Heeb

The Apocalypse will arrive December 21, 2012, though it all might end up being a state of higher consciousness. It’s kind of a coin toss for now.

“Twenty-five percent of all mammalian species will be extinct in 30 years. Fish are 90 percent fished out of the oceans. We’ve hit peak oil. Climate change is accelerating," says Daniel Pinchbeck from his Manhattan apartment. His daughter happily bounces about, oblivious to her dad – (she’s heard it all before), while a young, pretty disciple sits transfixed on a lumpy futon, nodding at every word. “When something’s unsustainable, ultimately, it falls apart,” he proclaims, running his hand through his blond hair. For someone who believes Civilization As We Know It ends with the Mayan calendar—just a thousand some-odd days away—he seems pretty calm.

A child of beat era parents (his mother was Kerouac’s girlfriend), Pinchbeck was a struggling writer until a “spiritual crisis” sent him traveling around the world, trying every known hallucinogen along the way. He came to the conclusion that hallucinogenic drugs reveal not only our own unconscious thoughts but a true, previously hidden reality. (That’s a major theme of his first book, Breaking Open The Head, which was labeled "mind-blowing" by most reviewers.) In 2004, at a Santo Daime ceremony in the Brazilian jungle, he heard the voice of the Mayan god Quetzalcoatl who “dictated this prophetic transmission about this being the time of the Apocalypse.” Some would have questioned their sanity or begun stockpiling canned goods, but Pinchbeck decided it means we’re approaching a time of potential “uncovering and revealing,” an era of greater enlightenment. Everyone will participate in global, even intergalactic, conversations with the natural world—perhaps the entire universe. First, however, we must focus on our own consciousness. “Most people are not really connected to their present awareness,” Pinchbeck explains. “Usually they’re either worried about the future or they’re connected to abstractions like patriotism and things that have no value to their actual lives, like sporting events or celebrities.”

If it sounds a little too hippie-dippie for you, rest assured—there is a practical side. Pinchbeck sees the end arriving more in the form of corporate greed and ecological destruction than little green men. An official member of the literati (he helped found the famed art and literary journal Open City), his work is fundamentally about ideas:he references Aldous Huxley, Walter Benjamin, and Rudolf Steiner; describes his experiences brilliantly; and never once explains the construction of a tin foil hat. For now, Pinchbeck enjoys the fringe benefits of shamanism; hanging out with soul searchers like Sting and guiding numerous attractive females on quests to expand their minds.

In preparation for 12/12, Pinchbeck recommends yoga and meditation to help you gain Kundalini awakenings (surges of spiritual energy), which will let you “see spirits or hear voices.” And there’s always Pinchbeck’s own key to enlightenment— hallucinogens. (He recommends starting with the Peruvian drug Ayahuasca.) If humankind can snap out of its current stupor, he claims, things that tend to divide us, like religion and ethnicity, will cease to do so and we will “all possess one united consciousness.” But it’s not that easy. “It may take a series of crises and catastrophes before we reach that realization,” Pinchbeck explains. “If there hasn’t been at least a crucial subset of humanity evolving their practices and creating a template for a new society [by 2012], I think it’s just going to be worse and worse. We could see disruption of energy supplies, leading to mass starvation. We might see nuclear bombs go off, leading to total meltdown and disaster…” And where will Pinchbeck be in the zero hour? “I might be in New York City. I might be in a cave in Peru. I might be on a UFO. You never know.”

And if the human race does continue to stagger forward and this is all just another Y2K scare, there’s always the next theological expiration date. According to Pinchbeck, the doomsday deadline in the Hebrew calendar is the year 6000, which translates as 2239.

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