orders (the Oriental has a full bar and panini menu); and the crowd presented a mix of the buttoned-down and the Bohemian, trending toward the tattooed and pierced. Ellen flashed me a proud look when Jenkins climbed onstage to give an introduction, and he was met with a lively burst of applause. Dressed in a well-worn jacket over a faded T-shirt, he could have been a professor who never quite recovered from his graduate-school years. Jenkins started by giving a primer of his theory about the galactic alignment and how the ancient Maya had calibrated their long-count calendar to coincide with this rare and transformative astronomical event. He shared his belief, reflected in the mantra “As above, so below,” that our lives are influenced by larger forces in the universe and that the Mayan sky watchers had used their sacred science to read the stars and divine creation’s deepest secrets. These same secrets can be ours, according to Jenkins’s theory, if we cup a hand to one ear, raise it to the sky and listen. “A lot of people ask me if the world is going to end in 2012,” he said, “and I’ve come up with the best way to address that. The short answer is yes. The long answer is no.” Writing in the forward to Jenkins’s “Maya Cosmogenesis 2012,” Terrence McKenna proffers that “we, by choice or design, actually live in the end time anticipated by the ancient Maya shaman-prophets. Their bones and their civilization have long since gone into the Gaian womb that claims all the children of time. Indeed, their cities were ghostly necropoleis by the time the Spanish conquerors first gazed upon them, 500 years ago. Yet it was our time that fascinated the Maya, and it was toward our time that they cast their ecstatic gaze, though it lay more than two millennia in the future at the time the first long-count dates were recorded.” It is a splendid, human-size dream, that an ancient people revered for unearthly wisdom could climb aboard a calendar ship and redeem us from our troubled world and the confines of our vexing natures. Dec. 21, 2012, is already here — long before the date arrives — and perhaps it has always been. End dates are not the stuff of fantasy, after all; each and every one of us has a terminal appointment inscribed in our calendars. And the end might just arrive sooner. Perhaps that is why we need to imagine a supernatural force with one eye on a ticking clock, waiting to make everything new again. It is the Maya who bring us apocalypse this time, and when the next one comes — well, we’ll just have to wait and see if the world is still here. Benjamin Anastas, a novelist, previously wrote for the magazine about Pentecostals.

Reality Sandwich social mixer in NYC this Weds night

daniel_pinchbeck — Tue, 26 Jun 2007 05:02:00 GMT

We continue to be amazed and gratified by the feedback to Reality Sandwich. Honestly, the site has taken off more quickly than any of us expected. We've been scrambling to keep up. Now we've begun to expand our team and hopefully you'll see the difference in the coming weeks. Thank you to the many people who volunteered (and apologies if we didn't reply to you yet -- we do intend to!). We're now also looking for a few Web Gurus (if you're interested, let us know). This Wednesday in New York we're having the inaugural Reality Social! Come by for a revelrous evening of pizza, beer, and herbal tea. All are welcome to join RS contributors, editors and readers for drinks, a slice, and a little dreaming. June 27, 7pm at Two Boots Restaurant, 37 Ave. A (btw. 2nd & 3rd St). Below are teasers for some Reality Sandwich highlights from the past few weeks. Enjoy! Yours, Daniel, Ken, Jonathan, Michael, ST, and Travis – the Reality Sandwich team John Perkins: From Corporate Hit Man to American Shaman by Michael Brownstein According to his best-selling book, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, twenty years ago Perkins was a tool of modern empire building. Today he is committed to environmental, economic and social change – following a shamanic path. "For shamanism to work in the larger culture," he says in this interview, "we need consumers and the people who work for the corporations to truly have a vision that shakes them up, a visionary recognition that this world is not a good one for our children, even if it seems good to us. And then we have to take action to change it." Read it here: http://www.realitysandwich.com/node/282 Ghost World Mix: A Story in Sound by Paul D. Miller aka DJ Spooky Digital Africa is here, and has been here for a while. The "Ghost World" mega-mix is all about the multiple rhythms and languages of Africa, but it makes no attempt to give you everything – it's from my record collection. That's why the "story" of the mix is about: polyrhythm, multiplex reality. There's current material, like the Kuduru sounds of Luanda (who says Techno doesn't exist in Africa!?) and old school hip hop like Zimbabwe Legit from the early 90's of classic "conscious" school hip hop. Yes there's material from Akon, but he gets mixed with Nelson Mandela, or MC Solaar. Listen to it here! http://www.realitysandwich.com/node/287 Our Forgotten Future by Daniel Pinchbeck While mainstream depictions of the future seem increasingly dire, New Age hits such as "The Secret" and "What the Bleep Do We Know" may point toward a new paradigm in which psychic energy is harnessed for planetary transformation. Read it here: http://www.realitysandwich.com/node/239 A Green Surge by Thomas P. Healy The Green Language that enables communication and interaction with the living intelligence of the planet is experiencing a verdant resurgence. Long relegated to the "occult," this expressive grammar has been kept alive through the ages by poets, alchemists, mystics, and wise women. At the first annual Conference on Green Hermeticism, brainchild of independent scholar Peter Lamborn Wilson, an inspired group of colleagues offered an astonishing array of facts, assertions, and speculations about our ability to connect to the planet. Read it here: http://www.realitysandwich.com/node/292 Family Ties by Melinda Wenner Plants behave differently depending on whether they are situated next to kin or strangers, according to a fascinating new study. Read it here: http://www.realitysandwich.com/node/265 A Blues Definition of "Cool" by Debra DeSalvo Enslaved Yoruba from West Africa brought to America the idea of coolness (itutu), which they defined as the ability to connect with one's inner divinity. In American culture we express that concept when we say that someone "has got soul." To be cool is to remain generous, calm and confident as a direct result of that soul connection, no matter how dire one's circumstances become. Read it here: http://www.realitysandwich.com/node/278 Greetings from LA by Chris Kraus I’d been relaxing on a Baja, Mexico beach with my friend Eileen Myles when I got a call that my boyfriend had been arrested in Clifton, Arizona, en route to LA. The jail was to Clifton what Target is to a derelict mall: a commercial anchor, expected to draw visitors, money and jobs. Read it here: http://www.realitysandwich.com/node/277 Out of Eden: Where Do We Go From Here? by Jonathan Phillips [The Electric Jesus] • Reading George Lakoff's Don’t Think of An Elephant sent me on a spiritual detective mission to discover what exactly went wrong with the Garden of Eden. This unexpected journey led me to drink ayahuasca, where I had an out of body experience, traveled through mystical dimensions, met my spirit guides, and saw a vision of transformation in human consciousness. I’d love to hear your thoughts on the Garden of Eden, ideas on what kind of transformations could be in store for humanity, or also what your first experiences were like on ayahuasca in the comments. Read it here: http://www.realitysandwich.com/node/257 A Giant Moon Mirror by Adam Elenbaas A liquid mirror on the moon's surface could take us deeper into the cosmos than we've ever been. Read it here: http://www.realitysandwich.com/node/285 Torture & Terror on Turtle Island by Kevin Dann [Daemonic Dispatches] • In the Republican presidential primary debate in South Carolina, only two of the ten candidates repudiated torture. Frontrunner Rudy Giuliani said interrogators should "use every method they can think of" to get information. The audience applauded wildly, in a chilling gesture that seemed to suggest that many contemporary Americans are happy to have torture performed in their name.Torture has a long history on this Turtle Island continent. Rudolf Steiner spoke of a set of black magical mystery practices in ancient Mexico dating to the first century AD. Read it here: http://www.realitysandwich.com/node/171 Does Al Gore Rock? by Tristan Gulliford The Live Earth extravaganza staged by The Alliance for Climate Protection is raising awareness about climate change. But what about the wristbands? Read it here: http://www.realitysandwich.com/node/276

Our Forgotten Future

daniel_pinchbeck — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 04:32:10 GMT

http://consciouschoice.com/2007/06/prophetmotive0706.html June 2007 | Prophet Motive Our Forgotten Future By Daniel Pinchbeck The future is not what it used to be. What does our future look like from this particular point in time? Scanning the distressing ecological data, we might find ourselves reminded of Marlene Dietrich’s exit line to Orson Welles in Touch of Evil: “Your future’s all used up.” From the Oscar-nominated Children of Men to Cormac McCarthy’s novel The Road, recent portraits of what may be coming down the pike have distinctly faded to black — sterile, war-torn wastelands where huddled masses forage for survival. These visions reflect the images we see from today’s Iraq, Afghanistan and Darfur. They suggest a darkening of the collective psyche, a reduced capacity to envision a way out from the encroaching crises that we intuit but lack the will or courage to confront. Novels and films of apocalypse function as avoidance mechanisms, allowing us to imagine global doom from a comfortably alienated vantage point. As the mainstream absorbs no-exit narratives of breakdowns ahead, the New Age and spiritual set have seized upon an almost antithetical attitude of naïve positivity, reflected in wildly popular works like What the Bleep Do We Know? and The Secret. From this perspective, the individual’s psychic state determines his or her physical reality, and the occult laws of attraction can be utilized to increase one’s bank account or sexual magnetism. If you haven’t cashed out, it is because you are not using your psychic powers at their maximum rate. If other people aren’t getting theirs’ yet, it’s not your problem, but their bad karma. This is a metaphysics suited to the narcissism of the baby boomers and the “Me Generation,” whose lifestyles have denuded the planet’s rainforests and ripped big holes in the ozone layer. What makes this perspective so seductive is that there are fragments of truth in it. In my own life and the lives of many people I know, the power of intention is becoming more evident. Reality seems increasingly psychic, as we relearn, step by step, the lessons of synchronicity and nonduality well known to tribal shamans and realized mystics. However, as we access what Carl Jung called “the reality of the psyche,” we also discover the huge gap between the small-time desires of the ego and the deeper purposes of the Self, our complete personality, encompassing conscious and unconscious elements. The Self doesn’t give a hoot if we drive a fancy car or score with supermodels, and might even prefer to smash the delusions of the ego to incite a deeper realization. Although I published a book on indigenous prophecy and the year 2012, which ends the 5,125-year Long Count of the Maya, my thoughts on the future continue to fluctuate (as Ralph Waldo Emerson noted, “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds”). Between the various camps of technological utopians (see Ray Kurzweil’s The Singularity Is Near), ecological pessimists, left-wing conspiracists, rapture-ready fundamentalists and New Age fantasists, one can experience schizo delirium. Is it possible that sudden crisis, such as coastal flooding or nuclear terrorism, will lead to a system meltdown that will change everything? Is it conceivable that most of the world will continue to disintegrate as wealthy First Worlders get stem cell injections, new DNA and nanobot implants? Or perhaps a rapid shift in global consciousness will lead to a new compassionate planetary culture, with shared resources and technologies based on nontoxic processes and biomimickry? In any event, unless the Law of Attraction can overcome the basic laws of physics, a contraction of industrial civilization seems inevitable. The trickster element undermining all future predictions is the reality of the psyche, and the possibility that psychic energy could be harnessed for purposes of planetary transformation. If we look back at the Industrial Revolution, before the 18th century, people had experienced lightning and shocks, but nobody had any idea how to make use of electricity. Once we figured this out, we changed the geophysical conditions of the planet in a century and a half — not even a blink in evolutionary time. What if we are hovering on the brink of learning how to access and make use of psychic energy in a similar way? If this were the case, it would require a different approach from the modern scientific method, allowing no place for subjectivity. Psychic effects cannot be separated from subjective realizations. Creating the conditions in which psychic intention might interact with and influence the material world would require a deep sensitivity to unquantifiable aspects of human experience such as mood, atmosphere and emotion. Considering this, it is possible that works like The Secret and What the Bleep have real importance. They could be transitional expressions, pointing us toward a new paradigm of psychic energy and intention that will become more sophisticated as it develops. It seems likely that the current interlocked problems facing our world simply cannot be solved by rational means – but they might be dissolved, if they are approached from a different level of consciousness, and a deeper realization of the psyche. Daniel Pinchbeck is the author of Breaking Open the Head: A Psychedelic Journey into the Heart of Contemporary Shamanism (Broadway Books, 2002) and 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl (Tarcher/Penguin, 2006). His features have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Rolling Stone, Esquire, Wired and many other publications.

Transforming Repression of The Divine Feminine

daniel_pinchbeck — Thu, 31 May 2007 19:54:23 GMT

Don’t miss these extraordinary new essays and articles on Reality Sandwich ( www.realitysandwich.com ), updated daily: http://www.realitysandwich.com/node/149 Transforming Repression of The Divine Feminine By Wahkeena Sitka Tidepool Ripple Imagine what the world would look like if there were millions of women who were anchors of ecstatic bliss energy. Imagine if there were millions of women who were eschewing convention and walking their path towards their authentic nature, who let go the norms of social conformity in favor of following their heart bliss. Imagine if the world was filled with juicy mamas who love to be loved, and love to get loved on. Imagine if millions of women were fully in their bodies, fully activated in their sensuality, fully released into their creative liberation.. What kind of world would we be living in? We would live in a world where people would rather make love than cut down trees or enslave other people. We would live in a world where we wouldn't need prostitutes. We would live in a world where everybody was met and loved, cared for and nurtured, such that the only thing we would want is to make sure others are getting enough too. We would live in a world where the top priority is to take care of each other, because taking care of each other is taking care of the whole. We as individuals are a part of that whole. http://www.realitysandwich.com/node/191 Gaia vs. The Off-Planet Father By John Lamb Lash If there is any real prospect of recovering and reviving Gnosis today, it will require looking closely at problems endemic to the Piscean Age, which the telestai were unable to solve, or denied the opportunity to solve. Deep ecology may well find the spiritual and mythic dimension it lacks in the Sophianic vision of the Mysteries. I cannot predict how this will happen, or even if it will happen, but I can offer a rough sketch of the conditions required for it to happen. http://www.realitysandwich.com/node/162 Controlling Substances By ST Frequency Few things in modern society are as powerfully deconditioning, or as demonized, as mind-altering drugs. Along with the epiphanies that may come, however, lie comparably shattering pitfalls. How do we reconcile the innate human desire for altered states with the toxicity of the "Poison Path?"

the Gnostic Revival

daniel_pinchbeck — Sun, 20 May 2007 11:57:32 GMT

Hi Folks, I thought you might enjoy my new column in Conscious Choice magazine, on John Lash’s extraordinary new book on Gnosticism, Not in His Image. The article is below and can also be found here: http://consciouschoice.com/2007/05/prophetmotive0705.html In other news: From June 1 - 3, I am giving a workshop at the Omega Institute in Rhinebeck, NY. This should be a great opportunity to go deeper into the subjects I explore in my books, in a beautiful campus setting. If you are interested in attending, the info is here: http://www.eomega.org/omega/workshops/54ca8589a640d71b488a425f18e7d4b3/ I will be speaking at the Health and Harmony Festival in Sonoma County the following weekend. Also, if you haven't checked it out yet, please visit my new web magazine, Reality Sandwich: www.realitysandwich.com <http://www.realitysandwich.com> May 2007 | Prophet Motive The Gnostic Revival By Daniel Pinchbeck I first encountered the work of John Lamb Lash through his website, metahistory.org, when he posted a series of pieces on “2012” — the end of the Long Count of the Mayan Calendar — from astrological and historical perspectives. In his essays, he defined the characteristics of various “end-time tribes” that were embodying aspects of futuristic consciousness. I began a dialogue with him on this subject, and he sent me his new book, Not in His Image: Gnostic Vision, Sacred Ecology, and the Future of Belief (Chelsea Green, 2006). This work is a tremendous achievement that reframes the debate about monotheism, offering a radical perspective on the destructive effects that have been unleashed by religious ideologies over the last two millennia. Not In His Image attacks the salvationist theology of the Judeo-Christian tradition from a Gnostic perspective, making a devastating critique of the moral conditioning and deep-buried suppositions of this heritage, which has shaped the modern Western psyche. As substitute, Lash presents a counter-myth and alternative cosmology drawn from the tradition of Gnosticism, featuring the goddess Sophia, who plunged from the Pleroma to become the physical and generative Earth, and the Archons, soulless off-planet entities who use the human propensity for error to lead us into increasingly destructive deviations from our evolutionary path. The populist and academic conception of Gnosticism considers it a radical offshoot from Christianity that was stamped out as the Holy Roman Empire gave way to the Dark Ages. Lash has a different perspective. In his view, the Gnostics were the inheritors of the wisdom and initiatory training of the Mystery Schools that flourished across the Classical World. This learned, pagan tradition had roots in the shamanic practices that predated the rise of Greece and Rome, and could be considered the indigenous spirituality of Europe. In some respects similar to Buddhism, the Gnostic tradition valued philosophical debate and direct mystical experience over received wisdom and authority vested in religious hierarchy. Lash connects Sophia to the modern “Gaia hypothesis,” developed by the scientists James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis, and argues that the Gnostic seers of the Mystery Schools were “deep ecologists” who taught “coevolution with Gaia.” The alienation from the natural world and the body that developed in Christianity was the result of a deception, leading to the “enslavement of humanity to an alien, off-planet agenda.” The Gnostics understood the basis of this error, and were persecuted for voicing their opposition to it. Lash is ruthless in analyzing the moral precepts and core concepts of the Old and New Testament. He shows the ways in which these texts were designed to appeal to the highest aspirations and ideals of humanity, but subtly twisted to create impossible incongruities. Humans were tricked into trying to conform to an inhuman code of perfection, which doomed them to continual failure in relation to an absolutist abstraction. Borrowing a concept from Tibetan Buddhism, Lash suggests substituting the concept of “basic goodness” for “original sin,” and argues that Gnostics were horrified by the Christian belief in the redemptive value of suffering. He argues that the moral ethos expressed by Jesus Christ — the “Divine Victim” — in the New Testament has the unfortunate effect of aiding what he calls our “victim/perpetrator” bond. The concept of “turning the other cheek,” for instance, only makes sense in world without aggressors. This precept instills a sense of otherworldly superiority in the victims of violence, while it helps the agenda of those who seek to dominate. “The ethic of cheek turning is utterly wrong because it obliges people who are not inclined to harm others to rely on those who do harm to embrace the same practice of nondefense.” The commandmant to “love thy God with all thy heart” is similarly distorted: “Who really needs to be commanded to love?” Lash asks. “We love spontaneously, through the power of love itself, which cannot be commanded.” Throughout the Gospels, Lash finds “a monumental effort to convert the human mind to the bad faith of betrayed humanity.” In our secular culture, it seems, the belief in a salvationist power that will liberate humanity at some future point has been transferred, unconsciously, from divinity to technology. In order to reconnect with our earthly powers, we have to deprogram ourselves from all concepts of a redemptive or divine force waiting outside of this realm. While Lash evinces a tendency to romanticize traditional and indigenous cultures, while ignoring some of the progress made by modern civilization, his critique still goes to the heart of the crisis of our current world, where disconnection from nature and entrenched belief systems have brought us to the brink of global chaos. It seems that we can’t find our way forward until we find our way back, utilizing that discriminatory intelligence — what the Gnostics called “nous” — that is our particular human gift. Daniel Pinchbeck is the author of Breaking Open the Head: A Psychedelic Journey into the Heart of Contemporary Shamanism (Broadway Books, 2002) and 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl (Tarcher/Penguin, 2006). His features have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Rolling Stone, Esquire, Wired and many other publications.

world-saving bacteria, Allen Ginsberg, parallel universes, etc...

daniel_pinchbeck — Wed, 16 May 2007 15:50:30 GMT

Hi folks, Reality Sandwich is adding great new content every day. What follows are openers and teasers to a few of my favorites of this week’s articles. Please read the rest of them, and much more, at www.realitysandwich.com - new media for a new time. While there, join up for updates and to become charter members of our community. Yours, Daniel Pinchbeck God’s Bathroom Mirrors By Adam Elenbaas Parallel universes are now a mathematical probability, and concepts like quantum overlap, digital delay, and dejavu are becoming, more and more, the curious object of our attention. While concrescense and novelty are knitting the global flow of digital information tighter and tighter, we often experiece personal moments of digital delay or overlap. We typically call these experiences synchronicities, head trips, or dejavus. Regardless of what we call them, these experiences are unmistakeable. It feels, suddenly, like we're standing in a double mirrored bathroom, sharing in one unified space and time, in one very particular ontology, one that has always been happening and always will be happening--like an absurd reverb of truer identity. Read the rest: http://www.realitysandwich.com/node/145 A Revolution without Enemies By Anu Bonobo Since Tim Leary still steals most of the headlines—and many of them bad—for psychedelic proselytizing in the ‘60s, I thought Allen Ginsberg deserved his due as one of Leary’s most articulate defenders, colleagues, and fellow-travelers. Ginsberg’s shameless integrity and sultry innocence offer charismatic counterpoint to Leary’s more superficial and self-serving crusades for psychedelic freedom. Reviewing the new Leary biography in a recent issue of the Nation, Neal Pollack portends that today “it’s harder than ever to swallow the idea that mind-altering drug use could transform our staggering society.” My thesis pursues another possibility—at the same time I realize that Pollack has a point and that many of the younger psychonauts I encounter at festivals fail to focus on the revolutionary force flavoring their recreational mindfood. Ginsberg’s old words give new juice to the eternal debate about the social implications of the cultural rituals shared by those who imbibe power plants and pills—reminding us that LSD “teaches one not to cling to anything, including LSD.” For Ginsberg as for me, insights gained in the Gaian mind of great visions have the inherent but often unrealized potential to renovate daily life forever—and this notion is inextricably linked to poetry and spirituality. While the psychedelic warrior’s mission to change consciousness engages in combat on an internal battlefield, Ginsberg never avoided more public confrontations with what he called “a vast conspiracy to impose one level of mechanical consciousness on mankind and exterminate all manifestations of that unique part of human sentience.” Read the rest: http://www.realitysandwich.com/node/109 Cyanobacteria to the Rescue By Melinda Wenner Could this weird-looking microbe save the world? A biologist at the University of Hawai'i has harnessed the power of cyanobacteria to develop a technology that could turn harmful atmospheric carbon dioxide into ethanol for fuel. Read the rest: http://www.realitysandwich.com/node/147

Reality Sandwich

daniel_pinchbeck — Tue, 08 May 2007 23:42:23 GMT

I am writing to announce the launch of my new web magazine, Reaiity Sandwich (www.realitysandwich.com), now live on-line. This enterprise has supplanted my previous work with Evolver. Please check it out, and tell your friends, if you like it. Send me messages through the site or here so I can hear your reactions. Yours, Daniel ps - below is from our "About" section, which describes the project: Reality Sandwich is a web magazine for this time of intense transformation. Our subjects run the gamut from sustainability to shamanism, alternate realities to alternative energy, remixing media to re-imagining community, holistic healing techniques to the promise and perils of new technologies. We hope to spark debate and engagement by offering a forum for voices ranging from the ecologically pragmatic to the wildly visionary (which, to our delight, sometimes turn out to be the one and the same). Counteracting the doom-and-gloom of the daily news, Reality Sandwich is a platform for voices conveying a different vision of the transformations we face. Our goal is to inspire psychic evolution and a kind of earth alchemy. For the launch of the site, we've assembled dozens of regular contributors who will post a variety of content, including thought pieces and essays, short news stories, video clips, and audio podcasts. As Reality Sandwich develops, we will become much more than a traditional online magazine. Reality Sandwich will merge media with a social network that facilitates connections between the members of our international community. As our features present visionary ideas and new tools for sustainable living, the social network will support our members in using these new concepts and techniques in their own lives, as well as facilitating discussions about their own journeys of discovery. We hope you will register to become a member of Reality Sandwich. As a member, you can write comments about blog posts, take part in the online forum, and receive Reality Sandwich email announcements and updates. You also get a public profile page on the site, so you can say who you are and what interests you. The "contact" feature on your profile page allows other members to send you messages – without revealing your email address to them. (To use this feature, you have to click the "personal contact form" box toward the bottom of the Account Settings page in your profile.) Soon we will introduce the full social networking component. Also check out our special announcements and newsletter for information about Reality Sandwich events around the country. Our goal is to have the Reality Sandwich community extend organically, from virtual contacts to real-world interactions. We realize, and appreciate, that the real processes of evolution and self-development takes place far away from computer screens and jingling cell phones, and we intend to bridge the gap between the digital and physical realm. Our hope is that Reality Sandwich will enrich the lives of its users in directly tangible and meaningful ways. The name "Reality Sandwich" is borrowed from a work by the Beat poet Allen Ginsberg – it is a prime example of his use of startling verbal juxtapositions to suggest new ideas and connections. We're grateful to the Allen Ginsberg Trust for their blessing and encouragement, and suggest you check out what they're up to. The web development was accomplished by the virtuosos of CivicActions, a firm of open-source specialist consultants. They've built the site using the popular open source publishing system Drupal. We understand that open source software, and a sharing attitude toward intellectual property in general, is crucial for revitalizing the commons and inspiring new forms of social initiatives. For the next couple of months we will be in a "beta" phase. We'll test things out, see what works, add new features, and reinvent as we go. This is a bootstrap operation which we intend to build into a viable, sustainable company that pays its heavy lifters. During the process, we look forward to hearing your feedback on all aspects of the site. Some Native American prophesies talk about this era as the time of "dreaming the world awake." So let's wake up together, and dream.

Mission Possible

daniel_pinchbeck — Wed, 04 Apr 2007 03:53:05 GMT

Here's my latest colum from Conscious Choice Magazine: http://consciouschoice.com/2007/04/prophetmotive0704.html Mission Possible By Daniel Pinchbeck When people in our culture want to be enthralled and inspired by a story, we run to the movies, where dramas of life, death, and redemption are played out at pulse-pounding high speed. Most of us do not fully realize that we are currently participating in a real-life thriller that could go as down-to-the-wire as any episode of Mission Impossible or Star Wars. The crux of this plot line is whether global humanity can awaken from its current trance — our fixation on materialist progress and economic growth — in time to salvage the biosphere, and our own future. According to current calculations, 25% of all species will be extinct within 30 years, at present rates. All tropical forests will disappear within 40 years, as all ocean fisheries collapse within the same timeframe. As climate change accelerates, it is creating unpredictable feedback loops, potentially leading to global food shortages as droughts and deluges affect agricultural tables. Mass species extinction could also cause feedback loops that would make life on earth untenable for large mammals such as ourselves. The large-scale disappearance of amphibians, butterflies, and honey bees in recent decades seems an unambiguous warning signal. Confronted with the frightening evidence of planetary decimation, many of us prefer to flinch away and retreat into our private concerns. We have to find the courage to overcome this tendency. Instead of inciting pessimism or fatalism, the dire predictions can compel us to deepen our commitment to transformation. If a few decades are all that separates us from cataclysm, then the "ecological U-turn" in global consciousness must be accomplished in the next few years One way that massive change could happen quickly is through a paradigm-shift in the mainstream media. While the United States has lost much of its standing in the world in recent years, we still operate the controls of the collective dream-machinery for the planet. The blueprint for a better life now being pursued by the masses and entrepreneurial classes across Asia, India, and the Third World is the "American Dream" of unlimited affluence, promoted by our television shows and films over the last half-century. A transformation of values — a spiritual revolution — in the US could initiate a global shift in priorities. If we used our genius for marketing and storytelling to project a different vision and value system, we could repattern and reprogram the collective psyche in a very short period of time. This new media paradigm would encourage participation over passivity, collaboration over individual success, attunement to local differences over acquiescence to mass marketing, and sufficiency over abundance. The "new news" would focus on trends that support sustainability and higher consciousness, and relentlessly expose techniques of fear-mongering, social control, and "greenwashing." Rather than exploiting violence and sex to grab at the public's fleeting attention, our media would present strategies of conflict resolution and nonviolent practices, while offering a positive revisioning of eroticism as a tool for personal growth. Responding to the necessity of the planetary crisis, the reinvented mass media would promote the attainment of happiness through nonmaterial means. Such a proposition may seem unrealistic — but at a time when our future as a species is imperiled, we might want to reconsider our concept of "realism." A drastic change in media messaging to align with the real needs of people and planet is preferable to system crash and biospheric meltdown. Corporate decision-makers are also parents and grandparents, who presumably want to see the world continue for their descendants. We can also change the old paradigm through the accelerated development of new media channels and interactive formats on the Internet. Historically, when a major new media technology emerges, it leads to profound changes in the social system. Just as mass democracy was made possible by the Gutenberg printing press, a new politics with new organizing principles may arise out of the instantaneous interactivity and reputation systems of the Internet. We are reaching that point where, as the social ecologist Murray Bookchin put it, our world "will either undergo revolutionary changes, so far-reaching in character that humanity will totally transform its social relations and its very conception of life, or it will suffer an apocalypse that may well end humanity's tenure on the planet." Despite the system's inertia, we have the capacity to restore the natural systems we have corrupted, and create a new planetary culture based on communality of interest. In my head, I keep writing my own movie or reality TV show of the next few years. In this gripping adventure yarn, the ticking time-bomb of ignorance and greed gets defused at the last moment by teams of stylish secret agents of consciousness and compassion, working in coordination across the planet. These tantric technicians create wilderness corridors for endangered species, end sectarian conflicts among warring factions, deploy alternative technologies at appropriate scales, and generally transmute negative vibes to harmonic frequencies. Our current world-movie appears to be moving toward a major show down. As the virtuosic director of this spectacle, God (or Brahma, or the archetypal Self, or whatever name you care to use) is sure to produce some great and unexpected plot twists in the final reels. Daniel Pinchbeck is the author of Breaking Open the Head: A Psychedelic Journey into the Heart of Contemporary Shamanism (Broadway Books, 2002) and 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl (Tarcher/Penguin, 2006). His features have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Rolling Stone, Esquire, Wired and many other publications.

USA Today on 2012 books

daniel_pinchbeck — Thu, 29 Mar 2007 02:31:16 GMT

March 28, 2007 Does Maya calendar predict 2012 apocalypse? By G. Jeffrey MacDonald, Special to USA TODAY With humanity coming up fast on 2012, publishers are helping readers gear up and count down to this mysterious — some even call it apocalyptic — date that ancient Mayan societies were anticipating thousands of years ago. Since November, at least three new books on 2012 have arrived in mainstream bookstores. A fourth is due this fall. Each arrives in the wake of the 2006 success of 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl, which has been selling thousands of copies a month since its release in May and counts more than 40,000 in print. The books also build on popular interest in the Maya, fueled in part by Mel Gibson's December 2006 film about Mayan civilization, Apocalpyto. Authors disagree about what humankind should expect on Dec. 21, 2012, when the Maya's "Long Count" calendar marks the end of a 5,126-year era. Journalist Lawrence Joseph forecasts widespread catastrophe in Apocalypse 2012: A Scientific Investigation Into Civilization's End. Spiritual healer Andrew Smith predicts a restoration of a "true balance between Divine Feminine and Masculine" in The Revolution of 2012: Vol. 1, The Preparation. In 2012, Daniel Pinchbeck anticipates a "change in the nature of consciousness," assisted by indigenous insights and psychedelic drug use. The buildup to 2012 echoes excitement and fear expressed on the eve of the new millennium, popularly known as Y2K, though on a smaller scale, says Lynn Garrett, senior religion editor at Publishers Weekly. She says publishers seem to be courting readers who believe humanity is creating its own ecological disasters and desperately needs ancient indigenous wisdom. "The convergence I see here is the apocalyptic expectations, if you will, along with the fact that the environment is in the front of many people's minds these days," Garrett says. "Part of the appeal of these earth religions is that notion that we need to reconnect with the Earth in order to save ourselves." But scholars are bristling at attempts to link the ancient Maya with trends in contemporary spirituality. Maya civilization, known for advanced writing, mathematics and astronomy, flourished for centuries in Mesoamerica, especially between A.D. 300 and 900. Its Long Count calendar, which was discontinued under Spanish colonization, tracks more than 5,000 years, then resets at year zero. "For the ancient Maya, it was a huge celebration to make it to the end of a whole cycle," says Sandra Noble, executive director of the Foundation for the Advancement of Mesoamerican Studies in Crystal River, Fla. To render Dec. 21, 2012, as a doomsday or moment of cosmic shifting, she says, is "a complete fabrication and a chance for a lot of people to cash in." Part of the 2012 mystique stems from the stars. On the winter solstice in 2012, the sun will be aligned with the center of the Milky Way for the first time in about 26,000 years. This means that "whatever energy typically streams to Earth from the center of the Milky Way will indeed be disrupted on 12/21/12 at 11:11 p.m. Universal Time," Joseph writes. But scholars doubt the ancient Maya extrapolated great meaning from anticipating the alignment — if they were even aware of what the configuration would be. Astronomers generally agree that "it would be impossible the Maya themselves would have known that," says Susan Milbrath, a Maya archaeoastronomer and a curator at the Florida Museum of Natural History. What's more, she says, "we have no record or knowledge that they would think the world would come to an end at that point." University of Florida anthropologist Susan Gillespie says the 2012 phenomenon comes "from media and from other people making use of the Maya past to fulfill agendas that are really their own." http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/2007-03-27-maya-2012_N.htm?csp=34 THE YEAR FOR BOOKS Current and coming books on 2012: 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl by Daniel Pinchbeck (Penguin/Tarcher, May 2006) 2013 Oracle: Ancient Keys to the 2012 Awakening by David Carson & Nina Sammons (Council Oaks, November 2006) Apocalypse 2012: A Scientific Investigation Into Civilization's End by Lawrence Joseph (Random House/Morgan Road, January 2007) The Revolution of 2012: Vol. 1, The Preparation by Andrew Smith (Ford Evans, January 2007) Serpent of Light by Drunvalo Melchizedek (Red Wheel/Weiser, Autumn 2007)

free talk in Princeton NJ this friday night

daniel_pinchbeck — Wed, 07 Mar 2007 18:08:19 GMT

2012 talk in Princeton NJ by Daniel Pinchbeck Friday March 9, 7:30 pm Princeton Academy of Martial Arts 14 Farber Road, Princeton, NJ 08540 609-452-2208 directions From New York or northern New Jersey: Take NJ Turnpike south to exit 9, New Brunswick. Go in the direction of Trenton. The exit will put you on Route 18. Stay on Route 18 for only about 1/2 mile, then exit a quick right onto Route 1 South. Take this about 15 miles. Go past the Princeton Market Fair, and go under the Meadow Road overpass. Make an immediate right to exit onto Farber Road. There is a Mobil gas station on one corner and a car wash on the other. Princeton Academy of Martial Arts is the first building on your left. From Pennsylvania: Take I-95 North into New Jersey (you'll cross into New Jersey at the Yardley exit). Follow it for about 10 miles to Route 1 north. Follow Route 1 north approximately 2 miles. Take the Meadow Road Exit, staying to the right. Go over Route 1 and exit onto Southbound Route 1. Go under the overpass, and make an immediate right onto Farber Road. There is a Mobil gas station on one corner and a car wash on the other. Princeton Academy of Martial Arts is the first building on your left.

From Ego to We Go

daniel_pinchbeck — Fri, 02 Mar 2007 06:28:36 GMT

Below is my column from the March issue of Conscious Choice magazine (www.consciouschoice.com): From Ego to We Go By Daniel Pinchbeck When I was in my twenties, literature was my ruling passion, and my heroes were writers like Fitzgerald, Kerouac, Virginia Woolf and Henry Miller. I longed to emulate the passionate intensity of their prose, and the “negative capability” which infused their characters with recognizable life. When I passed through the crucible of my own transformational process, I lost interest in novels and discovered a new pantheon of intellectual heroes. These days, I find the same level of electrical engagement that I used to find in novels in the works of thinkers whose central theme is the evolution and possible extension of human consciousness. This varied group is made up of mystics, physicists, philosophers, cosmologists and paleontologists — the roster includes Rudolf Steiner, Carl Jung, Edward Edinger, Jean Gebser, Teilhard de Chardin, F David Peat, Sri Aurobindo and Gerald Heard. For me personally, most contemporary fiction, like most current film, has an increasingly retrograde quality. In their efforts to make their audience identify with a particular drama or trauma or relationship saga, these products seem almost nostalgic. We live in a culture that continually seeks to entertain or at least distract us with an endless spew of personal narratives, whether paraded on lowbrow talk shows or parsed in literary novels. If you step outside of the cultural framing, you suddenly become aware of the mechanism that keeps us addicted to the spectacle — and, above all, hooked on ego. Our entire culture is dedicated to inciting and then placating the desires and fears of the individual ego — what the media critic Thomas De Zengotita calls “the flattered self.” Although they use different language to define it, the various theorists on the evolution of the psyche all agree that the crux of our current crisis requires that we transcend the ego. They suggest that the stage of material progress and scientific discovery we attained in recent centuries is not the end of human development, but the launching pad for another stage in our growth. However, this next stage differs from previous phases in one essential way — it requires a “mutation in consciousness” that can only be self-willed and self-directed. According to this paradigm, it is as if physical evolution has done billions of years of work on our behalf, to get us to this point. Right now, it is our choice whether we would like to go forward, or fall by the wayside like untold millions of other species, who over-adapted to one set of conditions, and could not recreate themselves as their environment changed. In his influential book, Pain, Sex and Time, the British polymath Gerald Heard defined three stages in human evolution — physical, technical and psychical. “The first is unconscious — blind; the second is conscious, unreflective, aware of its need but not of itself, of how, not why; the third is interconscious, reflective, knowing not merely how to satisfy its needs but what they mean and the Whole means,” wrote Heard, who believed we were on the cusp of switching from the technical to the psychical level of development. As we enter the psychic phase, we shift “from indirect to direct expansion of understanding, at this point man’s own self-consciousness decides and can alone decide whether he will mutate, and the mutation is instantaneous.” Originally published in 1939, Heard’s book has just been reprinted in the US; it was James Dean’s favorite work, and inspired Huston Smith to turn to religious studies. Despite its antique provenance, Pain, Sex and Time remains “new news” for our time. Heard viewed the immense capacity of human beings to experience pain and suffering, and the extraordinary excess of our sexual drive compared to our actual reproductive needs, as signs of a tremendous surplus of evolutionary energy that can be repurposed for the extension and intensification of consciousness, if we so choose. “Modern man’s incessant sexuality is not bestial: rather it is a psychic hemorrhage,” Heard wrote. “He bleeds himself constantly because he fears mental apoplexy if he can find no way of releasing his huge store of nervous energy.” Heard foresaw the necessity of a new form of self-discipline, a training in concentrating psychic energy to develop extra-sensory perception, as the proper way to channel the excess of nervous hypertension that would otherwise lead to our destruction. He thought that we would either evolve into a “supraindividual” condition, or the uncontrolled energies would force us back into “preindividuated” identifications, leading to nationalist wars and totalitarian fervors, and species burn-out. A sign I saw at last year’s Burning Man put it succinctly: “From Ego to We Go.” As the climate changes and our environment deteriorates, we are being subjected to tremendous evolutionary pressures that could push us beyond individuation, into a deeply collaborative mindset and a new threshold of psychic awareness. Seventy years after Heard’s manifesto, whether or not we want to evolve as a species remains an open question. But the choice is in our hands. Daniel Pinchbeck is the author of Breaking Open the Head: A Psychedelic Journey into the Heart of Contemporary Shamanism (Broadway Books, 2002) and 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl (Tarcher/Penguin, 2006). His features have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Rolling Stone, Esquire, Wired and many other publications.

the real dangers of Dominionism

daniel_pinchbeck — Wed, 07 Feb 2007 18:49:40 GMT

Yesterday, Michiko Kakutani reviewed right wing "intellectual" Dinesh D'Souza's new book, which blames the "Cultural Left" for 9-11. Kakutani dismissed the book's arguments as "absurd" and "preposterous," which entirely misses the point, and ignores why this work, and others like it, need to be considered seriously by those of us who consider ourselves progressive, liberal, or Leftist. An alternative perspective is presented in Chris Hedges' new book on the Dominionist movement, "American Fascists". Hedges is extremely worried that the Christian right could be planning to seize power in the US due to a terrorist attack, series of environmental catastrophes, or an economic meltdown. This would allow them to institute policies of "punishment, detention and quarantining" of groups that they find objectionable. Recent US history does not make this seem out of the question, especially the abuses of the Executive Branch. Mainstream reviewers have attacked Hedges' book as implausible, but certainly it is best, at the very least, to be forewarned of such possibilities in advance. Halliburton has recently received over $300 million to construct "detention centers" within the US (http://news.pacificnews.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=eed74d9d44c30493706fe03f4c9b3a77) that could be used for internment in a situation of martial law. A greater awareness of this possibility could, potentially, help to avoid it happening in reality. Hedges' perspective is that tolerance cannot be extended to the intolerant. This is perhaps a central paradox of the modern Democratic state. If the intolerant are given sufficient latitude to preach hate and violence, they may attract followers who will do their bidding. It would be inspiring to see progressives develop and implement overarching strategies for defusing the culture of hate and intolerance, perhaps launching sophisticated campaigns through the media, using identity politics and the spread of effective "memes" for defusing ideologies of violence. As Hedges notes in a recent article from Alternet, the basis of the success of the Christian Right is the "growing personal and economic despair of tens of millions of Americans," caused by the abandonment of the Working Class, exacerbated by economic policies enacted during the Clinton and Gore years. Hedges' piece: http://www.alternet.org/story/46908/

High Times article on a recent talk I gave in NYC

daniel_pinchbeck — Tue, 06 Feb 2007 21:28:15 GMT

This article on a talk I gave was published in High Times in February: http://www.drugwar.com/pinchbeckhtimes.shtm

"Prophet Motive"

daniel_pinchbeck — Thu, 01 Feb 2007 16:58:51 GMT

Hi folks, I wanted to alert everyone to my new column, “Prophet Motive”, appearing in Conscious Choice Magazine in Chicago, and its affiliates in Los Angeles, Seattle, and San Francisco. The column is also on-line here: http://consciouschoice.com http://consciouschoice.com/2007/02/prophetmotive0702.html The magazine are local giveaways that have just been revamped and made sexier, more relevant, political, and exciting. The San Francisco affiliate is Common Ground (their new issue is on sexuality and Tantra, and spiritual communities in SF based around sexuality): http://commongroundmag.com/ The LA affiliate is Whole Life Times: http://wholelifetimes.com/ here is the text of the column: The Open Hand By Daniel Pinchbeck Traditionally, writers have the job of defining the zeitgeist, but that task has never been as difficult as it is today. While this seems a singular and remarkable moment in human history, there is something indefinable about it. The weather is certainly strange—I live in New York City, where temperatures in early January remain about fifteen degrees above normal, and spring flowers started to bloom before Christmas. The political situation is most definitely peculiar—our military engages in a senseless campaign that has lasted longer than World War II, with hundreds of billions of dollars spent on spreading death and misery. We read about icebergs breaking up and a frightening lack of fish in the seas, yet there is plenty of ice for our drinks, and caviar is making a comeback. We swim in new psychic waters. We may understand, to a greater or lesser degree, that global civilization has hit the resource limits of the biosphere, but such a general foreboding is useless. We can recycle light bulbs or build a green roof. These gestures are meaningful, but they seem almost farcical compared to the magnitude of the problem. The contradictions between our intentions and our actions are almost head-splitting. My perspective is that we are experiencing an accelerated evolution of human consciousness. Right now, we find ourselves in an awkward transition between steadier states. For the last centuries, a limited form of scientific rationality ruled the modern world, a mindset that denied intuitive thought and saw nature as an enemy to be conquered. We developed technologies that embodied our sense of alienation and isolation. Many of us are now reaching a different perspective. As we make connections between quantum physics and Eastern mysticism, we realize we live in a participatory universe, with no place for an objective observer. Intuition is not irrational, but arational—it is the way our mind processes the overload of information that doesn’t enter our conscious filter. My own quest for understanding led me from being a somewhat embittered New York journalist to hitting a massive spiritual crisis in the late 1990s. In the throes of existential despair, I remembered my psychedelic experiences from college, and decided to pursue the subject as a journalist. I took an assignment to undergo a tribal initiation in Gabon, in West Africa, where I ate a visionary rootbark, iboga (also known as ibogaine). I traveled to the Amazon in Ecuador to drink ayahuasca—a hallucinatory potion—with the Secoya Indians, and visited the Mazatecs in Mexico, who preserve a sacred culture using mushrooms. The results of these investigations, and more, are recorded in my first book, Breaking Open the Head, which described my shift over time from cynical materialism to an acceptance of other dimensions and occult aspects of the psyche. By the end, I had plunged into Carl Jung, Rudolf Steiner, Walter Benjamin, Carlos Castaneda and many more, in an attempt to figure out what was going on. For my second book, 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl, I investigated the nature of prophecy, particularly the sacred calendar kept by the Classical Mayans in the Yucatan, which completes a “Great Cycle” of more than 5,000 years in the year 2012. Most modern people find it far-fetched that a non-technological and myth-based civilization, such as the Maya, might have developed a different system of knowledge that is more advanced than our own, in certain respects. In 2012, I conclude that this is possible. Somehow, from over a thousand years ago, the Maya predicted that this time would be crucial for humanity—and, indeed, it is. In the next few years, I believe that we are either going to slide into chaos, or institute a new planetary culture based on compassion and rational use of resources. The second option requires a quantum leap in consciousness—but, as I argued in 2012, our entire history has prepared us for that leap, when we view it from a certain perspective. It has been exactly forty years since the heyday of the 1960s. That epoch could be viewed as an attempted voyage of initiation for the modern world. Today, we have embarked upon a new phase of the initiatory journey begun a generation ago—with the opportunity to avoid the tactical mistakes, strident statements and polarizations of the past. Increasing numbers of people pursue spiritual practices, such as yoga and shamanism, with disciplined intensity. Perhaps, with an inchoate sense of foreknowledge, many people are preparing themselves for the transformation just ahead. If some elements of the 1960s are returning, they are doing so without the oppositional anger of the past. The open hand, offering friendship and reconciliation, has replaced the raised-fist symbol of old-style activism. In this column, I will offer my perspective on this on-going process of transformation, which has both psychic and physical dimensions. With its tremendous pressures and opportunities, I consider this the most exciting time to be alive in the history of our species, and I look forward to exploring it with all of you. Daniel Pinchbeck is the author of Breaking Open the Head: A Psychedelic Journey into the Heart of Contemporary Shamanism (Broadway Books, 2002) and 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl (Tarcher/Penguin, 2006). His features have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Rolling Stone, Esquire, Wired and many other publications

probably means i will soon be "out"...

daniel_pinchbeck — Sun, 14 Jan 2007 16:28:31 GMT

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/artsandliving/features/2007/in-out-list/

upcoming events

daniel_pinchbeck — Sun, 14 Jan 2007 16:26:57 GMT

Upcoming 2012 events January 20, 7:30 pm Mindbender at Sundance Film Festival MindBender An Exploration of the Mind Park City, Utah 7:30 Doors Open 8:00 THE PREMIERE SCREENING of "Entheogen" 9:00 Panel discussion with Dr. Ralph Metzner & Daniel Pinchbeck 10:00 ILloom 12:00 BASSNECTAR 2:00 Rendr 801 3:00 DJUnYa $15 for Film and Panel Discussion $20 for BASSNECTAR and Afterparty $30 for Film, Panel Discussion and BASSNECTAR Visionary art by Carey Thompson and Martin Stensaas Tickets on sale at: Orion Music in Park City 435.649.1850 Orion Music in Salt Lake CIty 801.531.8181 ONLINE Tickets at tickets.bassnectar.net The Event will be at the Yarrow Hotel in Park City 1800 Park Avenue, Park City, Utah 435.649.7000 FOR MORE INFORMATION VISIT : www.funartsexhibits.com/mindbender January 25, The Ayahuasca Monologues: Tales of the Spirit Vine Five dynamic storytellers will describe their visionary experiences with ayahuasca, the renowned sacred brew of the Amazon. For centuries, shamans have drunk this powerful concoction to heal illness, obtain mystical insights, contact spirit guides, and explore magical worlds. Hear of experiences both miraculous and terrifying when Westerners access ayahuasca's incredible gifts. Q & A session to follow. Proceeds benefit the web blog, Souldish.com <http://Souldish.com> . Featuring: Daniel Pinchbeck - author of Breaking Open The Head: Psychedelics and Contemporary Shamanism and 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl Jamye Waxman - sexplorer, Playgirl sex advice columnist, "Sex and Spirit" podcaster Nat Bletter – ethnobotanist Bill Kennedy – actor/storyteller and ayahuasca guardian Jonathan Phillips - founder of the NYC Gnostics, executive editor of Souldish.com <http://Souldish.com> Thurs, Jan. 25th, 7:30p Eyebeam, 540 W. 21st St. btw 10th & 11th Ave. $10 ** Friday, February 2, 8 PM Reading at THE RACONTEUR 2012: THE RETURN OF QUETZALCOATL Daniel Pinchbeck Reading/Signing/Discussion free The Raconteur A Damn Fine Bookstore 431 Main Street, Metuchen 732-906-0009 www.raconteurbooks.com ** Saturday, February 24 2-4pm The Mirabai Workshop Series Winter 2007 Integrating the Visionary Experience A workshop with author Daniel Pinchbeck (2012: Return of the Quetzacoatl; Breaking Open the Head) Join Daniel Pinchbeck, author of Mirabai’s number one best-selling title for 2006, 2012: Return of the Quetzacoatl, as we explore how to incorporate and communicate visionary experiences to the world. Personal experiences of visionary states and non-ordinary forms of consciousness can be extremely challenging, both during and after the fact. One can feel flooded by new ideas and inspirations, overwhelmed by contact with archetypal realms within the psyche, or shocked by intensities of psychological revelation. In this workshop, we will discuss mechanisms and methods for integrating such experiences. We will focus on writing and art as tools for expressing to others, as well as discovering for oneself, the meaning of transpersonal explorations. Participants will have the opportunity to share samples of their work with the group. Cost: $25 if registered and prepaid by Feb. 22nd; $30 if registering after the 22nd. Mirabai of Woodstock 23 Mill Hill Road · Woodstock, NY 12498 (845) 679-2100 www.mirabai.com ** Later that night: panel discussion with artist Alex Grey at COSM in Chelsea