2012 : The Return of Quetzalcoatl

[Led_Zeppelin]

I read B O T H 3 times. Loved it. I've already pre-ordered his new book due May 2, 2006. Has anyone else ordered it? New book is:

2012 : The Return of Quetzalcoatl

Daniel... can you give us a preview of your premise of this new book?

[Isaiah Mpski]

That God grows best in Oklahoma,
but would like to spend winters in Mexico.

[ April 16, 2006, 09:32 AM: Message edited by: Isaiah Mpski ]

[craazyman]

Just pre-ordered on Amazon.
Good Luck with it Daniel!

[brucedc1]

Hi Everyone

Does anyone know where/when I can get a copy of 2012... in the UK? I pre ordered it on amazon.co.uk but for some reason they took the listing off, can't wait to get my hands on a copy!

Thanks

Bruce (a long time lurker!)

[Dna]

Hi Bruce,

Just checked my amazon.com list and my order is still there, along with the others I ordered at the same time. I tend not to get books from amazon.co.uk, as I have found that amazon.com works out cheaper for me, what with the euro exchange rate and postage etc.

Best wishes,

Dna.

[brucedc1]

Thanks DNA, I'll get onto it!

Seems a shame it is'nt available in the UK though, maybe Daniel should look into it

Bruce

[Lowlight]

Yeah i noticed that too. I wanted to order of amazon UK but it now says it is 'limited availability'. I dont know if waterstines will be carrying it, will have to check tommorrow. Any news on this Daniel?

[Thom]

Bruce and Lowlight,

I ordered the book through Amazon UK this morning. If you click on the 'used' link on the page there is a bookshop taking pre-orders there. £20 though! Cheaper to get it from USA...

http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/tg/detail/offer-listing/-/1585424838/all/ref=sdp_usedb/203-0212061-7705500

[Lowlight]

thanks thom!

[brucedc1]

Cheers Tom and Lowlight, I ordered it from Amazom.com - does work out cheaper even with postage!

Bruce

[dragonfly]

Not unsurprisingly, Village Voice critic Carla Blumenkranz disapproves of what Daniel's up to:

http://www.villagevoice.com/books/0618,blumenkranz,73041,10.html

[Thom]

Hopefully there'll be some more engaging reviews.

The Village Voice piece seems written from an ambience of cool ennui, the kind of style that'll shrug while watching a house burn. Maybe light a smoke off the flames.

[ May 05, 2006, 09:43 AM: Message edited by: Thom ]

[craazyman]

Those Voice screeders whack away at anyone that doesn't suck the tit of the lightweight-pseudo intellectual-fascist-lesbo-femme-nazi-commie-limousine-liberal-Oedipal-propaganda that newspaper has gotten rich peddling between adds for sex clubs, tattoo parlors and S&M dungeons.

They're a pitifully humorless lot. They remind me of Joaquin Phoenix as Nero in "Gladiator".

Someone should send that woman a grey alien on a spring as a desk ornament, with the caption "Sorry if I let you down".

ROTFLMAO!

[Isaiah Mpski]

CM,Are you implying maybe Daniel paid them off.
"I wouldn't doubt it!"says Wolf.

[ May 05, 2006, 10:28 AM: Message edited by: Isaiah Mpski ]

[craazyman]

Isaiah, no doubt, the bigger the controversy, the better the PR. But in this case, I bet Daniel's getting it for free. It's like a Skinner Box over there at the VV.

[John Hoopes]

I'm concerned that the Village Voice may be right on target. I do hope that Daniel doesn't wind up going down the same dark road as Carlos Castaneda, which has been chronicled on the Sustained Action (http://sustainedaction.org/) website and in Amy Wallace's grim confessional The Sorcerer's Apprentice: My Life With Carlos Castaneda (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1583940766/).

[daniel]

I found the Voice review to be pathetic. She focused on this idea of "belief," when throughout the book I repeat over and over again that I am offering a hypothesis, a thought experiment, that I don't think anyone should "believe" in what I am saying, but should test it out for themselves. I would say that she is the one who "believes" - she believes that there can be no shift in paradigm or accelerated evolution of consciousness. I propose that these things are possible, based on my own philosophical study which was supported by my personal experiences while pursuing this area, which I reported on as scrupulously as possible.

I also found her line near the end of the review to be extremely stupid, when she talks about "progressive critics" who "should" be slightly ahead of the curve blasting off into the stratosphere instead. This is so moralistic and proscriptive. Why not be excited that someone takes the trouble to blast off into the stratosphere once in a while, rather than clinging to a safety margin like everyone else? Isn't that what Nietzsche, Artaud, etc., did, and why we still care about them?

I still find it a net positive that the Voice reviewed 2012 at all, as they ignored my first book entirely.

If I identify with any animal right now, it is an eagle - I feel like I have a very panoramic perspective on what is happening, that I am scanning the ground from far above, watching the process take place.

In a sense, I am feeling very relaxed - 2012, the Apocalypse, etcetera, is off my desk, and I know where I stand. Now it becomes everyone else's problem.

[Dna]

2012, the Apocalypse, etcetera, is off my desk, ... The arrow has flown.

Your words are winging their way to me(and others) across the moonlight waters of the atlantic, as I write.

There is a lot, even in the first 2 chapters. I don't have the time to give a detailed review - lot to absorb etc. If these two chapters are anything to go by then you've done great and I look forward to reading the rest of this book.

Dna.

[ May 07, 2006, 12:16 AM: Message edited by: Dna ]

[Led_Zeppelin]

I pre-ordered the new book for May 2, 2006 from Amazon. I have not received the book. Does anyone know what the problem is?

[Dna]

It won't be long Led,

Book only released Thursday.

Dna

[jezebelle]

led
I got my preordered one, very absorbing, my reward after work chores are done. I'm getting alot done ha, ha, I bet you have it by now, ehh.
hugs, jez

[dragonfly]

Bought the book yesterday. I'm only getting started but am already exhilarated to be reading it. I'm also thinking the VV reviewer was unjustly dismissive.

But unlike Craazyman, I don't think the issue is the Voice per se (though in the interest of full disclosure I should note that I'm apparently a "lightweight pseudo-intellectual" and "nazi-commie," as I've written for the paper in the past). I think journalism itself has a difficult time dealing with ideas that threaten its concept of the rational. It will be interesting to see how other journalists treat the book.

[sidecross]

I am waiting for the book to appear at my locally owned book store, but I agree with dragonfly in an interest on how other journalists and writers review daniel’s book.

A reading of the introduction to Karen Armstrong’s new book The Great Transformations: The Beginning of our Religious Traditions would show that between 1600 to 900 BCE many people had a depth of understanding that is lacking in today’s discussions.

[snow]

Karen Armstrong has a new book? Heads Up!

dragonfly:

"I think journalism itself has a difficult time dealing with ideas that threaten its concept of the rational. It will be interesting to see how other journalists treat the book."

yes it will be interesting. Daniel's book may be actually outside journalism as we know it, and i am not talking about gonzo journalism either.

i just got Daniel's book yesterday, and I dont have the impression, reading it, that is is journalistic tome, even though he employs the methods of journalism. I feel that I am climbing a moss grown jungled pyramid, and at each level Daniel is warning about the nexus of this book, each warning written from a different prism of the lense, which,at each stage, increases the focus, presencience his role/our role in 2012, Q., some bust ego scheme to reconcile it all...

a rotating multifaceted lense
3d -- not really jounalism, a pyramid journey. it's great to read.

[ May 09, 2006, 05:56 AM: Message edited by: snow ]

[craazyman]

Just finished it last night. Here is my short (and somewhat wackily turgid) review:

Huck Finn has been reincarnated and he's back on a homemade mind-raft drifting down a Mississipi as wide as the world and flowing free and clear through space and time with the ink black liquid of the Alchemical soul lit by the quantum glow of stars. 2012 is not a road novel or journalism or a work of philosophical speculation--although it borrows from all of these forms (and a little bit of Moby Dick too, with the tools of the whaling trade exchanged for a stack of philosophical texts, and the great white whale morphed into a flashing pinwheel mandala soul turning high in the sky of the universal mind)--instead it's a piece of literary performance art staged and performed by a scholar, clown, madman, shaman, comedian, psychopomp, flawed husband and father, and, above all, a 21st century American writer, with the uniquely American self-honesty, courage, faith and innocence that lets him believe man's redemption is somehow still possible here on this earth, and that if we think, and believe, and try, we can make it into the gates of heaven, just a few steps ahead of the devil's pitchfork, like a sharp and narrow second hand on a clock, ready to stabb us in our collective butts at the stroke of midnight December 21, 2012.

Do you believe? You don't have to. You can sleep. You can ignore the fantastically implausible plausibility of the artfully assembled and analyzed signs and prophecies. You can ignore the complete failure of the materialist world view to explain the essence of much of anything at all in this world that's worth explaining, and its near destruction of the world that we do have. You can laugh at the tabloid pseudo-science of crop circle studies and alien abduction research. You can take refuge in the cynic's safely sealed suit of armor that lets in no light or breath or life. You can survive as the corpse that you are.

But if you want to find out just who and what you might be, as incredible as it seems (and maybe is, as our author candidly concedes) then listen to the ravings of this cast of misfits, loonies, temptresses, new age priestesses, philosophers, home-grown geniuses, poetesses and seekers that Huck meets and befriends along the river. And if you do, at the very least, you'll be rolling on the floor laughing your ass off, mightily entertained by the performance, and by the all-too-human spectacle of it all. But be careful, you may find in it more than that, much more.

[Thom]

Nice! Your mention of Moby Dick reminded me of something Edinger wrote to a newspaper in response to its coverage of the McVey bombing of Oklahoma. It was titled, 'The Psychology of Terrorism.' Douglas might enjoy it.

Terrorism is a manifestation of the psyche. It is time we recognized the psyche as an autonomous factor in world affairs.

The psychological root of terrorism is a fanatical resentment - a quasi-psychotic hatred originating in the depths of the archetypal psyche and therefore carried by religious (archetypal) energies. A classic literary example is Melville's Moby Dick. Captain Ahab, with his fanatical hatred of the White Whale, is a paradigm of the modern terrorist.

Articulate terrorists generally express themselves in religious (archetypal) terminology. The enemy is seen as the Principle of Objective Evil (Devil) and the terrorist perceives himself as the "heroic" agent of divine or Objective Justice (God). This is an archetypal inflation of demonic proportions which temporarily grants the individual almost superhuman energy and effectiveness. To deal with terrorism effectively we must understand it.

We need a new category to understand this new phenomenon. These individuals are not criminals and are not madmen although they have some qualities of both. Let's call them zealots. Zealots are possessed by transpersonal, archetypal dynamisms deriving from the collective unconscious. Their goal is a collective, not a personal one. The criminal seeks his (her) own personal gain; not so the zealot. In the name of a transpersonal, collective value--a religion, an ethnic or national identity, a 'patriotic" vision, etc.--they sacrifice their personal life in the service of their "god". Although idiosyncratic and perverse, this is fundamentally a religious phenomenon that derives from the archetypal, collective unconscious. Sadly, the much-needed knowledge of this level of the psyche is not generally available. For those interested in seeking it, I recommend a serious study of the psychology of C.G. Jung. His letter wasn't published, unsurprisingly. Very many in the mainstream refuse the 'reality of the psyche.' They are therefore unable to even begin to engage creatively with visionaries, shamans etc...

[ May 09, 2006, 10:33 AM: Message edited by: Thom ]

[sidecross]

Being a repeated reader of Moby Dick, you might find “Melville’s Moby-Dick: An American Nekyia by Edward F. Edinger a companion to reading Moby Dick.

The word ‘Nekyia’ is a Greek word suggested by Jung in Psychology and Alchemy as a decent to the underworld.

[Thom]

Someone else recommended that book recently - so now I'll have to check it out...!

As an aside, I'm currently reading 'The Secret Life of Puppets' by Victoria Nelson, which was also recommended on this board, by Snow I think.

Its an exceptionally lucid investigation of the demonised and suppressed supernatural elements of human experience and their sublimated expression in 'fantasty' art, from Coleridge to Lovecraft etc. Definitely of interest to everyone who reads/posts here.

The 'marriage of heaven and hell' is becoming more and more essential to our contemporary artists and writers it seems.

[Dna]

Funnily enough Thom, I have also ordered the 'Secret Life of Puppets (http://www.librarything.com/catalog/315058)' from Amazon, along with Daniel's book and 'Collapse: How Societies Choose to Succeed or Fail (http://www.librarything.com/catalog/12446)' by Jared Diamond.

http://www.librarything.com/pics/librarything.gif

If you are intrested in expanding your reading list, you should check out LibraryThing.com (http://www.librarything.com/) . You put your favourite books up on the site (lots of books) and you connect with people of similar interest. You also get superb recommendations, based on your interests. Better than Amazon, which bases recommendations on what you buy from them only.

'Breaking Open The Head (http://www.librarything.com/catalog/332697)' is included in this website. See what kind of recommendations are generated etc.

Peace,

Dna.

[Dna]

I have created a user 'Dna' and put some of my books up there.

[Thom]

Hi Dna, thanks for the recommendation - looks like a useful site.

By the way, I mentioned earlier that Nelson's book delves into coleridge and lovecraft - this might imply shes old school literary. Such oldies are joined by many modern manifestations of the grotto-esque: The Matrix, horror movies, Bruno Schultz, SF, PK Dick etc. even the arch Aristotelian, Umberto Eco, gets frisked.

[daniel]

craazyman,

you rocked that review - thank you!

if you can see it in your heart to drop this on Amazon, I would be much obliged.

[waterthere]

Another review of the new book you might find amusing...

...quoted without permission:



Daniel Pinchbeck's latest book 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl is one that I have been looking forward to for some time. His first book, Breaking Open the Head, ranks as one of the best that I've read over the past decade - in both style and substance. [2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl] In it, Pinchbeck described his own journey from city-slicker cynic to shamanic convert, in the most exquisite prose that one could imagine. In fact, in my review of that book I felt he had reached the rare heights achieved by few writers - those of the calibre of Aldous Huxley - capable of describing the seemingly ineffable.

A few years on and Pinchbeck returns with the continuation of his personal journey, though one that seems to go slightly astray as it progresses. He begins the book by introducing his major theme, that of an apocalyptic end to our current paradigm and consciousness, as the end of the current cycle of the Mayan calendar approaches (in, of course, 2012).

"The hypothesis I propose is that the completion of the great cycle and the return of Quetzalcoatl are archetypes and their underlying meaning points toward a shift in the nature of the psyche...such a radical proposition may seem absurdly far-fetched and beyond rational analysis...however, it is my view that this transition can be approached sensibly, considered in a way that does not insult our reasoning faculties."

2012 is a book is embedded with the current eschatological climate of terrorism, Iraq, peak oil and global warming gone mad. Pinchbeck's observations on these topics range from the bland - for example, the usual 'sermonizing' about global warming, with little reference to the underlying debates - to the extremely insightful such as his discussion of Nietzsche’s ideas of "will to ignorance" and "will to superficiality", which perhaps provide no better description of the bizarre current global mood of ambivalence and apathy, as world leaders wage wars based on obvious lies.

The first few chapters live up to Pinchbeck's promise of not insulting our reasoning faculties, as he provides an excellent overview of the latest new paradigm thought, including Dean Radin's parapsychology research and the weird implications that the quantum world has for our view of 'reality'. Pinchbeck takes fundamentalist religion and secular liberalism to task for their lack of spirituality, and urges the reader to embrace a new spirituality in the face of these latest findings. Like Terence McKenna, he seeks an archaic revival of sorts:

"It is my thesis that the rapid development of technology and the destruction of the biosphere are material by-products of a psycho-spiritual process taking place on a planetary scale. We have created this crisis to force our own accelerated transformation - on an unconscious level, we have willed it into being."

Pinchbeck then moves on to contemplating another worthwhile book, Patrick Harpur's Daimonic Reality, and its implications. At this point we reach a stumbling block, as crop circles are introduced for the first time in the book - though certainly not for the last time. Despite warnings from a well-educated friend of his (Mark Pilkington, of Strange Attractor) regarding the human providence of these glyphs, Pinchbeck spends quite a bit of time discussing them as signs of the coming change in consciousness. His naivety seems overwhelming on this subject, as he tells of the stunning "Oliver's Castle" video showing orbs creating a crop circle - which as far as I'm aware, was proved a hoax by John Wabe more than five years ago (if not as far back as 1997).

Where Pinchbeck got it wrong with crop circles however, he must be praised for sections discussing the philosophies of Herbert Marcuse - on the failure of industrialization and our indoctrination into what is an irrational system - and most especially Jean Gebser's idea that humanity passes through different consciousness structures, each with "a profoundly different realization of time and space" and that new forms of consciousness arise as sudden mutations. The discussion of Gebser's thoughts in terms of the industrial revolution ( "What led to the invention of the machine? The breaking forth of time?") and how our modern mindset is to the constant acceleration of production and efficiency, certainly resonated with me as a major fault of our current 'consciousness'. Indeed, the ideas of Marcuse and Gebser are the fulcrum on which Pinchbeck levers his argument:

"If we were to conclude, after careful consideration, that our modern world is based upon fundamentally flawed conceptions of time and mind, that on these fatal defects we had erected a flawed civilisation - like building a tower on an unsound foundation, that becomes increasingly wobbly as it rises - then logic might indicate the necessity, as well as the inevitability, of change. By closing the gap between science and myth, rationality and intuition, technology and technique, we might also understand the form that change would take. Such a shift would not be the "end of the world," but the end of a world, and the opening of the next."

As can be imagined, there are also chapters which cover the shamanic hallucinogens, from iboga to ayahuasca and DMT. Also, as would be expected, Pinchbeck ties in McKenna's Timewave Zero and the date of 2012, to the other confluences of prophetic thinking which point at this date - from the Mayan calendar to the research of John Major Jenkins. In fact, the sheer amount of topics covered at times leaves the impression of superficiality...a myriad of topics could well have been debated in far more depth, from channeling, to the crop circle phenomenon, technological singularity etc, if the book was focused on a smaller amount of topics. Personally though, I'm glad that 2012 is so sweeping in its scope, as it tries to bring all manner of fascinating topics under one roof.

Where Pinchbeck's book falls down - at least from his original argument of not insult the reasoning mind - is the downward spiral in the later chapters in which the author begins wondering whether he has been 'chosen' as one to bring this new consciousness into being. Pinchbeck quotes Edward Edinger: "The archetypes themselves cannot evolve into full consciousness without being routed through a mortal ego to bring that consciousness into realization." By this time in the book - especially upon his return to the Burning Man festival - Pinchbeck is the epitome of a psychedelic burnout, going many days without sleep or sustenance, and begins believing that he may be one of these 'routers'. He receives 'transmissions' from an entity describing itself as Quetzalcoatl, heralding a new dawn of consciousness. At this point unfortunately, my 'reasoning mind' was beginning to feel a little insulted (I think any self-respecting deity would realise, by this point, that channeling prophetic material would just add to the past few decades of similar static which the New Age scene is full of).

In his favour, Pinchbeck is capable of self-analysis, and mentions a number of times the fallibility of apocalyptic fervour (seen throughout history, not just in our times), as well as the 'messianic complex' which so often accompanies psychic burnout - he praises McKenna for being able to approach this very subject with humour. He also considers the option "that I was sliding down a slippery slope toward an unusual form of madness," and notes that apocalyptic prophesy is "a classic symptom of megalomaniac ego-inflation." However, in the end, his internal rage against the current world, combined with what could be his own psychological need for importance, seems to overwhelm these warnings, as he grasps for something that will 'make things right'.

Throughout the book, Pinchbeck struggles with his own personal demons - misogyny, his lack of family interaction (like his father), and feelings that he should be destined for greater things. Perhaps a first step should be for him to realise that these are feelings which I'm sure a large number of men his age all undergo, and they are not peculiar to him as some sort of cruel destiny. Instead, there is a certain fatalism to Pinchbeck's lamenting of his own shortcomings, that these are 'in-built' and something he should not be fighting (for example, he decides that he will no longer be bound by the 'rules' of monogamist relationships). And yet his whole quest is about humanity changing from its 'inbuilt' destructive habits. He rails against humanity, but ignores the self. Rather than exerting discipline, he feels persecuted by humanity for the idea of monogamy and decides to make his own rules. He hurts his partner, but thinks he is the persecuted one (a microcosm of humanity and the globe?) How does he expect humanity to change if he can't change himself? On one hand he denies responsibility on a personal level, but on the other wants humanity to do so. In his favour, he does confront the question at times, acknowledging the "difficult task of reconciling freedom with responsibility." However, the impatient reader might simply feel like suggesting that he get over himself.

The author has certainly been influenced by a number of 'psychic' events which have smashed his previous physicalist worldview. One incident in particular, where his partner seems to be caught up in a dream he is having, is quite unsettling. Thus, we can understand his openness to other 'psychic' events such as the channeling of a prophetic entity. However, perhaps Pinchbeck should heed the warnings of Terence McKenna, and occultists such as Dion Fortune and Aleister Crowley, to be extremely skeptical of the claims of any particular 'intelligence' or entity that makes itself known. At one point in 2012, he relates his unease at a talk by Dolores Cannon, in which he felt that entities were "testing the lulled awareness of the listeners, looking for entry points, seeking to fasten onto their psyche, like mind parasites." Perhaps he should apply this wariness to his own 'communications', considering the fragile psychological state he seemed to be in by the latter stages of the book.

In using 2012 as his date of humanity's metamorphosis, perhaps it also would have been worthwhile to investigate in more detail the claims of those who have already heralded this date. The New Age bookshelf is riddled with vapid books of little research and substance, and I was certainly suspicious of identities mentioned by Pinchbeck, such as Jose Arguelles. At least Pinchbeck also raises his own concerns throughout the book, rather than blindly proselytising on behalf of these theories. One thing there is no doubt about is Pinchbeck's ability to write - every page is a delight to read, and some of his turns of phrase are sublime. Readers of 2012 may at times see similarities in style and substance to Hancock's narrative in Fingerprints of the Gods (which he does mention in the book) - "As I circled the massive blocks, it seemed to me that Stonehenge was constructed so that the knowledge encoded in the site would survive to the present day." His constant questioning throughout the book, indicates how personal this journey is.

In some ways, Pinchbeck's journey thus far reflects the hippie movement of the 1960s. The first embrace of psychedelics and other modes of thought, followed by a downward spiral into self-aggrandizement and denial of responsibility. Some may even see in this a parable about the dangers of psychedelic and occult thought. However, though the later chapters were not the ideal finish to 2012 that I would have expected, the majority of this book is a worthwhile read not only for the subjects it covers, but for the way it is intelligently discussed and written.

In fact, a quote by Pinchbeck's hero Walter Benjamin, lamenting the loss of storytelling, sums up what there is to like about this book:

Less and less frequently do we encounter people with the ability to tell a tale properly...it is as if the something that seemed inalienable to us, the securest among our possessions, were taken from us: the ability to exchange experiences. Experience has fallen in value. And it looks as if it is continuing to fall into bottomlessness.

At its heart, it is a sentiment which sums up this book - Pinchbeck is relating his experience to us, and no matter what we think of that experience, we should certainly appreciate him sharing it with us - not to mention the elegant prose it is written in. This is where the crop circle sections, which grated against me personally - may be seen as worthwhile, as it is the recollection of his own journey...not a necessary, objective truth. As crop circle research Michael Glickman says at one point in 2012: "In a post-Newtonian culture, it is very difficult to put forth a conviction in something that you can't actually prove."

http://dailygrail.com/node/2977

[craazyman]

Originally posted by daniel:
if you can see it in your heart to drop this on Amazon, I would be much obliged.Will do.

[Humming]

Here is my review:

In “Breaking Open the Head”, Daniel Pinchbeck explored the landscapes of visionary mysticism, writing about psychedelic substances, shamanism, and indigenous spirituality while also offering cultural criticism and insightful perspectives about our modern culture. Utilizing an unusual literary style that combines intellectual speculation with personal travelogue, Pinchbeck described his travels to Gabon, Africa to experience the ritual of the plant Ibogaine and to learn from the wisdom of the Bwiti tribe. In “2012: The Return of Quetzacoatl” his journey takes him everywhere from the jungles of Brazil to partake in the healing ceremony of ayahuasca with the Santo Daime church, to the crop circle formations of Glastonbury, to the maniac streets of his East Village home, to the legendary Burning Man festival in the Nevada desert.

Throughout this mind-expanding intellectual adventure, Pinchbeck is guided by the benevolent spirit of Quetzacoatl: the mythological archetype of the rainbow feathered serpent. Invoking the presence of Quetzacoatl like a shaman would invoke a totem animal spirit, Pinchbeck challenges the accepted consensus reality of our rationalized, scientific worldview: the postmodern philosophy of materialism. Instead, he offers evidence for the thesis of philosophical idealism, which states that consciousness creates the material world, not the other way around.

In the company of thinkers such as Michael Talbot, William Irwin Thompson, Rudolph Steiner, and Amit Goswami, Pinchbeck describes the cosmic mindstate of “nondualism” and transcending the traditional subject/object split, which is supported by the idea in quantum physics that the observer creates reality through the act of perception. To give credence to this view, Pinchbeck again chooses the unusual style of blending first-hand experience with intellectual philosophy, to emphasize the importance of subjective experience within science and the study of consciousness.

While “2012” may be a daunting read for the uninitiated, the true seeker will find an insightful tome that hints at an emerging paradigm, a new worldview that synthesizes diverse contexts such as the nature of reality and the significance of non-linear time, shamanism, entheogens, magic, dreaming, reincarnation, indigenous prophecy, Ray Kurzweil’s “technological singularity”, the alien abduction phenomenon, quantum physics, the Burning Man festival, the looming mystery of the year 2012, Gnostic Christianity, crop circles, the secrets of the Mayan calendar, the works of Terence McKenna, Rudolph Steiner, and Carl Jung, the need for ecological and planetary awareness, and the possibility of unified consciousness.

With its mixture of charm, wit, resonant prophecy, and deeply mystical knowledge, “2012” isn’t a book that anyone will soon forget. Pinchbeck is one of the most fascinating and multi-faceted modern intellectuals. His message of the transformative potential of a psychic shift from our greedy, ego-based society to a compassionate and collaborative planetary culture is one that needs to be heard and absorbed into the public dialogue.

[ May 21, 2006, 05:04 PM: Message edited by: Humming ]

[wandering1]

I have been reading 2012 and Breaking Open the Head and I am almost finished with both of them.

Excellent work! I think that they are important books that overlap with my own research and investigations.

Thank you to Daniel for being courageous in exploring these areas and opening up your self for the world to see.

Here is a thread from Noble Realms (another message board) that addresses the topic of "2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl":

http://forum.noblerealms.org/viewtopic.php?id=3322

Also, I want to commend Humming on a very well written review!

[ May 22, 2006, 04:40 PM: Message edited by: wandering1 ]

[daniel]

hi wandering1,

nice thread on that forum - thanks for posting the link.

i would encourage you to put up a review on amazon once you finish the book - and also i look forward to hearing what "red flags" go up for you.

[wandering1]

Hi Daniel,
Yes, I will post a review on Amazon.

No problem!

Also, FYI, the "red flags" noted in that discussion thread were not from me - but I will let you know if I discover my own "red flags".

I live in the San Francisco Bay Area and I look forward to meeting you during your June book tour visit.

[ May 22, 2006, 09:14 PM: Message edited by: wandering1 ]

[ocoyai]

yo
he been there
and done that

[wandering1]

ocoyai,
I saw a listing for a January 2006 visit to City Lights bookstore in San Francisco if that is what you are referring to.

I had also seen listings for another visit to the San Francisco area in June and I have emailed Daniel to see if that is still on.

[wandering1]

I heard back from Daniel and he confirmed the following events:

Thursday, June 8: San Francisco

7 P.M.: Talk/signing at City Lights, 261 Columbus Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94133, 415-362-8193.

Sunday, June 11: Oakland

3:00 P.M.: Talk/signing at Diesel Bookstore, 5433 College Avenue, Oakland, CA 94618, 510-633-9965.

[daniel]

review from 2012 expert Geoff Stray, who has plenty of nits to pick:

http://www.diagnosis2012.co.uk/pinch.htm



Dire Gnosis reviews:

2012 – The Return of Quetzalcoatl by Daniel Pinchbeck



Daniel Pinchbeck’s first book, Breaking Open the Head, about the author’s travels around the world, meeting shamans and sampling their sacred hallucinogenic medicines, was widely acclaimed. Thus his next book was awaited impatiently by many, and being published by Penguin, had the advantage of pre-sales hype, and pre-orders awaiting its release.

Pinchbeck, a New York intellectual, describes himself as “a clearly deficient, half-dissolute figure, a ‘freelance journalist’ of dubious repute” (p.20), and his 400-page (hardcover edition) book, 2012 – The Return of Quetzalcoatl, is an autobiographical essay that starts with his childhood experiences growing up in New York City. The book is split into six named parts but none of the chapters are named. There is no list of contents, nor are there any pictures or diagrams, nor any notes and references. However, there is an index and a bibliography. The book is well-written, but is not very gripping reading, and when finished, left me wondering if the author could have got his point over with just a short article. So what point is Pinchbeck actually making in this book? A summary of the chapters and their contents would be instructive here, so here are my chapter summaries:

Part 1: A Universe in Ruins 1: Pinchbeck’s Youth, Drugs and Quetzalcoatl; 2: Psychedelics; 3: Death of Pinchbeck’s Father and Ayahuasca; 4: New Physics and Jung; 5: 9/11

Part 2: The Serpent Temple 1: Daimonic Reality; 2: Crop Circles; 3: Terence McKenna; 4: Christianity

Part 3: Lucifer and Ahriman 1; UFOs; 2: Streiber and Abduction; 3: Glastonbury Crop Circle Symposium 2002; 4; Goswami and Steiner

Part 4: The Loom of Maya 1: The Maya According to Arguelles; 2: Gebser; 3: Deep into Arguelles; 4: Jenkins, Calleman and Arguelles

Part 5: The Dance of Kali 1: Iboga in Mexico; 2: Hawaiian Healing; 3: Symposium 2003, Crabwood Alien, Stonehege and Avebury; 4: Crop Circles – Schnabel, Irving, Martineau, Brown

Part 6: The Lord of The Dawn 1: Burning Man Festival; 2: Pinchbeck’s Sex Life; 3: Santo Daime and Channelling Quetzalcoatl 4: Jung on the Book of Job and More Daime; 5: The Quetzalcoatl Transmission; 6: Quetzalcoatl/Akosha/666 = Author, Recommends Arguelles

Epilogue: The Hopi and Calleman

As you can see, there is not much continuity in the subjects, since they are covered in the chronological order in which Pinchbeck dealt with them in his life story. The main thrust of the book, apart from the expected psychedelics, is crop circles. Pinchbeck was impressed by retired architect and crop circle researcher Michael Glickman, whose study of the sacred geometry of crop formations has led him to the conclusion that these creations are the harbingers of a dimensional shift, and that it will culminate in 2012. Glickman figured that the 1997 26 x 30 grid formation at Etchilhampton in Wiltshire signified the year 2012 because the 26 squares represented the 26 weeks in 6 months, and 30 of those equals 15 years, meaning that the 780 squares of the grid represented the 780 weeks between August 1997 and August 2012 (see item 23, Boustrophedon ). However, Pinchbeck mistakenly says the 780 weeks lead to “the end of 2012” (p.87). I pointed out in the late nineties, that not only is 780 days exactly 3 Tzolkins, but it is also one cycle of the planet Mars – a cycle also recorded by the Maya, since one Mars Round of 146 Mars cycles equals 3 Venus Rounds (6 Calendar Rounds). Pinchbeck covers this point with “This grid also seemed to reference the Tzolkin…”

Part One starts in New York City in the early seventies, where Pinchbeck grew up. By the time of his late twenties, he had plunged into feelings of desolation, and felt he was dead and “wandering in some Hades” (p.25-26), and sought escape in heroin, cocaine and alcohol. Unsatisfied, he re-investigated magic mushrooms and LSD, and found that the substances themselves seemed to be intelligent and could suspend linear time. He continued the investigation, and visited the West African rainforest, to experience an initiation with the Bwiti tribe using the psychedelic root bark called iboga. He tried ayahuasca, the Amazonian sacred brew, “in an East Side apartment, guided by pseudo-shamans from California”(p.28), visited Mexican shamans of Oaxaca, to try the local hallucinogens, and also tried smoking pure DMT and psychedelics invented in laboratories, such as DPT (dipropropyltryptamine). Pinchbeck later became convinced that this exploration of chemically-altered consciousness was being guided by Quetzalcoatl – the Toltec/Aztec plumed serpent god.

The psychedelic experiences triggered an interest in the paranormal, and Pinchbeck started reading up on the findings of Dean Radin, director of the Consciousness Research Laboratory in Nevada, who have apparently scientifically verified telepathy, precognition and clairvoyance. In 2000, he started going to the annual Burning Man festival, in the Nevada desert, then went to Ecuador to try ayahuasca with the shamans of the Secoya tribe. In chapter 4, he explores quantum physics and the work of psychologist Carl Jung, to try and throw some light on the strange dimensions and time-warps experienced in altered states. In September 2001, he witnessed some of the horrendous scenes of the 9/11 disaster, and notes that the Princeton University random number generator recorded a strong signal that started before towers were hit. This, according to the director of the project, is evidence of the first glimmerings of a global brain coming into being, which ties in with De Chardin’s concept of an evolving mind-layer, or ‘noosphere’ around the Earth.

In Part 2, Pinchbeck introduces crop circles, but fails to give any information (apart from mention of Gerald Hawkins' diatonic ratio discovery and Eltjo Hasselhof's work), that might convince people that the phenomenon is anything more than “landscape art”. The huge amount of evidence produced by BLT is barely mentioned, let alone referenced. This is a shame, because it will bring disrepute onto the subject of 2012 – supposedly the main subject of the book (see discussion on 2012 Tribe HERE ). In fact, Pinchbeck twice visited the Glastonbury Crop Circle Symposium, in researching his 2012 book, but didn’t attend the presentation about 2012. He also failed to mention any of the formations that reference Maya calendar numbers, (apart from the one cited above, upon which his whole crop-circles-2012 connection is based), and for a book centred on crop circles, to have no photos or even drawings of them means the reader cannot grasp the massive impact of these images. Part 2 is, however, redeemed by the discussion of the McKennas’ trip to Ecuador, which prompted the discovery of the Timewave. Unfortunately, the Timewave itself is not explained, and its brief mention incorporates an error, which I list below along with other errors in the book.

In Parts 3 and 4, Pinchbeck makes the most interesting points in the book, regarding 2012, in which he finds correspondences in the work of philosophers such as Steiner and Gebser – see The Pattern Perceived, below. Part 4 goes on to discuss the channelling of Jose Arguelles, in which “Pacal Votan” appeared and subsequently dictated the “Telektonon prophecy”. Arguelles then became “convinced that he is an incarnation, or emanation, of the “galactic agent” and time-wizard Pacal Votan…”, although Pinchbeck and many followers of Arguelles don’t seem to realize that Pacal and Votan were actually different people who lived centuries apart. Pinchbeck does remain objective on Arguelles, pointing out that there is an element of “megalomaniac ego inflation” (p.236), but he likes the idea that the Maya calendar is “fundamentally a time-schedule for the evolution of consciousness”, which is the concept behind Arguelles’ Dreamspell system, although these are in fact the words of Carl Calleman. Calleman’s system is also covered, but the faults of the theory are not. You can read about them in Beyond 2012, or on this site (see www.diagnosis2012.co.uk/call.htm (http://www.diagnosis2012.co.uk/call.htm) ). The brilliant work of John Major Jenkins is also briefly covered in this part of 2012 – The Return of Quetzalcoatl, and Pinchbeck attempts to unify Arguelles, Calleman and Jenkins, saying they all agree on the Maya calendar being a consciousness-evolution time-schedule.

In Part 5, Pinchbeck continues his psychedelic voyage, taking Iboga in Mexico, and Ayahuasca in Hawaii, and then he goes back to the Glastonbury Symposium, and takes up crop circles again. On p.296-299, Pinchbeck succeeds in communicating the “daemonic reality” concept of Patrick Harpur, which circle researcher and sacred geometer, Allan Brown skilfully described in his Glastonbury talk. The intelligence behind the phenomenon plays games with the observer, prodding him/her into a shift of understanding. However, for those unconvinced that these formations are not the work of artists and jokers, the observations will fall on deaf ears.

In Part 6, in the midst of more ayahuasca stories and tales of the author’s need for multiple sexual partners, the ‘skeptical journalist’ surprises us by channelling Quetzalcoatl, the Toltec/Aztec plumed serpent deity, and also claims to be the reincarnation of an Indian prince called Akosha. The “Quetzalcoatl transmission” implies that the prophesied return of Quetzalcoatl is happening now, and that, “the writer of this work is the vehicle of my arrival – my return – to this realm” (p.370). This means that, like Arguelles, who is one of several claimants to being a reincarnated form of Lord Pacal, Pinchbeck is now one of several returned Quetzalcoatls (see coming review of The Return of the Feathered Serpent by JC Husfelt). Even more incredible, perhaps, is that Pinchbeck goes on to identify himself with the Great Beast of Revelation, whose number is 666, though he does consider that he could have been the victim of astral plane entities, “puffing me up with delusions of grandeur…” (p.371). He saw the ayahuasca brew (“Daime”) as a protection against “whatever arrogant self-inflation came with my Quetzalcoatl transmission” (p.352), but also realizes the validity of the question, “…did the overuse of hallucinogens merely distort my judgement, tilting me toward madness?” (p.372). The identity with 666 is not surprising considering that Aleister Crowley, the infamous explorer and Magickian (intended spelling) and the most famous claimant to the title, also had a multiple partners/ drug experimentation history – see his book, Diary of a Drug Fiend.

Errors

An inaccuracy creeps in when Pinchbeck briefly covers McKenna’s Timewave Zero. He quotes from the 1993 edition of The Invisible Landscape, but is unaware that in the original 1975 edition, the end-point of the wave was calculated as 17th November 2012. When McKenna later found out about the 21st December end-point of the Maya 13-baktun cycle, he modified the end-point by 34 days. Pinchbeck also implies that McKenna returned from his expedition to the Ecuador rainforest with the conviction that ‘concrescence’ would occur during an eclipse of the galactic centre by the solstice sun, and that he then consulted astronomical software to find that this “would next occur on December 21, 2012” (p.98). It is then implied that this is why the 2012 end-point was chosen for the Timewave. The fact is that McKenna analysed the I Ching upon his return from Ecuador, and having produced the Timewave, locked it on to history by correlating the Hiroshima bomb explosion in 1945 with a massive novelty peak near the end of the Timewave. 64 lunar years later (each consisting of 384 days or 13 lunar months), the wave hits its maximum novelty endpoint on November 17th 2012. It was only after this revelation that McKenna found out that we are in the time of a conjunction of the winter solstice sunrise and the “galactic center”. Page 196 of the 1993 edition of The Invisible Landscape has an extra sentence inserted, that wasn’t in the original 1975 edition, saying “When this is done the most likely heliacal rising of the galactic center with the solstice sun occurs on December 21, 2012”. This is because, between the editions, McKenna had heard about the end-point of the 13-baktun cycle being in 2012, on a winter solstice, and thus changed his end-point by 34 days. It is still true that McKenna ascertained the 2012 end-point independently of any knowledge of the Maya calendar 2012 end-point, but not the actual day, apart from his identification of solstices generally around 2012 as being significant. Pinchbeck’s failure to grasp this distinction is understandable considering the ambiguous wording of the 1993 edition of The Invisible Landscape. John Major Jenkins later went on to show that it is the galactic equator (or visible galactic centre) rather than the astronomical galactic centre that is concerned in this conjunction, which he called Galactic Alignment.

These may sound like nitpicking, but critics will use errors like these to try and undermine the whole concept of the significance of 2012. A slightly more serious error occurs on p.191 of Pinchbeck’s book, where he puts the start-date at “August 13, 3114 BC”, and the end-point at “December 21, AD 2012”. This is due to the fact that he got his information from Jose Arguelles, as he readily admits. Pinchbeck correctly ascertained that Arguelles’ start-date of August 13, 3113 BC is misleading because it fails to account for the missing year zero between 1 BC and 1 AD, and he corrects it to 3114 BC. However, the 13 August start date is the start-date of what Mayanists call “the 585285 correlation”, the end-point of which is 23 December 2012. The alternative correlation used by Mayanists, and the one supported by Jenkins’ work is the 584283 correlation, which starts and finishes 2 days before the 584283 correlation, starting on August 11, 3114 BC and ending on 21 December 2012 AD. Thus, Pinchbeck has the start-date of one correlation and the end-date of the other correlation. This is sloppy research, and any book about 2012 should have these very basic facts sorted out.

Another misunderstanding on p.192 shows that Pinchbeck equates the Long Count with the “Great Cycle”. When Mayanists started to decipher the calendrical glyphs of the Maya, they didn’t have a word for the cycle of 20 katuns, so they simply called it a “Cycle”. At first they thought the next significant cycle was composed of 20 of these “Cycles”, but they later agreed that when 13 of the “Cycles” were completed, (13.0.0.0.0) the numbering of all 5 periods reverted to zero the following day (0.0.0.0.1). They called this 13-Cycle period, the “Great Cycle”. Later, to avoid confusion, they named the 20-katun cycle a baktun, using linguistic clues, and refer to the Great Cycle as the 13-baktun cycle, since there are actually larger cycles on some monuments. Thus, the Great Cycle is an outmoded term used by Arguelles, and refers to the 13-baktun cycle, which is just one cycle in the Long Count calendar.

Yet another error picked up from Arguelles is the confusion of Lord Pacal of Palenque and Votan. As explained in Whats New item 198, The "Pacal Votan" Composite, Pacal and Votan were 2 totally different people who lived centuries apart. Although Pinchbeck spends a lot of time looking at Jose Arguelles’ ideas, and correctly points out that “While Arguelles is correct that the twelve-month Gregorian calendar is a solar abstraction…the 13-moon system he proposes is a lunar abstraction, hence equally off-kilter” (p.283), he ends up recommending that the world takes on this equally off-kilter calendar as “a necessary part of the solution” to “our enslavement by artificial time” (p.377). Another error picked up from Arguelles, who in turn got the error from Tony Shearer, concerns the arrival of Cortez on the day 1 Reed in the year 1 Reed. This is not true – I have checked all the facts and ascertained that it was the year 1 Reed, but day 1 Reed was about 12 days off. See http://www.diagnosis2012.co.uk/harm.htm for more information, or Beyond 2012 pages 45-47).

Yet More Errors

On p.288, Pinchbeck gets the date of the 2012 Venus transit wrong. He says it will be on June 5, 2012, when it will be on June 6, 2012. It occurs exactly 8 haabs (365-day years) after the previous Venus transit in 2004 (8 June 2004). This is the period of one Venus pentagram, and exactly 104 of these makes a Venus Round, which is 2 Calendar Rounds. This is why the Maya did not include leap years in their calendars – it would have destroyed their whole cross-referencing calendrical structure. The Arguelles Dreamspell calendar, which Pinchbeck supports includes leap days, so in that system, it goes unnoticed that both these Venus transit days (2004 and 2012) are on the same Tzolkin day sign, (in the unbroken Tzolkin count of the Quiche Maya) which is Ik, or Ehecatl in the Aztec version, and this day is governed by Quetzalcoatl himself, who turned into Venus. So, the Venus transits occur on the day of Venus in the original unbroken day count, but in Dreamspell, they occur on 2 different day signs, neither of which is Ik.

On p.286, the method of calculating the numbers of the Fibonacci sequence is given as “…by adding each pair of integers, and then dividing the resulting larger number by the preceding smaller one…” This is wrong. In the Fibonacci sequence - 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21…each number is simply the result of adding the previous 2 numbers…no division is necessary.

On p.292, Pinchbeck says that the Wessex Research Group put out a magazine called Swirled News, but this is actually the name of a crop circle website run by Andy Thomas, author of Vital Signs, and was not the name of the WRG magazine. The crop circle confusion also extends to which county they are centred in, on p.274, where Pinchbeck says he drove 50 miles to Somerset, to see the crop formation that appeared on North Down, Wiltshire. This is probably just a typo, since he was already in Somerset, at Glastonbury. Other typos occur on p.265, which starts halfway through a sentence, and on p.261, which ends halfway through a sentence. Other errors include the "cosmic giggle factor", a term repeatedly attributed by Pinchbeck to Terence McKenna, while it was actually coined by Robert Anton Wilson in his 1977 book, Cosmic Trigger - The Final Secret of the Illuminati. Irritating to students of literature on the ancient Maya are Pinchbeck's use of the term "Classical Maya" instead of Classic Maya; "Mayans" instead of Maya, and attribution of the Aztec New Fire ceremony to the Maya.

The Pattern Perceived

Pinchbeck excuses these errors in advance, in the book (p.20), when he declares himself “a generalist, a perceiver of pattern rather than a delver into detail”. The pattern that he perceived is that a global transformation of consciousness has been predicted by philosophers such as Steiner, Goswami and Gebser, and is supported by the Psychologist Carl Jung and findings from quantum physics – a quantum leap also fits in with evolutionary theory, in which changes are made in sudden jumps – punctuated equilibrium. In fact, Gebser says we are in the 4th evolving stage - archaic, magical, mythical, and mental-rational., and are on the verge of a mutation, or transition to a 5th stage – “integral and aperspectival, characterized by the realization of time freedom and ego freedom”. This fits in well with the Hopi system, in which we are in the 4th World, approaching the 5th World.

Steiner, Pinchbeck points out, also said we are in the 4th incarnation of the Earth, and approaching 5th incarnation, or “Jupiter state”. We have 3 bodies already formed – the physical body, the ether body, and the astral body, and in the 4th incarnation we are strengthening the “I” or ego-body, by changing the desires and cravings that “pour into us through the astral body”, or “transmuting lower passions into higher energies”. This will create a 5th body called the 'spirit self', and in the Jupiter state, the “spirit self will experience its full unfolding”.

Conclusion

Pinchbeck points out that the Dreamspell 13-moon calendar is supposed to be a solution to the Gregorian calendar being a “solar abstraction”, yet the moon does not have a 28-day cycle, but a 29.5 day one. This is the cycle followed by the Maya and by the Ancient Britons, who encoded it into Stonehenge. The Dreamspell, says Pinchbeck, is thus “a lunar abstraction” (p.283). However, he surprisingly ends up recommending it to the world as a replacement for the Gregorian calendar. He comments on the ego-inflation of the Arguelles channellings, yet surprisingly ends up providing his own transmission.

The book is a rambling autobiographical tale, peppered with quotes from philosophers but it doesn’t actually have much to say about 2012, apart from a weakly argued crop circle connection; the ambiguous study of Arguelles, the theory of Carl Calleman, in which the evolutionary shift is actually all over by 2012; a brief mention of John Major Jenkins’ work, and even briefer one of McKenna’s Timewave. As one enthusiastic reader put it, when he finally finished the book, “...I’m not sure what I learned or if I learned anything tangible that can be described with words...” (from a 2012 Tribe discussion ). However, if the interesting points in The Pattern Perceived, above, had been concentrated into an article, rather than spread out through the book, then that would have made very interesting reading.

[sidecross]

Ouch!

I have no way to argue for or against that review, but I would not be dismayed.

Any tightrope walker is bound to take a stumble that is why they have nets. You are young enough and should be smart enough to sort out a miss step or a sudden unexpected slack in the tightrope.

The review should give you a deeper appreciation of Tim Leary and the arrows that will fly when you move beyond expected doctrine.

[jose1]

Pinchbeck's book was by far the best I have read so far on the subject, next to Rick Strassman's book. Pinchbeck's style is clean and to the point and interesting. There's a couple of places he bores, but then comes right back with some interesting info.

B O T H is good book because you can read it once and then let the info sift through your head and go back and read it again.

[wandering1]

From Geoff Stray review of 2012:

"peppered with quotes from philosophers but it doesn’t actually have much to say about 2012, apart from a weakly argued crop circle connection; the ambiguous study of Arguelles, the theory of Carl Calleman, in which the evolutionary shift is actually all over by 2012; a brief mention of John Major Jenkins’ work, and even briefer one of McKenna’s Timewave."

I disagree. I think that the book is an insightful and profound exploration of some of the key ideas related to 2012. I found that the use of quotes from philosophers was well crafted, and in some cases elegant and subtle. Perhaps so much so that even some "2012 experts" may not have understood it.

I think that some of the core ideas of the book relate to being able to step back and perceive larger patterns. Not just that, but to hold them up as possibilities rather than as articles of faith.

The thesis of the book was given at the beginning: "This book advances a radical theory: that human consciousness is rapidly transitioning to a new state, a new intensity of awareness that will manifest as a different understanding, a transformed realization, of time and space and self. By this thesis, the transition is already underway- though largely subliminally- and will become increasingly evident as we approach the year 2012."

With such pioneering work there are bound to be detractors and perhaps some of the harshest criticism will come from within the field.

Another key idea that I got from the book is that at some point it may be necessary to weave our own personal experiences into our understanding. We can quote experts and debate what the experts think but at some point it can be really useful to make the understandings our own - without abandoning rational and logical analysis.

I think that using autobiographical examples is a way to get this idea across in a way that a "to the point" article would not be able to convey.

[ June 01, 2006, 07:28 AM: Message edited by: wandering1 ]

[daniel]

i wrote this response to stray's review:

Hi Geoff,

Thanks for your careful analysis of the errors in the details of my new book. While working on it, I often longed for the help of a researcher, especially one competent in mathematical and numerical specifics. I had to produce the work under a low budget and facing extreme deadline pressure – from the publisher, but also from myself, as I felt a great urgency to have these ideas in circulation before the “end of the cycle” could come any closer. I will seek to fix the inaccuracies in future editions.

In your review, there is one shocking error, which I would ask you to rectify right away. I do not support Jose Arguelles’ calendar as the solution of the calendar problem. I do not understand where you got that idea, as it is not stated in the text – quite the opposite, in fact. In the book’s last chapter, I argue that we will need a global meeting of minds from different cultures and different disciplines – astronomers, indigenous shamans, physicists, etcetera – to assemble for the purpose of deciding on a new harmonic calendar (or “timing frequency”) for the Earth. I suggest that a logical place to hold such a conference would be Glastonbury, and it might be a conscious fulfillment of the myth or archetype of “thirteenth tribes” coming together to create a “New Jerusalem.” I am hopeful that you and others from the UK crop circle research world, such as John Martineau and Allan Brown, will contemplate this prospect, and perhaps organize such a forum within the next few years. In this way, we might move from passive contemplation of these ideas to active engagement with them, in service to humanity. As the last line of the book puts it, “We are the ones we have been waiting for.”

As for your other critiques, I would argue that the breadth of the book, as well as the autobiographical elements and the attention to style, are crucial to convey these ideas outside of the narrow and circumscribed realms in which they have lingered. If this consciousness transformation has any real meaning, then it must be realized as a qualitative shift that changes one’s inner nature and one’s perceptions, rather than just a flat tabulation of scientific data and hypothesis. My hope is that the book will convey the process that I had to go through, as a flawed individual, to integrate an entirely new system of thought and a new way of relating to time and being. “The more abstract the truth you want to teach, the more you have to seduce the senses to it,” wrote Nietzsche. By following my process, the reader has an opportunity to work through his or her own relationship to this material.

You also quote an enthusiastic reader of the book on tribe.net, who felt I had not suggested any tangible solutions. For the sake of clarity, I have posted his note and my answer to it below, with the hope that you will include it, along with this letter, with your review on your website.

Yours,
Daniel

#
Re: Pinchbeck's Book
Fri, May 26, 2006 - 12:12 PM
so i finished the book...

...im not sure what i learned or if i learned anything tangible that can
be described with words...as t mc k once said: the brighter the bonfire
the more surrounding darkness is revieled..

so i dont think i walked away with any anwers
im just more suspicious of how i view things
from a rational standpoint...maybe more trusting of my intuition

i'll say this..those radio interviews with the sirus guys and art bell jr
were painfully obtuse...so even thought im clueless about the world(s)
i feel im a little better of than those schumcks
reply to this post
#

*
Daniel
Daniel Pinchbeck
online 91
Re: Pinchbeck's Book
Sat, May 27, 2006 - 12:26 PM
Hi Xodman,

I want to say I appreciated your log of thoughts and impressions while reading my book. I will try to answer your questions.

As to why I omitted Leary, I just couldn’t cover everything! I had to go with what I was drawn toward – I also omitted Nostradomus, plus a number of prophecies from other Native American cultures (such as “White Buffalo Girl”) that would have supported my thesis. The eight circuit model seems interesting, but I have not yet explored it in depth. I am more drawn toward Stan Grof and his model of the perinetal matrices, and the relationship between birth trauma and transpersonal experience (also its relationship to astrology, via the work of Richard Tarnas), but wasn’t able to incorporate that in the book either.

As for “answers”, I feel that I do provide a number of possible conclusions, but I also leave it up to the reader to sort through these possibilities. I didn’t want to impose my answers, but let people work it through the material on their own, so they can integrate the new perspective or paradigm I am offering. If I try to separate some of these hypothetical “answers”, they include the following:

1. Perhaps I am offering a kind of “system software upgrade” for the modern mind, which has been trapped in dualism, literalism, and rational materialism. I am saying that “rationality” has to open up to include actual, tangible factors of reality that are left out of the materialist paradigm – psychic phenomena, for instance, and transpersonal experience, and the “reality of the psyche.” By making this shift in perspective, you reorient yourself in relationship to the world and the cosmos. Because we create systems and technologies based on our perspectival relationship to time and space, this might allow for a deepseated shift in the nature of our world.

2. Our civilizational crisis is based on a wrong relationship to time, and this can potentially be overcome through a new calendar that would place us in a new “timing frequency.” This is Arguelles’ idea – but I carefully critique the calendar he has created. I argue that we will need a global meeting of minds – astronomers, physicists, shamans, mystics, astrologers – to create a new calendar and harmonic timing frequency, meshed with the physical reality of the surrounding universe. A new timing frequency would be retroactive as well as projective, so we would be able to do away with nationstate charters, Third World debt structures, unfair legal codes, etc. We could create a new harmonic template for a compassion-based planetary civilization without artificial borders or boundaries.

3. My own narrative suggests that those of us who are currently outside the power structure and have been intensifying our consciousness and deepening our awareness over the last decades may turn out to constitute a new “elite class” that will supplant the current political and economic leadership during an imminently approaching crisis. As previous revolutions – such as the French Revolution – indicate, there is a natural process in which a ruling class becomes increasingly out of touch with visceral reality, until that class can no longer maintain order. At that point, the class that has attained a deeper attunement to the truth of their time naturally emerge into prominence. Although this was a violent and chaotic process in the past, if we can understand and integrate the pattern at a deeper level before the crisis happens, we can ready ourselves for being leaders in this shift to a new form of social organization. I believe this process is also carefully explored in Tao do Ching and the I Ching.

4. We co-create reality through the activity of consciousness and our directed intention. Therefore, we have to take careful stock of our intentions and how we direct our psychic energy. If we are obsessed with apocalypse and collapse, or enmeshed in paranoid conspiracy, we help to bring those results into manifestation. I agree with Arguelles that the “job” of the visionary is to envision the best possible outcome for humanity – by realizing and holding the higher frequency, we help to bring new possibilities into manifestation.

5. The importance of psychedelic investigation and the transpersonal domain: The book suggests that what is taking place is a nondual process of consciousness evolution – we have to simultaneously do the painful work on ourselves, master ourselves, in order to bring about positive transformation of the world.

6. A huge amount of trapped and wasted psychic energy is embedded in sexuality and love relationships, and we need to bring this area up to a much higher level of conscious awareness and articulation. Women have as much work as men in realizing and reintegrating their shadow projections – much of the feminine “will to power” manifests in the arena of personal relationships, with devastating consequences. This turns out to be very hard work on a personal level. A transformation in our realization of eros – also a resacralization of eros - may be necessary before we can make a positive transformation of the world.

7. The most extraordinary and sophisticated reading of the Mayan Calendar by Calleman suggests that breakdown is coming very soon – 2008, give or take a few months. This may seem over literal- but I think his reasoning is quite sound. This also fits with other predictions I have seen – Peak Oil etc – and also intuitively seems to fit with the sense of accelerating entropy now prevalent. Therefore, those of us who may as I said above become the elite of a new planetary civilization have just until that time to prepare – I would like to see the widespread dissemination of a new paradigm including sustainability, alternative energy and permaculture tools, new media expressing a positive vision of human possibilities, as well as wider dissemination of shamanism and other techniques of personal transformation.

8. We are in the same situation today with psychic power as people were in the 1750s with electricity: They had experienced lightning and static shocks but had no idea how to bring it down into the world to create an industrial grid. Many of us are experiencing upsurges of synchronicity and psychic phenomena (part of the process of the “coming of the self” revealing the “reality of the psyche.”), which suggest that the new “mutational” shift in consciousness will allow us to understand and access psychic energy in new ways, by integrating intuitive and rational modes of cognition. We can begin to envision what support systems for this transformation might be like, as that visioning process will help bring it into realization.

Does this help at all?

[sidecross]

What is wrong with being possibly wrong? If all we had are answers their would be no need for questions. Can we not be satisfied that nearly all of our bipedal family knows which orifice to place the fork and spoon?

I still would be grateful for a safety net when on the tightrope and a sense of humor in my back pocket.

[wandering1]

Daniel,

Nice work on the Geoff Stray reply.

[drew hempel]

Daniel -- your reply is fascinating! Have you read Camille Paglia's "Sexual Personae"? Her writing style is as ornate as her subject matter and it took me a year to digest her book.

I corresponded with Jenkins when his book first came out and when I pointed out the same "stargate conspiracy" material on Oliver L. Reiser, Arguelles and the CIA-U.N.-Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton material Jenkin's response was that he focused only on the traditional Mayan information.

More escapism or is it fear?

This is a problem I think because the books "Fire in the Mind" by George Johnson and "One True Platonic Heaven" by John Casti both deal with the techno-spirituality coming out of advanced macro quantum chaos science and it's ties to ancient cosmology.

Both write out of Santa Fe in collaboration with the top military science research labs.

In otherwords the whole argument about "which" Mayan calendar interpretation is more accurate doesn't take into account chaos science discovered by Henri Poincare at the end of the 19th century!!

Steve Strogatz is the best on this topic of macro quantum chaos science (the top subject at the top research labs) and his latest stance is that the computers have taken over in math and it's just a matter of time before the computer control spreads.

That is exactly the "actual Matrix Plan" information that I've had published online -- free readable. See http://nonduality.com/hempel.html

Anyway the computers are taking over for STRUCTURAL REASONS inherent to mathematics which is the foundation for all science and all logic even.

The reason I asked about Camille Paglia is because Nefertiti was the cold, UnDead queen that started humanism. It's very difficult for us to accept the Cosmic Mother as total destruction but that is the tantric path.

Paglia calls this cold, UnDead logos "the fourth eye" and my local anarchist hang-out "the Hard Times Cafe" in Minneapolis had as their boardwalk advertisement "Open your fourth eye!"

This is the ultimate Femme Fatale experience! Robbe-Grillet understood this!

The U.S. Empire is based on this cold UnDead desire of Nefertiti.

Love can be pure cold, Undead matter -- that consciousness "behind" the Heart-mind. The universe doesn't care AT ALL whether humans live or die. It's a mathematical process of resonance from Apopis -- the Egyptian goddess of apocalypse.

drew hempel, M.A.

[drew hempel]

http://nonduality.com/hempel.htm

That should do it -- although it's only "half" of the expose. All get the other half as well.

[drew hempel]

http://drewhempel.gnn.tv

Just scan down to the blog entry "secrets of the all seeing eye-one-I Freemasonic-math-science"

haha

[daniel]

excellent exchange between john major jenkins and john hoopes about my book and other related subjects:

http://groups.google.com/group/utmesoamerica/browse_thread/thread/a636bb7dfc6d7e85/c412ee3a86e38b1a

I would say the fairest and truest criticism of "2012" is the lack of engagement with traditional Mayan culture. I wanted very much to return to the Yucatan and speak with the Maya, but I ran out of money and time. Perhaps I will rectify this in the near future.

[drew hempel]

Ah -- fascinating. David Freidal's co-author helped Martin Pretchel with his Mayan shamanic book "Secrets of the Talking Jaguar."

I don't see these "scholars" touching Pretchel's work!!

In fact my first year project at Hampshire college was a moog synthesizer-Mayan flute fugue recorded on a 4-trac that was out of sync.

I got the Mayan flute from a Mayan outside a pyramid complex in the Yucatan in 1986 or so.

My brother-in-law is Pipil from El Salvador -- a mix of Mayan and Nahua.

Anyway there's been recent research documenting that the traditional Mayan have become a major force of destruction because of the traditional slash and burn farming techniques.

Maybe these same techniques are what caused the collapse of the Mayan Empire but I've also seen a study documenting that the development of the Mayan Empire followed the Golden Ratio Fractal!!

I think both those articles may have been in New Scientist.

The same golden ratio Empire analysis has been proven for the Roman and Ottoman Empires.

The Golden ratio is the slowest converging nonlinear asymmetrical fractal in mathematics.

The best way to make anything last the longest.

One is asymmetric -- but the Mayans were afraid of Zero as the end of Time.

In western math we rely on Numbers being symmetric (as lined up with phonetic logic) so there is a deep paradox involved with the use of zero and one.

Right-brain number systems -- like the 60-based number system of the Sumerians -- relied on the Gods as ratios of planets.

I expect there is a direct lineage here and anthropology professor Rodney Needham has speculated the same in his excellent "Left and Right" book that he edited on dispersion of Solar verus Lunar-based city-state empires.

In Vedic philosophy for example time is not just cyclical but it's a spiral that leads to consciousness -- this concept goes beyond astro-theology.

The "direct path" in Vedic cosmology teaches that if a person empties out their Heart-Mind then eternal liberation is achieved -- just as if they astral traveled to the "end" of the universe!! That's why it's called "the direct path" -- quite a bit easier.

But we find the same position in the start of Western Monotheism -- with Akhenaten in Egypt stating (and this is a direct quote):

"I have never known my non-existence."

Even professor Joseclyn Godwin understands this issue when he writes on cosmology and ratio theory -- the fact that zero and one paradoxes lead to "empty awareness" as the source for Time is a very disturbing reality to encounter.

It was made the deepest secret of religion and science, etc.

thanks,

drew hempel, M.A.

[drew hempel]

In fact this paradox of logic and math is at the heart of black holes! John Wheeler who coined the term "black hole" (much to the anger of the French, haha) anyway Wheeler insists that since "It comes from Bit" the dynamics of the black hole must be controlled by the natural numbers 1 and 0 -- there is no real number continuum for black holes. see the book "Strange Science" for details.

But Mario Livio in his definitive book "The Golden Ratio" states that the black hole is "governed" by the Golden Ratio which is defined in western math as an irrational number.

In fact this paradox is at the heart of Arguelles and James Hurtak and Melchizadek's "propaganda" for the New Age -- propaganda that has been linked to a CIA campaign to assimilate "back to the land" cultures -- like the Kogi in Colombia that Drunvalo Melchizadek jumped all over.

As I stated the Stargate conspiracy author's website gave details on this but their book also has details -- Lynn Picknett and Clive Prince. Also professor Bruce Lincoln -- at U of Chicago -- documented the CIA's infiltration of traditional Mayan culture as an attempt to stop any "back to the land" philosophy.

Anyway if you look at Melchizadek Drunvalo's books they're all about how the New Age is based on the irrational golden ratio NOT the Fibonacci series of fractal natural numbers (which converges into the golden ratio).

How Nature must be "controlled" etc. -- the Golden Ratio is the foundation of Freemasonry which publishes New Dawn -- the top New Age magazine.

For example 1:2::2:3 is the same as A:B::B:A + B (the phonetic, left-brain definition of the Golden Ratio) But 2:3::3:4 based on the law of Pythagoras -- the right-brain logic of shamanism and the Harmonic Series behind number theory paradoxes.

Quantum chaos math professor Steve Strogatz in his promo of the new book "Stalking the Riemann Hypothesis" calls this Harmonic Series paradox that is the foundation for predicting all prime numbers a "conspiracy between nature and number, atom and arithmetic."

drew hempel, M.A.

[drew hempel]

I just remembered that professor Rodney Needham also wrote a fascinating expose on Carlos Casteneda. It turns out that beyond the dichtomy of him being a fake -- a scam-artist and him being an intiate of psycho-tropic shrooms that inspired some trippy writing -- the third path Needham etches out is that it appears Castaneda plagiarzed a 1950s book on Zen Meditation by a german.

The book was published in English and was quite popular and Needham documents in detail how Carlos Castaneda uses the exact same languages and concepts as this Zen book.

Another great example of how drugs and meditation overlap in the guise of anthropology -- the only discipline that other academics openly have called to be disappeared.

drew hempel, M.A.

[sacha]

I would say the fairest and truest criticism of "2012" is the lack of engagement with traditional Mayan culture.I must say that that is frankly the most disappointing aspect of "2012" to me.

Not even second-hand contact with them, through other people who have had contact with traditional Maya. Not even in books. (Martin Prechtel is not even listed in the bibliography. Humbatz Men, the only direct Mayan source I can find mentioned in the book, is in the bibliography but not quoted.) The only people interviewed have little to no contact with real Mayan people. Arguelles' statement that he "distinguishes between the indigenous Maya and the 'galactic Maya'" sound suspiciously like the former do not matter -- a common New Age idea that dismisses real life indigenous people if they don't conform to the New Agers' ideas about them. (The way that Castaneda fans dismiss real-life Yaqui culture is a good example of this attitude.)

[ June 03, 2006, 08:19 AM: Message edited by: sacha ]

[drew hempel]

I was trying to find that "strange science" book but instead came across "Science and Ultimate Reality: Cosmology, quantum physics and complexity" (Cambridge University Press, 2004)

It's a book dedicated to comments on John Wheeler's work and there's an essay by David Deutsch who started the whole quantum computer craze. Deutsch states that when John Wheeler claimed "It comes from Bit" Wheeler was wrong because math does not take precedence over physics.

So even the big shots disagree about these issues.

drew hempel, M.A.

[sidecross]

An excellent critique of daniel’s new book and a response to what has been happening at the ‘Tribe’ concerning Dr. Hoopes and daniel can be found here:

http://2012.tribe.net/thread/348cfd7e-ab99-44c3-8b0d-9928cc2aa858

Though the author ‘Gayle’ is also a member of BOTH writing under the name ‘sacha’ her critique shows an excellent understanding of the parameters of this argument between daniel & Dr. Hoopes.

If sacha has posted this excellent piece on her own, please forgive this duplication.

[drew hempel]

thanks for that link. I thought the most interesting point was about left-brain dominance starting all the way back with homo habilis -- 2.5 mya!!

People seemed to have a problem with that one but I read an excellent "pre-historic man" book detailing how the stone spear-heads with more chips in them were more effective.

In other words reductionism started a long time ago -- whether it was left-brain dominant or not is not the real issue.

I think that science is based on left-brain mathematics and left-brain logic is as well. This is the heart of the religion-secular issue -- "I Am that I Am" is the formal logical definition of God (God comes from the Indo-European word GOTT meaning Bull or fertility god. Even Karen Armstrong's "history of God" book does not give the etymology of the word!! C'Mon People!!).

"I Am that I Am" also means I as One and Am as 2:3:4 -- the Pythagorean Tetrad found throughout the ancient city-states in right-brain math while "That" refers to the fourth-dimension of space as eternal time.

As Plato said: "Time is the Image of Eternity."

How can time be an image if it's measured by frequency? There's a deep paradox in that.

Chomsky relies on I-language and has stated that if the source of I-language was focused on then magic could be achieved (or at least all the lost perceptions that other animals have, like rats being able to perceive x-rays, etc.)

So what makes us "human" is left-brain dominance of the I-language. Well alot of languages do not use "to be"!! But quite clearly all languages have a sense of "I" and the structure of the language is based on logical mathematics.

This pre-I-language magic is a product of the Platonic Forms -- the Tetrahedron of Freemasonry and Pyramid power.

This magical form is found in the water macromolecule and is the explanation for why an expansion of volume in water reduces entropy!

See professor J.L. Finney "whats so special about water?" 2004

Water is the pivot point for the asymmetrical dynamics on earth (left-hand dominant carbon-based life to right-hand dominant silica-based life via right-hand dominant iron-weapons) that is the secret cycle of the elements taught by Jose Arguelles.

So math can be both right and left brain but as Number it need not go beyond "one, two and many."

As mathematician K. Devlin writes Nature prefers Natural Numbers.

thanks again,

drew hempel, M.A.

[drew hempel]

A good specific connection on the Platonic Forms and "evolution" is professor Michael Corballis' brilliant book "the Lop-sided Ape."

See ever since primates began walking upright there is an inherent chaotic asymmetry to human form. The right-hand is used to protect the heart and tends to lead in walking against an otherwise imbalanced rhythm.

But in the full-lotus body position not only is the original symmetry of the human-form recovered but the center of pressure is below the center of gravity (I stole that from "The Fastest Indian on Earth" movie -- otherwise a silly flick).

So the increased pressure below the center of gravity creates stability as intense heat that ionizes the elements creating electro-chemical energy that turns into electro-magnetic energy and finally light that bends spacetime back to consciousness or empty awareness.

That's alchemy in a nut-shell or Nuit-shell -- the ancient cistern of Egyptian Goddess of Nothingness.

See astronomy professor emeritus Seymour Percy's books for more details.

drew hempel, M.A.

[sidecross]

I just came back from reading today’s ‘tribe’ on daniel’s book, and came away with a possible solution; daniel’s book should have been listed as fiction!

[ June 05, 2006, 01:48 PM: Message edited by: sidecross ]

[sidecross]

I have an older brother, anythingbutcross, who is a Professor Emeritus and a PhD in Philosophy, Logic & Medical Ethics. I on the other hand left High School to try to become a buckaroo in Nevada, and wound up in San Francisco in ’66.

My brother and I were talking recently and he took pride that he was able to talk to working class folks, while I took a similar point of view and applied it to talking to PhD’s.

What I realized was that both of us had the same hubris in thinking we could communicate, but that communication is compromised by bias masked with a typical liberal conceit.

The person who comes from an ‘Ivory Tower’ and the ‘self educated’ are possibly just fooling each other, and each has their own bias.

After reading the ‘tribes’ thread on daniel’s new book, I could not help but think of the recent conversation with my brother and compare that to what has been happening on the ‘tribes’ thread.

Language is subject to the bias of who is using it, and this bias may trump the best intention of communication and those who use it.

[John Hoopes]

Hello all. I don't know whether I'll be able to manage participation in multiple online fora, but I'm pleased to discover that the UTMesoamerica and the Tribe discussions have come to your attention. I'm especially grateful to Daniel for remaining engaged despite our somewhat testy exchanges. I'm sincere in my admiration of his writing and his intellect. I know I'm not the only one to have locked horns with him and I think we're all in this to learn more about each other as well as ourselves.

I haven't had a chance to respond to Sacha's very thoughtful post in the Tribe thread yesterday morning but I will try to do so soon. I am very thankful to her for jumping into the discussion and raising some worthwhile issues. However, I'm at a slight disadvantage in that I lent my copy of "2012" to a friend and won't have it back in hand until Saturday.

Anyway, I just wanted to affirm that I still value you and this board, which were responsible for drawing me into these discussions in the first place.

[John Hoopes]

Originally posted by sidecross:
I just came back from reading today’s ‘tribe’ on daniel’s book, and came away with a possible solution; daniel’s book should have been listed as fiction!I just finished reading The Da Vinci Code (I finally picked it up right after I put down 2012) and I have to say there is probably a huge amount of moola to be made by whoever can use Dan Brown's successful chase/quest formula to spin a tale about the pursuit of ancient, extraterrestrial wisdom that can be revealed through clues hidden in Glastonbury, Stonehenge, crop circles, Maya calendrics, Toltec pyramids, past life regressions, and entheogenic visions. The hero will be a hip journalist who's implicated in the murder of a high-ranking Tibetan lama while on a retreat in Nepal in the company of a lovely occult priestess. They will hook up with a former alien abductee turned psi researcher who will lead them to the location of a secret temple hidden within the Sphinx but will be stunned to learn that it was, unfortunately, looted in antiquity. Part of the lost manuscript they're seeking (once in the possession of the Dogon, who got it from residents of a planet circling Sirius B) will be discovered to have been sequestered within the fallen but recently discovered Lighthouse of Alexandria. Other parts, one from the cave beneath the Pyramid of the Sun and the other from the looted tomb beneath the Temple of the Feathered Serpent at Teotihuacan, will be found hidden in Colonial catacombs under Mexico City and a secret cache at Palenque. The final key, of course, will require them to travel to Machu Picchu and ultimately a cave in eastern Ecuador, all the while being pursued by a British team led by an independent scholar styled after Graham Hancock, a rogue band of Russian and Iranian mafiosi, and a former astronaut on the payroll of the CIA. Of course, their discovery will provide the solutions to global warming, autism, and breast cancer and end in warm romance.

[sidecross]

Exactly! ;)

[John Hoopes]

By the way, have any of you read Paul Theroux's recent novel Blinding Light (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0618418865)? It's about a blocked writer who travels to Ecuador in search of an entheogenic solution for damaged creativity and libido but finds himself hobbled by unanticipated side effects. I suspect it contains some rich metaphors that are pertinent to the issues at hand. It's also on my summer reading list.

[Agent Smith]

dan brown made millions banking on the fact that no one's got the patients to read umberto eco AND the holy blood, holy grail gobbeledgook

excellent book proposal by the way... do you have an agent?

[drew hempel]

I recommend "The Templar Revelation" by Lynn Picknett and Clive Prince -- that book is probably just as much as source as HBHG. Also Picknett and Prince make no bones about Dan Brown and his spin-off promoting fascist eugenics.

drew hempel, M.A.

[willoweyes]

Drew, Umberto Eco's "Foucault's Pendulum" has your name on it. If you haven't read it yet, you are in for a treat.

[willoweyes]

Drew, you really must learn to practice restraint.

Daniel, after reading your introduction, slowy, at length, I bow to you as I back to the edge of the circle, feather and book in my hand. I long to annoint your feet with oil.

That shallow cheap Harlot,
Independence (with one breast exposed, In red white and blue.

I return to the 11-Poster Project: "My Hero!"

As many here sense the change will come first in a new music among the children.

[drew hempel]

Sorry but Eco's book bored me about half way through. It was worth checking out though. I read half of it and then skimmed the rest.

[kozan]

Daniel,
This is my first post on your BOTH website - I want to thank you for your courage and honesty as a spiritual warrior in writing BOTH And 2012. You are a born writer and I feel you've taken up where McKenna left off, and that you are doing great justice to "the work."

I'm sure that a vast majority of people either laughed at or ignored the concept of Earth Changes when Native American traditionals and others begin to speak and write about this phenonmen/prophecy in the last few decades. We are now witnessing major Earth Changes (Katrina, Global Warming, etc) that in effect confirm Indigenous prophecies.

You are doing Bodhisattva work by calling attention to 2012 and writing about various esoteric strands and manifestations of the time we are living in, as well as what is hopefully a potential shift in evolutionary consciousness before it's too late.

In reading 2012 I found myself thinking of the Avatamsaka Sutra, a major text in the Mahayana Buddhist tradition - this mythopoetic text correlates nicely with the multi-parallel universe theories in modern physics. Much of the work would seem to be involved in experientally shifting our perspective from the limited self to the universal self, and opening to a multi-layered universe while remaining grounded in love and compassion.

We are currently witnessing an explosion in a phenomenon called "Identity Theft".... seems to me there is rich material here in terms of what this might mean on a personal and collective psychic basis. One might say that the collective unconscious is manifesting or challenging us on the issue of Identity, and that our collective un-integrated shadow is forcing us to look at the true nature of our Identity, both personally and collectively.

As you mentioned in an interview from last fall, it is apparent that our political and cultural forms are breaking down and have been exhausted. Identity Theft might be seen as a sign/symbol of the fact that we need to acknowledge our lack of realization of our true natures, prior to bringing about the creation of the Fifth World.

Food for thought... and again thank you for your excellent work - it is much appreciated.

[daniel]

hi kozan,

thanks for your supportive comments... if you felt like posting a similar review on amazon, i would be psyched.

anything in the books you didn't like or actively disagreed with?

[kozan]

Daniel
I'll attempt to post reviews of BOTH and 2012 on Amazon.com in the next few days. Being a Pisces I'm fascinated by comparitive religion/spirituality and writings that convey spiritual realization, especially from folks such as Rumi, Mesiter Eckhart and Dogen (founder of Soto Zen in Japan).

I really find no fault in your writings - I'm trusting that you are conveying faithful accounts of your own experiences. Plus the fact that you are coming from a non-literalist perspective and do not attempt to give any definitive answers is great. You bring up so much material in your books and leave things open ended for further research, exploration and hopefully future writings by other inspired voyagers.

The common threads existing in Gebser, Steiner, McKenna, Hopi prophecy, various indigenous shamanistic practices, etc are fascinating and encouraging. How do we bring the non-literalist viewpoint of spiritual imagination and breakthrough into manifestation?

Keep up the great work - you're an inspiration!

[kozan]

Daniel,
Following is my review of 2012 now posted on Amazon.com.... 5-stars of course! I'm hoping as many people as possible read 2012 and BOTH and are inspired to question and explore "reality."

Open Ended Investigations into the Mystery, June 10, 2006
Reviewer: Darrell Koerner (Boulder, Colorado United States) - See all my reviews

Daniel Pinchbeck is an amazing writer. I do not believe that Daniel is advocating any answers or belief systems in 2012, nor is he painting a picture of the end of days. He is helping to call attention to the mystical traditions of spirituality in all religions, whether Indigenous, Buddhist, Christian, Muslim, Gnostic, etc.

The fact that the writings from these mystical traditions correspond to many of the findings of quantum physics, as well as many of the dilemmas we currently face (environmental, economic inequality, materialism, etc) should be seen as a source of inspiration rather than critique.

Daniel Pinchbeck is asking us to consider a non-literalist, imaginative perspective(s) of the world that we take for granted. And also to consider that we are part of something greater than our habitual self-centered egos.

Because he writes from the heart I consider the author of 2012 and Breaking Open the Head to be a spiritual warrior - attempting to understand that which is greater than himself by willingly undertaking the trials and tribulations of all true seekers.

2012 is a great book and hopefully will inspire other seekers and writers to take up further explorations into the multiple esoteric threads mentioned by the author. Daniel also seems to embody that state of intentional open-mindedness referred to by Keats as Negative Capability - the most admirable quality "when man is capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts without any irritable reaching after fact & reason."

I highly recommend 2012 to any and all open-minded persons, and congratulate Daniel Pinchbeck on writing a great document of inquiry.

[ June 11, 2006, 09:18 AM: Message edited by: kozan ]

[IMQ]

kozan,

thank you for sharing two very unique connections to this complex puzzle. your views of identity theft are especially intriguing and thought-provoking. i agree that it is the shadow (whether it be technology, earth rumblings, or clash of fundamental ideologies) that is provoking us to question the most fundamental tenets of how we define ourselves and the way that we live. it is important i believe to not react in fear and loathing, but to question what is being threatened and why it is being threatened, and to adapt our patterns of thought and conditioning accordingly. your mention of the Avatamsaka Sutra seems like a very worthy place to begin.

with that said, you listed "Katrina" as the first example of the Earth Changes that are happening, as do many of us in this country. i would like to remind all of us that Katrina was one of but approximately 30 hurricanes and tropical storms that occurred last year, including one tropical storm Stan that raged through the Lake Attitlan area of Guatemala (home to a large number of indigenous Mayan people), killing hundreds and destroying the homes of thousands, many of whom are still living in temporary shacks that are no better or larger than the storage units that dot the American landscape.

although i realize that your example was perhaps a matter of convenience to make a point, it also shed light on the fact that one of patterns of conditioning and convenience that the shadow is provoking us to face is our cultural and national identities and the lens in which those idenities limit our perceptions of suffering, etc. are we at first Americans, Guatemalans, Mayans, Iraqis or are we all human beings? and, by the same token, are we simply human beings or rather one species of life connected within the larger fabric of the planet and the cosmos?

i present this not as a criticism, but rather as another morsel to chew on. again, muchas gracias for the food for thought.

~in lake'ch~

[sidecross]

All the seats were full and standing room filled the back at Diesel Books in Oakland at 3:00pm as daniel spoke.

[drew hempel]

rock on Daniel!!

[Thom]

Just realised, there is a HUGE discussion going on about 2012 Return of Quetzalcoatl at the tribe site: http://2012.tribe.net

Its almost too unwieldy to get a handle on...I recommend people check it out though, if they haven't done so already.

Anyone else participating there? Perhaps I'm last on the boat...!

[ June 13, 2006, 09:32 PM: Message edited by: Thom ]

[sidecross]

Originally posted by Thom:
Just realised, there is a HUGE discussion going on about 2012 Return of Quetzalcoatl at the tribe site:

Its almost too unwieldy to get a handle on...I recommend people check it out though, if they haven't done so already.

Anyone else participating there? Perhaps I'm last on the boat...!I have been there using the surprise name ‘sidecross’. There is at least one other from our site writing as well, and some good comments and writing.

[ June 14, 2006, 03:39 AM: Message edited by: sidecross ]

[Thom]

Hi Sidecross,

I'm reading through the posts there at the moment and have noticed your contribution (you have a pitbull? My cousin breeds bull terriers, interesting dogs) Also Sacha/Gayle is posting there.

Hopefully I'll join the discussion, but I'm away for a week from tomorrow for the solstice festivals - going to try print the thread to take with me: fascinating so far, though Daniel seems to have bowed out...

[ June 13, 2006, 12:13 PM: Message edited by: Thom ]

[sidecross]

It may be that daniel is just taking a rest from a busy schedule; when he spoke in Oakland he had to leave in the middle of a San Francisco talk, and after finishing in Oakland was due to return to San Francisco to finish his engagement there.

He, daniel, listed his tour under ‘Special Announcements’ and it would be exhaustive for me to do even at his age.

John Hoopes is also a member of BOTH; he did write here a week ago or so, but has not been active here for a good time now.

My Pit Bull mix is a wonderful dog; I take her where ever I go. If they refuse to let her in with me when I go places, then both of us do not go. I would not have it any other way.

I know the owners of Diesel Books, so they always let us in.

[okster]

The link above is to the main page for the 2012 tribe. http://2012.tribe.net is the same.

Here is a direct link to the discussion:

http://2012.tribe.net/thread/348cfd7e-ab99-44c3-8b0d-9928cc2aa858

And it looks like that one got so big that a new thread was just started to continue it:

http://2012.tribe.net/thread/bb20af95-f26b-4954-ad5a-6aa9b861e67d

Some interesting debate, for sure.

I have put up a page with these links and some other links related to the 2012 book:

http://www.ionet.net/~tslade/2012book.htm

[Thom]

Thanks for cleaning the link up Okster. The one I posted above actually logs you into my account. Oops. So I've edited it...can you do the same Sidecross, in your quote? Thanks.

"It may be that daniel is just taking a rest from a busy schedule; when he spoke in Oakland he had to leave in the middle of a San Francisco talk, and after finishing in Oakland was due to return to San Francisco to finish his engagement there."

Sounds like hard work, but fun too. I've heard recordings of him at Palenque, he's an interesting speaker. What did you think of the San Francisco talk?

"My Pit Bull mix is a wonderful dog; I take her where ever I go. If they refuse to let her in with me when I go places, then both of us do not go. I would not have it any other way."

Quite right. I have a border collie who is like a brother, and is probably telepathic. He chews b. caapi vines whenever he gets the chance, seems to like the taste. Which is annoying because the vine is slightly more expensive than hazel...

[ June 13, 2006, 09:46 PM: Message edited by: Thom ]

[Caprinardo Delirio]

i find it rather paradoxical that hoopes and these people over at the other board would think that daniel's new book was meant only to be a further and steeper inquiry into precisely their own narrowhead and closedcasket fields of discource, that would lead no one from a more socio-healthy way of livin to even think of glazing at their shit and ever recognizing any relevance for anyone but those already stuck in that puddle..

also that notion that daniel is encouraging activism so as to feather his own nest is just outright blindingly fucking ridiculous, and brings testament to their utterly insignificant penises and talent of perspectives.

[sidecross]

“…that hoopes and these people…”

That has the tone of Karl Rove and the George W. Bush team.

I read and learn from both daniel and John Hoopes; I never will agree with all that either has to say, but I would not ever refer either of them as ‘these people’.

Take a deep breath and think what has been done to ‘these people’ over human history. I know what you meant to write, but the tone is disturbing.

[ June 14, 2006, 04:48 AM: Message edited by: sidecross ]

[drew hempel]

Well it certainly is unfortunate that Daniel has to personally give psychological treatment for Hoopes but such is the way of "science" debates.

L. Sprague de Camp! That's hilarious. Personally I'm a fan of "truth is stranger than fiction." My favorite example from him is the detailed analysis of the Archimedean Screw used in ancient Egypt for water irrigation.

The Archimedean Screw works as a simple vortex device -- just a hollow screw slanted into the water that uptakes into an irrigation channel.

But that vortex model is the key to magic and alchemy -- so prominent in ancient Egyptian culture, yet conspiciously overlooked by other "staid" non-fiction de Camp book's -- "the Ancient Engineers" comes to mind.

As for Hoopes whole archaeology rationalist position well he seems to be ignoring the recent "symbolic revolution" discovered by the French archaeologists and published in English by Cambridge U Press, 2000: "Origins of Agriculture and the Birth of the Gods."

Plow-based agriculture was preceded by a "symbolic revolution" in philosophy -- one that replaced animistic shamanism with anthropocentric art work, and the destruction of female-principled circular housing. Rectilinear housing is easier for war-mongering imperialists and of course "squaring the circle" is the foundation for Freemasonry -- 10,000 B.C.E.!!

Anyway the whole L. Sprague de Camp reference just demonstrates this current retro-50s craze where there is this myth that science was for and by "the people." George Gamow's books are a great example and inspired many a professional scientist today (unlike us wild-eyed "laymen"). Of course the Manhatten Project was a secret for the tens of thousands of unwitting scientists and democracy is a total farce when apocalyptic technology is seen as the logical development of science.

But the implications of E. Lorenz's discovery of computer-based chaos in the 1960s has yet to be assimilated by popular science culture. Martin Gardner epitomizes this philosophical problem with his "Reflective Universe" book, recently reissued. Gardner, the leading voice of scientism and rationalists, admits that David Bohm's quantum pilot wave model is completely logical and possible.

Based on the de Broglie wave quantum information travels faster-than-light and is not only non-local but, using the group wave quantum electronics technology, can send real signals as superliminal communication. This is called "quasi-telepathy" in the quantum electronics community -- and with good reason. One-way signals faster-than-light are really no different than the well-documented telepathy and telekinesis practiced by today's qigong masters of China.

An excellent scientist who bridges these traumatic philosphical paradoxes is the Indian-born Rustom Roy, featured in the cover story for New Scientist a few issues back. Roy has done experiments with water, documenting how the tetrahedral (pyramid power) of water violates the 2nd law of thermodynamics, as well as the 2nd law of Newton!

Professor emeritus Roy is a "staid" professional, leading his discipline: chemical engineering. Roy has also had the nerve to document the reality of qigong power under the national treasure of China: Master Yan Xin.

Well George Bush Sr. had Master Yan Xin visit the White House 8 times for personal treatments which probably took years off his depravation. Considering Bush sr. did a sky dive in his 80s and holes up with some very young exotic Asian chick we can all slap ourselves on the back for a job well-done.

Macro quantum chaos science is the cutting-edge of research at today's top military-based labs: Los Alamos, Sandia and the Santa Fe Institute. The science writers who have detailed the "techno-spiritual" shamanism of this new discipline are John Casti (see his book "One True Platonic Heaven" and George Johnson -- "Fire in the Mind.")

The New Scientist has also followed these chaos developments -- several books by Mark Buchanan and articles by Marcus Chowen for example.

But professor Steve Strogatz' best-selling "Sync" is really the top source for the topic. Strogatz has admitted that the Pythagorean Harmonic Series which is the foundation for the Riemann Hypothesis is "a conspiracy between nature and number, atom and arithmetic." Strogatz has also come out recently stating that computers have taken over logic and computer-control will spread throughout the rest of science.

Clearly time is asymmetrical, humans are not in control, and having the elite go underground will not do anything.

drew hempel, M.A.

[David L]

Just finished 2012 today. Though its taken my awhile, I got it June 11th and there it is the 23rd - I've been busy.

This book is amazing it struck a chord deep within my being, an inspiring resonance that has giving me - aloud me to find more energy within myself and the connection between each other, or planet and existence.

I've been finding that the books I choose to read always seem to be completely relevant to what I'm currently experiencing. Though it may be wishful thinking and I adopt texts as a religious person would covet a bible I think that's not the case.

2012 is packed full of very immanent material corresponding to our current state of reality. A big theme I had been seeing before reading this was "Koyaanisqatsi" - Life out of balance. I learned about this word in my Abnormal Psyche class before reading 2012

A need for integration seems to be a big part of this book. The Apocalypse - uncovering, goes hand in hand with the issue mentioned above.

The collapse of time, change in calendar, environmental preservation and recognition, archaic revival, right meeting left (east-west), etc. A union to complete the dialectic.

This book is just what we needed. Thanks Daniel.

[Isaiah Mpski]

Head for the mountains.

[daniel]

I am very pleased with this piece by Judith Lewis, appearing today in LA Weekly. It is the first write-up in the mainstream media that seemed to me to deal with the book itself, rather than the writer's projections on me and the subject (of course I admit I am biased):

http://www.laweekly.com/art+books/books/apocalypse-in-progress/14080/

[sidecross]

“…(of course I admit I am biased)”

We all are; I liked the review too.
:cool:

[Agent Smith]

I felt validated, the way a stoner feels honored to find out Carl Sagan smoked too.- from the review.

[enantiodromia23]

Yes indeed, good review, Daniel... consider yourself lucky the LA Weekly didn't assign R. Meltzer with the task of writing you up! (he of the poison pumice-tongue)...

[transfluent]

i'm about half way, and i am loving it!

i really dig your writing style daniel. excellent work man. ;)

[Isaiah Mpski]

Has anyone noticed how frequently wanna-be-messiahs are turning up on this board.I've counted at least two more just this week.
I think you should send a copy of your book to Al Gore Daniel.He is the only hope to avoid a society run by a quasi-military conglomeration and to turn your trend of healthy consciousness expansion alive.

[lovemanifest]

It took about 240 pages to reel me in, but once it did, I stopped doing dishes and laundry or tending to basic needs for a day until I had it all absorbed. I love the mysterious and hilarious ways our One Being rouses itself into remembrance. I just bought some land about an hour from Chichen Itza, in part to be near the hoopla in the upcoming years. Bring it on, Quetzalcaotl...bring it on, baby.

[lovemanifest]

no more typing with babies on the desk.
That would be Quetzalcoatl...there we go.

xoxo,
B

[drew hempel]

I talked to Al Gore for half an hour in the basement of a VFW in 2000 and I told him how the CIA controls the drug trade and Gore confessed that he can not even change his own stock accounts!! He's just "little oil" but I wish him luck. If you want the real esoteric angle on Gore you gotta read "The Stargate Conspiracy" by Lynn Picknett and Clive Prince.

[Giselle62]

Originally posted by lovemanifest:
I just bought some land about an hour from Chichen Itza, in part to be near the hoopla in the upcoming years. Bring it on, Quetzalcaotl...bring it on, baby.can i come? i'll help with the babies...just to put it out there, if there's a chance that some of us might be thinking about living communally in the years before cataclysm; I have 5 years experience with childcare on a commune. I'm not suicidal (most of the time) nor am I prone to follow leaders lemming-like.I'm a practical person who believes in the communal alternative, even though I did eventually leave the one I was a member of.
Regarding the book: i just ordered it from the library. I may have trouble ultimately believing alternative ideas; but I'm very open to reading and hearing them, reading about alternative ideas and perspectives is my idea of a good time.

[ August 09, 2006, 12:14 PM: Message edited by: Giselle62 ]

[Luminousman]

2012 was a terrific book. I thought it was well written. I liked it so much that I went and purchased "Breaking open the head" Here is where my problem starts........It began by being seemingly familiar and what I realized is that (I did not bother to finish it) Everthing I read this book was duplicated in 2012 ????? It was like Daniel used it as filler material. Thats right....to make the book thicker...I mean it has a beautifull cover but without this info it would have been a lot thinner. Had I know I could have saved the price of this "other book" I felt that as Daniel professed in 2012 the impotance of ethics that there should have at least been an authors foot note indicating that he had plagerized his own writing. I did not want to bad mouth anyone however I felt it important to bring this to the surface. If I am wrong I would like to be made aware and I will be the first to apologize

[ August 19, 2006, 01:21 PM: Message edited by: Lumimousman ]

[lovemanifest]

Let it out, man. Speak up!
I haven't read BOTH yet--just 2012, because I 'm into that stuff. I felt it was a slow start, but in retrospect, it formed a favorable impression of David in my mind like a rareified Hunter S. Thompson.
My spidey sense says that if there is a lot of crossover material between the two books, it is mainly for the purpose of maximizing communication and partly to make Penguin happy.
I should get around to reading this book. I said most books suck, and they do, nevertheless I always have a book or three going. Now it's The Ageless Body (Griscom), The Pleiadian Tantric Workbook (Quan Yin), and The Teachings of Don Juan (Casteneda) again. I have made friends with some of Abuelo Kachora's friends, so I thought I'd jog my memory a bit.

By the way, can you give a couple examples?

[Isaiah Mpski]

Another great book is The Secret Life of Plants and R.A. Wilson's triolgy part "3-The Illuminati was especially well written.
I fell in love so much with the Don Juan trip,that I lived with a native American medicine man on the banks of the Rio Grande on the San Juan Indian Reservation for a year.Imagine me,a medical Doctor,listening to a savage talk to plants and animals.There must have been more than one MD on the reservation as I kept hearing different stories about myself,during times of hidden moments like the Hot Springs at Ojo Caliente or StageCoach Springs mear Taos(I'd bet they're really crowded now 30 years later)
What a year.It finally started to come together for me and life seemed to start anew with the coming of the festival on Labor Day in Santa Fe.

How many of you animals are heading west on I-40 toward Burning Man?
Our farm is at exit 262 on I-40,about two miles west of US 69.
Reminder to all who may venture here.Behave or be gone.
Yhe Lord
Go to Yahoo Groups-PickOverFlow-misc pic of our lakefront farm at exit 262 I-40 Kiko,Love,Lord CM,Nanouk etc,Charlie,and Dan.

[ August 21, 2006, 04:09 AM: Message edited by: Isaiah Mpski ]

[lovemanifest]

Man, I have got to start reading my posts before I just go shootin em off. Ahem, I meant Daniel, not David.
I was bummed to learn that Carlos made a bunch of stuff up in his subsequent works, and that he made empty promises to his teacher. Even so, I am deepy inspired by the story and look forward to the day when I will meet Abuelo Kachora. The day will soon come when the wisdom of indigenous people will be learned and honored. Bring it on.


How many of you animals are heading west on I-40 toward Burning Man?
Our farm is at exit 262 on I-40,about two miles west of US 69.
Reminder to all who may venture here.Behave or be gone.
Yhe Lord

[lovemanifest]

Isaiah, what is it with you and Burning Man?
BTW, I've never been. I'm a techno-hippy, yes, but I'm also a redhead. Days in the desert with no trees or mountains? Are you kidding? I'm sure the culture is fab, and the trips are deluxe, but it's more for people who don't have pigment issues or needy Indigos to nurse.

All you crazy kids listen up and be good or stay the hell away from Isaiah's land. ;)

On a side (topical) note, I really appreciate the aesthetics of 2012. It is such a departure from my other books which usually depict some kind of fantastic/inspiring/new age artwork. Daniel's is the first that I can bring out with me and someone will voluntarily pick it up, thumb through the pages, and ask questions. This is such a small aspect of the book, indeed, but it is worth mentioning. It is a beautiful thing to see someone open up to new ideas, and partly because of it's look, 2012 is briging in some of the fencesitters.

[ba caracus]

Its wonderful to have read the discussions on the board for over two and a half years, and have a book which reflects what has been discussed. A wonderful review for me, personally, of everything that has been revealed to me through this discussion board over this period.

I have rarely submitted posts, becuase I have always been trying to catch up. So to those who have contributed, and to Daniel for providing me with a book, that I can give to people who have been completely bemused or bored by my incoherent ramblings of what is stretching my heart, mind, soul. I thank you.

The mere fact that I am concious of these thoughts put forward by all, has been a wonderful blessing, and gladly, not just for myself.

[Isaiah Mpski]

Follow me.

[brucedc1]

Hi, just about to re-read 2012 again - thought that bumping this thread to the top might help a little as well smile.gif

[nyk]

Jeezuz.

I have been reading the reviews of Daniel's
Quetzalcoatl book, here and elsewhere. They
are almost all uniformly pathetic - meaning,
they are clueless to the core theme of this
book - both the positive and the negative
reviewers.

I am now soooooooooo glad that I ceased my
similiar writing endeavor...umm, about 3
years ago...and that Daniel has taken on
this albatross. This subject requires great
talent and focus.

All power to you Daniel. You have unleashed
the arrow (that appears to be a book). That
it will have interesting and unexpected con-
sequences, I have no doubt. I am throwing in
with you. Yours is an arrow I can ally my
intent and support with. Until now, I have
found noone else traversing in the noosphere
that my partner and I call home.

smile.gif

[sidecross]

As a ‘pathetic’ person who read daniel’s book with a different impression, my comment considers not the quality of the arrow, but the strength of the bow.

daniel’s writing is strong enough for the task, but the strength of the bow is where we part company.
:cool:

[nyk]

Daniel is a work-in-progress. If he was already
further along, he would be far too alien for the
intended audience to emphasize with, to relate
to, in a pragmatic way. This book, as I see it,
is initiatory. And it is Daniel's broken bow
that endears me to him.

[nyk]

I guess Q is just a really hard pill to swallow for most, even for
revolutionaries.;)

I have every confidence that Daniel is >essentially< reading the leaves
very well, that he is very sincere in his intent - and - that he will follow
through with what he has initiated (no matter how improbable this may
appear to be to so many). He gave himself no choice in the matter.

And I pledge my complete support. I also have very powerful help.

[sacha]

Daniel is a work-in-progress. If he was already
further along, he would be far too alien for the
intended audience to emphasize with, to relate
to, in a pragmatic way. This book, as I see it,
is initiatory. And it is Daniel's broken bow
that endears me to him.

That articulates my view very well, too.

Furthermore, I feel as though the negative interpretations and misunderstandings (which I have seen in many places) are a necessary part of the process ... Consider, with other kinds of reactions coming in, it would be very easy for ego to take over, an ego temptation hard to resist. But, instead, Daniel chose (at a certain level) to be subjected to a process that would help him to let go of ego... and that in turn is what it will make it possible to be the kind of channel he has the potential to be.

[nyk]

Yes. There is much more here than meets the eye.

Camoflauged within Daniel's narrative is a massive process. To the cynical
eye - and cynicism does abound - this is yet another line of speculation,
not much different than all the others, and an author who went just a
wee too far around the bend. I can see what the cynics see true enough,
but there is much more, and it is really really hard to articulate it. One has
to write around it. And I see that too, all too well. If most people want
to dance dust circles around on only surface of Daniel's evocation,
then let 'em dance. For those of us caught in the substance of this
thing - I generally just codify it as Q to keep it simple - we are way too
occupied with an explosive transmutation to really give a rats ass what
the general machine consciousness is thinking, which are really only
mechanical repetitions in the first place. We are caught in a pyroclastic
flow. And like Daniel, it took an act of 'self-betrayal',for want of better
description,to set something into motion. It might be conceived of as
a form of psychotherapy that cuts several degrees deeper into the
collective unconscious than is traditionally executed.

[daniel]

nice one, nyk!

[daniel]

from your post above, just curious how you would formulate "the central thesis" of the book?

[daniel]

my former partner called it my "self-immolation".

[nyk]

from your post above, just curious how you would formulate "the central thesis" of the book?

That's easy.

my former partner called it my "self-immolation".

You answered the question 2 minutes after you posed it.

Self-Immolation. That's the Phoenix archetype. Global scale. And we
are right in the thick of it. A few know it for what it is. For most, their
consciousness is just sliding around on the surface, perplexed. For awhile.
Your wife was right. And she didn't want to embrace a transformation;
one of such a radical depth and change. She wanted preservation,
not metamorphosis.

This can be a very lonely path.

[wallace]

Its the first book review I have ever done there, so I am a supporter!

I read the book very quickly yesterday and agree with one message that come to me from it that we need to come together with like minded souls for the interesting times ahead.

I have just started taking psychedelics so as yet I don't feel this change , intellectually I acknowledge it though, but I have a journey to go on to experience it personally.

In a month or two my view of the book may be very different but this is my first impression as posted on Amazon, feel free to tell me I got it wrong! I agree we need poets like Daniel.

I have read a few of the other posts and like some of you more than others!
Sunny thoughts,
Wallace

Amazon review posted today.

This is a more important,more profound work than B.O.T.H. The highlight of it for me was the section on Santo Daime. I was disappointed he didn't report on Santo Daime members views on 2012 etc. If substantial conversations weren't had this should have been explained. Also "Forest of Visions" a book on Santo Daime was ignored, why?

Like others I found his views on women objectionable. If he wanted to include this material then there replies should have been incorporated into the text in italics! He will have some explaining to do to his daughter when she grows up and reads this!

There was a little too much of the "I have been chosen" refrain in this book, also I found his transmission unremarkable so a bit more humility would have been useful. I feel the importance he gives to his transmission unbalances the book. When he says the Daime will be will you forever that means these experiences will be commonplace, so get used to them! The change of title for the U.K is wise.

He writes beautifully which is something is undervalued in this New Age, so despite the odd problem it merits five stars.

[wallace]

One other thing is that the book is not funny enough! Humour is important!

W

[Isaiah Mpski]

where are you from,ignorant muther-fuker.
Humor is spelled Homer.
You jug-eared potato pussy.
No wonder youse guyys got a rot.You're all from Rhode Island pussies.
Your faces look like your butts.
All white and ugly.Lol.

[Akiz]

Hello,

I am new to the forum- this is my first post.

I actually posted this in another form to the Viking Youth power hour podcast forum recently, in comment to the new interview with Pinchbeck, but I thought i'd post it here also. http://www.thefeedlot.org/vikingyouth/index.php

I really enjoyed the new Daniel Pinchbeck interview. As many have said, it's one of the better interviews with him around. To compare him with Terence McKenna, who truly was a bardic speaker, is a little bit unfair, I think. Pinchbeck seems sincere, although he isn't the best of speakers.

I read Breaking Open the Head after having read an excrept from it in Disinformation's Book of Lies, and it made a huge impression on me and inspired me. It seemed a really down-to-earth in a way (compared, for example, to Terence McKenna and other more established psychedelic writers) , and seemed like a good "first book" on psychedelic shamanism and related subjects. As I was reading the book I also was having my first encounters with various psychoactive substances, and later some quite life-altering and defining experiences.

In Pinchbeck's first book I could really relate to his approach and transfromation from cynic and materialist to something else, and I think that was one of it's true strengths- that it didn't come from some "true believer" who was already far out there and had left his scepticism behind. This is also in my view a problem with the new book- that it seems to be written by a "true beliver" in a sense. It has always been somewhat troubling to me that individuals who really "break their heads open" seem to end up with such utterly strange and bizarre ideas, with ideas that seem, at first glance at least, quite alien and somewhat irrelevant to ones life, with UFO's, quantum theories, crop circles, reincarnations, conspiracy theories, and all manner of wierd shit as seen on the X-files. It is also somewhat troubling when someone claims to be an avatar of some entity or force- my natural reaction is to repel such things. But I might be wrong- maybe Pinchbeck truly is an avatar for Quetzalcoatl. It just seems that especially in the last hundred years or so, avatars and bringers of new aeons conciding with some meanigful-sounding date seem to have been popping up quite frequently.

I do think that Pinchebeck touches on many important issues, such as the ecological stuff, but I just find it hard to swallow all his rather strange esoteric ideas- I think they might be very real and relevant to him personally, but maybe not so relevant and real to me. I would be interested to hear what exactly people have gotten out of his new book.

I also find this apocalyptic 2012 stuff to be rather unbelivable and/or paranoid, especially if taken literally and as much more than some kind of metaphor. I think it is a breath of freash air that not all individuals heavily involved in psychedelic shamanism arrive at these apocalyptic theories and conclusions- I quote from an interview with Christian Rätsch: (the entire interview can be found at http://www.johnhorgan.org/work17.htm )

"I asked what he (Rätsch) thought of Terence McKenna’s time-wave theory and his prediction that the apocalypse could occur in 2012. "Complete bullshit. Hmm hmm." Ratsch had once asked McKenna if he really believed the time-wave theory, and McKenna had answered, No, not really. "But that is because we are good friends," Ratsch said. "He wouldn't admit that in the public." "

Nevertheless, I do find Pinchbeck to be a highly interesting writer and thinker, and have only read part of the new book and intend to finish it soon- maybe I'll change my mind about these points then.

[nanouk]

Welcome to the madhouse, Akiz! :cool:

Akiz wrote:"But I might be wrong- maybe Pinchbeck truly is an avatar for Quetzalcoatl. It just seems that especially in the last hundred years or so, avatars and bringers of new aeons conciding with some meanigful-sounding date seem to have been popping up quite frequently."

Well, i wouldn't want to be the one carrying THAT cross, even though my own visions and "journeying" has involved deities like Quetz, White Buffalo Calf Woman, Pan and Other's, it is a truly Jungian experience, and when one comes out on the other side, if one hasn't become "un-sane", things don't even seem any clearer... :errf:

and:

"Nevertheless, I do find Pinchbeck to be a highly interesting writer and thinker, and have only read part of the new book and intend to finish it soon- maybe I'll change my mind about these points then."

I agree, and i also hope you will find time to get to "know" some of our other Stars on BOTH. ;)

Love and Respect,
~n~

[wallace]

gives to his transmission just alienates a wider audience.

Its for others to decide if it has the earth shattering importance Daniel think it has, not for him to put it in the title! He should have down played it or maybe even not included it so as give time to reflect on its importance. But maybe this kind of thing boost sales in California!

For me the last part of the book is the best so its a shame if people can think this is where he goes loopy! I found the description of South America etc magical.

Sunny thoughts,
Wallace from the U.K

[daniel]

hi wallace and akiz,

i felt it was necessary to include the transmission because it was an extremely powerful subjective experience that happened to me while i was researching this book. I trace my lineage as a writer back to the Beats, and believe that being honest about your own experiences is the best thing you can offer as a writer.

in 2012, I did take pains to leave it open for readers to make their decision about this material. It may be that such transmissions are simply something that happens while one is pursuing a certain line of occult inquiry (as with Arguelles, Crowley, even Jung). Or it may be that it has a deeper meaning.

As for the 2012 date, as I have discussed elsewhere, the next five years are critical to the human project no matter how you slice it - if we haven't accomplished a massive u-turn in ecological consciousness by then, the climate shift and the species die-off may create an unstoppable momentum leading to our own extinction.

[nyk]

As for the 2012 date, as I have discussed elsewhere, the next five years are critical to the human project no matter how you slice it - if we haven't accomplished a massive u-turn in ecological consciousness by then, the climate shift and the species die-off may create an unstoppable momentum leading to our own extinction.

I believe it is this unstoppable momentum leading to our own extinction
which is absolutely necessary for the transmutation of the human into the
next apotheosis. The worm completely melts down in the chrysalis. If it
didn't the Lepidoptera could never consummate. This is not just mental
allegory. It is physical.

I think that many want to have it both ways somehow...stay the same
and yet have wings. I do not think that is possible. And I think it is decades
too late to actualize a massive u-turn. It isn't going to happen in time,
so I would suggest that we plan accordingly.

[wallace]

NYK

Any ideas how you intend to "plan accordingly".

My idea is to attach oneself to like minded people. I think we need to get togeather in communities.

I like the idea of the internet crashing so we have to communicate telepathically.

I believe Santo Daime believe that 2014 is the key date, at least that's the impression I got from reading "Forest of Visions". 2012 or 2014 I guess its all the same.

Sunny thoughts,
Wallace

[nyk]

NYK

Any ideas how you intend to "plan accordingly".

My idea is to attach oneself to like minded people. I think we need to get togeather in communities.

I like the idea of the internet crashing so we have to communicate telepathically.

I believe Santo Daime believe that 2014 is the key date, at least that's the impression I got from reading "Forest of Visions". 2012 or 2014 I guess its all the same.

Sunny thoughts,
Wallace

Small communities. On the edge of abundant wildernesses. Comprised of
people who may or may not know about any of this in '2012' terms, but
who feel right. Who feel real, in some basic way. That would not be - for
example - New York City. Or London. I have to question the motives of
anyone who at this stage of the game is still entrenched in those pustules.
Now, I dip into Seattle from time to time, but I sure as heck do not live in
such a place. My community is the one that just launched the film '2012:
The Odyssey', which to me is just another sign that I chose the right
place. I chose this region for exactly this purpose - 17 years ago.

Oops, I see you are in London. That's the hive where there are more
surveillance cameras than anywhere else in the world (I read recently).
You thinking about moving?

[sidecross]

Small communities. On the edge of abundant wildernesses. Comprised of
people who may or may not know about any of this in '2012' terms, but
who feel right. Who feel real, in some basic way. That would not be - for
example - New York City. Or London. I have to question the motives of
anyone who at this stage of the game is still entrenched in those pustules.
Now, I dip into Seattle from time to time, but I sure as heck do not live in
such a place. My community is the one that just launched the film '2012:
The Odyssey', which to me is just another sign that I chose the right
place. I chose this region for exactly this purpose - 17 years ago.

Oops, I see you are in London. That's the hive where there are more
surveillance cameras than anywhere else in the world (I read recently).
You thinking about moving?


With a world population of 6.5 billion and not expected to peak until it reaches 9 billion where are these 'small communities' going to locate without bumping into each other?

[nyk]

With a world population of 6.5 billion and not expected to peak until it reaches 9 billion where are these 'small communities' going to locate without bumping into each other?

Dress warm.

[Akiz]

Hello again,

Daniel, thanks for your points/clarifications on the questions raised. As said, I cannot fully come to any conclusions, not having finished the new book yet.
I appreciate your honesty about your transmission / powerful subjective experience, but again, I remain sceptical about it's relevance to me personally.

I get quite sceptical when things get down to this sort of doomsday-mentality, when people seem to be waiting for, almost hoping for, some sort of massive breakdown of everything as we know it. I think it is worth pointing out that this kind of armageddon-angst is not a new phenomenon at all, and that people have been screaming bloody-end-of-the-world since the middle ages, and still the planet has gotten through. Of course, the situation is different now from then and the threaths are far more real, but still- an analogy to keep in mind I think. There seems to be a tendency in people to be driven to these apocalyptic visions, like people in peak oil circles almost wishing for the worst kind of malthusian crisis scenario; and it seems (and I am not trying to offend anyone here) this kind of apocalyptic mentality is especially popular in the USA, far more than in Europe- why that is, I don't know.

Ragnarök is occuring all around us, all the time- an axe-age, a sword age, when all the world is on fire - an ongoing process of destruction and renewal. Wheter it will culminate in some grand apocalyptic finale, or the return of some archetype, I don't know. For me, it isn't even the main question or concern; for me it is more important to sort these things out (ecology, spirituality, psychedelic experiences and whatnot), starting from myself and my own surroundings, right now, and as much as possible. As above, so below- As within, so without.


(P.S. I seriously doubt the idea of self-sufficient, small communities, loosely based around some idea/ideal - never have I yet encountered such a community that would have worked for any length of time.)

[sidecross]

Hello again,

Daniel, thanks for your points/clarifications on the questions raised. As said, I cannot fully come to any conclusions, not having finished the new book yet.
I appreciate your honesty about your transmission / powerful subjective experience, but again, I remain sceptical about it's relevance to me personally.

I get quite sceptical when things get down to this sort of doomsday-mentality, when people seem to be waiting for, almost hoping for, some sort of massive breakdown of everything as we know it. I think it is worth pointing out that this kind of armageddon-angst is not a new phenomenon at all, and that people have been screaming bloody-end-of-the-world since the middle ages, and still the planet has gotten through. Of course, the situation is different now from then and the threaths are far more real, but still- an analogy to keep in mind I think. There seems to be a tendency in people to be driven to these apocalyptic visions, like people in peak oil circles almost wishing for the worst kind of malthusian crisis scenario; and it seems (and I am not trying to offend anyone here) this kind of apocalyptic mentality is especially popular in the USA, far more than in Europe- why that is, I don't know.

Ragnarök is occuring all around us, all the time- an axe-age, a sword age, when all the world is on fire - an ongoing process of destruction and renewal. Wheter it will culminate in some grand apocalyptic finale, or the return of some archetype, I don't know. For me, it isn't even the main question or concern; for me it is more important to sort these things out (ecology, spirituality, psychedelic experiences and whatnot), starting from myself and my own surroundings, right now, and as much as possible. As above, so below- As within, so without.


(P.S. I seriously doubt the idea of self-sufficient, small communities, loosely based around some idea/ideal - never have I yet encountered such a community that would have worked for any length of time.)



I have always considered myself a realist and I personally have nothing vested in an Armageddon world view.

It has never been the fall from the cliff that has been the worry; rather it is its sudden stop that is the danger.

It has taken until the 18th century to reach a billion people; we now are at 6.5 billion. Our species is only between 100,000 and 150,000 years old. The amount of fresh water has not increased while the pollution caused by our species has.

Only a few hundred years ago, people living to my current age in my mid 60’s was unusual; today most modern people expect it.

It is not rocket science to look at a graph of the current trends of population, natural resources, and communication resources to see that everyone who will have access to information and will be able to decide for themselves the current trends and where the numbers go off the graphs or charts.

I hope I am wrong, but it seems to me we have been in free fall for quite some time. I would not expect a problem until we hit the ground.

[nyk]

Unfortunately most people are not realistic. Worse, they are not very
perceptive. We passed the point of no return circa 1998-1999. I guess
it is just too damn subtle for conditioned perceptions to notice such
a thing. An old teacher of mine used to call this world the land of the
living dead. And I used to think that assessment was severe. I don't
anymore.

[John Hoopes]

Unfortunately most people are not realistic. Worse, they are not very
perceptive. We passed the point of no return circa 1998-1999. I guess
it is just too damn subtle for conditioned perceptions to notice such
a thing. An old teacher of mine used to call this world the land of the
living dead. And I used to think that assessment was severe. I don't
anymore.

I think it's clear that some humans have been passing "points of no return" since they first began banging rocks together over two and a half million years ago. Once they realized that some rocks were better than others, they worried about someone else getting all the good rocks and were reluctant to wander too far from the sources. Some of them figured out how to make better tools and their families grew while others died. About a million and a half years ago, they discovered that food tasted better and was less likely to make you sick if it was cooked, so some of them figured out how to make fire and their families grew while others died. Sometime after that, those who could think straight realized that the growing population was outstripping the natural abundance of dead animals and they decided to kill some themselves. Their families grew while others died.

Anyway, you get the picture. I have no doubt that our ancestors were bitching about how other people were using up all the resources long before the end of the Ice Age. It just accelerated with the emergence of agriculture, the growth of villages into cities, and increasing world populations. The folks who wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls over two thousand years ago were certain that their world would be ending soon. The same was true for the Crusaders a thousand years ago and the millennialists who started settling in the New World five hundred years ago. People have been walking around certain that the world would end for a long time now, but it's still here.

The world will change radically in our lifetimes. That's a given. Don't worry, though. Humans will not become extinct. As has always been true, the ones who figure out the best survival strategy will make it. The question worth worrying about is just who has the best survival strategies. Is it the fat cats who take a whole day just to light a fire on "Survivor" and freak out when they run out of fresh batteries or the lean, mean, wise ones who have already figured out how to survive in the planet's harshest deserts, thickest rain forests, coldest tundras, and roughest mountains?

When the pinch is tightest, whose families will grow while others die? I'd put my money on the survivors whose families are already growing in places, jobs, and lives that none of us could tolerate, like Darfur and Afghanistan, Tanzania and Malawi, Honduras and Bolivia. Haiti, even. Think about the kinds of lives that have gone on, largely unchanged, as civilizations have risen and collapsed, risen and collapsed, again and again. Don't worry. They'll still be there.

[nyk]

Exactly.

This is about people like us. Sitting in front of these plastic boxes.

[nanouk]

Small communities. On the edge of abundant wildernesses. Comprised of
people who may or may not know about any of this in '2012' terms, but
who feel right. Who feel real, in some basic way. That would not be - for
example - New York City. Or London. I have to question the motives of
anyone who at this stage of the game is still entrenched in those pustules.
Now, I dip into Seattle from time to time, but I sure as heck do not live in
such a place. My community is the one that just launched the film '2012:
The Odyssey', which to me is just another sign that I chose the right
place. I chose this region for exactly this purpose - 17 years ago.

Oops, I see you are in London. That's the hive where there are more
surveillance cameras than anywhere else in the world (I read recently).
You thinking about moving?

I know a nice organic farm roughly 100 miles southwest of London, it used to be a thriving little business, but since the manager left 5 years ago, it has been occupied by a bunch of hippies who are more interested in their obscure cabaret's than growing produce and raising live stock to sell to local traders.
Since their eviction notice in September, these peple are now squatting the farmhouse and travellers have taken over the meadows.

The owner, an American hippie green grocer who bought the farm, and it's mill in the early 70's, have been known to be difficult to deal with, he has even got an ASBO and court order to stay away from the farm, HIS farm, but judging from the present situation, i would definately support a genuine business plan and ideology of a functioning 2012-commune. serious individuals PM me and i will give you the address and directions how to get there.

Love and Respect,
~N~

ps. This place also has a long history of festivals and parties, and the licence to do so, it could become a great place for WWFF'ers and inhabitants to act positively again! I would love to see a Quetzalcoatl Gathering there soon...ds.

[Isaiah Mpski]

May I bring a couple of rifles or can you get me a couple there?

[nanouk]

May I bring a couple of rifles or can you get me a couple there?

Pheasant season is in full swing, and they are very fat! :)

~n~

[Isaiah Mpski]

Why do I have to repeat my story every two or three months to create any interest.
McIntosh County Oklahoma is home to one of the largest Manmade Lakes in the world and the people that built it have a timeline in which to return it to the original ower of record.
I bought a little cabin and a section of land,all lakefront.I also got a producing oil well and a piece of some gas wells,and all the coal I can dig,fish I can eat,wood I can cut,and control of the local BS.
Whoever helps me homestead(and will of course register to vote and make it worth more than it was the day before can count on having a comfortable existance someday.
No more on the side of the bed for you Nanouk if you can hold on to your mine.
I think maybe NYK would be good for you and yours if he isn't a narcissist liek me.
Take care Nanouk and slow down on the mushrooms.
You're lible to find yourselve next to Daniel dumpster diving in a can.
Who,in their right mind would want to live overthere/

[nanouk]

Why do I have to repeat my story every two or three months to create any interest.
McIntosh County Oklahoma is home to one of the largest Manmade Lakes in the world and the people that built it have a timeline in which to return it to the original ower of record.
I bought a little cabin and a section of land,all lakefront.I also got a producing oil well and a piece of some gas wells,and all the coal I can dig,fish I can eat,wood I can cut,and control of the local BS.
Whoever helps me homestead(and will of course register to vote and make it worth more than it was the day before can count on having a comfortable existance someday.
No more on the side of the bed for you Nanouk if you can hold on to your mine.
I think maybe NYK would be good for you and yours if he isn't a narcissist liek me.
Take care Nanouk and slow down on the mushrooms.
You're lible to find yourselve next to Daniel dumpster diving in a can.
Who,in their right mind would want to live overthere/

I honestly believe that private ownership and co-habiting with the proprietor would get in the way of communal democracy and autonomic policy, in this case, the owner of the property doesn't live there, and it would be a case of leasing the farm and ALL it's land.

At present, and for the past 25 years, no-one has paid rent, just needed to work one day for accomodation, another for board, any other hours worked, a small wage is paid. The owner has footed the bills all this years, and it is not until now, he is rightly thinking that the occupiers are "taking a piss", since he has to provide food from his own shop to feed them all, as well as paying for electricity and council rates, etc.

Very generous offer though, Isaiah, but my children would not be able to emigrate with me, as their father and i share custody.

And, FYI, the last Amanita i ate was on Sunday, didn't see Father Christmas or anything ;) previous to that, it was ages ago.

Don't need them, or any other (MAO inhibiting substance)i was born tripping on life and i smile and percieve lots anyway! :D

Love and Respect,

~n~

[Isaiah Mpski]

I think NYK would help you with your current sperm donor.But I have to admit i'm gettin that that old feeling to head back to Mexico before long.
Fickle is where I'm going Nanouk.

[sidecross]

To paraphrase Terrence McKenna who described the asteroid that hit Earth some 65 million years ago. He said that after it the Earth, 1.5 seconds later a hole 5 miles deep was created; a plume of debris 6000 feet tall was moving at Mach 6. Nothing larger than a chicken survived.

Was this a tremendous disaster? Yes, without a doubt, but if it were not for this event mamals, which we are, might not have had a chance to develop.

A history of Earth will show we are a rather recent development in an ever changing landscape.

[Isaiah Mpski]

Yeah,that's what we're turning back into.
A bunch of pigs.

[wallace]

Akiz

My rational side agrees with you but as I mentioned on P4 of this thread in my Amazon review of Daniel's book, I think to actually feel this change you have to be taking psychedelic substances ideally within some ceremonial context. Have you taken psychedelics?

Yea communities are a problem but hopefully Santo Daime is different??

Daniel is still in NY isn't he, but I may move. Move to the hills, not sure we do need people after all

I think Daniel may be right but as yet I don't feel it about 2012. One of the things that is striking about his new book is how much more profound it is than BOTH. Due to the plants in my opinion!

Daniel's book is much better than Graham Hancock's Supernatural but I did like the illustrations in Hancocks book. Some of Hancocks prose is just embarressing. Any chance of some pictures of Crop Circles in the paperback version of your book Daniel? I was born in Wiltshire and you have converted me about their importance but I would like to see what you are talking about! A picture counts more than a thousand words etc.

Nice to know you are doing one picture book on Burning Man though.

Daniel has mentioned Richard Tarnas new book Cosmos and Psyche. I thought his previous book The Passion of the Western Mind was a masterpiece but I don't feel his new book will change the world as his supporters suggest. Its just not as well written, while his previous book is beautifully written. Its too academic in a bad sense. Daniel's book I suggest will have a bigger impact. Can any one think of a new book that will have a comparable impact as Daniels?

I do like the autobiography in 2012, it makes it more readable and I disagree that the first few chapters are just a rehash of BOTH. There are a reframing and work because they are obviously written with care and precision.

One can imagine in Daniel's next book he might reframe 2012 before going on to fresh pastures and I will be interested to know how he gets on with the First Priestess!

Is 2012 honest or true? Is it the complete truth? Following Nietzsche it can only be fiction, or one mans truth.

I love ironic humour which I dont find enough in Daniels work but you get the impression he has been through some difficult times.

I guess the lesson of Nietzsche is to write beautifully and Daniel has absorbed that lesson well. But I think Daniel takes himself too seriously and I dont think Nietzsche did do that.

My favourite book on Nietzsche is Peter Sloterdijk's Thinker on the Stage. He also wrote the definitive book on Cynicism, which would have been handy for BOTH.

Anyway back to reading I am going to finish Aldous Huxleys The Island.

Sunny thoughts,
Wallace(I have cognitive problems so please excuse the spelling mistakes!)

[nanouk]

To paraphrase Terrence McKenna who described the asteroid that hit Earth some 65 million years ago. He said that after it the Earth, 1.5 seconds later a hole 5 miles deep was created; a plume of debris 6000 feet tall was moving at Mach 6. Nothing larger than a chicken survived.

Was this a tremendous disaster? Yes, without a doubt, but if it were not for this event mamals, which we are, might not have had a chance to develop.

A history of Earth will show we are a rather recent development in an ever changing landscape.

Yes, the palette is still changing, i am not so worried to perish from an earthquake or comet, i have told my kids that it could happen any day, and that i am only hoping we would be in each other's arms if it did, like the Pompeian Stone Sculptures.

What i DONT want, is to run out of drinking water, or being slowly killed by an ash cloud covering the planet, or even worse, hit by a car. I hate cars, they are Evil Robotic Chariots From Hell.

Love and Respect,

~n~

ps. guys i like the look of the"... Earth Catalog " book, especially the greeting "Evening. Thanks again" on the cover! :)

Maybe Bookfinder.com has it, they even had Wilfred Pelletier's "No Foreign Land"(a Native Canadian Indian semi-autobiography),
when i wanted to replace the copy i lent someone and never got back...it went out of print in 1973, after only one edition.ds.

[nyk]

To paraphrase Terrence McKenna who described the asteroid that hit Earth some 65 million years ago. He said that after it the Earth, 1.5 seconds later a hole 5 miles deep was created; a plume of debris 6000 feet tall was moving at Mach 6. Nothing larger than a chicken survived.

Was this a tremendous disaster? Yes, without a doubt, but if it were not for this event mamals, which we are, might not have had a chance to develop.

A history of Earth will show we are a rather recent development in an ever changing landscape.

We were a flash in the pan, so-to-speak. Like the replicants in Blade
Runner. Burning bright.

[magicbean]

I do think that Pinchebeck touches on many important issues, such as the ecological stuff, but I just find it hard to swallow all his rather strange esoteric ideas- I think they might be very real and relevant to him personally, but maybe not so relevant and real to me. I would be interested to hear what exactly people have gotten out of his new book.

I also find this apocalyptic 2012 stuff to be rather unbelivable and/or paranoid, especially if taken literally and as much more than some kind of metaphor.



I got the same impression Akiz, on both the esoterics and the apocalypse. I fall on the Sam Harris side of the fence (though not entirely) when it comes to belief. I have no more reason to believe Daniel's personal belief system than I have to believe in the Christrian god or everyone's favorite Flying Spaghetti Monster...because I haven't had the same experience.

Sidecross mentioned some numbers about humanity's burden on the planet. No doubt as a species our impact is unbalanced, but when you consider that pound for pound there are more ants on the planet than humans - ants physcially weigh more than us - then there's room for us all if we figure out how to live sustainably. Plants weigh more than we do, and yet they know how to fit their ecological role. I think any upcoming grand change has to do with fitting a role, being balanced, not being obliterated. "Pulse" is a fabulous book that talks about this kind of optimistic evolutionary process, that doesn't advocate a return to mud huts and gathering raw meat for true survival. That would be an evolutionary step backwards.

[magicbean]

Akiz
I think to actually feel this change you have to be taking psychedelic substances ideally within some ceremonial context.

I cry BS on the part of psychedelics users (of which I am one). There are many, many, many paths to learning and wisdom. Psychedelics are one, and only one. There is no special knowledge of the self or the world that cannot be gained by other methods, be they slower or less entertaining. Besides, if an idea is true, it's true from many perspectives, not just the psychedelic one.

I would argue that the danger of psychedelics, which can unground you profoundly, is that you think you've discovered something true when you haven't. Happens all the time.

[nyk]

I cry BS on the part of psychedelics users (of which I am one). There are many, many, many paths to learning and wisdom. Psychedelics are one, and only one. There is no special knowledge of the self or the world that cannot be gained by other methods, be they slower or less entertaining. Besides, if an idea is true, it's true from many perspectives, not just the psychedelic one.

I would argue that the danger of psychedelics, which can unground you profoundly, is that you think you've discovered something true when you haven't. Happens all the time.

Oh c'mon Bean. Everything is psychedelic, don't ya know?! It's just the
rigidity of the modern fossilized adult human that appears to keep
psychedelia in check. We are built for psychedelic apprehension. Have
you ever seen a kid who wasn't (naturally) drugged?

Of course, levering open that potential after an (adult) lifetime of mediocre
containment is bound to produce experiences that are a bit lacking in
integrity. I have found that my experiences were true, but that I was
not all that good at bringing them across the bridge and incorporating
them into my mediocre life. I am still working on that one.

[wallace]

Magicbean,

Are you planning to review Daniels book? I have been reading the monogamy thread and found your comments interesting.

Sunny thoughts,
Wallace

[magicbean]

Wallace, I hadn't really planned on it. I'm sure my opinions on the book will come through my posts....

Oh c'mon Bean. Everything is psychedelic, don't ya know?! It's just the rigidity of the modern fossilized adult human that appears to keep psychedelia in check. We are built for psychedelic apprehension. Have you ever seen a kid who wasn't (naturally) drugged?


nyk, you're great, but I have to disagree. Wonder and awe and the magic of the everyday I believe in, and if by remaining open to the magic of what unfolds before your eyes all the time, you mean "psychedelia", then OK. I'm limiting my remarks to powerful drug-induced states of mind.

[nanouk]

Everything is psychedelic, don't ya know?! It's just the
rigidity of the modern fossilized adult human that appears to keep
psychedelia in check. We are built for psychedelic apprehension. Have
you ever seen a kid who wasn't (naturally) drugged?

. I have found that my experiences were true, but that I was
not all that good at bringing them across the bridge and incorporating
them into my mediocre life. I am still working on that one.

Life is a psychedelic Journey, Life is a Trip. The Bridge is Relative, if one wishes to NOT cross it, SO BE IT.

Like a Marriage vow, i say: "I Do." But only in the context of the Spirit, done the marriage, until it is RIGHT, only for Spirit, Lust can W8... :)

Love and Respect,

~N~

[nyk]

nyk, you're great, but I have to disagree. Wonder and awe and the magic of the everyday I believe in, and if by remaining open to the magic of what unfolds before your eyes all the time, you mean "psychedelia", then OK. I'm limiting my remarks to powerful drug-induced states of mind.

All states of mind are drug-induced. The brain is a drug factory. Artificial
or external drugs are simply leverage. In some cases battering rams. Even
the best of external stimulants are clunky and crude compared to the
brain factories own though. But at least the artificials, if used sparingly
and wisely, can assist cracking the ice....a preview of the potentials, as
it were. I know that I myself am now, fundamentally, chasing down and
claiming all of my altered states of the past eight years - sans the
assistance.

[nyk]

Life is a psychedelic Journey, Life is a Trip. The Bridge is Relative, if one wishes to NOT cross it, SO BE IT.

Like a Marriage vow, i say: "I Do." But only in the context of the Spirit, done the marriage, until it is RIGHT, only for Spirit, Lust can W8... :)

Life is a trip, therefore ride. [reworking of gospel of tommy, verse 42]

[daniel]

The danger is of a biological and climactic transformation that would make the planet uninhabitable for larger life forms, such as mammals like us. The potential for our extinction is quite legitimate. Luckily, we have a short window of time in which we can engineer an ecological u-turn, and a shift in planetary consciousness. Nobody knows what the exact timeframe is - the editor of Worldchanging believes we have thirty years to transform our material basis and industrial processes. He notes we get one shot and have to do it correctly.

Meanwhile, the weather in NY this month is almost spring-like, and has little relationship to the weather I recall as a child. At a certain point, shifts in climate lead to massive changes in agricultural tables. We have had a long running drought in many parts of the country, plus a huge increase in forest fires. The Inconvenient Truth laid out, in purely factual terms, the likely devastation facing us.

For me, an important question is one that nyk raised: To what extent is the caterpillar turning into a butterfly metaphor an accurate one? To what extent will there be continuity, or disjuncture, from our lived experience of the past? Will physical death for us as individuals be necessary for the transformation of consciousness that is required?

Steiner said that, in this era, humanity would "cross the threshold into the spiritual world." He also said that destruction of the physical body of the Earth was necessary, in order that the spiritual be set free.

I tend to believe that it is still up to us to make the determination about the threshold ahead of us. The more that we can consciously reckon with and get over our evasions and delusions and rationalizations about the situation, the less we will be helpless victims of it, and the more choice we will have.

For me, this means working now to try to put systems in place that would allow for social and ecological transformation on a global scale, if an electrical current of awakening were to suddenly pass through the sleepwalking body of humanity at our deepest moment of crisis.

[nyk]

For me, an important question is one that nyk raised: To what extent is the caterpillar turning into a butterfly metaphor an accurate one? To what extent will there be continuity, or disjuncture, from our lived experience of the past? Will physical death for us as individuals be necessary for the transformation of consciousness that is required?

Steiner said that, in this era, humanity would "cross the threshold into the spiritual world." He also said that destruction of the physical body of the Earth was necessary, in order that the spiritual be set free.



I think there is some kind of death in the metamorphosis, but not a
physical one so much as a psychological one. The worm loses its
wormness, but it doesn't physically die and then get raised from the
dead or something like that.

I also think that there are many divergent pathways opening up here,
and not all of us are going the same direction. I am speaking of a
multiverse conjunction. I think we are on the eve of empowered
intentionality, and that we may burst like a flower pod, out of which
many new worlds will spew across the Void. Or something like that.

I personally have (and have for some years now) an overpowering
urge to be living fully in the present while at the same time be fash-
ioning and sustaining another world - a blueprint, as it were - within
the old one. It is a creative urge and it overshadows every convent-
ional motivation I know of personally. Is this just an premature
2nd childhood on my part? Who knows. I'm an artist, and gotta go
where the juices flow. My juices that is.

The other thing I like to keep bringing back to the surface of
consciousness is the business of the duality of day and night. Really
now, what would a life and a world be like if one were to merge both
night (sleeping) and day (so-called waking) consciousnesses (and
environments) together? I mean really? A twilight realm...like the
Big Room in that other thread? I feel so. That is where I have my
sights set.

[nanouk]

The danger is of a biological and climactic transformation that would make the planet uninhabitable for larger life forms, such as mammals like us. The potential for our extinction is quite legitimate. Luckily, we have a short window of time in which we can engineer an ecological u-turn, and a shift in planetary consciousness. Nobody knows what the exact timeframe is - the editor of Worldchanging believes we have thirty years to transform our material basis and industrial processes. He notes we get one shot and have to do it correctly.

Meanwhile, the weather in NY this month is almost spring-like, and has little relationship to the weather I recall as a child. At a certain point, shifts in climate lead to massive changes in agricultural tables. We have had a long running drought in many parts of the country, plus a huge increase in forest fires. The Inconvenient Truth laid out, in purely factual terms, the likely devastation facing us.

For me, an important question is one that nyk raised: To what extent is the caterpillar turning into a butterfly metaphor an accurate one? To what extent will there be continuity, or disjuncture, from our lived experience of the past? Will physical death for us as individuals be necessary for the transformation of consciousness that is required?

I tend to believe that it is still up to us to make the determination about the threshold ahead of us. The more that we can consciously reckon with and get over our evasions and delusions and rationalizations about the situation, the less we will be helpless victims of it, and the more choice we will have.

For me, this means working now to try to put systems in place that would allow for social and ecological transformation on a global scale, if an electrical current of awakening were to suddenly pass through the sleepwalking body of humanity at our deepest moment of crisis.

Daniel, i could not match Your vocabulary in a millenium, but what you say brings it to Heart. the disjuncture you talk about, rings Alarm bells, even to my "common" community, this is what me, and my Friends Talk about!

Comfort, pleeez?

I know you are mainly academic, but...you keep preaching Tolerance.

ps. your web address is the ONLY one i can give as opposite to the "Bleep" and the"Butterfly effect"...

www.breakingopenthehead,com

93,

~n~

[nanouk]

Wallace, I hadn't really planned on it. I'm sure my opinions on the book will come through my posts....



nyk, you're great, but I have to disagree. Wonder and awe and the magic of the everyday I believe in, and if by remaining open to the magic of what unfolds before your eyes all the time, you mean "psychedelia", then OK. I'm limiting my remarks to powerful drug-induced states of mind.


Wow, you stay with the "psychedelic" drugs, and we'll watch this space... ;)

~n~

[wallace]

Magicbean ,I think people should rate Daniels book, he won't mind! Do we care if he does??

Re Daniels discussion of Steiner. I don't know enough about Steiner to comment much but I wish he had made the crucial point that the reason Steiner has been ignored by mainstream opinion is that his followers have made him into a God who is infallible. Its the guru complex again.

There are advantages of working outside academia but there are dangers too, and this switching off of the critical brain is one of them. The philosopher of 21st Century mmm I would say one of them perhaps but I need to read more to judge.

Also he was against psychedelics.



The future: I am a little uncomfortable with this Green rhetoric of we have got thirty years which Daniel goes into. I think its a consciousness thing primarily and thats what by and large the Green lobby dont get but people like Santo Daime do understand, its about finding oneself in nature as described in Forest of Visions. Green consumerism leaves me cold,its still consumerism! A lot of people who call themselves green are just as unspirtual as the general population. Having said that I vote Green but you know where I am coming from. Getting people to go Green should be seen as only the first step. In Scandinavia its all the rage but is their consciousness so much in advance of ours? I dont know I have never been there.

Sunny thoughts,
Wallace

NYK

Your ideas reminded me of Bache(I haven't read him, have you?) Like your photos!
Sunny thoughts,
Wallace

[wallace]

After reading Daniels book I am unsure whether he regrets taking certain psychedelics. Its seems an open question. But whats done is done.

Wallace(my real name for Daniels benefit!)

[magicbean]

All states of mind are drug-induced. The brain is a drug factory. Artificial or external drugs are simply leverage.

Sure, that's what I'm saying. Truth isn't in the little piece of paper or the plant or whatever. I was pointing out that exact thing by saying that you don't have to take psychedelics to gain any particular truth that isn't accessible by some other method, like your own experience and mind.

To what extent is the caterpillar turning into a butterfly metaphor an accurate one? To what extent will there be continuity, or disjuncture, from our lived experience of the past? Will physical death for us as individuals be necessary for the transformation of consciousness that is required?

All great questions, and none of us will really know until it happens. Make the butterfly/caterpillar metaphor bigger...into "no such thing as waste", only change of state from say, leftovers to compost. Calcium to bone. And then there's always continuity. Whether you and I and our personal egos are aware of one state to the next is a different matter. (That's what I get from nyk's last comment about physical/psychological death.

Thanks wallace, but I already spend too much time on the computer.

Nanouk, you seem very, very sweet and kind, but to be honest, I can't always figure out what on earth you are talking about!

[nanouk]

i agree, neither do i sometimes, i should not post anything while i am on a different Plane(t), and that is without any drug apart from coffee and tobacco...thanks for pointing it out. ;)

Love and Respect,
~n~

[Isaiah Mpski]

Oh please Mommy.Let's buy Daniel a place in Mexico for Christmas.He'll be so happy there.
Will send routing and other info soon.Remember put in what you can and take out what you need but ask me first.

[nyk]

Your ideas reminded me of Bache(I haven't read him, have you?) Like your photos!
Sunny thoughts,
Wallace

They probably remind you of Bach because he has an affinity for the
psychic landscape as promoted by Seth (Jane Roberts), as do I. In fact,
Seth was the one thing I found after my Break that really put my
experiences in perspective. Nothing else comes close except thru
allegory. I can see Richard's island from my beach. Yesterday I even
saw snow on it....never saw that before!

[graffitirun]

For me, an important question is one that nyk raised: To what extent is the caterpillar turning into a butterfly metaphor an accurate one? To what extent will there be continuity, or disjuncture, from our lived experience of the past? Will physical death for us as individuals be necessary for the transformation of consciousness that is required?


yes, it is important to investigate these metaphors we build upon. We and the world will turn into something to be sure, but it must be designed, and designed according to healthy harmony with the earth and be-- realistic.

the caterpillar/butterfly symbol is a great image, but in terms of biomimicry [ http://www.biomimicry.net/ ] -something we should take a good & involved look at- the butterfly might not be our best vehicle. What with a lifespan of two weeks;


http://ask.yahoo.com/20040116.html

It's difficult enough to sight one of these elusive, delicate creatures in fair weather and practically impossible when the weather turns inclement.
That's because everything about the very nature of butterflies speaks to their fragile make up.

[nyk]

yes, it is important to investigate these metaphors we build upon. We and the world will turn into something to be sure, but it must be designed, and designed according to healthy harmony with the earth and be-- realistic.


Would you like to attempt a definition of 'realistic'?

[graffitirun]

Would you like to attempt a definition of 'realistic'?

realistic, in this context;
Ill go back to the butterfly-

It is a great image and longstanding symbol of regeneration, yet the realism of what a butterfly is, is a fragile entity unable to withstand the rain.

If humankind is to transform itself succesfully it must look to metaphors and guides, to monitoring systems, actions and decisions that essentially 'add up'

From this level of realism we begin to repair and reconstruct infrastructures of many kinds. Repairing/reconfiguring this level of consensus reality is a step towards engaging or creating other realities.

unrealistic in this context would be, in my opinion, group meditations, 'sending energy' and the like. These operate according to a different reality, acting with more than one foot outside the physical realm. I dont mean to disarm such things, but I dont view them as realistic, in this case.

One thing we do not want to do is go forth with great plans of action according to good intention and interesting symbology only to discover, too far down the road that our assumptions were unrealistic or ill informed, that the ship we built our newmetaphors upon will perish 2 weeks in.

in some sense this is what humankind has already done.

I like Daniels comparisons of electricity and psychic energies-
but of course, if one is not realistic around electrical current it can shock and kill.

All this is certainly not to suggest we should be unimaginative, or that realistic reality holds no awe.

[Isaiah Mpski]

I like the things my Daddy's companies did before they retired him.Build big deep lakes with power plant attached.
Daniel.Are you serious about putting some money in Mexico or do you just want a place to stay>
Everything in Mexico is for sale,or soon will be if I,Slim Carlos hasny say.

[gandydancer]

The butterfly info is not accurate. (From memory, so perhaps not exact, but I will look it up when I have time)--The monarch has several generations in one summer and the last generation is of a different nature in that it is long lived. Monarchs north of the Great Lakes must fly that great expanse of water on their way down to their winter grounds where they over-winter in CA, and Mexico and other places. They start to form into giant flocks just waiting for the right day to make their fly over the great water and intuitivly know when to take off, which they do in great masses!!!...more later.

[gandydancer]

Furthermore, the Japanese have bred their famous cherry trees not to have a long blossom period, but a *short* one as a reminder to us that our stay on this earth is short (and eternity is long...).

[graffitirun]

The butterfly info is not accurate.

ahh, yes and I found other info of a lifespan of 8-9 months.

but I dont know if this proves or disproves my point....
we need to be cautious(?) about what information we wish to transform into

[gandydancer]

Well, from the seahorse to the butterfly...but right now I have visions of the winged horse dancing in my head....I just came back from the astrologer and it is "my" Pegasus, my winged mare that I think of right now. Oh crap overcast here in Maine, but I can't wait for the next clear night to be able to go out and take a look at her...But right now I need to be off to attend a meeting on how to get our little village more ecologically aware...YIKES!

[nyk]

Sure, that's what I'm saying. Truth isn't in the little piece of paper or the plant or whatever. I was pointing out that exact thing by saying that you don't have to take psychedelics to gain any particular truth that isn't accessible by some other method, like your own experience and mind.


It is perhaps the foreign (contaminant) ideas we should be more wary
of than external substances. Those artificial architectures of conscious-
ness that we absorb from our psychological adventures in the world
and which saturate us to our bones and colour our experience to the
extent that we cannot really tell whether or not we are even living
our own lives anymore or we have indeed become marionettes.

[nyk]

realistic, in this context;
Ill go back to the butterfly-

It is a great image and longstanding symbol of regeneration, yet the realism of what a butterfly is, is a fragile entity unable to withstand the rain.

If humankind is to transform itself succesfully it must look to metaphors and guides, to monitoring systems, actions and decisions that essentially 'add up'

From this level of realism we begin to repair and reconstruct infrastructures of many kinds. Repairing/reconfiguring this level of consensus reality is a step towards engaging or creating other realities.

unrealistic in this context would be, in my opinion, group meditations, 'sending energy' and the like. These operate according to a different reality, acting with more than one foot outside the physical realm. I dont mean to disarm such things, but I dont view them as realistic, in this case.

One thing we do not want to do is go forth with great plans of action according to good intention and interesting symbology only to discover, too far down the road that our assumptions were unrealistic or ill informed, that the ship we built our newmetaphors upon will perish 2 weeks in.

in some sense this is what humankind has already done.

I like Daniels comparisons of electricity and psychic energies-
but of course, if one is not realistic around electrical current it can shock and kill.

All this is certainly not to suggest we should be unimaginative, or that realistic reality holds no awe.

Well said. However we must - in my understanding of the situtation -
be a bit sneaky with ourselves with regard to realism. It is a deep
seated activity underneath the layers of our display where something
is massaging a certain strata of energies (so-called) to effectualize
the realism we experience. In otherwords, we are already being very,
very real. No matter what silly thoughts we may be entertaining, some
primary part of us is very successful about holding an organic being
together and operational. And we are also somehow tuned into a
greater reality - an environment. It's a very interesting holographic
setup, if you stop to think about the uncountable details that all
coordinate to form a coherent experience. And there is that little
gray zone that we can never quite seem to pinpoint where thought
transitions into material. It is ellusive. But fortunately we sometimes
become momentarily so unrealistic that the projection falters enough
and reality becomes plastic. And something inside of you finds
passage thru the cracks of the blueprint and into the greater field
of play....and for a moment, time alters and things happen.

So, out of this apprehension of the shape of things within this
reality comes the interesting challenge of becoming extremely
playfully unrealistic while becoming stone cold sober. At the same
time. The more of each extreme we embrace simultaneously the
greater an intensity and brilliance that forms in the midst of that
focus. It sounds a little weird, but to actually apply it has undeniable
vitality, and there is a sort of internal logic to the exercising of
our consciousness in such a fashion.

[graffitirun]

becoming extremely playfully unrealistic while becoming stone cold sober.

!yes exactly




and begin and continue to open and update the realities that grow and emerge.

that pinpoint; the chasm of time

[graffitirun]

It sounds a little weird, but to actually apply it ...

sounds wierd, it's completely realistic.


-

yeah it is a warm evening, a hot warm, not comfortable in the least especially if you care to reflect that it's late novermber. and in this november heatwave, I keep my cool because I can see the gates to hell opening wide, inside; complete chaotic heaven, I am standing on the docks of so many harbours, diving crystal waters and ripped apart, delivered my the head to the loop, staring death in the face, laughing all the way... to the snowbank.

[nyk]

thank the gods of asgardhr that some other stranger in this forsaken
neverwhere feels the same damn thing i do

'tis fusion

[daniel]

Wallace writes: "I think people should rate Daniels book, he won't mind! Do we care if he does??"

Why don't you spare me?

Wallace writes: "I don't know enough about Steiner to comment much but I wish he had made the crucial point that the reason Steiner has been ignored by mainstream opinion is that his followers have made him into a God who is infallible. Its the guru complex again."

Not exactly the case. Since you don't know enough, perhaps you shouldn't comment.

Wallace writes:"There are advantages of working outside academia but there are dangers too, and this switching off of the critical brain is one of them. The philosopher of 21st Century mmm I would say one of them perhaps but I need to read more to judge."

I have never shut off my critical brain. Inside academia, none of the subjects I write about can be freely discussed. Yes, why don't you read more before you judge. "Philosophy of Freedom" is a good place to start.

Wallace writes: "Also he was against psychedelics."

I don't think that is so clear - even if he was adamantly against them, one would have to consider the context of his time, and what was known about them at that time. I believe that if Steiner had lived later he would have recognized psychedelics as necessary luciferic catalysts.

Wallace writes: "The future: I am a little uncomfortable with this Green rhetoric of we have got thirty years which Daniel goes into. I think its a consciousness thing primarily and thats what by and large the Green lobby dont get but people like Santo Daime do understand, its about finding oneself in nature as described in Forest of Visions."

Obviously it is not an "either or" situation but a "both and" one. You wouldn't want to live like the Daime do in the Amazon, believe me. It is tough, rudimentary, and would not make for lengthy life spans.

Wallace writes: "Green consumerism leaves me cold,its still consumerism!"

So you don't like to eat well and dress well and live in a nice place? As I have said elsewhere, capitalism and even "consumerism" (though I hate the word) are not the problem. Please read William McDonogue's "Cradle to Cradle" - if we create a system where all the industrial through-puts fed the biosphere positively, with regenerative closed-loop manufacturing and no toxic byproducts, we could consume as much as we like. My vision of the future is one where we thrive, bloom, and flourish, not simply subsist at the level of what we now consider to be sustainable.

Wallace: "A lot of people who call themselves green are just as unspirtual as the general population. Having said that I vote Green but you know where I am coming from."

Actually, I don't.

[daniel]

great posts, nyk

nyk writes: "I think there is some kind of death in the metamorphosis, but not a physical one so much as a psychological one. The worm loses its wormness, but it doesn't physically die and then get raised from the dead or something like that."

You think there won't be a physical death - but perhaps that is because you do not want to think it? I am speaking also for myself when I write this. Perhaps we are going to be forced to learn that total loss is total gain. Or perhaps the "choice" is still up for grabs (whose choice is it?).

nyk: "I also think that there are many divergent pathways opening up here, and not all of us are going the same direction. I am speaking of a
multiverse conjunction. I think we are on the eve of empowered
intentionality, and that we may burst like a flower pod, out of which
many new worlds will spew across the Void. Or something like that."

I have gone down this road of thought many times. At the end of present world incarnation, Steiner discusses humanity splitting into different "human kingdoms" that enter very different future paths of evolution. However, it is hard to substantiate this in one's mind - it exists as a possibility beyond the edge of what we now can conceive, intuit, and feel. What would it be like in a lived reality for humanity enter these divergent paths? Would we witness the Greys coming down to claim those who had fallen into techno-hypnotic trances of passivity? The hordes of Islam fusing with the Qa'Bah into one hard stoney Allah-worshipping supermind?

It seems like a kind of spiritual shortcut somehow... but maybe it is or could be "true."

nyk: "The other thing I like to keep bringing back to the surface of
consciousness is the business of the duality of day and night. Really
now, what would a life and a world be like if one were to merge both
night (sleeping) and day (so-called waking) consciousnesses (and
environments) together?"

Yes that is definitely part of it - Osho talks about overcoming the perceived dualism of dream and waking. Or what you said in that other post, reality becoming more sober and more impossibly phantasmogorical at the same time...

or is this all just the projection of a dying mammallian species that didn't get smart enough fast enough and has now overgrazed its niche?

[Dna]

Daniel:
if we create a system where all the industrial through-puts fed the biosphere positively, with regenerative closed-loop manufacturing and no toxic byproducts, we could consume as much as we like. My vision of the future is one where we thrive, bloom, and flourish, not simply subsist at the level of what we now consider to be sustainable.

Yes. The green movement can (sometimes) appear be a dull, moralizing, finger-wagging brigade who underestimate human creativity and our capacity for total transformation. This is not an entirely unwarranted perception, either.

Dna.

[Dna]

Nyk:
I think we are on the eve of empowered
intentionality,
I like this phrase empowered intentionality. I think it describes very well what many of us feel.

[nyk]

nyk writes: "I think there is some kind of death in the metamorphosis, but not a physical one so much as a psychological one. The worm loses its wormness, but it doesn't physically die and then get raised from the dead or something like that."

You think there won't be a physical death - but perhaps that is because you do not want to think it? I am speaking also for myself when I write this. Perhaps we are going to be forced to learn that total loss is total gain. Or perhaps the "choice" is still up for grabs (whose choice is it?).

It's not that I think there will not be a physical death. Actually I rather
realistically expect it. It is that I believe the physical portion of this
transition is ultimately the least of it. Our real tribulations (as well as
our triumphs) all reside in the realm of consciousness from my perspect-
ive. It is that invisible, but massive, psychological framework that we
have erected and fastened into place, and thru which all of our
perceptions and interpretations are modulated. Much of that architect-
ure is hidden to our conscious awareness, so at home are we in it.
Take that away, or even just rearrange it a little, and suddenly we
feel very disturbed and alien, even in our own skin.

I don't think I'm actually explaining this very well. It is like we have
a body within a body perhaps. Since I was a kid I would occasionally
enter a very strange void state in my sleep. I think I called it The
Big Nothing. It was positively terrifying. I would then slam into my
body and explode out of bed, drenched. Then I would go off and
find a bathroom and turn on lights. There was some relief in seeing
the familiar, but at the same time there was this deep dread sense
of hollow emptiness as though my body and the room though looking
real were utterly devoid of inner substance. I remember pressing
or firmly pounding on my thighs endeavoring to regain that sense
of athomeness that had been ripped away. It was as though all of
my marrow had been sucked out...or the bottom had fallen out
of 'me'. Yes, the latter sense in particular. Like a bottomless pit.


nyk: "I also think that there are many divergent pathways opening up here, and not all of us are going the same direction. I am speaking of a
multiverse conjunction. I think we are on the eve of empowered
intentionality, and that we may burst like a flower pod, out of which
many new worlds will spew across the Void. Or something like that."

I have gone down this road of thought many times. At the end of present world incarnation, Steiner discusses humanity splitting into different "human kingdoms" that enter very different future paths of evolution. However, it is hard to substantiate this in one's mind - it exists as a possibility beyond the edge of what we now can conceive, intuit, and feel. What would it be like in a lived reality for humanity enter these divergent paths? Would we witness the Greys coming down to claim those who had fallen into techno-hypnotic trances of passivity? The hordes of Islam fusing with the Qa'Bah into one hard stoney Allah-worshipping supermind?

It seems like a kind of spiritual shortcut somehow... but maybe it is or could be "true."

I don't know. I have had some very strange experiences in the past
few years, and from them I have gotten a strong sense of many
worlds sandwiched together; many worlds, in the same 'space'. I
think we may be slipsliding amongst these variations constantly, but
hardly noticing them consciously. But upon occasion we drift just a
bit further than usual and then even physical reality appears to have
deviated in various ways. But then we are drawn back into our familiar
track before we know it and left with little more than a strange feeling.
There is this chimeric yet tenacious sense that one day I will deviate
past the point of no return, beyond the recall of that invisible elastic.

On some level within myself the concept of divergence seems like
the only viable possibility. This is from the perspective of granting
legitimacy to each soul - an inherent integrity - regardless of what
each appears to be doing or not doing. It is a life-affirming view...
a big jolly yes coupled with a gentle shove. Move things along. Go
where thou wilt, but go! I do not necessarily want to know all of
the details of that.

I may have to read Steiner sometime.


The other thing I like to keep bringing back to the surface of
consciousness is the business of the duality of day and night. Really
now, what would a life and a world be like if one were to merge both
night (sleeping) and day (so-called waking) consciousnesses (and
environments) together?"

Yes that is definitely part of it - Osho talks about overcoming the perceived dualism of dream and waking. Or what you said in that other post, reality becoming more sober and more impossibly phantasmogorical at the same time...

or is this all just the projection of a dying mammallian species that didn't get smart enough fast enough and has now overgrazed its niche?

I think we are half of ourselves during the day, and half of ourselves
during the night. In the night we tend to lose acute awareness. In
the day we tend to lose plasticity. Illusion or not, it dissipates our
power and potential. In that moment in the dream state when your
consciousness crystalizes and the scene snaps into brilliant focus
and you are like goddamn I am in a dream and completely awake at
the same time - and your limbic system becomes like a lodestone....
at those times you just know that that is the real thing; day
awareness merged with night fluidity.

Perhaps extinction and enlightenment go hand-in-hand.

[Dna]

I have gone down this road of thought many times. At the end of present world incarnation, Steiner discusses humanity splitting into different "human kingdoms" that enter very different future paths of evolution. However, it is hard to substantiate this in one's mind - it exists as a possibility beyond the edge of what we now can conceive, intuit, and feel. What would it be like in a lived reality for humanity enter these divergent paths? Would we witness the Greys coming down to claim those who had fallen into techno-hypnotic trances of passivity? The hordes of Islam fusing with the Qa'Bah into one hard stoney Allah-worshipping supermind?

It seems like a kind of spiritual shortcut somehow... but maybe it is or could be "true."

Maybe this is true and maybe it is not. Either way, it certainly sounds like a convenient way to get rid of the assholes who do not share one's point of view.

But maybe it is 'true'. Speciation is a mystery. There are 2 types, (if remember correctly). These are 'sympatric' and 'allopatric'. In the second case, isolated populations of organisms diverge slowly into different species. In the first case, which is what we are considering, the species split occurrs in the same population.

Actually, here's a couple of links.
Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sympatric_speciation)
Evolution 101, (Berkley.edu) (http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evosite/evo101/VCCausesSpeciation.shtml)

And that's as far as science goes. For a long time we believed in 'phylogenetic gradualism', where species came into being over long periods of time. Now we have been moved to a theory of 'punctuated equilibrium', where sharp environmental changes make new species appear almost as suddenly (thousands of years).

Currently, science does not take into account 'consciousness' or 'intent', but I think these ideas will become central. It may be perfectly possible that a species can 'intend' an evolutionary path for itself, just as we know we can in our personal lives. In fact I believe this is likely. So, by that token, perhaps you are onto something.

Peace,

Dna.

[Karyn]

It's not that I think there will not be a physical death. Actually I rather
realistically expect it. It is that I believe the physical portion of this
transition is ultimately the least of it. Our real tribulations (as well as
our triumphs) all reside in the realm of consciousness from my perspect-
ive. It is that invisible, but massive, psychological framework that we
have erected and fastened into place, and thru which all of our
perceptions and interpretations are modulated. Much of that architect-
ure is hidden to our conscious awareness, so at home are we in it.
Take that away, or even just rearrange it a little, and suddenly we
feel very disturbed and alien, even in our own skin.

Perhaps extinction and enlightenment go hand-in-hand.

Hi Nyk, The hermetic philosophy of the mystery school I am a student of teaches that death is a fact..but not necessary. It serves a purpose if one is not learning or growing in consciousness during a life time. But if one learns to correct incorrect mental patterns and transmute their mind thus transmuting matter -- we can overcome death of the body. This is the lesson on Key 13 Death. Funny although it is written clearly in black and white many students of the same school seem unable to see these teachings. I have even pointed out the lesson number - page and paragraph- but they seem to have a mental block in this area. Love, Karyn

[wallace]

Daniel

You dont want us to rate your work but you want us to review it on Amazon(as I have done), hardly consistent!

Thanks for the Steiner reading tip.

I was thinking about your book in relation to sex and relationships and I think that was the weakest part of it. This has been discussed in the monogamy thread so I wont rehearse all this. For example I was rereading "Forest of Visions" and found that a much richer resource for this area than yourself.

Basically I think you need healing at the heart chakra(takes one to know one -so do I!). The amount of personal details you reveal in your book- far more I think than you have revealed on this board- tells me subconsciously you know this is a problem area for yourself.

Nietzsche here is a bad role model here who had tragic relationships with women. He died, in my opinion of loneliness, despite his brilliant mind.

Intellect must be married to the heart.

I think this is your next threshold to cross and by doing so you should light the way for others.

I have had a problem with relationships so i am not trying to lecture here.

Yes I know this is a personal post but you wrote a personal book!

Sunny thoughts,
Wallace

[daniel]

wallace,

have you ever encountered the term "projection"?

[graffitirun]

Perhaps extinction and enlightenment go hand-in-hand.


could very well be.

and this relates to being 'wildly unrealisticly amazing simultaneously stone cold sober and present"

Ayahuasca & DMT certainly suggest worlds and spirits just beyond the bend, around the corner, totally amazing, exhilarating, enlightening... while at the same time offering annihilation and destruction of 'the world'

we are and always have been 'in the dark' about death
perhaps our millennial, widespread, increasingly strange experiences, encounters, and syncronicities with spirits and so on is the light of the afterlife, the everchanging light of death- shining through the holes in our lives, the cracks in our dreams, a rising sun by which we either awake, become engulfed, warm ourselves, stare into, or grow our food.

[nyk]

Hi Nyk, The hermetic philosophy of the mystery school I am a student of teaches that death is a fact..but not necessary. It serves a purpose if one is not learning or growing in consciousness during a life time. But if one learns to correct incorrect mental patterns and transmute their mind thus transmuting matter -- we can overcome death of the body. This is the lesson on Key 13 Death. Funny although it is written clearly in black and white many students of the same school seem unable to see these teachings. I have even pointed out the lesson number - page and paragraph- but they seem to have a mental block in this area. Love, Karyn

Hi Karyn-

Transcending death is perhaps a rather large step - or long shot - don't
you think? The death of death? Sometimes it appears that those around
us may be in fact the shadows of our own misgivings. And immortality -
or rather creative extension - requires somewhat of an independent
streak. We are groomed into a rhythm which we share with the herd
and would have to fall out of that lock-step to enter the dragon's gate.
The passage is narrow; one enters alone. That is perhaps a major
issue for most people. Schools....they often seem to be little more than
placeholders for a very ellusive truth. To graduate requires daring.

[daniel]

Meaningful salvation and redemption would require salvation and redemption of the material and organic world as well.

I still feel that those who have passed through the gates of the Self have a profound responsibility to serve the collective - out of compassion, as well as commonsense. Most of those who I consider (or consider themselves) "illuminated," to some degree, do not utilize their gifts and their knowledge for the benefit of the multitude. Many of them regress into art-making or California hot-tubbing. I would like to see them sacrifice their own pleasures for a deeper satisfaction. There is a kind of mystic hipster insularity that retards the real potential for social progress. People go in circles, lingering in the delusionary bardo of the "god realm" for too long. I fear there will be consequences.

[nyk]

we are and always have been 'in the dark' about death
perhaps our millennial, widespread, increasingly strange experiences, encounters, and syncronicities with spirits and so on is the light of the afterlife, the everchanging light of death- shining through the holes in our lives, the cracks in our dreams, a rising sun by which we either awake, become engulfed, warm ourselves, stare into, or grow our food.

Aye, I have often felt so. And so what choice have I but to widen those
cracks?

[nyk]

Meaningful salvation and redemption would require salvation and redemption of the material and organic world as well.

I still feel that those who have passed through the gates of the Self have a profound responsibility to serve the collective - out of compassion, as well as commonsense. Most of those who I consider (or consider themselves) "illuminated," to some degree, do not utilize their gifts and their knowledge for the benefit of the multitude. Many of them regress into art-making or California hot-tubbing. I would like to see them sacrifice their own pleasures for a deeper satisfaction. There is a kind of mystic hipster insularity that retards the real potential for social progress. People go in circles, lingering in the delusionary bardo of the "god realm" for too long. I fear there will be consequences.

I have a personal adage which goes: If it ain't physical, it ain't real. So,
I am inclined to agree with you in basic terms. I would not agree that art-
making is a regression. Crop circles are art, and so is the cover of your
latest book. And what about BM? The motto in my town is "art saves
lives". And art, being a physical manifestation of intent, is inherently
a bridge between the material and psychic realms. As for those who
are illuminated, I sincerely doubt that any of those are truly recognizable
to the general population. They are hidden in plain sight. I think that
these mystic hipsters you refer to are a product of the social climate
that you frequent. Out in the boonies such glamour tends to disperse.

The whole of California is a bardo as far as I am concerned. And they
can have it. One thing I think you may be overlooking Daniel is the
fundamental truth that every being is - not will be, but is - a god.
The energy that is used to walk between worlds by one being is exactly
the same as that used by another to walk into a Walmart. It comes down
to Intent. Ignorance or whatever we wish to call it is not something
happening to people, it is something they are enacting in themselves.
And there is no way to deal with something like that but by the most
peripheral of means. The failure of religions is a testimony to the pitfalls
of the head-on approach. We are not dealing with just simple ignorance
and poverty in this world, but with the will of gods. There are countries
within countries, invisible to the general consciousness. I believe our
general salvation lays within these communities.

[gandydancer]

I still feel that those who have passed through the gates of the Self have a profound responsibility to serve the collective - out of compassion, as well as commonsense. Most of those who I consider (or consider themselves) "illuminated," to some degree, do not utilize their gifts and their knowledge for the benefit of the multitude

I would suggest that you and those you consider "illuminated" are perhaps not so "illuminated" as you think you are. With "illumination" comes compassion. I would clearly say to anyone that wanted to make a "sacrifice" for me to just STOP IT! There are already too many Social Workers in the world and they have done way too much damage already.

My prayer: And God please save me from the social workers, the people who just want to help me. Amen

[Damien]

I would suggest that you and those you consider "illuminated" are perhaps not so "illuminated" as you think you are. With "illumination" comes compassion. I would clearly say to anyone that wanted to make a "sacrifice" for me to just STOP IT! There are already too many Social Workers in the world and they have done way too much damage already.

My prayer: And God please save me from the social workers, the people who just want to help me. Amen

Hot!!!1 Yes, I totally agree that the age of martyrdom is over the paradigm is now going to shift into the realm of people helping "themselves" for "others". What that means is that people will have to come to their own reckoning of who they are, what they are, and who they are responsible too...especially because the new shift is going into fire and air, there is a need to address the explosive as well as the implosive.

For example, if you see someone in need there is generally this feeling of, "How can I help them?" "What can I do for them?" this is generally accomplanied by the feeling of "What can I get for it for myself?" or "How does this effect me?". Balance will require a constant shifting of perspective and a leavening of obligation and responsibility to the parallel of freedom and self-direction, rising cannot be accomplished without a complete unification of the dual poles of self and other, compassion dispassion, hurting healing, and a rendezvous with truth.

[Karyn]

Hi Karyn-

Transcending death is perhaps a rather large step - or long shot - don't
you think? The death of death? Sometimes it appears that those around
us may be in fact the shadows of our own misgivings. And immortality -
or rather creative extension - requires somewhat of an independent
streak. We are groomed into a rhythm which we share with the herd
and would have to fall out of that lock-step to enter the dragon's gate.
The passage is narrow; one enters alone. That is perhaps a major
issue for most people. Schools....they often seem to be little more than
placeholders for a very ellusive truth. To graduate requires daring.

Hi Nyk, We would have to discard the current computer program that the brain is now playing. During sleep the subconscious has a chance to repair the damage of the thoughts and attitudes of the day. This happens with imaging. Most dreams are the images the lower cerebellum sends to tell the body to heal. The problem we have is during the waking hours when we allow our current belief system of death and aging to take over. The truth is I never believed I would "have" to die.
The teachings are that a Master looks like everyone else except they are using more of their brain. They have made changes to their nervous system. Also the physical structure changes. This makes sense to me because physiology follows the mind. The body is the last manifestation of the thought. With more knowledge and information --more is thought to be possible causing changes..First mental and then physical. Physical is also spiritual. It is not solid. It is on the move obeying our belief systems over our Knowing during our waking hours. Another teachings of the school is that you can tell your subconscious (that always obeys the Self conscious) that it is to obey Self conscious "only" when the Self Conscious is in agreement with Superconsciousness. This should help correct a lot of incorrect programming that is based on limited sight and experience. Nyk you are right this will not be easy. Masters are rare. I think the reason I have not meet a Master yet in the flesh is because I am not yet frequency specific to one. Love, Karyn

[Damien]

Hi Nyk, The hermetic philosophy of the mystery school I am a student of teaches that death is a fact..but not necessary. It serves a purpose if one is not learning or growing in consciousness during a life time. But if one learns to correct incorrect mental patterns and transmute their mind thus transmuting matter -- we can overcome death of the body. This is the lesson on Key 13 Death. Funny although it is written clearly in black and white many students of the same school seem unable to see these teachings. I have even pointed out the lesson number - page and paragraph- but they seem to have a mental block in this area. Love, Karyn

Karyn, i'm struck by your repose...could you enlighten me more towards what your school teaches...

[graffitirun]

a profound responsibility to serve the collective - out of compassion, as well as commonsense. ... regress into art-making

is art-making not a way to serve the collective?


if put forth as a challenge, then I agree with what your saying here.
but Im curious about how, as nyk mentioned, books, art and so forth fit into this- art-making and hot tubbing are worlds apart no?


sacrifice their own pleasures for a deeper satisfaction

what types of action would you suggest in order to accomplish this?

[JustSitting]

Meaningful salvation and redemption would require salvation and redemption of the material and organic world as well.

I still feel that those who have passed through the gates of the Self have a profound responsibility to serve the collective - out of compassion, as well as commonsense. Most of those who I consider (or consider themselves) "illuminated," to some degree, do not utilize their gifts and their knowledge for the benefit of the multitude. Many of them regress into art-making or California hot-tubbing. I would like to see them sacrifice their own pleasures for a deeper satisfaction. There is a kind of mystic hipster insularity that retards the real potential for social progress. People go in circles, lingering in the delusionary bardo of the "god realm" for too long. I fear there will be consequences.

This is something I’ve dealt with personally. It seems to be we stand on the edge, knowing unlimited compassion is the answer, believing it, but being afraid to act on it. Because we (on some level) know the truth of the matter, when it comes to small acts of compassion and involvement we become terrified. This isn’t just a “do it every once in a while” thing, it’s all encompassing, all consuming; to really give in would mean the total destruction of the self.

Need seems endless, and to be compassionate in an endlessly needy world is a task few are up to. Where are the limits? When I’m tired? When the person is beyond help, when I have to get home for dinner? No! All of this seems null compared to the compassion required. To avoid understanding our own egoistic greed we find distractions, excuses, anything to avoid being consumed.

Enlightenment isn’t something you do in little increments; it’s a total transformation, always available, but terrifying to the single separate mind. The mind builds many layers of self defense against this. Until we see our greed for what it is, and totally accept it, we have no hope of transmuting it into compassion. We just give it lip service, not total acceptance.

To protect itself the mind tricks us into taking a little here, a little there kind of mindset with compassion. But it’s just to feed the ego, to say “I’m compassionate! Look at the story of my day, it has some compassion. Clearly I am working on being non-greedy”
Then the story is used to judge others, and yourself. All the while your head remains unbroken.

[Isaiah Mpski]

unbroken but frightfully German ugly.

[nyk]

Hi Nyk, We would have to discard the current computer program that the brain is now playing. During sleep the subconscious has a chance to repair the damage of the thoughts and attitudes of the day. This happens with imaging. Most dreams are the images the lower cerebellum sends to tell the body to heal. The problem we have is during the waking hours when we allow our current belief system of death and aging to take over. The truth is I never believed I would "have" to die.

It requires a certain kind of vigilance to overcome the program. Resolve.
If we can keep the channels into the 'subconscious' running open during
the day as well, then we might have a chance.


The teachings are that a Master looks like everyone else except they are using more of their brain. They have made changes to their nervous system. Also the physical structure changes. This makes sense to me because physiology follows the mind. The body is the last manifestation of the thought. With more knowledge and information --more is thought to be possible causing changes..First mental and then physical. Physical is also spiritual. It is not solid. It is on the move obeying our belief systems over our Knowing during our waking hours. Another teachings of the school is that you can tell your subconscious (that always obeys the Self conscious) that it is to obey Self conscious "only" when the Self Conscious is in agreement with Superconsciousness. This should help correct a lot of incorrect programming that is based on limited sight and experience.

Yes. Thought and matter are really just two ends of the same stick.
Where exactly does 'you' fit in with a subconscious and a superconscious.
A triad relationship? A virtuality between two poles? I think I can feel
what you are getting at, but there remains some fuzzy mystique about
these spheres of consciousness.


Nyk you are right this will not be easy. Masters are rare. I think the reason I have not meet a Master yet in the flesh is because I am not yet frequency specific to one.

From my occasional forays into alternate earths I have found that when
I change everything changes. That includes people. And anyway, where
can one draw the line between 'mastery' and non-mastery? Is there
really such a thing, or are we ourselves creating that idea?

[wallace]

I am impressed by the quality of people's postings. This is the "Magic Mountain"(one of my favourite novels).

On being illumined I believe we need to accept healing even when we think we dont need it. I am reminded of this when in 2012 when Daniel refuses a healing ceremony offered by the Teacher.

Daniel castigates the New Age obession with healing.

If someone offers you healing I feel generally it is compassionate to gratefully accept, putting aside one's ego.

I have had chronic health problems most of my adult life so maybe I am biased here!

In simple terms the earth is sick and so are many of us, to help others we need the humility to accept that we sometimes may need help, to in turn help others, as Daniel mentions we should.

Robert Bly talks about the archetype of the wounded hero who achieves humanity through his suffering in Iron Man. Daniel shows in 2012 he is wounded but the question is whether he is a hero! He needs to recognise he is wounded and embark on a journey to heal the wound.

Enlarging the heart is the duty of all of us.

Sunny thoughts,
Wallace

[Isaiah Mpski]

Yeah Daniel.Send us some money.We want to buy you some land in Mexico.
You too Lord CM.Ten grand will buy alot of hectacres and the fishing is almost the greatest.Google Mahi Mahi.Twenty ten to forty lbers a day -400 dollars in the market.
Say u lit a

[magicbean]

Because we (on some level) know the truth of the matter, when it comes to small acts of compassion and involvement we become terrified. This isn’t just a “do it every once in a while” thing, it’s all encompassing, all consuming; to really give in would mean the total destruction of the self.

Certainly it's not all or nothing. That's all we can offer as humans, is one helping hand to another. Do we all have to be Ghandi to have compassion in the world? Or ease some suffering? That's just silly.


Need seems endless, and to be compassionate in an endlessly needy world is a task few are up to. Where are the limits? When I’m tired? When the person is beyond help, when I have to get home for dinner? No! All of this seems null compared to the compassion required. To avoid understanding our own egoistic greed we find distractions, excuses, anything to avoid being consumed.

Need is endless, but it's egoistic to think you personally have to take it all on or you're not doing any good. You can't and shouldn't give it all. Be engaged and aware, yes, but that means being aware of your own limits, your own sustainability, not being a martyr. If humans started to live with sustainability of the self, rather than seeing things as all or nothing, boy would things change fast.

Enlightenment isn’t something you do in little increments; it’s a total transformation, always available, but terrifying to the single separate mind. The mind builds many layers of self defense against this. Until we see our greed for what it is, and totally accept it, we have no hope of transmuting it into compassion. We just give it lip service, not total acceptance.

You speak of enlightenment as if it's some stage you get to, some perfection to rest in. Heaven, as it were, and if you could just flip...that...dial..grunt..you would be there forever. I don't buy it. And it is never lip service to change a bedpan, or lift a spoon to someone's hungry mouth, or help a lost child find her parents.

I do agree with some of the questioning that you and others have raised upthread about ego driving service, the giving becoming about the giver, rather than the receiver. The evangelist who needs to save you being the most annoying example. But just because some "help" is not really such, that doesn't meant there's no genuine and intermittent compassion. Don't buddhists call this kind of confusion the "near enemy", when you confuse things like compassion and pity?

[Karyn]

It requires a certain kind of vigilance to overcome the program. Resolve.
If we can keep the channels into the 'subconscious' running open during
the day as well, then we might have a chance.




Yes. Thought and matter are really just two ends of the same stick.
Where exactly does 'you' fit in with a subconscious and a superconscious.
A triad relationship? A virtuality between two poles? I think I can feel
what you are getting at, but there remains some fuzzy mystique about
these spheres of consciousness.




From my occasional forays into alternate earths I have found that when
I change everything changes. That includes people. And anyway, where
can one draw the line between 'mastery' and non-mastery? Is there
really such a thing, or are we ourselves creating that idea?

-Yes -When the blocks are removed the channel is clearer. Less interference with our correct state of being. It is the middle- Self Consciousness. It is in between Superconsciousness and the Subconscious. We should be in the present. The state of observer. A Self Conscious state that is in touch with Superconsciousness. It is a state of acute alertness and awareness where your mind does not wander to the past or the future. Living fully present in the Now with the inner voice and feelings as your guide. This happens when the instrument/ personality is fine tuned, in-line, balanced. Thanks for reminding me Nyk. Although there is only One we are the many points of Self Consciousness of the One. The Experiencers of the One and the One at the same time. Love, Karyn

[Karyn]

Karyn, i'm struck by your repose...could you enlighten me more towards what your school teaches...

Hi Damien, Sorry I missed your post earlier. The name of the school is The B.O.T.A. The original teacher of the school is Paul Foster Case. He was a member of the Golden Dawn. He was in touch with the inner school. The channel for the teachings. The teachings are from the ancient mystery schools of Egypt and India. It is called "The Great Work" It is the work on self. Transmutation of mind and matter. Because we think in pictures it is easy to program our subconscious with pictures. Subconscious responds to images. An easier way of correcting the incorrect programming then trying to find every incorrect thought. The tarot keys were originally created for the purpose of programming the subconscious. We all share a universal knowing of what every symbol in the Keys mean. Example: Key 0 the Fool is an image of who we are as Self. Unlimited. Superconsciousness. That is what it says to your subconscious thus correcting incorrect mental patterns of limit and lack. Whatever program you put in-whatever image you hold in the frontal lobe the subconscious will create. Love, Karyn

[tree hugger]

I hope this doesn't sound like it's coming out of left field but I can't help think about what it is like to give birth while reading some of this thread.

First off, no matter what anyone tells you while you are pregnant no matter all the advise you receive it's impossible to grasp what giving birth will be like until it's actually happening.

I can't say enough about the utterly beautiful and mystifying arrangement in which you lead a child into the world and simultaneous the child is teaching you how to do it. It is far bigger then you and so ancient. At some point in laboring you are so far away from your conscious self you fail to recognize the material in which you are made. Then just like that the baby arrives and you come back. You are of course forever transformed.

And then, maybe in a couple of years you decide to have a second child and you think you have it all figured out and bam... guess what? It's kind of the same but each birth is different and none are easy.

In the process of development we shed our webbed feet and hands, our tails, our gills and reptilian faces. Does that mean those parts no longer exists. I think the obvious answer is no. We are all of those things and more.

One last thing. Is making the sacrifices one often has to make to care for a dying parent a selfish misguided act? Again I think the answer is no. We guide each-other in and out of this thing we call living. It's our judgments of ourselves and others that is the issue.

Now, I'm going to go and birth some more of myself while simultaneously drawing closer to my death. Or then again, maybe not.

Tree hugger

[nyk]

-Yes -When the blocks are removed the channel is clearer. Less interference with our correct state of being. It is the middle- Self Consciousness. It is in between Superconsciousness and the Subconscious. We should be in the present. The state of observer. A Self Conscious state that is in touch with Superconsciousness. It is a state of acute alertness and awareness where your mind does not wander to the past or the future. Living fully present in the Now with the inner voice and feelings as your guide. This happens when the instrument/ personality is fine tuned, in-line, balanced. Thanks for reminding me Nyk. Although there is only One we are the many points of Self Consciousness of the One. The Experiencers of the One and the One at the same time. Love, Karyn

I reminded you?:skeptic:

Is there anyway you can correlate those 3 consciousnesses with
centers in the body, or chakras in the kundalini? I am getting all
pretzeled thinking about this!

[nyk]

I hope this doesn't sound like it's coming out of left field but I can't help think about what it is like to give birth while reading some of this thread.

First off, no matter what anyone tells you while you are pregnant no matter all the advise you receive it's impossible to grasp what giving birth will be like until it's actually happening.....



Is it happening?

[JustSitting]

/Gets off high horse
Hi, thanks for responding, very compelling!
/back onto high horse

Certainly it's not all or nothing. That's all we can offer as humans, is one helping hand to another. Do we all have to be Ghandi to have compassion in the world? Or ease some suffering? That's just silly.


I honestly don’t know. People have been going less than all in for most of time, how has that truly solved our problems? I’m not going to pretend I’m any better here; I’m lost in the woods too.

Need is endless, but it's egoistic to think you personally have to take it all on or you're not doing any good. You can't and shouldn't give it all. Be engaged and aware, yes, but that means being aware of your own limits, your own sustainability, not being a martyr. If humans started to live with sustainability of the self, rather than seeing things as all or nothing, boy would things change fast.

Thank you, I often give this advice, but fail to see it in my high minded pursuit.


You speak of enlightenment as if it's some stage you get to, some perfection to rest in. Heaven, as it were, and if you could just flip...that...dial..grunt..you would be there forever.
You are right, that is what I think; it’s beyond the normal wheel of causal events. It’s a radical one way transformation uprooting any defilements and any potential for future transgressions.


I don't buy it. And it is never lip service to change a bedpan, or lift a spoon to someone's hungry mouth, or help a lost child find her parents.
My deepest apologies, this isn’t my intent. To do anything like this is touching the divine, I just think we should be the divine instead of touching it.


Don't buddhists call this kind of confusion the "near enemy", when you confuse things like compassion and pity?

Can you provide a link to this concept.

[magicbean]

"The second of the four divine abodes-the highest emotions-is compassion, whose far enemy is cruelty and whose near enemy is pity. Pity can't give others any help. If someone pours out her heart to us and we pity her, then two people are suffering instead of one. If by contrast we give her our compassion, we help her through her trouble.

It's very important to develop compassion for oneself, because it's the precondition for being able to do so for others. If someone doesn't meet us lovingly, it will be easier for us to give this person compassion instead of love. It's easier because now we know that this person who comes to meet us unlovingly is angry or enraged, is most definitely unhappy. If she were happy, she wouldn't be angry or enraged. Knowing about the other's unhappiness makes it easier for us to summon up compassion, especially when we've already done so with respect to our own unhappiness."

http://www.shambhalasun.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1766

And don't feel you need apologize justsitting! Lordy, you don't owe me or anyone else a thing, ride whatever thought horse you like best, really.

how has that truly solved our problems?

I defended this in another thread if you are interested, but problems just are. Problems exist. Like the dang dishes, there's no endpoint at which they go away and you are done. It's about being with the process and balance, not reaching a goal. If you accept that unhappiness exists, rather than working towards a ungodly perfect happiness that doesn't exist in any permanence, you're much closer to an all-encompasing divine existence. Check out "After the Ecstasy, the Laundry!" by Kornfield.

I think, anyway.

If I wasn't so lazy, I'd google the name of the zen teacher who said "Strive for liberation! Work hard for it! You will never be liberated!" That thought is so comforting in a bizarre way.

[tree hugger]

Nyk-

No. That happened some time ago. I am however caring for my mother who is dying. That is presenting more lessons and more self birthing, of course.

The hospice nurse said something to my mother I had never heard before.
When the nurse was describing the end of my mothers life to her this is how she said it.

".... eventually your body will get to the point where it is no longer compatible with life"


Tree hugger

[Isaiah Mpski]

...and then it turns into a pain in the ass or prostate or more common cancers like uterine,breast,skin etc..For Freud it was rectal cancer.When he died he stunk so bad even Hitler(the family dog) wouldn't come near him.

[JustSitting]

"The second of the four divine abodes-the highest emotions-is compassion, whose far enemy is cruelty and whose near enemy is pity. Pity can't give others any help. If someone pours out her heart to us and we pity her, then two people are suffering instead of one. If by contrast we give her our compassion, we help her through her trouble.

It's very important to develop compassion for oneself, because it's the precondition for being able to do so for others. If someone doesn't meet us lovingly, it will be easier for us to give this person compassion instead of love. It's easier because now we know that this person who comes to meet us unlovingly is angry or enraged, is most definitely unhappy. If she were happy, she wouldn't be angry or enraged. Knowing about the other's unhappiness makes it easier for us to summon up compassion, especially when we've already done so with respect to our own unhappiness."

http://www.shambhalasun.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1766


Awesome link! I'll need to read that a few more times. Thank you so much.

I only apologized because I didn't want to discourage or demean the small acts of compassion; to do so would be a crime in my mind. I merely wanted to point out that an even greater possibility exists in us all.


"Yet if we love only because we want to be endearing, we succumb to the error of expecting results for our efforts. If an action is worth doing, then it doesn't lose this value, whether we get results or not. We don't love as a favor to another or to get something. We love for the sake of love, and so we succeed in filling our hearts with love. And the fuller it gets, the less room there is for negatives."
This is kind of what I meant by the greed in some compassion.

[nyk]

Picture time.

Interesting how the head appears to be thrusting out of a flower.



http://img289.imageshack.us/img289/4591/quetz2ug4.png

[nanouk]

Flower?

Love? Pain? Euphoria?
Dante Rossetti loved, and lost, his Beatrix, or Elizabeth...

http://www.schoolsliaison.org.uk/aliens/access/signsSym/images/rossetti2.jpg

...or even more representative of Love - Demeter, the Poppy Goddess of Health and Euphoria.

http://web.clas.ufl.edu/users/marksj/relig/relig_images/relig_images_Q2/poppygoddess.jpg

...apparently Rossetti buried all manuscripts of his poems together with Elizabeth...

Love and Respect,
~n~

[daniel]

isaiah,

over time i have come to consider you the most necessary contributor to this board.
:twisted:

[nyk]

maybe you are right

maybe the rest of us should make like an enema and blow

[nyk]

Flower?

Love? Pain? Euphoria?



Or......

http://img295.imageshack.us/img295/6879/yggiv1.jpg

[nanouk]

Or......

http://img295.imageshack.us/img295/6879/yggiv1.jpg

Torus, again, Love it! Funnily enough, "Sun Rising" with "The Beloved" is on my hifi tonight...

Love and Respect,
~n~

[nyk]

Funnily enough, "Sun Rising" with "The Beloved" is on my hifi tonight...

Love and Respect,
~n~


By what artist?

[nanouk]

By what artist?

The Beloved. :)

[Isaiah Mpski]

Daniel,
I appreciate your comment.
I have been fighting a war with so-called powers that be soon as I became ENLIGHTENED.It is getting very serious now and I believe it will only be won by a group of people with divineness at heart
It has been a very terrible and lonely struggle,puncuiated by homeless,jail,mental instituitions for trying to bring awarness and reality to the world and a few around me..
I do not want to be worshiped but I do want people to understand the reality of karma and what a wonderful world this could be.
I appreciate you Daniel and this site,even though I like to kid you some.
Your friend JS

[wallace]

NYK

Your excellent photos I think backs up what you said about art-making.

Personally the idea of the book needs to be rethought. It is a sensous item and the text and illustrations need to be brought togeather. William Blake is someone who understood this. BTW he saw any angel at my local park!

An ironic counterpart to the illustration creates the possibility of humour which I think is undervalued in our culture. The rich history of Alchemy also used images creatively. The alchemic art of art -making allied to the dimensional shift is needed.

400 pages of text without illustrations leave me cold, we need new forms along with new words.

Pictures can inspire as well as words. The pictures in Supernatural inspired by Ayahuasca by the shaman artist etc .

Sunny thoughts,
Wallace

[sidecross]

NYK

Your excellent photos I think backs up what you said about art-making.

Personally the idea of the book needs to be rethought. It is a sensous item and the text and illustrations need to be brought togeather. William Blake is someone who understood this. BTW he saw any angel at my local park!

An ironic counterpart to the illustration creates the possibility of humour which I think is undervalued in our culture. The rich history of Alchemy also used images creatively. The alchemic art of art -making allied to the dimensional shift is needed.

400 pages of text without illustrations leave me cold, we need new forms along with new words.

Pictures can inspire as well as words. The pictures in Supernatural inspired by Ayahuasca by the shaman artist etc .

Sunny thoughts,
Wallace



As a former free lance photographer whose work was viewed internationally, I can assure you that photographers do not make money from book publishing. The reason I became a union mechanic was not due to the desire to be around automobiles and trucks.

I began my photographic work with Robert Brown who later was the NBC camera (video) person murdered in Bob Jones’s Jonestown in 1978. My work was more in the vain Robert Frank. I did not have the drive to do the dramatic kind of journalism Robert Brown was a part of.

Anyone familiar with the commercial world of photography would know they are on the lower tier of the pay chart; photographers are a ‘dime a dozen’.

Like musicians, being good is probably only 10% of what it takes to be successful.

[nyk]

Oh darn artemis. I guess I'd better give up art before it kills me.

[graffitirun]

400 pages of text without illustrations leave me cold, we need new forms along with new words.



From an interview with novelist Zadie Smith on KCRW's Bookworm program

"But the problem with readers, the idea we’re given of reading is that the model of a reader is the person watching a film, or watching television. So the greatest principle is, 'I should sit here and I should be entertained.' And the more classical model, which has been completely taken away, is the idea of a reader as an amateur musician. An amateur musician who sits at the piano, has a piece of music, which is the work, made by somebody they don’t know, who they probably couldn’t comprehend entirely, and they have to use their skills to play this piece of music. The greater the skill, the greater the gift that you give the artist and that the artist gives you. That’s the incredibly unfashionable idea of reading. And yet when you practice reading, and you work at a text, it can only give you what you put into it. It’s an old moral, but it’s completely true."

[nyk]

Your excellent photos I think backs up what you said about art-making.

Personally the idea of the book needs to be rethought. It is a sensous item and the text and illustrations need to be brought togeather. William Blake is someone who understood this. BTW he saw any angel at my local park!

An ironic counterpart to the illustration creates the possibility of humour which I think is undervalued in our culture. The rich history of Alchemy also used images creatively. The alchemic art of art -making allied to the dimensional shift is needed.

400 pages of text without illustrations leave me cold, we need new forms along with new words.

Pictures can inspire as well as words. The pictures in Supernatural inspired by Ayahuasca by the shaman artist etc .

Sunny thoughts,
Wallace


I agree. It's what I've been laboring with for years now.

But who is going to publish such a thing? And who is going to buy it?

There is no market. I couldn't even give it away in these times.

[sidecross]

Oh darn artemis. I guess I'd better give up art before it kills me.

I have turned my life into a piece of art, and have never looked back.

[nyk]

I have turned my life into a piece of art, and have never looked back.

Yeah well, I guess I just sometimes wish you wouldn't keep that dimension
of yourself hidden. But that is your perogative.

[sidecross]

Yeah well, I guess I just sometimes wish you wouldn't keep that dimension
of yourself hidden. But that is your perogative.


It might be you are unable to see it; that may be your perspective and not mine.

[gandydancer]

Graffitirun, thank you VERY much for that post! I had never thought of it that way. I am going to share that with my daughter and she may want to share it with the school her kids go to.

My mother was a great story teller. We didn't have any children's books like they do now, but she would tell us of the wonderful adventures of three boys, "Slim, Johhny, and Bill". When I was in the second grade my mother came to school for my birthday and drew pictures of them and their adventures on the school blackboards with colored chalk. Our teacher was reading us a book, a chapter a day, and my mother read a chapter that day. I just don't know what words to use to tell you how different it was... She put music and...I can't think of what word to use, "play" is the only one I can think of, meaning both play, and play as in "a play" into her reading. Pure magic!

The wonderful art of story telling skipped me, but both of my daughters have it. When my daughter Judy's son was little she would have him select three objects, for instance: A clock, a dog, and a crayon. Then she would begin to weave a story about a dog, and you would be so caught up in it that you would completely forget about the other words till "the clock struck twelve and began to whisper softly...", and so on :D.

When I was young and the kids were little the extended family used to meet at the lake cabin. At night the cards would come out and the same stories would be told over and over and always better than the last time you heard them. ...the time they accidently shot a mule thinking it was a deer "Lots o' meat, but look at the shoosh (shoes)" (that would be said in a Finnish accent).:D

[daniel]

Nyk: “I would not agree that art-making is a regression. Crop circles are art, and so is the cover of your latest book. And what about BM? The motto in my town is "art saves lives". And art, being a physical manifestation of intent, is inherently a bridge between the material and psychic realms.”

Yes. But what has become increasingly clear to me, and something that most people forget, is that everything in the universe can be viewed as an art project. To take one example from our limited human reality, we can look at money as a work of conceptual art. Almost everyone believes in its absolute reality, yet it actually has no basis in anything material (since it was taken off the gold standard – and what did it mean that money was linked to humps of inedible glittering rocks in the first place (check out Norman O Brown for details?). All that money is, is everyone’s belief in it.

The Mayans had a better conceptual art form of exchange: They used cacao beans as currency. Cacao beans cannot be hoarded as they are only edible for a few years, therefore $ always goes right back into circulation. Also, how do you become more wealthy? You grow more chocolate trees. Many Native American cultures had a form of exchange that was ceremonial rather than “this stuff” for “that stuff”.

So I don’t think artists are thinking big enough for the most part. They confine their art to images or installations – why not make art out of reality instead? (Despite his faults, Jose Arguelles taught me something about this).

It may be that the biggest problem with our world is that the people we have allowed to design our social reality are, simply put, bad artists. Streets based on right angles and cities requiring the internal combustion engine are art projects gone wrong.

[daniel]

Nyk: “As for those who are illuminated, I sincerely doubt that any of those are truly recognizable to the general population. They are hidden in plain sight. I think that these mystic hipsters you refer to are a product of the social climate that you frequent. Out in the boonies such glamour tends to disperse.”

I take illumination to mean one who has had the experience of ecstatic states and maintains a continued awareness that these states are of primary importance to soul and spirit.

Nyk: “One thing I think you may be overlooking Daniel is the fundamental truth that every being is - not will be, but is - a god. The energy that is used to walk between worlds by one being is exactly the same as that used by another to walk into a Walmart. It comes down to Intent. Ignorance or whatever we wish to call it is not something happening to people, it is something they are enacting in themselves. And there is no way to deal with something like that but by the most peripheral of means. The failure of religions is a testimony to the pitfalls of the head-on approach. We are not dealing with just simple ignorance and poverty in this world, but with the will of gods.”

I think it is far more complex than this – although, at the same time, I will turn this question back around and ask, okay, if this is the case, how should a god operate in this reality? From what set of principles?

My perspective is that there is, ultimately, one consciousness that is beyond space, time, and manifestation, of which we are fractal expressions – convenient reference points so that the unitary consciousness can have sensory experience, learn, and grow. Our current experience of individuation may be superseded by one where identity is not perceived as something separate, but perhaps overlapping, intermeshed, transparent (Steiner suggests this, and it comes out in Bache’s Dark Night, Early Dawn).

Your point kind of depends on what you mean by “god” – do you mean the singular consciousness noted above, or those archetypal entities who, according to Tibetan tradition for instance, have tremendous powers and lifespans but eventually reincarnate in a lower bardo?

Perhaps: Every soul who desires it is coming into awareness of their “god-hood” in stages of karmic awakening, lifetime after lifetime. The voltage is too much to take in all at once – and also “with great power comes great responsibility.” People might fantasize about the power, but they are not ready to handle the responsibility.

I am also inclined toward Gurdjieff’s concept that there is only a certain quantity of higher energy available, and the fact that most people don’t even want the share that is naturally available to them means that other people can progress faster, if they so choose. These imbalances might be absolutely necessary for the running of the entire sentient system. Gurdjieff also notes that as soon as you attain a particular power or siddha it is a good idea to give it away, if you can find someone who is ready to accept it.

The hot-tubbers and artists I described above are living in the “god realm,” compared to most human beings at this point in time. (The bardo realms are emotional states that we incarnate into, moment after moment). If you want to become “god” rather than a god, you would need to dig deeper into the responsibility of one who knows and has attained powers.


Nyk: “There are countries within countries, invisible to the general consciousness. I believe our general salvation lays within these communities.”

What do you mean by this? Some examples?

[Damien]

Nyk: “One thing I think you may be overlooking Daniel is the fundamental truth that every being is - not will be, but is - a god. The energy that is used to walk between worlds by one being is exactly the same as that used by another to walk into a Walmart. It comes down to Intent. Ignorance or whatever we wish to call it is not something happening to people, it is something they are enacting in themselves. And there is no way to deal with something like that but by the most peripheral of means. The failure of religions is a testimony to the pitfalls of the head-on approach. We are not dealing with just simple ignorance and poverty in this world, but with the will of gods.”

I think it is far more complex than this – although, at the same time, I will turn this question back around and ask, okay, if this is the case, how should a god operate in this reality? From what set of principles?

My perspective is that there is, ultimately, one consciousness that is beyond space, time, and manifestation, of which we are fractal expressions – convenient reference points so that the unitary consciousness can have sensory experience, learn, and grow. Our current experience of individuation may be superseded by one where identity is not perceived as something separate, but perhaps overlapping, intermeshed, transparent (Steiner suggests this, and it comes out in Bache’s Dark Night, Early Dawn).

Your point kind of depends on what you mean by “god” – do you mean the singular consciousness noted above, or those archetypal entities who, according to Tibetan tradition for instance, have tremendous powers and lifespans but eventually reincarnate in a lower bardo?

Perhaps: Every soul who desires it is coming into awareness of their “god-hood” in stages of karmic awakening, lifetime after lifetime. The voltage is too much to take in all at once – and also “with great power comes great responsibility.” People might fantasize about the power, but they are not ready to handle the responsibility.

I am also inclined toward Gurdjieff’s concept that there is only a certain quantity of higher energy available, and the fact that most people don’t even want the share that is naturally available to them means that other people can progress faster, if they so choose. These imbalances might be absolutely necessary for the running of the entire sentient system. Gurdjieff also notes that as soon as you attain a particular power or siddha it is a good idea to give it away, if you can find someone who is ready to accept it.

The hot-tubbers and artists I described above are living in the “god realm,” compared to most human beings at this point in time. (The bardo realms are emotional states that we incarnate into, moment after moment). If you want to become “god” rather than a god, you would need to dig deeper into the responsibility of one who knows and has attained powers.


I think you both have it right, just in different areas. Its true we are all "Gods" and that the coming age will confirm and "bring out" this Godhead nature within every sentient being on the planet, that's right I think this will extend into the animal kingdom as well (See White Deer and Buffalo).

As sparks of Source, our souls ARE here to collect experience to deliver back to the Whole once incarnation ends...

I agree with Daniel's postulate that people who are "there" are there but haven't necessarily been able to manifest all of the abilities associated with this new state of being.

Its possible that these skills will only truly emerge once the entire population, or whoever's left after the chaos, arrives there...something like a great machine that needs all of its cogs in place to function.

I've experienced what I think have been "illuminated" states and besides the tremendous euphoria and sense of peace, I hadn't noticed any powers, unless you consider being COMPLETELY self-sustaining emotionally and spiritually as being a power. ;)

[Karyn]

I reminded you?:skeptic:

Is there anyway you can correlate those 3 consciousnesses with
centers in the body, or chakras in the kundalini? I am getting all
pretzeled thinking about this!

Hi Nyk, To answer your question I checked the Ramtha school's teachings with the B.O.T.A.'s teachings. I was looking for where the teachings match. Ramtha teaches about the chakras but the B.O.T.A. does not. Paul Foster Case the founder of my current school- being the inquisitive person that he is- did come up with a Tarot Key placement for each chakra. Ramtha calls the seven levels to this one "Levels of Consciousness" but Paul calls them "Modes of Intelligence" In Hermetic philosophy they are called the seven inner planets. There is a planet and metal assigned to each one. Paul recommends meditating on the mode of intelligence assigned to each one to activate theenergy.
-Your question was "Where do Superconsciousness, Self Consciousness and Subconsciousness correlate to the energy centers (called chakras) in the body?" This is what I have come up with:
Ramtha has the Superconsciousness in the 5th level-5th Seal, Self Consciousness in the 3rd Level- 3rd Seal, and Subconsciousness in the bottom level-1st Seal. So it is Superconsciousness above Self Consciousness and Subconsciousness at the lower position. In Paul's version of the seven levels which he calls "Modes of Intelligence" Superconsciousness in Key 0 and is our True Self. He does not place it in the chakras.
The crown chakra -the 7th Seal he places Key 1 The Magician. You would know this as Primary Consciousness. This is Self Consciousness with a capital S. The first creation of Superconsciousness (the Void-the No-thing.) At this point we are aware that we are Superconsciousness and are a perfect channel for Superconsciousness but there is no understanding of Superconsciousness. Paul gives the name "Intelligence of Transparency" to the 7th Seal. The planet is Mercury.

The 6th Seal- 6th chakra Paul assigns Key 2 The High Priestess. This is Primary Subconsciousness. Virgin State of Cosmic Consciousness. The Mirror. "Primary receptive aspect of Life Power." "Uniting Intelligence" Planet-Moon.

5th Seal- Key 3 The Empress. Planet Venus. "Luminous Intelligence" Mother Nature. This is Subconsciousness as productive generating activities of Key 2 Primary Subconsciousness, after it has been impregnated by seed-ideas originating at the Self Conscious level represented by Key 1-The Magician. "Subconsciousness in imagination based on memory." Subconsciousness as the Mother of ideas is the result of the uniting of Key 1 with Key 2. Self Consciousness (Key 1) looks to Subconsciousness (Key 2) and sees the results of Superconscousness expressed in Key 3.

Self Consciousness which is the perfect channel of Superconsciousness does not understand Superconsciousness until the results of intent-seed ideas are shown -reflected back from Subconsciousness. Then we have wisdom through understanding. It is important to understand how these three modes of consciousness operate. A problem occurs when Self Consciousness stops looking to Subconsciousness as the mirror of intent and looks to the emotional senses and material surroundings instead. This is when Self Consciousness becomes self consciousness in the 3rd Seal. Self Consciousness at this level (3rd seal) needs to recognize that we reap what we sow. The law of cause and effect. 3rd Seal is assigned Key 10 The Wheel of Fortune. Planet Jupiter. "Intelligence of Conciliation" Love, Karyn

[gandydancer]

tried to delete my message. it is the end of the day...time to just go inward...Forum insisted I put a few more words, so I have done that...

[nyk]

It might be you are unable to see it; that may be your perspective and not mine.


No kidding, duh! ;)

[nyk]

So I don’t think artists are thinking big enough for the most part. They confine their art to images or installations – why not make art out of reality instead? (Despite his faults, Jose Arguelles taught me something about this).

Well Daniel, I happen to agree completely with this, and it is my primary
focus. It has been for 8 years now. I just haven't talked about it in
public much. How can I? It is too far out to talk about it. I can't even
talk about it in BOtH.

I'll bet Karyn would though...if she ever returns. [Edit: Oh I see she did - good!]


It may be that the biggest problem with our world is that the people we have allowed to design our social reality are, simply put, bad artists. Streets based on right angles and cities requiring the internal combustion engine are art projects gone wrong.

Yes. And plastic surgeons who are clueless about sculpture - yeesh.
One thing that is really strange about former military reservations
made into parks (which there are many around here) is that they have
nothing but right angle turns thruout the base. No curves, no windings,
not even diagnonals. It's weird. And that is the consciousness applied
in martial strategy? And 'modern' architecture. What kind of cyber
consciousness did all that emerge from? It is all so sterile.
But people just seem so numb to it all. I just have to think of my
parents. Not only tone deaf, but also contour blind. Not a hint of
Feng Shui in them at all. What is all that sophisticated neurology for if
people can't even perceive sensually? How many thousands of years
more for consciousness to find its way out of the hind brain?

[nyk]

I've experienced what I think have been "illuminated" states and besides the tremendous euphoria and sense of peace, I hadn't noticed any powers, unless you consider being COMPLETELY self-sustaining emotionally and spiritually as being a power. ;)

Keep trying. And no I don't consider a power real unless it has
physical manifestation - in some form. You probably already are
but may not have connected the dots....yet.

[Damien]

Keep trying. And no I don't consider a power real unless it has
physical manifestation - in some form. You probably already are
but may not have connected the dots....yet.


I don't need to "try"...moving towards the philosophy is a self-destructive lofacy.

[Karyn]

Keep trying. And no I don't consider a power real unless it has
physical manifestation - in some form. You probably already are
but may not have connected the dots....yet.

Hi Nyk,
I was shown that we have all the power of God- Now.
We are only lacking information. I was shown that information = energy = higher frequency. The more information the higher the frequency. I got this message while contemplating Key 15 the Devil which represents us at this phase. It is Archangel Uriel. We are sitting on only half a cube. I was show that only information in missing. Knowledge is missing. I was also given the same message awhile ago in another way. My vision of God as a grey cloud that misses us but cannot just come to us full force while we are in this state. The information/ energy has to be given a little at a time.
Love, Karyn

[wallace]

As Daniel mentions Bache I thought I would print this article of Bache where he says the sustainablity crisis is a crisis of consciousness. I guess I would agree with this as would Daniel, I expect.


Bache however seems to be a big fan of holotropic breathwork. Does Grof oversell this? Why haven't there been clinical studies of its effectiveness? Perhaps wrongly I am a little sceptical.

Sunny thoughts,
Wallace

[wallace]

IONS Review #57,
Sept. - Nov. 2001
The Noetic Core
of Sustainability
A Response to Alan AtKisson's Article, "A Quest for Sustainability"

by Chris Bache




I agree with Alan AtKisson that the challenge of transforming ourselves into a truly sustainable civilization will be the defining global challenge of the twenty-first century.

Beside it, everything else fades into near irrelevance, because if we fail here, all our other accomplishments, however noteworthy, will come to naught. It's that simple. To succeed will require the best from all of us—artists, scientists, educators, physicians, engineers, politicians, social activists, clergy, and citizens. It will demand extraordinary vision, courage, and daring. This challenge has the capacity to draw from us accomplishments that are breathtakingly beautiful and could change the course of human evolution.

I also believe that AtKisson is correct that humankind must speed up and redirect our technology to render harmless the technology we have already set loose on the world and to assume our role as responsible stewards of the planet. Yet, at the same time I am concerned about the potential shadow cast by what could be construed as a technology-driven solution to sustainability. I am concerned because I don't think such an analysis pushes deeply enough into the core of the sustainability issue. While not negating the many fine points AtKisson makes, I think we must go further to examine the inner state of consciousness that has generated this catastrophic imbalance with our world.

One of the things that makes this crisis so difficult to get one's arms around is how multifaceted it is. It is a crisis of technology, politics, ecosystems, economics, and religion, to list only a few. Because it will be a comprehensive test of our viability as a civilization, it will touch every aspect of our collective and individual lives. Yet, we must try to penetrate the many layers of the puzzle and identify what the core of the problem is.

I believe that the sustainability crisis is at its core a crisis of consciousness. Without being overly simplistic, it can be described as a crisis that is being generated by our lack of deep self-awareness. In this sense, one could say that it is a crisis of unconsciousness, of not knowing fully who and what we are, of "disconnection from source." It is a multifaceted crisis created by a species that, in awakening its individual genius, has not yet integrated that genius into the ground of existence.

In his book, Promise Ahead, Duane Elgin describes the sustainability crisis as a developmental threshold for humanity. We are, he says, like adolescents, filled with the growing power of our might but not yet ripened to mature adult self-awareness. An adult takes responsibility for the broader impact of his or her actions on the entire community of life in a way that we collectively do not. An adult considers how her or his actions will affect generations to come, while our culture focuses on quarterly business statements and the next election cycle.

We need to look deeply into what is keeping us anchored in this short-term, adolescent perspective when we desperately need to adopt a long-term perspective, that balances the needs of self and other, present and future, more equitably. To do this, I suggest that we look at the truth-stories we have been telling ourselves about the universe we live in and our part in it. These stories are the over-arching meta-stories that anchor our cultural "common sense." They also tell us a great deal about the state of consciousness of the beings who created these stories.

Let me put my cards on the table. I believe that if we are to respond powerfully and effectively to the sustainability crisis, our response must be grounded in two ways. First, it must be grounded in a deeper understanding of the universe and our place in it. Secondly, it must be grounded in a deeper experience of our being and our connection to this universe. The sustainability crisis cannot be solved by the same state of consciousness that created it. A shift in consciousness is required.

The story that emerged to guide Western civilization, starting about three hundred years ago, included the following themes: Existence is the result of an inexplicable explosion, not a conscious, intelligent choice. Our lives are largely the result of luck because life mindlessly evolves according to blind chance tested by the survival of the fittest. There is no deeper logic to our lives than physical survival, no "purpose" or intelligent "design" behind the specific challenges we face, just the powerful shaping forces of chance and necessity. Furthermore, we are just our bodies. Our minds can be mapped onto our brains, and in the end, all our noble qualities and aspirations reflect mere biochemical processes, nothing more. Our individual existence begins when we are born, and no one knows what happens to us when we die. The notion that there is any world other than the material world is denied or rendered deeply suspect.

The sustainability crisis cannot be solved by the same state of consciousness that created it.
This is the "enlightenment story" still being taught at most of our universities today, even though its axioms have already been challenged by scientific research. It is a story created by persons who experience themselves separate from, cut off from, and not an integral part of the universe that surrounds them. This story of a "dead universe" that miraculously produced self-conscious life underpins our secular culture, with its fevered pitch of "happiness by consumption." If we are just our physical bodies, then it only makes sense to seek happiness by consuming material things. This is a reasonable strategy, given the story we have been telling ourselves. If death is truly a mystery, then it only makes sense that our best chance for happiness lies in grabbing as much as we can while we are alive. If we are just our bodies, then logically our peace of mind hinges on taking care of our private selves, not on also securing the well-being of other persons, let alone other species.

But what if this story is fundamentally flawed? What if we are not separate from each other but actually interconnected? What if consciousness survives bodily death? What if we are repeating players in the drama of creation? In order to rise to the challenge of this moment in history, our culture needs to find a new story based not on wishful thinking but on the best observations of science and consciousness research, a story that is true to both the physical evidence and our inner experience.

Such a story began to emerge in the last century. Readers of this journal are already familiar with many of its themes. It is a story of a living universe, of quantum connectivity, systems interpenetration, and ecological networking. It is a story of nonlinear dynamics, emergent properties, and selforganizing systems. It is a story of enhanced sensitivity to the subtle threads that weave the larger patterns of life, of holons and non-local connections. It is a story of learning nature's ways, of biomimicry, symbiosis, and recycling. It is even a story of the recycling of consciousness across multiple incarnations, of carrying forward everything we learn, of extending the human story into the story of the soul. It is a story of learning to "see into" and commune with the previously invisible world of spirit.

Read another response to AtKisson's article:
• Eric Weiss—"Subtle Technology"

This story is emerging out of, and evokes from us, a very different state of consciousness, one that is more participatory and organic. When we begin to orient our lives inside this new story, many things shift all at once. All of the world's spiritual traditions have asserted, for example, that human beings possess an instinct to connect with something larger than themselves, to find our place in a larger tapestry of intention. It is as though each of us carries a vestigial memory of wholeness that we keep seeking to actualize. In the old story, this instinct had no place and was ridiculed. In the new story, this instinct has a legitimate place. It is thought to be that in us which mirrors the holism that we now recognize underlies life's burgeoning diversity.

In addition to forging a deeper understanding of the universe, we need also to cultivate a deeper experience of the universe—most importantly, the universe inside ourselves. We need to deepen our contemplative life and engage the universe head-on, so to speak, in our very person. Almost by synchronistic good fortune, the ancient skills of inner contemplation today surround us everywhere. We are virtually flooded with potent methods of transformative engagement, refined over centuries in the contemplative laboratories of mountain caves and monasteries.

At a time when over-consumption is causing the breakdown of our planet's basic life-support systems, finding an experiential connection to the ground of existence becomes a social as well as personal imperative. Never has it been more important for us to take up the transformative practices that can awaken us to this interior connection. Never has it been more important to make these practices available on a wide scale.

The world's wisdom traditions unanimously agree that in order to satisfy our innate hunger to connect with the essence of life, it is necessary to simplify our material lives. Practitioners do so not because the physical world is bad but in order to create the clarity and focus that inner exploration requires. Here the imperatives of sustainability and spiritual realization converge, for simplicity rebalances both our inner and outer lives.

Isn't it a general rule of thumb that the deeper one's spiritual realization, the more lightly one walks upon the earth? Those who are nourished by deep interior experience tend to make fewer demands on the physical world. Beings who have rediscovered their connection to the web of life, who have experientially recovered their essential identity with the totality, do not gouge the Earth to sell off its pieces. In the end, the only lasting solution to the sustainability crisis may be our collective awakening to a deeper and more mature mode of consciousness.

If we are self-aware beings in a living universe, if the power that courses through our individual lives is part and parcel of the power that courses through all life, then to remain unconscious of this connection is more than just a personal tragedy. It is also a collective tragedy that feeds the cultural insanity of our times and encourages the continued stripping of our planetary home. Conversely, if a person were to become experientially conscious of this connection, it could be more than personally liberating. According to Rupert Sheldrake's concept of formative causation and morphic fields, it might contribute directly to the emergence of a higher order of cultural sanity in the human family as a whole.

People may debate the severity of the ecological crisis or how soon it will impact us. In this debate, AtKisson and I are in agreement that its impact will be both severe and soon. Indeed, it has already begun, if one knows where to look. We also agree this will be a defining moment in human history, one that will demand the very best we have to give. I place more emphasis on the need for an interior revolution at the level of consciousness to ground the new civilization to which this crisis will give birth. My training as a philosopher and a student of consciousness has persuaded me that as part of this historical transition, it is likely that humanity will undergo a deep intellectual and spiritual transformation beyond the technological and social transformation AtKisson describes. The challenge ahead is for humanity to take the next step in its maturational process. We must become more conscious than we presently are.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Christopher Bache is director of transformational learning at IONS, and the author of Lifecycles: Reincarnation and the Web of Life and Dark Night, Early Dawn: Steps to a Deep Ecology of Mind, published by SUNY Press.


Art Credit:Res Ipsa, 1983 by Francesco Clemente

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All contents of this page Copyright © 2001 by this Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS).

[nyk]

Daniel and Karyn-

I was a bit overwhelmed by what both of you wrote last night. I attempted
several times to frame cogent responses. Everything I saw coming from
my hand was so....neandertal. I do not have the facility of either of you.

My perspective is that there is, ultimately, one consciousness that is beyond space, time, and manifestation, of which we are fractal expressions – convenient reference points so that the unitary consciousness can have sensory experience, learn, and grow. Our current experience of individuation may be superseded by one where identity is not perceived as something separate, but perhaps overlapping, intermeshed, transparent.

It is this supersession you indicated above Daniel which consumes me
now.

I took one picture yesterday. Same mountain and haven as before.
The fountain was down, but Mary was willing and able. This could be
called a self portrait.

http://img109.imageshack.us/img109/4802/marymountainqn6.jpg

[nyk]

Hi Nyk,
I was shown that we have all the power of God- Now.
We are only lacking information. I was shown that information = energy = higher frequency. The more information the higher the frequency. I got this message while contemplating Key 15 the Devil which represents us at this phase. It is Archangel Uriel. We are sitting on only half a cube. I was show that only information in missing. Knowledge is missing. I was also given the same message awhile ago in another way. My vision of God as a grey cloud that misses us but cannot just come to us full force while we are in this state. The information/ energy has to be given a little at a time.
Love, Karyn

And there must also be clear reception, correct?

[nyk]

I've experienced what I think have been "illuminated" states and besides the tremendous euphoria and sense of peace, I hadn't noticed any powers, unless you consider being COMPLETELY self-sustaining emotionally and spiritually as being a power. ;)

Keep trying. And no I don't consider a power real unless it has
physical manifestation - in some form. You probably already are
but may not have connected the dots....yet.

I don't need to "try"...moving towards the philosophy is a self-destructive lofacy.

Was your battery in backwards when your wrote that last bit?
How do you equate my statement about moving towards physical
manifestation as moving towards philosophy (the opposite direction)?!
And what the heck is 'lofacy'? :skeptic:

[Damien]

Was your battery in backwards when your wrote that last bit?
How do you equate my statement about moving towards physical
manifestation as moving towards philosophy (the opposite direction)?!
And what the heck is 'lofacy'? :skeptic:

Ah, you were not clear in linking the two. What I meant was "trying" to move towards something like that is just like a meditator "trying" to attain enlightenment, the goal negates the pure presence of mind needed to get there.

[gandydancer]

Hi Wallace,

I have done Grof's breathwork, and yes it does "work".

Here is the AtKisson article that Bache responed to:

A Quest for Sustainability
Alan AtKisson | IONS Noetic Sciences Review | IONS Review #57 |5(1 rating)Our generation is charged with an unprecedented responsibility: to lay secure foundations for global civilization that can last for thousands of years. To accomplish this task, I believe that we must, in the coming decades, maintain and greatly enhance our technical capacities and cultural stability, while simultaneously changing almost every technological system on which we now depend so that it causes no harm to people or the natural world, now or in the future.

At the dawn of the third millennium, human civilization finds itself in a seeming paradox of gargantuan proportions. On the one hand, industrial and technological growth is destroying much of nature, endangering ourselves, and threatening our descendants. On the other hand, it seems we must accelerate our industrial and technological development, or the forces we have already unleashed will wreak even greater havoc on the world for generations to come.

We cannot go on, and we cannot stop. We must transform.

Facing a Great Paradox
At precisely the moment when humanity's science, technology, and economy have grown to the point that we can monitor and evaluate all the major systems that support life all over the Earth we are discovering that most of these systems are being systematically degraded and destroyed ... by our science, technology, and economy.
For me, the evidence that we are beyond the limits to growth is by now overwhelming: The alarms include climatic change, disappearing biodiversity, falling human sperm counts, troubling slowdowns in food production after decades of rapid expansion, the beginning of serious international tensions over basic needs like water. Wild storms and floods and eerie changes in weather patterns are but the first visible harbingers of more serious trouble to come, trouble for which we are not adequately prepared.

Indeed, change of all kinds—in the biosphere (nature as a whole), the technosphere (the entirety of human manipulation of nature), and the noösphere (the collective "field" of human consciousness)—is happening so rapidly that it almost exceeds our capacity to understand it, control it, or respond to it adequately in corrective ways. Humanity is simultaneously entranced by its own power, overwhelmed by the problems created by progress, and continuing to steer itself over a cliff.

At the same time, some of the very products of our technology—plutonium, for instance—require of us that we maintain a very high degree of cultural continuity, economic and political stability, and technological capacity and sophistication far into the future. To ensure our safety and the safety of all forms of life, we must always be able to store, clean up, and contain poisons like plutonium and persistent organic toxins.

We are, in effect, committed to a high-technology future. Any slip in our mastery over the forces now under our command could doom our descendants—including not just human descendants, but also those wild species still remaining in the oceans and wilderness areas—to unspeakable suffering.

Sustaining such high levels of complex civilization and continuous development has never before happened in the history of humanity, so far as we know. From the evidence in hand, ancient civilizations have generally done no better than a few hundred years of highly variable progress and regress, at comparatively low levels of technology, with relatively minor risks to the greater whole associated with their inevitable collapse.

The only institutions that have demonstrated continuity over millennia are religions and spiritual traditions. So, while we must be intensely scientific, our future is also in need of a renewed sense of spirituality and the sacred. Given our diversity and historic circumstances, no one religion is likely to be able, now or in the future, to sustain us or unite us. We need a new sense of spirituality that is inclusive of all believers and nonbelievers, and inclusive of the scientific quest. We need a common sense of high purpose that connects and uplifts all of our religious traditions to their highest levels of wisdom and compassion because the task ahead of us is enormous.

History demonstrates that we, as a species, have the power to create the future we envision
Our situation is not only without precedent; it is exceedingly difficult to comprehend. Those who, in the waning decades of the second millennium, have been able to comprehend this Great Paradox to some degree often feel themselves emotionally overwhelmed and powerless to effect change. Denial and avoidance have been civilization's predominant responses to the warnings coming from science and the signals coming from nature during the 1970s, '80s, and '90s.

For more information on Alan AtKisson, go to his website, www.atkisson.com But the feedback from nature, as well as the growing global distress signals from those left behind in poverty, are both becoming so strong that they can no longer be denied, even by those with the greatest vested interest in denial. These early decades of the third millennium are the period of reckoning, the time for decisively changing course.

Modest Changes Are Not Enough
Change is clearly possible. Modest changes in the direction of greater sustainability are now underway, and modest incremental changes in both technology and habitual practice can ameliorate—indeed, have ameliorated—some dangerous trends in the short run.

But overall, incremental change of this sort has proven exceedingly slow and difficult to effect, and most incremental change efforts fall far short of what is needed. Dramatic, rapid change, in the form of extremely accelerated innovation in the noösphere (conscious awareness and understanding) and the technosphere (physical practice) is what is called for now.

Without such change, the most probable outcome of industrial civilization's current trajectory is convulsion and collapse. "Collapse" refers not to a sudden or apocalyptic ending, but to a process of accelerating social, economic, and ecological decay over the course of a generation or two, punctuated by ever-worsening episodes of crisis. The onset of collapse is probably not ahead of us in time, but behind us: in some places, such as storm-ravaged Orissa, Honduras, Bangladesh, Venezuela, even England and France, collapse-related entropy may already be apparent.

Trend, of course, is probability, not destiny. It is still theoretically possible, albeit very unlikely, that civilization could continue straight ahead—without any conscious effort to direct technological development and the actions of markets in more environmentally benign and culturally constructive ways—and escape collapse through an unexpected (though currently unimaginable) technological breakthrough or improbable set of events. Some have called this the "Miracle Scenario."

But hoping for a miracle is by far the riskiest choice.

Transformation is Possible
When it comes to the prospects for sustaining our civilization, we have to trust our species' best judgment, which comes from the interpretations and extrapolations of our best experts. These experts—such as the respected Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change—are reporting a disturbingly high degree of consensus about the level of threat to our future well-being.

Dramatic civilizational change—transformation, in a word—is not so difficult to imagine. History is full of examples. Global history since the Renaissance, with all our remarkable transformations in technology, economics, and culture, is largely a product of humanity learning to take seriously the evidence of its senses, to reflect on that evidence carefully, and to make provisional conclusions that can be tested. This is the cornerstone of science.

If we are to take seriously the evidence of our senses and our science, we could provisionally conclude that we are now largely responsible for living conditions on this planet. We have the power to fundamentally shape climate, manage ecosystems, design life-forms, and much more. The fact that we are currently doing these things very badly obscures the fact that we are doing them, and can therefore learn to do them better. Designing and managing the world we live in now is our collective responsibility.

To succeed, we must take our responsibility as world-shapers far more seriously than we currently do. History demonstrates that we, as a species, have the power to create the future we envision. If, therefore, we give in to despair, collapse will follow. If we cultivate a vision of ourselves as powerful and wise stewards of our planetary home, transformation becomes possible.

Examples of cultural transformation occurring in a generation or less abound. The Meiji Restoration transformed Japan from a closed agricultural society to an industrial one in just a few decades. The wholesale redirection of the North American and European economies during World War II took just a few years. The Apollo Program's success in putting humans on the moon transpired, on schedule, within a decade. The fall of the Berlin Wall . . . the end of apartheid . . . the change in China from a state-planned to a market economy . . . much of recent history suggests that transformation is not only possible, but a frequent occurrence in civilizational evolution.

None of these events, however, remotely approaches the scale of global transformation that is called for now, but this testimony from history illustrates something profoundly important. Transformation does not involve the magical or instantaneous creation of a new culture. "Transformation" is the name we give to the extremely accelerated adoption of existing innovations, together with the acceleration of innovation itself.

By framing ambitious and visionary goals, a corps of skilled
and forward-looking ind ividuals could inspire others.
The numbers could grow exponentially.
Understanding transformation in these terms gives us a reason for hope. An enormous amount of design work, preliminary to a transformation of the kind envisioned here, has already been done. Inventions, policies, models, scenarios, alternatives . . . innovations of all kinds have been developed by thoughtful and committed people over a generation, and the speed of innovation is increasing. Intense and focused commitment by a critical mass of talented, dedicated, and influential people—in business, government, religion, the arts, the civil sector, every walk of life—could accelerate the process by which innovation enters the mainstream of technical and social practice, and thereby turns humanity on a more hopeful course.

By framing ambitious and visionary goals, and by highlighting the dangers and risks of inaction, this corps of skilled and forward-looking individuals in groups, organizations, corporations and governments could inspire others. The numbers involved could grow exponentially.

One generation of intensely focused investment, research, and redevelopment—redesigning our energy systems, overhauling our chemical industries, rebuilding our cities, finding better substitutes for wood and replanting lost forests, and so much more—could transform the world as we know it into something far more beautiful, satisfying, and sustainable.

This I believe: Sustainability is possible. Sustainability is desirable. Sustainability is a goal worthy of one's life's work. Sustainability is the great task of the next century. Sustainability is the next challenge on the road to our destiny.

"Sustainability" is Dead—Long Live Sustainability
The concept of sustainability sprouted and spread like grass during the last few decades of the twentieth century. In scientific terms, it means a system state that can renew itself indefinitely. Consider a forest: By not losing trees any faster than they grow back, the forest system survives despite fires and other natural disturbances. The forest is sustainable.

The Transformation of Globalization
Transformation of many kinds is already happening all around us, mostly in the name of globalization. "Globalization" has become the signifier for a family of transformations in communications, finance, trade, travel, ecological and cultural interaction that are drawing the world's people and natural systems into ever-closer relationship with each other, regardless of national boundaries. Many of these transformations contribute more to the likelihood of global collapse than to global sustainability because they are fueled by destructive technologies. They result in ever greater levels of environmental damage, they undermine national democracies, and they have so far widened dramatically the gap between rich and poor.

Yet there is nothing inherently unsustainable about globalization per se, if we understand that word to mean the growing integration of global human society. Indeed, globalization of many kinds—from the spread of better technologies to the universal adoption of human rights—is essential to attaining global sustainability. But the engines of globalization need to be harnessed to a more noble set of goals and aspirations.

At the heart of most descriptions of globalization is the market economy. It has often been fashionable to blame the market for the environmental crisis, and in particular to blame the market's tendency to concentrate power within the large, independent capital structures we call "corporations." But we need corporations, transformed corporations, and the market to accomplish the change we seek. To develop and spread innovations for sustainability at transformation speed, we need corporate-scale concentrations of research, production, and distribution capacity. We need the market's speed, freedom, and incentive structures. Clearly, we also need governors on the spread of destructive development, and the enormous fleet of old and dangerous innovations. But if we can alter globalization so that it turns the enormous power of the market and corporations in a truly sustainable direction, we will watch in awe as our world changes for the better with unimaginable speed.

Envisioning the transformation of globalization will strike many as the ultimate in wishful thinking. Yet transformation begins precisely in wish and thought; and there are currently two powerful wishes adding considerable weight to global efforts to bring down the Berlin Wall between today's damaging "capitalism-at-all-costs" and tomorrow's practice of a more mindful "capitalism conscious of all costs." One "wish" is the United Nations' new Global Compact with the corporate sector. It calls on corporations to adopt greater levels of social and environmental responsibility—a call that many are pledging to heed. The other "wish" is the nongovernmental Global Reporting Initiative, which sets new criteria for measuring sustainable corporate performance and is fast becoming adopted as an international standard by corporations and activists alike.—AA
As a guide to the future, the word "sustainability" is currently both our best hope and yet as the new millennium begins, sustainability, as a word, is dying. "Sustainability" is dying because few concerted attempts have been made to enshrine a deeper understanding of the word in intellectual and political discourse, to defend the word from misappropriation, or to bring the word to public attention in a positive and exciting light. "Sustainability" is dying of misuse, and dryness, and reduction to buzzword. It is dying because it is attached to too many initiatives that pretend to be "sustainable" when they are demonstrably not.

The misuses and abuses come from all sides. "Sustainable development"—a term so misapplied as to be nearly beyond rescue—is not development-as-usual with a few green-looking additions or nods to social equity; but that is what it has often been reduced to in practice. Sustainability is a far more ennobling concept than most current application reflects. Sustainability is a dream. Sustainability is an overarching ideal toward which humanity is striving. It is not an elegant word, but it is the best we have for what we need: a vision, a direction, a set of criteria by which to measure our success. Sustainability is the fundamental and primordial benchmark of our maturation as a species.

Let us collectively abandon our use of the words sustainability and sustainable development, as they were used in the twentieth century. Let us therefore declare sustainability dead—and immediately proceed to revive it.

To be brought back to life, sustainability, as a word, must be reinvented. It must be imbued with all the qualities that our societies need to embrace to make sustainability itself possible. The word "sustainability" should shine with promise and vibrate with creativity. It should fascinate the hungry mind, satisfy the heart in search of a meaningful life, draw people to it the way athletes are drawn to compete, the way artists are drawn to create, the way lovers are drawn to each other.For our descendants, sustainability may someday be about maintaining a hard-won balance between the needs of people, nature's other species, and future generations of both. But we are far from balance today. For this generation, sustainability is about global transformation. Nothing could be more exciting to consider as the project of a generation. We have before us the opportunity and the responsibility to begin remaking our world. We can, and we must, make it more beautiful in every respect, more delightful, more effective and efficient at securing our needs and encouraging our aspirations.

In the twenty-first century, let us use "sustainability" only when it carries the full radiance of a dream—the dream of civilization's transformation to a more uplifting, beautiful, ecological, equitable, and genuinely prosperous pattern of development.

The Quest for Sustainability
We are still, however, quite a distance from realizing this dream. Moving decisively in the direction of sustainability will require transformative change in virtually every area of human endeavor. My vision of the changes that must and can take place—at a mimimum—includes the following:

Complete redesign and rebuilding of our energy systems so that they drastically reduce carbon dioxide and other greenhouse emissions. Every internal combustion engine, every coal-fired power plant, every methane-emitting landfill would be transformed or replaced with an alternative that is climate-neutral and environmentally benign. We need breakthroughs in the spread of solar, wind, hydrogen, and other forms of energy, together with new policies and financial instruments to accelerate the transformation process.
Ideally, the simultaneous development of a globally coordinated system for managing the global carbon balance at a scientifically determined acceptable level, since current best-case scenarios for emission reduction still leave us with an unacceptably warmer world.
Elimination of the threat of nuclear weapons and materials from escaping into the biosphere. Highly radioactive and long-lasting materials like plutonium, especially, would be contained in perpetuity or transformed into more benign materials; and new technologies, both in science and in social patterns, would be discovered for achieving either goal.
Complete overhaul in our production and use of chemicals and materials so that no toxins of any kind are allowed to accumulate in the biosphere. There would be a concerted effort to identify existing alternatives, innovate new ones, and to diffuse both throughout the global economy.
Elimination of global poverty and the threat of war. "Poverty reduction" is neither a noble nor an adequate goal, as poverty creates ecological destruction, increases social instability, and diminishes our humanity. War is too dangerous in an era of globally destructive weaponry. Nothing less than the full elimination of these two scourges is sufficient to attain sustainability and establish the full proof of our maturity as a species.
Total protection of the integrity of the Earth's natural and agricultural systems. Protective boundaries would be drawn around biodiversity preserves, critical ecosystems, and places of awe and wonder. Farmlands and food production would be protected from displacement by urban sprawl and colonization by overzealous profiteers. Human habitations would be completely self-sufficient, no longer drawing down resources at unsustainable rates or destroying places of living mystery through extraction, pollution, or overuse.
To achieve these and other lofty goals, change agents—people dedicated to promoting sustainability ideas and innovations—are needed in every field, in ever-increasing numbers. We need, especially:

Artists, to help us feel the gravity of our predicament, to facilitate our envisioning a more beautiful way of life, and to inspire us to strive for better things.

Scientists and engineers, to find solutions, new inventions, breakthrough ideas that can rapidly transform our way of life.

Designers, to redesign virtually everything, and to fuse beauty and functionality in a transformed world.

Business people, to re-imagine and redirect the flows of money and investment and talent in ways that can recreate the world while enhancing global prosperity.

Activists, to call attention to those issues about which societies at large are in denial or unable to act on because of systemic or hegemonic forces.

Professionals, so-called, such as those in healthcare or the law or international development, to change the standards of practice in their profession and to lend their considerable weight to a general movement for change.

Average citizens, so-called, to reimagine themselves as global citizens, to enthusiastically support change efforts, and to dare to reach for their own aspirations for a better world.

Politicians, to motivate us with inspiring rhetoric, to frame new policies that encourage transformation, and to tear down obstacles to innovation and transformation.

Educators, to prepare current and future generations for a great responsibility: directing human development toward sustainability, and beyond.

If a critical mass of people in all walks of life take seriously the charge to make transformation happen, and if they are supported with widespread communication networks and resources and incentives, then transformation will happen, and sustainability will become an attainable dream.
And transformation will enrich us, not impoverish us. It will enrich us spiritually, socially, and economically. We will know our purpose more profoundly, live together more compassionately, develop wealth more equitably. There is so much work to be done that there will be jobs for all who want them.

As we step away from self-destructive habits of over-consumption to achieve a genuine transformation, we can redirect our economies, not dismantle them. The demand for innovation, redesign, and redevelopment is too great to be achieved by anything less. Our responsibility for the dangers we have already created requires us to continue maturing in our technical capacity, scientific understanding, and economic integration.

We can climb the mountain of sustainability, but only if we summon all the strength, intelligence, wisdom, compassion, and determination of which our species is capable. We do not know what a sustainable world will look like, but we can be assured that it will far more beautiful, creative, prosperous, fascinating, and engaging of our full humanity than the world in which we now live.

[Karyn]

Daniel and Karyn-

I was a bit overwhelmed by what both of you wrote last night. I attempted
several times to frame cogent responses. Everything I saw coming from
my hand was so....neandertal. I do not have the facility of either of you.



It is this supersession you indicated above Daniel which consumes me
now.

I took one picture yesterday. Same mountain and haven as before.
The fountain was down, but Mary was willing and able. This could be
called a self portrait.

http://img109.imageshack.us/img109/4802/marymountainqn6.jpg

Hi Nyk, I am back at my studies after about 20 years. When I first started the lessons my friend Nancy and I did not understand any of it! When she asked headquarters what to do- she was told to keep reading anyway and that some part of our mind would understand. It was not easy to read what makes no sense so I stopped the lessons when they got too hard. Now I am reviewing them and understand every word.
What Daniel says -"There is only One" is true. We are the many Centers of Expression of the One. We are how the One experiences. Without us there would be no experience. Only a state of being with no Things and no Self discovery.

Your picture of Mary looking to the East reminds me of something I just wrote in my note book last night about the Fourth Seal - Fourth Chakra- regarding what Paul calls The Fifth Kingdom. "Composed of human being who, by understanding the law of evolution which has brought organized life-expression as far as ordinary genus homo, is enabled to apply that law to the self-evolution of a "new creature," who is as far beyond ordinary humanity as the average human being is beyond the animals. As yet, though the whole line of sages, prophets, adepts and masters belong to the Fifth Kingdom, that company of new creatures is small, by comparison with the mass of humanity. These notes are from -The Tarot- A Key to the Wisdom of the Ages -by Paul Foster Case.
The Tarot Key for the 4th Seal (heart center) is Key 19 -The Sun. While the other four Kingdoms of nature- mineral, vegetable, animal and human look to man for its final development the members of the Fifth Kingdom look to the Sun. The energy of the Sun is the physical embodiment of Superconsciousness. Your picture has Mary facing the Sun. I take this as a cue from you for me to share my notes.
Love, Karyn.

[nyk]

Hi Nyk, I am back at my studies after about 20 years. When I first started the lessons my friend Nancy and I did not understand any of it! When she asked headquarters what to do- she was told to keep reading anyway and that some part of our mind would understand. It was not easy to read what makes no sense so I stopped the lessons when they got too hard. Now I am reviewing them and understand every word.
What Daniel says -"There is only One" is true. We are the many Centers of Expression of the One. We are how the One experiences. Without us there would be no experience. Only a state of being with no Things and no Self discovery.

There is only one yes. That is obvious upon personal internal inspection -
honest inspection. So, there is this interesting application of intent
within the one...a kind of bend that is occuring. Because you are here
now I can talk about it a wee bit. If you are familiar with the kundalini
- the serpent pathway - which is also of course Quetzalcoatl, then you
know that it follows the vertical line (pillar) of the being, or rather our
bodies follow it. One of the greatest mistakes of the dogma of kundalini
however is the recycled error that the 7th seal/chakra is at the crown
and that the energy follows a straight line out of the top. That is rather
strange considering the association of kundalini with the cobra. The
cobra bends the pathway forward. The 7th is actually located in the
limbic system, and it is that bend - like a shepards staff - after emerging
out of the 4th (point zero)...that compromise between escape velocity
(shooting straight out the top) and collapse that creates our being,
that stablizes us in a coherent reality.


Your picture of Mary looking to the East reminds me of something I just wrote in my note book last night about the Fourth Seal - Fourth Chakra- regarding what Paul calls The Fifth Kingdom. "Composed of human being who, by understanding the law of evolution which has brought organized life-expression as far as ordinary genus homo, is enabled to apply that law to the self-evolution of a "new creature," who is as far beyond ordinary humanity as the average human being is beyond the animals. As yet, though the whole line of sages, prophets, adepts and masters belong to the Fifth Kingdom, that company of new creatures is small, by comparison with the mass of humanity. These notes are from -The Tarot- A Key to the Wisdom of the Ages -by Paul Foster Case.

It is highly significant that we have our hands together at the chest. That
is point zero. Zero is 'that which can be divided no further'. Singularity.
It is apparent that Mary is camoflauge for an archetype much bigger
than the bible. My focus is in that '5th Kingdom'...I really cannot
sustain the 4th world any longer.


The Tarot Key for the 4th Seal (heart center) is Key 19 -The Sun. While the other four Kingdoms of nature- mineral, vegetable, animal and human look to man for its final development the members of the Fifth Kingdom look to the Sun. The energy of the Sun is the physical embodiment of Superconsciousness. Your picture has Mary facing the Sun. I take this as a cue from you for me to share my notes.
Love, Karyn.

Yes, fortuitous that you mentioned the sun. I learned recently that a
photon generated in the center of the sun takes some 10 thousand
years to get from there to the surface - traveling at the speed of
light, so dense and convoluted is the mass that it must travel thru.
Yesterday while travelling I made a peculiar connection within myself
with the sun. There is that dense hind brain of ours that contains all
of our lives and particulars. We are trapped in a maze there. For
thousands of years, on our way from the core into awakening. Hence
the head of Q coming our of the flower. Q represents our birth into
the '5th Kingdom'.

[daniel]

Wallace,

Thanks for posting those articles. I do agree that consciousness is the central issue.

All of our technology manifests from a particular frequency of consciousness. If we change that frequency, the technology we create will also change.

Also it is interesting, giving the discussion above, where the two writers do leave a crucial space for art-making: A new myth-making is required to turn the necessary paradigm shift into a story that people can share and enjoy. Stories can be absorbed on a feeling level into the human organism in a way that facts and explanations cannot be.

The main failure of The Inconvenient Truth was its failure as story, because it chose the political propaganda-ist mode of the "hero biopic" rather than the more authentic storyteller mode for its scaffolding.

I feel the success of my new book is due to its presentation of my personal story of initiation. One way to frame our current consciousness crisis is as a global crisis of initiation - when there is no threshold passage into wisdom, requiring experiential knowledge of non-ordinary states, you have a culture trapped in adolescence. Many people have been going through their private, personally structured initiatory processes, but this hasn't emerged into the public discourse (which is polarized between religious noise and secular materialist noise). Part of the initiatory process requires the "bearing witness" by the larger community. That is what people get to do when they read my book (or even read about my book in Rolling Stone). I am realizing it almost doesn't matter if the first tone that is transmitted is one of ridicule, as long as the essential concept of there being an initiatory process is somehow conveyed.

In terms of understanding the crisis of consciousness, I am reading a wonderful book right now - The Spell of the Sensuous. Has anyone checked it out?

[nyk]

I feel the success of my new book is due to its presentation of my personal story of initiation. One way to frame our current consciousness crisis is as a global crisis of initiation - when there is no threshold passage into wisdom, requiring experiential knowledge of non-ordinary states, you have a culture trapped in adolescence. Many people have been going through their private, personally structured initiatory processes, but this hasn't emerged into the public discourse (which is polarized between religious noise and secular materialist noise). Part of the initiatory process requires the "bearing witness" by the larger community. That is what people get to do when they read my book (or even read about my book in Rolling Stone). I am realizing it almost doesn't matter if the first tone that is transmitted is one of ridicule, as long as the essential concept of there being an initiatory process is somehow conveyed.

Yes. It makes it personal and real. There is a good chance for a trigger
effect with your book.