This is the third and final post devoted to my review of Geoff Stray's Beyond 2012 -- Catastrophe or Awakening?
Throughout human history shamans, native healers and others have used naturally occurring mind-altering substances to enter non-ordinary states, possibly giving rise, in some cases, to the many indigenous predictions concerning 2012. It should probably, therefore, comes as no surprise that current day "psychonauts" have had similar experiences. Most notably among these is the McKenna brothers.
While smoking pure DMT (N-N-dimethyltryptamine) Terence McKenna reportedly encountered "extradimensional life-forms" who told him that the "laws of physics will be transformed around 2012." Another user has reported that while taking "magic mushrooms" he "received a date, like a programmed ending point, or beginning...2012. This is the moment where time and therefore also space will fall apart, and we will remain with only our spirit (energy)."
Another of Stray's correspondents reported a friend's experience of " '...the ripping away of everything as we knew it'." The friend "was very adamant about the year this would happen...2012." And this apparently coming from someone with "absolutely no knowledge of what a Mayan even is."
Then there was the person, writing under the pseudonym of Copehead, who, on taking a potent cocktail of substances, apparently received the message, "Time stops in 2012. Please be ready." Later, after taking psilocybin, he "...received the idea that something monumental was to happen in 2012." And in a third experience he saw a series of clocks and calendars, including the Mayan calendar, and was "told" that "mankind...and several other species...are all collaborating on a colossal project....which will reach completion in the year 2012. It has something to do with time, consciousness, and perhaps leaving the planet or returning it to a pristine state."
Yet another correspondent, a professional writer, after taking Salvia divinorum, "heard" that he was to write about 2012, including such subjects as "...the Mayan calendar, UFOs, standing stones, telepathy, visions, and dreams." While another person using Salvia experienced "two different realities in parallel. One...everyday reality...and the other one was 2012...."
Stray also had some very interesting things to say about the possible role of endogenous DMT and the pineal gland in the future, and he includes some fascinating correspondence between Caroline Taylor and Rick Strassman (a leader in DMT research) but since I will be covering Strassman's work in more detail in a later post I think that that will have to wait.
In closing, I would like to note that while Stray is strikingly open-minded when considering even the most outlandish of hypotheses, he is a stickler for validation, to the extent possible, and he doggedly checks out theory against the known facts. For example, after presenting the work of one person he notes that he had "checked and rechecked the author's claims using astronomical software, and they just don't add up."
After citing a prediction by another noted author that our whole solar system was scheduled to travel down a wormhole in the direction of Sirius in 2012-2013 he comments that, since all of the author's other predictions have "failed to come to happen...this one also looks highly unlikely."
In fact, the book is peppered with such phrases as, "tenuous," "seriously flawed," "on the whole best forgotten," "errors were made," and "not very convincing." He is evidently also an absolute stickler for accuracy, as shown by his frequent use of the term [sic] when quoting other authors who have inadvertently erred in some way.
I find all of this curiously reassuring as it seems to bespeak a mind that is sincerely devoted to an honest and open search for the truth, unabashedly immersing himself in subjects in which most reputable scholars have no interest, to put it mildly. But, on the other hand, he is someone who, as they say, is not "so open minded that his brains fall out." On the contrary, his brain seems to be working just fine.
In his closing, he acknowledges that "we have been unable to reach a definite conclusion...as to what we can expect around 2012." However, he does note the potential for unprecedented challenges that might await us and he proffers some pertinent suggestions congruent with Tami Simon's counsel of "open hearts" and "intelligent activism." . To wit:
...confronting our shadows...clearing-out...the subconscious or unconscious mind of all repressed feelings, and forgiveness of all those who have caused us problems in the past; a letting-go of all bitterness, resentment, negative emotions, self-doubt, and ego problems, a dissolving of learned fear and anger responses; and getting ready to treat others as ourselves....
And you certainly can't fault that.
Note: To view some of Stray's other writings as well as get insight into his current thinking, check out his website at Dire Gnosis.
