Surfing Quetzalcoatl

Journalist Daniel Pinchbeck, self-proclaimed cynic and son of Beatnik parents, transversed the realms of the psychic and the psychedelic, as well as his own personal drama, to bring us his version of the Eschaton in his book 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl. His scholarly prose is punctuated with radical, apocalyptic refrains which underscore his own revelations as to the immanent arrival of something both terrifying and wonderful. If he is correct, our near future contains the potential for both catastrophe and conscious enlightenment, a view I happen to share to some extent.

Whether this transformation will occur in one simultaneous event on December 21, 2012 remains to be seen. However Mr. Pinchbeck threw himself to the wolves in this book, revealing not just his own relationship issues, self-doubt and twisted shamanic journeys, but a full-on prophetic experience of Quetzalcoatl himself and a vision of our future perhaps only a very small handful of people are willing to consider.

He calls this book an “extravagant thought experiment”, explaining his dual lines of investigation from philosophical groundwork to his own “process of discovery”, which led us from psychedelic trips all over the world, to crop circles, alien abduction, occult manifestations, time vs. consciousness theory, global environmental and economic collapse, and back to his own frustrating and comparatively two-dimensional Manhattan habitat. Through these various means, he points out our general unwillingness as a species, in these post-modern times, to recognize the ever-increasing void of spiritual awareness; our cultural blinders have rendered us more or less incapable of recognizing the signs of our own imminent demise, which come to us through journeys into a level of consciousness few seem prepared to take.

While his writings and experiences differ greatly in style, organization, and attitude, I found the skeletal framework somehow reminiscent of my own, as if there were some great field of knowledge to be tapped into whose messages are passed on through one’s own particular experience, research, circumstances, filters, lexicon, allegory, etc. – the flesh, as it were. Granted, the subject matter stems from the same genre, though our intentions are arguably dissimilar; however I couldn’t help but notice how much of this work resonated with my own in Surfing the Tao. After much agonizing over whether to share what I found to be synchronous lines of thought, I have decided to note some here humbly, knowing my own self-published, obscure volume will likely only make it into a handful of minds. I ask the reader not to misinterpret the following as any folly of ego; I recognize my own small work can never be compared to Pinchbeck’s literary talent, however critiqued he may be. I do this only in the spirit of noticing how similarly the Tao can touch the thought patterns of an open mind and heart, and that the synchronicity of it all could raise a few eyebrows as to what may or may not be truer than we realize…

DP: “Throughout my early life and into my thirties, I lacked a metaphysical view of any sort.” (p. 19) AVM: “For the first thirty-odd years of my life, I wandered in ignorance.” (p. vii)

DP: “…I concluded, sadly, that our current civilization is not a machine built to last. (p.8) AVM: “As time and technology progresses, general knowledge is actually regressing…A system based on money instead of love will eventually falter.” (p.7)

DP: “…the modern materialist sees myth as antiquated and simpleminded – at best, metaphoric or symbolic.” (pp. 9-11) AVM: “..we have been taught to think of the ‘gods’ as mythological or symbolic…”(p. 31)

DP: “…a text can only act as a scaffolding of concepts, a ladder for others to climb.” (p. 15) AVM: ““Though some texts can be used to help guide us, no one ever entered the actual ascended state through the pages of a book.” (p. 210)

DP: “Real knowledge of what I am saying must be earned, and lived, by each individual, in his or her own way.” (p. 15) AVM: “This is a highly personal experience…little things will pop up in everyday life that will start to ‘prove’ it to each person in their own way.” (p. 14)

DP: “Few of us have time to make our own investigation of such abstruse realms as psychic research – and why would be bother, when our ‘experts’ assure us they have the situation wrapped up?” (p. 38) AVM: “…those who control the leading educational and intellectual institutions of our day have settled on the general public view of non-supernatural evolution…Many would rather accept the lives they have been taught…and not bother with anything more.” (p. 5)

DP: “…modern physicists…were surprised…[to find] that matter was largely composed of empty space. At this quantum level, physicists discovered that their attempts to measure the phenomena they were studying affected that phenomena…” (p. 47-8) AVM: “…inside an atom, there really isn’t any substance at all; just tiny sparks of energy…physicists are surprised to discover you can’t measure sub-atomic activity without influencing it.” (p. 15)

DP: “I found that attuning myself to synchronicities…required the development of a kind of intuitive skill…some of these synchronicities involved conjunctions between personal episodes and world events that seemed to me both numinous and inexplicable.” (p. 55) AVM: “My life became filled with so many bizarre synchronicities and small daily miracles that few people would even believe them.” (p. vii)

DP: “It is only as a fully self-reflective individual consciousness that one can make the choice, out of free will, to reconcile with the Divine, through sacrifice, or supercession, of the ego.” (p. 117) AVM: “Choose love: use your free will to seek His will, and soon it will coincide with your own and your life will be truly blessed.” (p. 20)

DP: “In the popular culture of our secular age, the gods, demigods, fairies and gnomes of the old mythic realm have returned as extraterrestrials.” (p. 121) AVM: “Author John A. Keel wrote in his work Operation Trojan horse, “The UFO manifestations seem to be, by and large merely minor variations of the age-old demonological phenomenon.” (p. 50)

DP: “According to this hypothesis, Christ ‘redeems’ us only when we follow his lead. We still have to save our own souls.” (p. 117) AVM: “It is a bit of a paradox – we must first save ourselves, by refusing to be fearful, and maintaining a positive state of mind.” (p. 199)

DP: “Our conventional notion of history, like our conventional understanding of space and time, supports a linear, evolutionary and causally deterministic view of events.” (p. 189) AVM: “Most people alive today probably think our world is just the result of natural evolution…” (p. 1)

DP: “As represented in the Tai Chi symbol, one pole does not negate its antipode, but reflects and includes it.” (p.209) AVM: “Yin and yang are not opposites – yinyang is the essence of the oneness of all things.” (p. 28)

DP: “The superstrings, quantum jumps, and wormholes through space-time described by contemporary physicists might prove the basis for shamanic techniques of visiting other realms…” (p. 245) AVM: “The passageways between [black and/or white holes] are referred to as wormholes, gateways through space/time…This concept mirrors our ancients’ views about our reality [re. origins of 'the gods'.]” (p.42)

DP: “’EVERYTHING IS SAFE IN GOD’S HANDS.’ This telegraphed answer [to a question regarding the fate of humanity] was startling – and reassuring…It has liberated me from fear and anxiety.” (p. 259) AVM: “God’s plan is great but complicated…only know that He loves us and everything will be ok in the end…Stop worrying…never give in to fear.” (pp. 250-1)

DP: “As it says in the Tao Te Ching, ‘Non-Tao is short-lived.” (p. 375) AVM: “’That which goes against the Tao comes to an early end.’ – Lao Tzu” (p. 14)

DP: “Such a shift would not be the ‘end of the world,’ but the end of a world, and the opening of the next.” (p. 15) AVM: “Far from being the end of everything, this event could trigger our ascension into a higher realm…” (p. 249)

But whereas many of my own thoughts seem mirrored in his book, I found it interesting how his own particular circumstances, and journey towards this consciousness, manifested in such different ways. While I’m no stranger to psychedelics and have indeed had some prophetic experiences thereby, my most profound revelations were actually not drug-induced but rather brought about during moments of startling clarity during deep meditation. What truth I believe I stumbled upon comes from within; our own atoms already contain the necessary ingredients for wisdom, transcendence and enlightenment. Mr. Pinchbeck does not hesitate to tell of his terrifying psychedelic foray into the realm of the trickster daimon and the occult; he does indeed admit the inherent dangers therein, “The initial visions had been seductively Luciferic.” (p. 72) While he does admit the inherent dangers of the “daimonic reality”, I might suggest the best protection there, as anywhere, is love. And love is something he seems to have struggled with, on a personal level, throughout – though he does recognize the necessity and power of positive thinking, something he was not afraid to comment on during a recent and much-discussed argument with Whitley Strieber on his radio show.

But he is on a very different journey than I am; for many, psychedelics offer a way to, in Pinchbeck’s own words, ‘break open the head’ in a way they might not otherwise be able to, in a world that seeks to keep this kind of knowledge hidden. Certainly one cannot help but be mystified by the profound and strikingly similar types of inferences made by the likes of McKenna, Burroughs, Narby, Pinchbeck himself and others in these altered states. To seek knowledge of another realm, consciousness or dimension, you have to somehow travel there.

Towards the end, Pinchbeck shares the transmission he received from Quetzalcoatl. I read it umpteen times, my sense of discernment on high alert, as if searching for a way to Know…I am left with the overwhelming sense that he did intuit truth and wisdom, the sort of truth one gleans from Knowing with the Spirit; in the intellectual world, nothing like this could ever be proven. I suffer the same dilemma. Somehow I find solace knowing that if these revelations indicate mental illness according to western psychiatric theory, at least I would be in good company in the psych ward. So, knowing how difficult it is to write about these things in a secular materialist culture, he does win my respect and admiration for even coming out with this material. As I said before – the wolves are eager to tear it apart, and he has laid bare his jugular, “Even if it required isolation from the mainstream, I preferred to sacrifice my beliefs and preconceptions, along with the comforts and status they afforded, rather than cling to a set of inherited values that I increasingly suspected to be false.” (p. 40) At the risk of repeating myself, again I find evidence that our many diverse paths have the potential to converge onto the Great Path – that singular Truth of Being which seems to so deftly escape our waking consciousness.

2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl was published in hardback in 2006 and paperback in 2007. Mr. Pinchbeck can be found online at Breaking Open the Head, Reality Sandwich, Whole Life Times, featured in a video at Postmodern Times, his Amazon blog and MySpace among others.

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