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At one point in Daniel Pinchbeck’s fantastical
personal exploration of apocalyptic myth and reality in 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl, he
elaborates on the Global Consciousness Project of Princeton University,
mentioning that one of the researchers speculates that they are
“witnessing the early phases of the self-organization of a global
brain.” Pinchbeck believes that a planetary human-consciousness
transformation may happen soon — very soon — beginning Dec. 21,
2012, when the earth and the sun are in alignment with the “dark
rift” at the center or our galaxy. In a nutshell, that’s also the date at the end
of 5,000-year Mayan calendar, the “Fifth World.” It’s
believed by some that the world will end then as a result of multiple
catastrophes or there will be a grand human consciousness change as a
reaction to global environmental disasters and breakdowns of the human
socioeconomic system. Pinchbeck’s quest to discover the truth of the
upcoming “dimensional shift” takes him to several countries. He
concludes, for instance, that crop circles are evidence of alien
visitations in England and that the current “sun” calendar must
be replaced with a 13-month “moon” calendar. Numbers and time
have elaborate meanings. As an exploration of his inner self as Pinchbeck
describes theories of the Apocalypse and possible mechanisms for global
consciousness change, the book is an engaging and intelligently written but
overlong treatise on the range of mystical, New Age, religious, and
philosophical hypotheses currently in vogue. Pinchbeck, a journalist,
author, and admitted atheist, even criticizes these claims throughout the
book. But he undermines his own skepticism constantly by
immediately embracing those very same claims, such as astrology,
extrasensory perception, and numerology, which have no scientific validity.
What’s more, he’s constantly taking psychedelic drugs and
having visions that he interprets as actual or symbolic truths. Despite his immersion in drugs that should create
self-doubt about his visions and dreams, Pinchbeck believes that he’s
the vessel for the return of Quetzalcoatl, the Mesoamerican feathered
serpent deity that signifies the end of the corrupt age in 2012 and
subsequent magical transformation of societies into Utopian ones. At least
he believes the deity is an archetype and the world will continue to exist,
in contrast to others who foresee apocalyptic collapse. One New Ager he
quotes flatly states that the Internet will cease to exist in 2009. But Pinchbeck really goes off the deep end when he
relates conversations with a praying mantis that tells him psychically that
they are “emissaries from a galactic civilization” and they
look forward to “opening formal lines of communication with the human
race once we had passed through the dimensional portal.” I wonder
whether he saw Men in Black. Those who believe that 2012 will be the end of the
world in some way should remember James Randi’s list of dozens of
failed end-of-the-world predictions, such as those made by the Millerites
in the 1840s and the Jupiter Effect of 1982. Over and over, in reading about the true
believers’ predictions of the quick evolution of human beings into
some obscure “higher consciousness,” I was reminded of the
Overmind in the late Arthur C. Clarke’s science-fiction classic Childhood’s End, which
was written before the New Age writings that Pinchbeck embraces.
“There lay the Overmind,” Clarke writes, “whatever it
might be, bearing the same relation to man as man bore to amoeba.
Potentially infinite, beyond mortality, how long had it been absorbing race
after race as it spread across the stars? . . . Now it had drawn into its
being all that the human race had ever achieved. . . . The billions of
transient sparks of consciousness that had made up humanity would flicker
no more like fireflies against the night.”
Daniel Pinchbeck has written a New Age manifesto that
could have used a dose of better historical reflection and recognition of
the difference between science and science fiction.
Bob Ladendorf is a freelance writer, co-founder of
the Rational Examination Association of Lincoln Land, and chief operating
officer of the Center for Inquiry-Los Angeles.
This article appears in Mar 27 – Apr 2, 2008.
