Reality Sandwich social mixer in NYC this Weds night

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: 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! 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: www.realitysandwich.com/node/276

Our Forgotten Future

consciouschoice.com/2007/06/...0706.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

Don’t miss these extraordinary new essays and articles on Reality Sandwich ( www.realitysandwich.com ), updated daily:


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.


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.


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

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:

consciouschoice.com/2007/05/...0705.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:

www.eomega.org/omega/work...5f18e7d4b3/

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 <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...

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:
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:
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:
www.realitysandwich.com/node/147

Reality Sandwich

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

Here's my latest colum from Conscious Choice Magazine:

consciouschoice.com/2007/04/...0704.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

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."


www.usatoday.com/tech/scie...2012_N.htm


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

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

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.