fasten your seatbelts

A new bill has given the President the right to incarcerate and torture virtually anyone, as the language of the bill is so vague:

www.latimes.com/news/opini...n-rightrail

At the same time, Robert F Kennedy's story on electronic voting in Rolling Stone presents a very convincing case that the elections are now hacked:

www.rollingstone.com/politic...hacked/4

For all intents and purposes, it seems that we are now living in a dictatorship.

It will be fascinating to see how this plays out in Nov 2008. 11/08 will be the beginning, according to Calleman, of the period on the Mayan Calendar connected to the fearsome, destructive energies of Tezcatlipoca, god of black magic and the jaguar. During the Tezcatlipoca phase on the previous stage of the Mayan Calendar (1931 - 1951), we saw the Great Depression, Holocaust, Second World War, and dropping of atomic bombs on Japan. This time, the period just lasts one year (due to the 20X faster acceleration on each step of the pyramid). Calleman thinks we will see a last, desperate attempt, on the part of the controlling forces, to maintain dominance.

The new bill, like the Patriot Act, could have a powerful threatening effect on free speech, even if it isn't actually used to imprison dissenters and leftist political journalists. An alternative option is that the level of collective disgust rises to the point where dissent is openly voiced on every level, far more than before. The slow-boiling frog can still jump out of the pot before it is cooked.

While the Democrats are hopeless, the progressive and Leftist community is still hapless and fragmented. At this point, there seems to be no meaningful counterforce or movement that can oppose the Right Wing juggernaut. If such a movement were to self-organize, it would have to happen in a new way, through a kind of anonymous and collective process. The legacy of the Left in the late 1960s and early 1970s is that leaders are too easy to target (through trumped-up drug charges, for instance, leading to legal cases that exhausted the resources of the Left in the 1970s). New tools and a new social imagination - plus the will to risk one's self for the greater good - are going to be necessary to oppose a regime that could easily tilt in a direction all-too reminiscent of threatened dictatorial juntas of the past century: find a number of scapegoats, reduce them to subhumanity, imprison them in camps (Haliburton is currently building secret detention centers), and so on.

Personally, I believe everything will work out in the end, but only if we wake up to the increasingly threatening conditions surrounding us, and find the right methods for dealing with the situation.

the end of the world, etc.

In the current issue of New York Magazine, Kurt Andersen writes a column on the new apocalypse fervor, and leads with me. The piece begins: “The week of September 11 (two weeks ago, not five years), I noticed a poster up at Frankies, my sweet neighborhood trattoria in Brooklyn: It advertised a talk on 9/11 by Daniel Pinchbeck—the former downtown literary impresario who has become a Gen-X Carlos Castaneda and New Age impresario. My breakfast pal nodded at the poster and said, “The guy is selling his apocalypse thing hard.”

nymag.com/news/imperial...697/index.html

Unfortunately, Andersen did not bother to read any of my book for himself, relying on the distortions of the Rolling Stone piece. Of course, I already knew this to be the way the media works. And yet, it is still a shame. Apparently, I am now caught in the media “spin cycle,” where one distortion feeds the next, until the message becomes unrecognizable. Later in the piece, Andersen follows Rolling Stone in suggesting that I feel only a “psychedelic elite” will survive “2012” – in actual fact, I do not think or argue anything of the kind. I am sincerely anti-elitist in my views and my way of thinking. I do suggest that the psychedelic or shamanic insight is one that our culture has suppressed, and it may offer a different perspective for understanding and confronting the crisis that now faces us as a species.

On the other hand, of course, I am delighted that the book continues to get media attention and stir up controversy.

I emailed Andersen with the hope of engaging him in a dialogue, perhaps on his radio show. It will be interesting to see if he responds.

Newsweek on 2012

The current Newsweek has a short piece on the 2012 phenomenon. Unlike Rolling Stone, which turned me into a loony prophet of doom, Newsweek quotes me almost as the voice of reason. Here it is:

MSNBC.com
Beliefwatch: 12/21/12
Newsweek

Sept. 25, 2006 issue - Followers of New Age spirituality have long turned to indigenous religions for wisdom and inspiration, so it has not escaped their notice that something big happens in 2012: the ancient and complex Mayan calendar—studied by astrology, spirituality and history buffs alike—has chugged along for 1,872,000 days, and its cycle stops (and restarts) on Dec. 21, 2012.

Speculation over the 2012 cycle change has spurred a growing cottage industry. Amazon.com shows more than 100 books on the subject, with titles like "Doomsday 2012" and "2012: You Have a Choice!" A number of spirituality conferences are already convening. This month in New Mexico, spiritual seekers will gather for a "2012 Ascension Symposium," which promises to "offer humanity global reassurance and change the Consciousness of the world"; metaphysics author Geoff Stray is giving a series of lectures on 2012 throughout 2006 and 2007, including at the UFO Conference in Nevada in February and a "Healing Conference" in Jericho, Israel, in May.

To add to the frenzy, it just so happens that the years building up to 2012 mark an unusual astronomical alignment, one so rare it occurs only in 30 out of every 26,000 years. During this period, the Sun will make its annual crossing of the galactic equator—the plane that bisects the Milky Way as it appears in the sky—on the same day as the winter solstice. So what does all this mean? A small group of doomsayers believe a life-ending cataclysm is on the horizon. Patrick Geryl, a Belgian researcher, says he believes the alignment will trigger a reversal in the magnetic fields of the Sun, causing it to get 10 or 20 times hotter, which will reverse the Earth's rotation on its axis and flood its inhabitants (mainstream astronomers don't agree).

Meso-American scholars are far less concerned. In Mayan cosmology, time proceeds in cycles—not in a straight line. "The world collapses, but then it gets reborn," says Davíd Carrasco, professor of Latin American religions at Harvard University. (The Maya believe the same thing happens when the Sun rises and sets each day.) Literary-magazine editor Daniel Pinchbeck, author of "2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl," sees the new cycle as an opportunity for personal and spiritual growth. Instead of looking at the completion of the 5,125-year cycle as "the end," Pinchbeck suggests that 2012 "could be more like the birth of the world."

—Holly Lebowitz Rossi

URL: www.newsweek.co.uk/id/14868...newsweek/
© 2006 MSNBC.com

breaking open the head forum - back from the ashes!

I am very pleased to announce that the discussion forum at breakingopenthehead.com has been given a revamp. The discussion board had become infected by automated spam from "bots" exploiting holes in the security system. A longtime participant in the forum has done the difficult work of despamming it and relaunching it on a more secure platform.

The forum has been going since 2002, and is one of the better places on the Internet to engage in deep discussions about shamanism, prophecy, crop circles, occult practices, the ecological crisis, and our current social order. It is the cross-pollination of subjects that most people do not usually see as connected that has made the board such a unique and lively place. The community has led to many friendships, and witnessed a few tragedies (Dan Carpenter, author of A Psychonaut's Guide to the Invisible Landscape, on his DXM experiences, took his life before the recent publication of his book).

I have learned a huge amount from participating in this forum, and look forward to returning to it now that it is no longer full of ads for Viagra and various desperate scams.

preying mantises at burning man

some provided by nature, some built by man:

www.flickr.com/search/

Red Ice

Just got this email that an interview I did with Red Ice, a Swedish radio program, will be up as a podcast tomorrow (Sunday, Sep 10). It was a good one, I recall.

Hi Daniel, this is Henrik from Red Ice Radio (Sweden) I hope you're well!

I just wanted to let you know that we'll be airing the interview with you
tomorrow on www.BBSradio.com <www.bbsradio.com/>

(People must sign up to listen to the feeds/streams - it is free)

Or the show can be download, after it has aired, from my site
www.red-ice.net <www.red-ice.net/> , (it will be added sometime
during Monday)

Burn talk; letter to Rolling Stone

If anyone reading this is going to be at Burning Man, I am giving a talk there on Friday at 5 p.m. at the Entheon Village.

What follows is my letter to the editors of Rolling Stone. I hope they will publish it in its entirety.

Here is the letter:

I was delighted that Rolling Stone found my work significant enough to deserve feature
coverage. Unfortunately, the piece [RS 1008] was full of inaccuracies and outright
fabrications on a factual level, as well as sensationalist distortions of my ideas.
To take a few examples, the first and last scenes never actually happened. We did
not visit "a bunch of people on dimethyltryptamine," I had not seen a "downtown rock
show with Moby" the night before, and there was no woman groaning on a futon. I do
not have "buck teeth." Similarly, the scene described at the end never occurred-I
don't even own a copy of The Lion King.

I found the writer' loose relationship to truth particularly depressing when she
attempted to define my ideas. I am not "actively bidding to become [my] generation's
Timothy Leary"-in fact I critique Leary quite harshly in my first book. In my work,
I don't advocate mass use of psychedelics as Leary did, and certainly do not consider
them to be "the answer."

In 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl, I do not argue that "the world as we know it
is about to end-on December 21, 2012." My hypothesis is that we are already in an
accelerated process of consciousness evolution, and I explore the possibility that
the Mayan Calendar is, as Carl Johan Calleman describes in The Mayan Calendar and
the Transformation of Consciousness, a "timetable" for understanding this process.

I most emphatically do not argue or think that "only the psychedelic elite and those
who have reached a kind of supramental consciousness" will "be saved in 2012." I
do think that a deep transformation in the mindset of those who hold power in the
modern West is necessary if we are going to avert disaster in the next few years,
as we approach resource depletion and biospheric collapse.

In the future, it would be wonderful to see a magazine with the rich legacy of Rolling
Stone approach the living currents of the intellectual counterculture of the 1950s
and 60s with far more grace, integrity, and sophistication.

thoughts on Rolling Stone feature

I stopped by the Rolling Stone office and picked up an advanced copy of the new issue (Sept 7, 2006), which contains a substantial feature on me, titled “Daniel Pinchbeck and the New Psychedelic Elite”, by Vanessa Grigoriades. It will be hitting the newsstands in a few short hours.
My reaction to this article is extremely mixed. For the most part, I am happy that it has seen the light of day, as it is no doubt going to feed discussion around shamanism, psychedelics, my books, the concept of a global consciousness shift as we approach the year 2012, etcetera. From my perspective, the growing awareness of this alternative paradigm is, in itself, part of the prophecy – a necessary step in the process of bringing a new world into manifestation.
I find myself in a peculiarly bittersweet relationship to fame, worldly success, etc., as part of the concept I am promoting is of a shift in consciousness that will be so swift and so profound, when it arrives, that it will annul our current categories and conventional reward systems. As I noted in “2012,” I sometimes feel like I am communicating “backwards” from this future state of “time freedom,” and it is a peculiarly uncanny sensation. From that impersonal perspective, I am simply watching a process unfold in linear time – the process of the accelerated evolution of consciousness. As a messenger or prophet (certainly not a "guru"), I am simply sending out a signal to be picked up by those who are ready to receive it.
The article, despite its five-page length, is impressively shallow, almost ignoring the ideas in my new book entirely, to concentrate on semi-salacious details of my personal life. I learnt, to my surprise, that I have “buck teeth,” and some undefined similarity to Austin Powers. The article has that seamy tabloid vibe of scandal, sin, and shadowy disgrace. Perhaps the best thing about it is the Matt Mahurin illustration of me facing myself as forked-tongue serpent.
The most frustrating aspect of the piece is the impression I get, while reading it, that most of my ideas (as well as salient details of my life) were carefully, almost meticulously, distorted or disconnected from each other so that they would seem unfounded and insignificant. There were crucial aspects of my thesis in “2012” that Vanessa seemed unable to understand – for instance, I explained to her over and over again the Calleman model which reveals the Mayan Calendar as a precision timing device for the development of consciousness on Earth, from more than 16 billion years ago to 2012, in a nine-stage process that accelerates by factors of twenty in relation to linear time. Clearly, she was too busy seeking out quotes from disaffected former lovers to follow such an argument.
In retrospect, I feel that my mistake in my fencing match with Vanessa was to reveal my own frustrations over the predictable mechanisms of the mainstream media, which I discuss in my books and know well from my own struggles as a freelancer. The rigid formats and tone of articles such as hers make any honest or integral dialogue utterly impossible. Everything has to be branded in some immediately recognizable way, as if any idea that was new or different might threaten the entire system that the media is propping up. To take one of many examples available paragraph by paragraph, she writes that I am “actively bidding to become [my] generation’s Timothy Leary.” First of all, I scrupulously critique Leary and his approach to psychedelics in Breaking Open the Head. Second of all, I do not behave in any way like a “high priest” of psychedelia, and have a completely different way of framing my discourse and the results I am hoping to help bring about.
Vanessa almost entirely ignores my efforts to start a new company, Evolver (with EVO as its membership organization), which is actually a deep-seated effort to put the ideas developed in “2012” into practice by creating a supportive infrastructure for social transformation (it is far more than just a magazine), using the tools of business. She couldn’t be bothered to look into it. The article ignores my hypothesis on 2012 and the meaning of Quetzalcoatl as an archetype – representing the integration of spirit and matter, or the coming together of the Western rational and empirical mindset with the intuitive, shamanic, or mystical way of knowing and being. She also writes, incorrectly, that I promote the notion of a psychedelic “elite” that will be saved somehow when the world goes haywire. In actual fact, I am committed to a compassionate transformation of our planetary situation that would benefit everyone.
And of course Vanessa takes the easy opportunity to smack me around on the subject of my sex life and my views on sexuality – a subject about which I would love to open a serious debate in the mainstream media, but which Rolling Stone is not likely to allow. The fact that I propose monogamy is not the only solution to human sexuality automatically means I am a sleazebag. It is not even conceivable that one might explore an open approach to sexuality in a positive or non-demeaning way. It seems apparent that Vanessa’s own shadow material is wrapped up in this area, as she describes herself, unjustly, as a “not-hot enough girl” with “disbelieving eyes.” The lack of dignity, grace, or empathy in her writing reflects her own limitations, as well as her ambitions, at least at this point in time.
Ah well… soon the specifics of the article will be forgotten, and Rolling Stone wil have given the psychedelic renaissance a useful push.
As Jack Kerouac put it, long ago, “Fame is like old newspapers blowing down Bleecker Street…”

hovering on the threshold

Next week, after holding the article for months and nearly killing it, Rolling Stone is publishing a feature article on me (on-sale August 24). I await this with a mingling of excitement and trepidation. For the last years, since I realized the potential magnitude of the importance of the material I was exploring, I have hoped to function as a good messenger and communicator of these difficult ideas to the public. Because of the radical nature of the paradigm I am offering, I felt that this required scrupulous integrity on my part, and have done my best to adhere to that.

I think that "2012" is pretty rigorous in exposing my own faults rather than holding myself up as some kind of paragon or guru. However, it is one thing to expose your own faults in your own language and your own way, and another to have an outsider come in to do it for you! Above all, I am concerned that the article - which I have not read yet - does not do justice to the book's content and philosophical approach, but sensationalizes and trivializes my perspective instead. In any event, the Rolling Stone piece will bring the concept of a global consciousness shift in relation to the Mayan Calendar end date in 2012 and the post-modern resurgence of shamanism to a much broader audience. The piece is likely to be a watershed moment in the mainstreaming of a number of different ideas - including ayahuasca shamanism and the Mayan and Hopi prophecy cycle. It will be interesting to see the results.

Of course, from my perspective, the raising of consciousness around these issues is actually part of the prophetic foretelling, inseparable from the process of evolving planetary awareness, on a scale that can hopefully jump from countercultural to global in the matter of a few short years.

*

A beautiful late season crop circle appeared just a few days ago: www.cropcircleconnector.com/2006...lhamp ton/etchilhampton2006b.html

another review of 2012

from brainwashed:

brainwashed.com/index.php