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2012 – What Can It Mean?                                                 © Richard Stammler, 2009      The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.       ~ Einstein Introduction      I would guess that most of you by now have heard of the 2012 prophecy (as some interpret it) and the Mayan calendar end date of December 21, 2012. It has become a popular topic as evidenced by websites like History.com where Hitler, the Masons, and the Hopis, for example. I would dismiss this projection as one of many espoused by the fringe element that never seems to materialize, but enough geophysical, geopolitical, and social upheaval is in evidence that it is prudent to take a second look. Let’s look at the evidence and indications, perhaps from a new perspective.      There is circumstantial geophysical evidence that should cause us to take notice. Take global warming that has the potential to disrupt the routine ephemeral patterns in our civilization or, as some maintain, sow the seeds of global destruction due to the corruption of the food chain at all levels, and, perhaps, man as a species. The black gold of the (near) future is clean water, clean air, and the availability of food. The impact of overpopulation on the globe and our callous disregard of sound ecological principles, including the effects of global warming, have led to a dramatic increase in the extinction of species. During a recent national survey 70 percent of biologists view the present era as part of a mass extinction event, called the Holocene extinction event, possibly one of the most rapid ever. Some, such as Harvard University’s biologist E. O. Wilson predict that humanity's destruction of the biosphere could cause the extinction of one-half of all species in the next 100 years.      We can now add a more directly human element to the picture and that is the global economic crisis. We are not just in one of those periodic corrections in a persistent upward economic expansion, that we call a “recession.” No, this is something bigger and the evidence is that the government is running scared. Near the end of the Bush administration when the picture began to unfold ever more clearly, we engaged in a very non-Republican action and that was to throw a lot of money directly at saving financial institutions. The next step has been an even more non-Republican action – some might call it socialism (a dirty word for staunchly free market advocates of either party) and that is for government to own a stake in these institutions.      This is indeed a global crisis. The Europeans not so quietly mocked the Americans as the North American debt crisis began to unfold, stating that they had better control of their financial institutions and do not take the same risks that Americans were willing to take. That very quickly changed as the same crisis, proving that the globe was now fully interconnected in its financial structure and economic activity, resulted in the outright bankruptcy of a very conservative nation, Iceland, who turned to the European Union for a few billion dollar loan to stave off complete disaster. Europe said no, and Iceland, in complete desperation, turned to the Russians, who agreed to help. Even our government, normally prone to paint a rosy picture in the face of calamity, admits that the problem will get worse before it gets better. Planet Earth’s’ cycles: the magnetic field      Let’s turn to something more scientific and basic, the physical system of the planet and the astronomical. The first worth discussing is earth’s magnetic field. The earth’s magnetic field is critical for life on the planet. It is the earth’s magnetic field that produces a barrier to the sun’s harmful radiation (the ozone layer serves a similar function) that streams onto planet Earth all the time. These blasts of solar radiation are most powerful during sun spots, which are magnetic storms on the surface of the sun. When these hit Earth, they produce electromagnetic interference and pose a serious danger to satellites. There has been a distinct decline in the strength of the magnetic field, which has lost 5 – 10 percent of its strength in the last 200 years. The trend appears to be accelerating, providing one estimate of a complete collapse of the field by 2030. Is this a prolog to a reversal of the magnetic poles? We know from the script recorded in the stone from volcanic eruptions, which takes on the magnetic set of the time it cools, that the poles in the past have irregularly shifted during the geologic ages indicating 14 reversals in the last 4.5 million years. There is evidence that the North Pole was once in central Africa. During the shift there is a period of weak or no magnetic field.      The sun regularly reverses its magnetic poles on an 11-year cycle, which is associated with the sun spot cycle. The next such cycle is coming in 2012 and is expected to be the most severe in the recent series. Sun spots are associated with magnetic storms on the sun and are linked to human health and disease such as influenza.v Pole shift: reshuffling the land masses      Charles Hapgood was a Harvard trained historian who taught at Keene Teacher’s College (now Keene State College) in Keene, NH. He wanted to explain why the fossil record not only showed great regional extinctions but the deaths of some animals appeared to occur very rapidly, so rapidly that grasses can be found in the mouths of woolly mammoths when they are excavated from the permafrost in Siberia. It appears that many of them were frozen rapidly, so rapidly that in some the tissue is still viable and being eaten by wolves when they are uncovered in the soil. We know that Siberia was once a part of a rich savanna similar to those found in parts of Africa and that the parts of the planet now hidden under the ice at the poles were not always at the poles. Some of this can be explained through the dynamics of plate tectonicsvi but that movement, which is measured in centimeters a year, cannot explain the rapid freezing of the mammoths. What Hapgood suggested was that at times all or portions of the Earth’s surface, called the lithosphere, shifts suddenly.      Hapgood felt that at certain times the skin of the Earth shifted quickly, so quickly that it positioned different parts of the Earth in the polar regions causing rapid cooling and animals to be quick frozen, which explains the woolly mammoths uncovered in Siberia and additional evidence of extinction elsewhere. Such a shift would create monstrous tsunamis and might explain the ubiquitous mythology of the great flood across many independent and disparate races and ancient cultures. He also felt that his theory provided a better explanation of many of the locations and dynamics of the glacial ice sheets. He was so convinced of this theory that he sent an unsolicited paper to Einstein, who was intrigued by the idea and replied to Hapgood, who added it to the foreword to his book, Path of the Pole:      I frequently receive communications from people who wish to consult me concerning their unpublished ideas. It goes without saying that these ideas are very seldom possessed of scientific validity. The very first communication, however that I received from Mr. Hapgood electrified me. His idea is original, of great simplicity, and – if it continues to prove itself – of great importance to everything that is related to the history of the earth’s surface. vii      In support of Hapgood’s idea, if the earth is in fact spinning like a top in space, then would not internal mechanisms described by him and a redistribution of weight on the poles increase the lithosphere’s instability and the likelihood of a shift? Is that now occurring in the melting of the polar ice caps and the many glaciers? The wisdom of the ancients?      These are potential geophysical phenomena that may factor into a dramatic event, but where does the 2012 date come from? It appears that in popular western literature the Nobel Prize nominee, Frank Waters, who wrote the acclaimed mythology book, The Book of the Hopi, was the first to have described it in considerable detail in The Mexican Mystique, his book about the Maya Indians of Central America. Frank Waters, historian, writer, and cultural anthropologist is known for his mythological, religious and cultural analysis of the North American and Mesoamerican Indian. Waters is to these original inhabitants of North America as the famous comparative mythologist, Joseph Campbell, is to world mythology.      Across the globe we have evidence that many ancient cultures were very sophisticated in their knowledge of astronomy. Examples include England’s Stonehenge, other Stonehenge kinds of sites throughout mainland Europe, and, somewhat incongruously, ancient observatories in Africa. Some have expressed the opinion that the pyramids were also tied to astronomical observations and monitored cosmic configurations. There are also legitimate mysteries in these ancient cultures because some mythologies express knowledge that only modern instruments have revealed as true astronomical configurations. Frank Waters notes that the American Indians knew the Pleiades as the “seven sisters;” however, only six are visible to the naked eye.viii Then there is the incredible mythological reference of the Dogon people in north central Africa of a dark dwarf star that circles the Sirius system. It is a mythology that goes back thousands of years, but the existence of the dark star was only confirm ed several years ago through modern astronomical instruments.ix      The Mayans appear to have one of the most sophisticated systems of knowledge about astronomy and incorporated that knowledge in a series of calendars that are still used by the Indians of Central America.      The calendar system in use throughout Mesoamerica is one of the most phenomenal achievements in the world. It integrated in one vast complex, highly developed mathematical calculations, astronomy, astrology, myth, and religion.x      Their knowledge of astronomy is truly remarkable. This knowledge appears to come before the age of Christ and some date it much further back than that. Without apparent modern technology, the Mayans and perhaps the cultures that predated them, the Toltecs and Olmecs, calculated the orbit of the earth as 365.2420 days, which is closer to actual (365.2422) than the Gregorian calendar which held it as 365.2425 days. A record of their calculations for the sinusoidal periodicity of Venus is detailed in the Dresden Codex, one of the extant codified tablets from the Mayans, which provides a cycle of 583.92 days, the lunar month as 29.5302 days (the modern astronomical calculation is 29.5305 days). They also had calculations for the appearance of Mars.xi      If Frank Waters introduced us to the Mayan calendar, then John Major Jenkins continued to develop the idea through extensive research and an almost obsessive determination to fully explain the mythology of the Mayans. According to Waters and Jenkins it is clear that the Mayans, as well as other American Indian mythologies such as the Hopis, were concerned with time, its connection with astronomy and astrology, such as the precession of the equinoxxii and the evolution of man. They not only detailed with precision the movement of cosmic bodies but also described great astronomical cycles of time. For example, Waters notes one of the inscriptions at Palenque, Mexico, is a date “reaching back nearly 1,250,000 years.”xiii In one of the significant interconnected Mayan cycles called the “long count,” he and others detail the latest cycle to have begun on August 13, 3113 B.C.A. and will terminate on the winter solstice, December 21, 2012.xiv The unique astronomical event on that date is the alignment of the Earth, Sun and the center of the galaxy at sunrise. During that winter solstice an event that occurs only every 26,000 years is the alignment of the winter solstice sun (at sunrise) with a point where the ecliptic (zodiac) crosses the center of the galaxy. For Mayan, ancient Egyptian and many North American Indian mythologies the center of the galaxy has great significance. More specifically, it is the so-called dark rift where a great molecular cloud obscures the stars near the center of the galaxy that is tied to ancient Roman, Egyptian and many other mythologies, which describe the cycles of human life and death. The prophesized destruction is part of a cycle of great destruction events that have been detailed in many mythologies, and the theme carries across ancient cultures in all corners of the globe. Frank Waters:      The mythological creation and destruction of four previous worlds is not a unique conception of the ancient Nahuas and Mayas, or of contemporary Pueblos and Navajos. The belief was common to Hindu and Tibetan Buddhism, to Zoroasterism, the Iceland and the Polynesian Islands. Heraclitus and Aristarchus both taught that the earth was destroyed periodically; and Hesiod, the Greek historian, recounted the destruction of four previous worlds.xv    The inner and outer, as above so below      Why do we of sophisticated scientific mind care about something like the position of stars and planets and the alignment of the Milky Way with the earth? There are two ways to answer this: one is a theoretical position and the other is a practical answer. James Gleick, an author of scientific concepts, first popularized the concept of fractals in the public literature through a book called Chaos in the 1980s.xvi      Since then the concept has found wide acceptance and practical application in various algorithms. A fractal is a repeating pattern that replicates itself at every scale. One of the most famous examples is the graphic visualization of a mathematical algorithm called the Mandelbrot invented by an IBM mathematician Benoît Mandelbrot. At ever finer scales the Mandelbrot repeats itself. Analogously, structures of consciousness (more about this below) repeat themselves with scale such that the electron appears to be aware and is an entity unto itself. The same is true at the next scale, the atom, then the molecule, for biological entities, the cell, then the organ, the body, the family, the species, the planet (Gaia), the solar system, and the galaxy. We are not isolated beings in a vast emptiness. We are interconnected in a fundamental way; we are connected to the electron, the molecule, and cellular structures, and at much larger scales, astronomical structures. This is what Joseph Campbell meant when he stated that as we explore space we metaphorically explore our inner selves.xvii Our reality is a repeating fractal of equivalent complexity at every scale. So what happens “out there” is indeed connected to us.      The second practical example is the scientific impact on us from the very interesting experiment done by the US Government in its research on remote viewing. In a scientifically structured experiment it was discovered that there is a significant difference in the success of remote viewing attempts between periods when the individual is exposed to the center of the galaxy and when the earth is positioned so that it stands between the remote viewer and the center.xviii By this, I mean to say that perhaps the position of cosmic bodies and cosmic structures has a very real impact on humans, and the ancients may have had an intimate knowledge that we are just now scientifically validating. It has been known for a while that electromagnetic radiation including ultra-violet rays can be dangerous to life and gamma rays cause damage to DNA creating mutations in the genome, which propel evolutionary changes to many species, including man.xix Additionally, according to Jeff Mishlove, the well-known parapsychologist and radio host reports that:      Scientists have correlated solar storm activity to rates of heart attacks, lung disease, eclampsias, and the activity of microbes. . . Epidemics of diphtheria, typhus, cholera, and smallpox have also been correlated with solar activity.xx The compression of time      Swedish biologist, Carl Johan Calleman, also an ardent student of the Mayan calendar, carries the analysis one step further when he ties it to an even longer cycle of time. He and other students of the Mayan calendar express the cycle as a rebirth in the evolution of consciousness. Calleman specifically talks about the nine underworlds of consciousness, each one building on the other and states that the Mayan pyramids had nine layers to convey this symbology. We are about to enter the ninth underworld. For Calleman the nine levels start with the cosmic big bang and each succeeding level accelerates by a factor of 20 over the preceding level so that the evolution of consciousness dramatically accelerates the development that has gone before. Therefore, the first cycle is measured in billions of years, the second in tens of millions, the third in two million, the fourth in 100,000, the fifth in 3100, the sixth in 1700, the seventh in 12.8 years, and the eighth in 260 days. The ninth? Well the ninth is ushered in during 2012.xxi The entire history of evolution found in the preceding cycle is contained in the next foreshortened cycle. Calleman says that the reason that modern life, including technology, is moving at such a pace is the natural progression of the cycle, which, if he is right, will accelerate increasingly to 2012. For some of us that have been around for a while, the pace is already blinding. The Institute for Noetic Sciences (IONS) publishes an Annual Shift report and the report for 2008 indicates that 84 percent of all knowledge known by man was created in the last four years.xxii This should be interesting.      Calleman concludes,      By 2011, the dominance of the dualist mind will wither, and all the conflicts of humanity originating in lower levels of consciousness will be resolved. From the perspective of the enlightened state, the old order will no longer be real.xxiii      This is the why of 2012 and it may be a bit too esoteric, but if we cast our net a bit wider we can discern a greater significance. Other accelerations      The Coming Singularity      Ray Kurzweil is an inventor, forward thinker and an acknowledged futurologist. He invented a popular speech-to-computer translator as well as other leading edge software innovations. In his musings and highly informative descriptions of the evolution of technology, Kurzweil developed two interesting concepts, the law of accelerating returns and, the singularity.xxiv Kurzweil codifies Calleman’s conclusions about the Mayan mythology, that of continued acceleration into and beyond 2012. Kurzweil states that all mappings of technological change demonstrate an exponential function (for those not mathematically inclined, such a function when plotted on a logarithmic scale produces a straight line) and furthermore, when plotted on a logarithmic scale also produces an upward curve, meaning that the exponential growth has an additional exponential component.      The paradigm shift rate (i.e., the overall rate of technical progress) is currently doubling (approximately) every decade; that is, paradigm shift times are halving every decade (and the rate of acceleration is itself growing exponentially). So, the technological progress in the twenty-first century will be equivalent to what would require (in the linear view) on the order of 200 centuries. In contrast, the twentieth century saw only about 20 years of progress (again at today's rate of progress) since we have been speeding up to current rates. So the twenty-first century will see about a thousand times greater technological change than its predecessor.xxv      Kurzweil’s singularity refers to the point in time when the computer machines we create will have the same capacity as the human brain and will then go on to design even more powerful versions of themselves. According to Kurzweil, man will then port himself into his machines to acquire immortality. There are already medical implants for the cornea of the eye, the cochlea of the inner ear and portions of the brain and the development of further enhancements to the brain’s natural processes are on the drawing board. Kurzweil projects that the singularity can come as soon as 2030.      Nobel laureate and neuroscientist, Gerald Edelman, reports that he and a colleague have made a model of the brain with a million simulated neurons and almost half a billion synapses connected through a neural anatomy equivalent to a cat brain. It is showing “intrinsic activity” even when not stimulated and, like the human brain, manifests beta and gamma electromagnetic waves when hooked to an electroencephalogram.      In other words, our device has some lovely properties that are necessary to the idea of a conscious artifact. It has that property of indwelling activity. So the brain is already speaking to itself.      That is a very important concept for consciousness.xxvi      The Near Death Experience      Psychologist Kenneth Ring and physician Ray Moody studied a fascinating phenomenon called the near death experience (NDE)xxvii. They explored and recorded in great detail the strange but consistent experience of many people who were clinically dead or near death and then recovered. The stories told by the participants in such an event have a consistent theme of a great state of peace and serenity, a white light and tunnel and then, typically an interchange between themselves and some discarnate entities. Typically, people with these experiences (approximately 70 percent) have a profound and permanent shift in worldview, which completely reorders their relationship with other elements of natural reality and their relationship to other people. When this research came to light some 30 years ago, it led to the creation of the International Association of Near Death Studies (IANDS) that publishes a peer reviewed journal, the Journal of Near Death Studies.      At the conclusion of his investigation Ring calculates projections on the percentage of our population that annually undergoes these events and posits that the aggregate of these profound changes in worldview will produce a tipping point where the spiritual evolution of mankind will take a quantum leap forward. He calls this point the omega point. Modern technology has raised the rate of the NDE phenomenon since medical technology has increased the ability to resuscitate those near death.      The Institute of Noetic Sciences      Edgar Mitchell, one of the Apollo 14 astronauts, has had a mystical connection all his life. His trips into space further emphasized this mystical connection and propelled him, along with others, to form the Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS). IONS has a membership that includes leading thinkers, scientists and dreamers who share a belief in the evolution of consciousness, fosters collaboration on new age thinking and supports consciousness research across many disciplines. IONS believes the evidence is overwhelming that there is an evolution in consciousness and that we are moving toward a shift in consciousness. That is why IONS publishes the annual review of significant events and important research across all economic, scientific, social and psychological disciplines in a report called “Shift.”xxviii Philosopher, scientist, futurist, and former president of the Institute of Noetic Sciences, Willis Harman,      We are living through one of the most fundamental shifts in history – a change in the actual belief structure of Western Society No economic, political, or military power can compare with the power of a change of mind. By deliberately changing their images of reality, people are changing the world.xxix A Question of Perspective      Worldviews are all important      At this point it is worthwhile to discuss world perspectives because fundamental worldview will dictate how the whole 2012 issue is perceived. This discussion continues the one started above which describes the paradigm shift. I need to go to the beginning of this article and emphasize the orientations that exist now and, in fact, create the dialectical struggle in which we find ourselves. Our worldview could not be more important as expressed by the late Harvard psychiatrist John E. Mack:      Worldviews, and the ways of knowing that produce and sustain them, structure our perceptions and define how we experience ourselves in relation to the universe. They determine how we relate to each other and to the Earth itself, how we find satisfaction, and how we come to terms with the ultimate questions of living and dying. For these reasons, there is no matter of greater significance than which worldview, or paradigm, is ascendant in our society.xxx      Paradigm shifts      An interesting thing happened near the middle of the last century; the Newtonian-Cartesian reality that had taken hold in all aspects of our western culture, including psychology, came into question. Our social, cultural and governmental structures are built on the Newtonian-Cartesian model of reality (and that’s the problem!). The behaviorists, who desperately wanted psychology to be based on the paradigm, were busy assessing all the determinants of learning so that we could predict behavior with certainty. The human is no different than any other cosmic or terrestrial object; it responds directly and completely in accordance with the forces that presently and in the past acted on it. A leading example of this line of thinking was Harvard University psychologist B.F. Skinner who developed radical behaviorism. Skinner developed what became know as the “Skinner box” that totally controlled reinforcement schedules for an infant and ultimately led him to conclude, “Give me a child and I'll shape him into anything,” meaning if I can control all learning, then I can form any personality I wish. Then the 60s happened and the cultural backlash to materialism invoked a climate of searching for bigger answers, the deeper meaning. Interest was renewed in Eastern mysticism and Far Eastern teaching.      In modern western scientific thinking this shift in worldview actually started at the turn of the century when the first theoretical rudiments of quantum mechanics were being developed. The studies and theoretical developments of quantum mechanics puzzled physicists to no end and as its basic tenets took shape, it completely upset the Newtonian apple cart and shook the foundations and basic assumptions of physicists’ worldview. A number of them, particularly the quantum theorists followed by the cosmologists, literally redrew the map of reality revealing a strange and wonderful topography. One of the first to record this shift in viewpoint in the popular literature was Fritjof Capra, a particle physicist who got his Ph.D. from the University of Vienna and now lectures at the University of California at Berkeley. To say that Capra’s book, The Tao of Physicsxxxi, struck a psychological chord is to put it mildly. Since its original printing, it has had two revisions, sold over one million copies worldwide and has been translated into more than one dozen languages (at the time of the third printing, 1991).      It is interesting and ironic to me that it is that most hardnosed of sciences, physics, dedicated to the study of material reality (indeed physicist Ernst Rutherford stated, “if it isn’t physics it’s stamp collecting,”xxxii ) where the greatest seed for change in the Western mode of scientific thinking has taken hold and prospered.      What is changing?      There is a basic continuum on which we can place all orientations to reality. In our recorded history the debate starts with Aristotle and Plato and has continued more or less unabated until the 20th century. In those years science thought it had it all locked up (at least in western society), and the famous physicist Max Planck, at that time a student with promising talent as a concert pianist, was advised by his mentor not to get into physics because it had all been figured out save for crossing a few T’s and dotting a few I’s. xxxiii      It did have it figured out until physicists discovered that annoying quantum mechanics that seemed to say that fundamental reality is vastly different than was supposed. Thus, all philosophers, authors, and even scientists knowingly or unknowingly put their view of reality somewhere on a continuum of thought. Where one sits on the continuum is crucial to the worldview and, indeed, some evidence supports the notion that worldview, in fact, creates the reality in which we find ourselves. It is no less dramatic than that.      What is this continuum? On the one extreme are the material monists, also known as materialists, that believe material reality, what we can apprehend with our five senses, is all there is and most modern views based on the scientific method hold that this is the only proper study for science. The material monists believe that material reality strictly obeys the Newtonian laws of physics, and it is mechanistic, meaning that causality is local and always flows with time from past to present to future. Consciousness is an epiphenomenon (a side product if you will) of the material brain. In the words of Marvin Minsky, MIT mathematics professor, student of artificial intelligence and computer science, “Minds are what brains do…There is not the slightest doubt that brains are anything other than machines with enormous numbers of parts that work in perfect accord with physical law.”      One of the problems with this worldview is, if material reality is all there is and it follows strict mechanistic rules, then it is difficult not to reach the conclusion that behavior and therefore the unfolding of future events is strictly deterministic, and there is no free will. This is summed up nicely by B. F. Skinner,      The free inner man who is held responsible for the behavior of the external biological organism is only a prescientific substitute for the kinds of causes which are discovered in the course of scientific analysis . . . Science insists that action is initiated by forces impinging upon the individual, and that [freedom] is only another name for the behavior for which we have not yet found a cause.xxxiv (emphasis mine)      More recently, famed codiscoverer of the double helix DNA structure, the late Nobel laureate Sir Francis Crick, stated in classic reductionist terms, “You, your joys and sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will are in fact no more than the behavior of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules . . . You are nothing but a pack of neurons.”      How’s that for a mechanistic reality?      At the extreme other end of the continuum are the monistic idealists (Willis Harman calls it transcendental monism) who believe all material phenomena including material reality arise out of consciousness. In the words of Amit Goswami, theoretical physicist at the University of Oregon:      The centerpiece of this new paradigm is the recognition that modern science validates an ancient idea - the idea that consciousness, not matter, is the ground of all being. xxxv      Nobel Prize winner and neuroresearcher, Roger Sperry, is acclaimed for his split-brain research, which created a revolution at that time of new knowledge about the role and function of the brain hemispheres and their interaction. He wrote a lead article for the 1981 Annual Review of Neuroscience called “Changing Priorities.” In it he made the radical statement,      Current concepts of the mind-brain relation involve a direct break with the long-established materialist and behaviorist doctrine that has dominated neuroscience for many decades. Instead of renouncing or ignoring consciousness, the new interpretation gives full recognition to the primacy of inner conscious awareness as a causal reality.xxxvi      The radical and operative term is consciousness; mind is “a causal reality.” Mind changes matter. Sperry did not say that consciousness is the only causal reality but it was a giant step to call it “a” causal reality. His words also detail another aspect of this continuum and that is the mind/body problem. It is interesting that Rene Descartes has to be labeled a dualist because he believed the material world and mind were two separate aspects of reality. But it is the physicists who discovered the paradoxes inherent in quantum mechanics, wrestled with its implications for a fundamental description of our reality, and then changed their worldview. Theoretical physicists Bryce Dewitt and Neill Graham:      No development of modern science has had a more profound impact on human thinking than the advent of quantum theory. Wrenched out of centuries-old thought patterns, physicists of a generation ago found themselves compelled to embrace a new metaphysics. The distress which this reorientation caused continues to the present day. Basically physicists have suffered a severe loss: their hold on reality.xxxvii      Echoing the results and interpretation of the quantum mechanical double slit experiment, Goswami, as well as many other theoretical physicists, states that, not only is physical reality not a fixed material thing, “There is no object in space-time without a conscious subject looking at it.”      For the monistic idealists all reality is created by consciousness; it does not exist without consciousness. At the end of the introduction of his book, Elemental Mind, which explores consciousness and how it collapses the quantum wave, physicist Nick Herbert draws the following conclusion:      I confess that I do think that consciousness will turn out to be something grand–grander than our most extravagant dream. I propose here a kind of “quantum animisim” in which mind permeates the world at every level. I propose that consciousness is a fundamental force that enters into necessary cooperation with matter to bring about the fine details of our everyday world. I propose, in fact, that mind is elemental, my dear Watson.xxxviii      In the quantum paradigm, time is simultaneous, the past, present, and future are all happening now, and, underlying our physical reality is a reality that has a quantum wholeness in which things are not separated by time or distance, a feature the quantum theorists call “non-locality.” For a monistic idealist these last two characteristics of reality mean that causality is not bound by time or distance. (And I might add this explains the existence of psychic or so-called paranormal phenomena.)      One of the proofs for this aspect of reality is that of the government-funded scientific remote viewing, which with high reliability and in double blind studies, reveals that the mind can travel to any place and any time, record the environment and events occurring there. This capability is not diminished by distance or time.xxxix This viewpoint could not be more radical because one of its corollaries is that far from an objective fixed reality, consciousness, particularly mass consciousness, changes reality and the very physical laws that govern it.      Preposterous, you say. For example, look at the research by William Tillerxl and Dean Radinxli to see rigorous science validating the impact of mind on material reality. The sneaky part of this aspect of our reality is that if this is true, and I believe it is, then your experiences, not only of the scientist but also at the intensely personal level, will faithfully replicate your worldview. Your consciousness filters reality to conform to your beliefs. For the idealistic monist, consciousness changes first and then material reality shifts with it. In general, the scientists’ experiments will align to conform to expectations and, both sides will have “proof” that they are right. Will there be a shift?      I will assess this question now from the perspective of the idealistic monist. The question then, for 2012, and leaving the exact date aside for the moment, is not, are we going to have a cataclysmic change that will come about in the near future, but what are the consequences if we do not? As a conclusion to his Tao of Physics, published in 1975, Fritjof Capra draws the following conclusion near the end of the book:      I believe that the world-view implied by modern physics is inconsistent with our present society, which does not reflect that harmonious interrelatednes s we observe in nature. To achieve such a state of dynamic balance, a radically different social and economic structure will be needed: a cultural revolution in the true sense of the word. The survival of our whole civilization may depend on whether we can bring about such a change.xlii      What is he talking about? If any number of indications of impending ecological disaster are true, then a radical reorientation in the way we approach our world (or in the monistic idealist’s words, the way we create our world) is necessary. Also, in addition to our conflict with nature is our fight with ourselves. We cannot seem to get beyond killing each other in attempts to solve our problems. If we have learned anything in the history of man, it is that war does not bring peace, it only brings more war. Harman, Capra and others make the point that our basic social/governmental institutions are based on a Newtonian-Cartesian view of reality that no longer works. Depending on the criteria used, perhaps they never did.      One aspect of our condition today that mirrors the Mayan mythology as interpreted by Calleman is the acceleration of change. Nowhere is that more evident than in the pace of technology and the rapidity of socialization of an idea in our modern culture. For example, a new term in our lexicon is the phrase, “it went viral” to reflect something that is introduced and then circulates rapidly throughout the Internet. So here is our problem: technology is advancing so rapidly and the accessibility to it is increasing so quickly that our inventions that can lead to global destruction are also increasing in number and availability. Global society is coming to its own omega point as described in the graph below. The exponential upward curve in blue is the rate of change for technology, which includes globally destructive technologies. The other function is the accessibility to these harmful technologies and intent to use them. In this case I have made this an (inverse) linear function for illustration to reflect the impact of the global media. The media and modern communication quickly propels all injustice and global strife to consciousness everywhere on the planet, which multiplies negative emotion and negative thought, building increased momentum for organized and individual acts of violence. We will hit an omega point in the near future where it is not only possible to destroy ourselves, but also easy to do so. Rate of Change of Technology vs. Opportunity with Intent (inverse)      It is not hard to come up with examples. At the end of World War II only the United States and the USSR had the resources to build an atomic bomb. Today we worry about third world countries such as North Korea and Iran having the capability to do so. How long will it be until pernicious transnational groups have that capability? Even simpler and more egregious are the rapidly developing biotechnology sciences. With little monetary outlay and little scientific training (as compared to building an atom bomb) it is possible to create a new pathogen whose destructive capabilities are not well understood and can “go viral.” It is possible to develop an organism accidentally or deliberately that can destroy large numbers of the human species or the environment it relies on to sustain itself. So the question is not will there be a shift but how can we assure that there is? Conclusion      The problem here is that in the current paradigm of reality, one of prevailing institutions’ core values is survival. Institutions are resistant to change and will expend large resources to assure their survival. How will a fundamental change in our institutions come about without a transformative upheaval? Our history indicates that this is a normal consequence of large scale change. The other aspect, if you are a monistic idealist, is since mind creates material reality and because the dialectical struggle to enter into a new paradigm is represented by conflicting ideas and beliefs of mass consciousness, it is likely that struggle, as it always does, reflects itself in the material reality consciousness creates.      To unpack this a little, for the true idealistic monist, material reality arises out of consciousness and the vehicle is thoughts and beliefs. What arises in material reality arises first as an idea and then manifests in material reality. Under this paradigm conflicts in consciousness also translate to conflict of some type in the geopolitics of the human species as well as geophysical reality. Geophysical reality is impacted because the earth also is conscious, which is called the “Gaia hypothesis.”      In this worldview we would expect geophysical, geopolitical, and social upheavals of some kind. Will it happen in 2012? If enough believe that it will, then it will. Otherwise, it is clear that we are on the threshold of big changes that are highly likely to occur. We are in an era of paradigm change and in an era in which one-time US Air Force historian and transpersonal therapist, Chet Snow, says, “when secrets will be revealed.”           Truth is fiction with a pedigree. ~    T.S. Elliot End Notes iSee for example, http://www.history.com/search.do?searchText=2012. iiWarrick, J. (1998). Mass extinction underway, majority of biologists say. The Washington Post. April 21, 1998. Retrieved January 15, 2009 from http://www.well.com/user/davidu/extinction.html. iiiHeimpel, M. University of Alberta geophysics professor as quoted in Vanderklippe, N. Our north loses the pole. CanWest News Service. June 09, 2005. Retrieved February 8, 2009 from http://www.greatdreams.com/spinaxis.htm. ivBraden, G. (2007) Choice point 2012: our date with the window of emergence. Simon, T. (Ed). (2007). The Mystery of 2012: predictions, prophecies and possibilities. Boulder, CO: Sounds True, Inc. p.5. vSunspot. Retrieved February 13, 2009, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunspot. viPlate tectonics describes the large scale motions of Earth's lithosphere. The theory encompasses the older concepts of continental drift developed during the first half of the 20th century, and seafloor spreading, understood during the 1960s…The lithosphere is broken up into what are called “tectonic plates” — in the case of Earth, there are seven major and many minor plates (see list below). The lithospheric plates ride on the asthenosphere. These plates move in relation to one another at one of three types of plate boundaries: convergent or collisional boundaries; divergent boundaries, also called spreading centers; and transform boundaries. From Plate Tectonics, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plate_tectonics, retrieved February 20, 2009. viiHapgood, C. H. (1958). Path of the pole. (3d ed. 1999). Kempton, IL: Adventures Unlimited Press. p. XIV. If you are interested in this topic see, White, J. (1980). Pole Shift: scientific predictions and prophecies about the ultimate natural disaster. Virginia Beach, VA: A. R. E. Press for a survey of many theories, channeling, and mythologies about the pole shift and cataclysm. viiiWaters, F. (1963). The Book of the Hopi: the first revelation of the Hopi’s historical and religious worldview of life. New York: Penguin Books. ix Temple, K. G. (1976). The Sirius mystery: was Earth visited by intelligent beings from a planet in the system of the star of Sirius? Rochester, VT: Destiny Books. xWaters, F. (1975). Mexico mystique: the coming sixth world of consciousness. Athens OH: Swallow press, Ohio University Press, p. 218. xi Ibid. pp. 226-229. xii The precession of the equinox is a slow wobble of the earth on its spin axis as it rotates. This wobble encompasses about 26,000 years and is the reason the prominence of various star configurations along the ecliptic plane changes. That is why we are moving out of the age of Pieces into the age of Aquarius. xiiiIbid. p. 237. xivJenkins and others maintain that Waters incorrectly calculated the date to be in 2011. xv Waters, (1975) p.108. xviGlick, J. (1987) Chaos: making a new science. New York: Penguin Books. xviiCampbell, J. (1986). The Inner reaches of outer space. Novato, CA: New World Library. xviiiTarg, R. citing research by physicist James Spottiswoode. xixNelson, D, L. & Cox, M. M. (2005). Principles of Biochemistry (4th Ed.). NY: W.H. Freeman and Company, a graduate level biochemistry text. pp. 294-295. xx Mishlove, J. (200x) The Roots of Consciousness (2nd ed.). Retrived Feb 4, 2009 from http://www.williamjames.com/Folklore/HIGHER.htm xxi Calleman, C. J. The Nine underworlds: expanding levels of consciousness. Simon, T. (Ed). (2007). The Mystery of 2012: predictions, prophecies and possibilities. Boulder, CO: Sounds True, Inc. pp. 77-87. xxiiGilbert, M. (Ed.) (2008). The 2008 shift report: changing the story of our future. Petaluma, CA: The Institute of Noetic Sciences. xxiiiCalleman, p. 84. xxiv Kurzweil, R. (2001). The Law of Accelerating Returns. Retrieved February 14, 2009 from http://www.kurzweilai.net/meme/frame.html?main=/articles/art0134.html. This is a seminal article that should be read by anyone interested in the future. The graphs are convincing. xxv Kurzweil, R. (2003). Kurzweil’s Law (aka “the law of accelerating returns”) Retrieved February 14, 2009 from http://www.kurzweilai.net/meme/frame.html?main=/articles/art0610.html (last para.) xxvi Kruglinski, S. (2009). The Discover Interview; Gerald Edelman, Discover, February 2009, pp. 64-69. xxviiRing, K. (1985). Heading toward omega: In search of the meaning of the near-death experience. New York: William Morrow and Moody, R. A. Jr. (1973). Life after life. New York: Bantam Books. xxviiiGilbert, M. (Ed.) (2008). The 2008 shift report: changing the story of our future. Petaluma, CA: The Institute of Noetic Sciences. xxixHarman, W. (1988). Global mind change: the promise of the last years of the twentieth century. Indianapolis, IN: Knowledge Systems, Inc. xxx Pfeiffer, T. (Ed.), Mack, J. E. (Ed.), and Devereux, P (Ed.). (2007). Mind before matter: vision of a new science of consciousness. Berkeley, CA: O Books. xxxiCapra, F. (2000) The Tao of physics: an Exploration of the parallels between modern physics and eastern Mysticism. Boston, MA: Shambhala Publications, Inc. First printing 1975. xxxii Quoted in, Gibbon, J. (1984) In search of Schrödinger’s cat. NY: Bantam Publishing, p. 79. xxxiii Herbert, N. (1985). Quantum reality: Beyond the new physics. New York: Doubleday, p. 31. xxxiv Skinner, B. F. quoted in Harman, W. p. 31-32. sssv Goswami, A. (1993). The Self-aware universe: how consciousness creates the material world. New York: Jeremy P. Tarcher. xxxvi Sperry, R. (1981). “Changing priorities,” Annual Review of Neuroscience, Vol.4, pp. 1-15. xxxviiBryce Dewitt, B., Graham, N. quoted in Herbert, N. (1993). Elemental mind: human consciousness and the new physics. New York: Dutton, p. 140. xxxix Herbert, N. (1993). Elemental mind: human consciousness and the new physics. New York: Dutton. xxxix See any number of the books written by government-trained remote viewers like Joe McMoneagel. The future can also be viewed with some limitation; time precludes me from getting into this discussion. xlTiller, W. A. (1997). Science and human transformation: subtle energies, intentionality and consciousness. Pavior: Author. Google Tiller, there are many articles available on the web. See especially his more recent work on “conditioned space” which hints at mind altering the laws of physics. xli For a nice sample of Radin’s groundbreaking work (as the IONS principal researcher) go to http://www.psiarcade.com/research/references.htm. If his research is right, then the implications for the scientific method are quite dramatic and, this would provide a very nice explanation of the experimenter effect and the so-called placebo effect, which have never found satisfactory explanation and are normally ignored as a meaningful result. xlii Capra p.307.