2012: Breaking Open the Heart

Daniel Pinchbeck Interview

By Gabriel Kennedy

Synchronicity

One definition of this term describes it as meaningful coincidence, an event happening in space-time that does not make sense in terms of cause-and-effect. Over the years, since first reading Robert Anton Wilson's Illuminatus Trilogy I have taken note of the synchronicities in my life. They seem to vary in intensity and depth, ranging from a mere coincidence that repeats itself over and over again, like hearing a word in a song synch up and match exactly a word that my eyes have met whilst reading. I am not quite sure how meaningful these particular coincidences are, but I find them to be amusing, nonetheless. There have been a few synchronicities, however, that have occurred in recent years that have left me wondering just how much influence my thoughts may have on who or what I cross paths with. Por ejemplo, meeting Daniel Pinchbeck, while just wandering the streets of Greenwich Village, could easily fit such a description. Please allow me to explain. Mr. Pinchbeck's latest book, 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl hit bookstores on May 4th, and I picked it up a few days after its release. As I was flipping through the 400+ pages I thought to myself how cool it would be if were to interview this guy. Pinchbeck has put himself through some sort of vision quest these past ten years, and has the wherewith all to document such ventures into his psyche while he watched his formerly materialistic philosophy peel back and fold over like a shimmering psychedelic Mobius strip, to where he finds himself today. Back in New York, but with a very different perspective. One that seriously considers the role one's consciousness plays in shaping those events that happen in one's life. Like say, meeting an author you really wanted to interview without having to contact his publisher to get said interview. I once heard someone make reference to a term she called Chi-Mail, perhaps, on some level, some part of me, sent out a Chi-Mail to Daniel, and the cosmic computer just connected the line. Anyway, it was pretty fucking weird how we met. I had just left an Anarchist bookstore located on Allen Street, where I sat through a young radical speak about a book he'd just penned about The Weather Underground. Knowing that the Weather Underground was integral in freeing Dr. Timothy Leary from prison in 1970, I was curious to see how Leary was represented in this young author's text. I wasn't too surprised to find that Leary, again, was represented as a mad kook, whose career of respectability, of any form, was thrown out the window the day he got the boot from Harvard. I sought a polite debate with the writer, describing myself as a Leary apologist, trying to shed light upon my fellow comrades about Leary's possible importance in America's countercultural history. I mentioned how the sixties psychedelic explosion could be viewed as the first wave of shamanism here in the North, and that these things take generations to really take hold. Fear not my fellow Radicals, the wonder and horror of Lysergic Acid! The second wave is here, and it's a really nice swell. When I thought about what I said while walking out of this bookstore north up first avenue I thought about two things, 1) I was thinking that I got that notion of this present time being that of the second wave of shamanism in North America from Daniel Pinchbeck. I think he wrote that in his first book Breaking Open the Head, or something to that affect. What a fun read that was. Pinchbeck's journey from jaded New York postmodern nihilism to that of an initiate into his own humanity, with the help of a few different entheogens was a big one. And the second that went through my mind as I was walking north on first avenues was 'why the hell did I leave that store so soon.' I had two hours time before my friends show started, why didn't I just stay in that bookstore and continue talking with those people, or at least read or something. And then, as I raised my heavy head I saw Daniel Pinchbeck just moseying south bound with a very pretty woman smoking a cigarette on his side, both in conversation. I stopped and said, "You're Daniel Pinchbeck!" We spoke from a minute. I showed him his book that I was carrying with me in my backpack. He pointed out to his companion that what we were a part of was a 'synchronicity,' ya think! Agreed, a synchronicity to a high degree. And how appropriate a set-up for an interview about the subjects Mr. Pinchbeck has explored these past ten years.

MLA: So, this book obviously is about many different things. But one of the main things it seems to be about is prophecies, and involved in prophecies, it seems, is the mythic perspective on reality. Life and what not. We can go into that mythic perspective in correlation with prophecies. Why don't you tell me how you finally came to the understanding of prophecies in your own life, and how it played out in realizations you made throughout this book? Like for instance, you were writing a book about prophecies, and you saw that your life was a prophecy fulfilled in some sense.

Pinchbeck: Well basically, it started in 'Breaking Open the Head,' doing work with psychedelics and shamanism and then coming to the realization that there was a reality of importance to the shamanic worldview and system. Then there was a massive shift in my own worldview from materialism. I had to start taking seriously what these indigenous cultures were saying about the time we're in now. Turns out that they had pretty consistent and coherent prophecies, oral traditions, even the Western Apocalypse 'Book of Revelations,' seemed to be potentially connected to where we are at now. And so I then sort of had to go on a whole quest to understand how you can make sense of that from the modern rational perspective. And part of that was looking at myth, from the Jungian framework. The western materialist thing is that myths are just cute stories these tribal, pre-modern groups came up with to explain phenomena they didn't understand and that's it. But that's a very limited way of looking at myth. And you can instead look at myth as a new kind of Archetypical manifestation of a part of your psyche that represents hidden aspects of the self and aspects of being. And that actually certain myths are sort of constellating and they come to presence at a certain point of human reality.

MLA: At one point during the book you say that, it is almost our tragic fate as modern people to long for meaning and receive only explanation. That's a good line man. It seems that, at some points, so as to face the terror of myths, fairy-tales come in to play. And as you wrote, In the fairy-tale we learn to overcome the terror of the unknown to trust in natural powers and the instincts of animals to have faith in the secret workings of destiny Would you say that viewing one's life, as a fairy-tale could be a relatively good approach?

Pinchbeck: Yeah, I definitely felt more and more that I'm in a story or am co-creating a story. And I really like that Nietzsche comment I had as a pre-emblem to one section about how maybe the world to us might be a fiction and if you ask whose fiction, then surely there belongs an author, the answer is why? Maybe there is a co-creation, but yeah it does seem like there is a story or fairy-tale aspect to reality which I had no clue about when I was younger and more embedded in this other world view, materialist world view.

Why couldn't the world that concerns us - be a fiction?
And if somebody asked, 'but to be a fiction there surely 'belongs an author?
couldn't one answer simply: why?
Doesn't this 'belongs' perhaps belong to fiction, too?
---Nietzsche

MLA: Now in terms of myth, and what I might call mytheo-poetic; where poetry seems to really resonate more than linear didactic writing about stuff, where metaphor really comes into play, and where synchronicities play a major part. The role of names also seems to be significant as well. You mentioned in the book where you even see synchronicities with your own name. With this quest that you are on, the name 'Pinchbeck,' your name, there seems to be a sort of Joycean pun and the like there. Just briefly Daniel, describe how you saw a correlation with Pinchbeck as false-gold and Mayan prophecies and what not.

Pinchbeck: Well that's in the book. I don't know how much I need to repeat stuff that's directly in the book. But basically 'Pinchbeck,' I noted in the first book, the name is Alchemical. One of my ancestors created a kind of false gold called 'Pinchbeck' gold, which was an alloy of tin, and then that came to be known as anything false or spurious. Then of course, Alchemy is all bound up for this quest for gold. And then the name, 'Pinchbeck,' which means anything false or spurious, could be seen closely analogous to the concept of Maya as a kind of illusory reality. Which is a little bit different from the original meaning of Maya, which I talk about in the book, which was more about the magic creative power of the gods and maintaining the illusion of the world.

MLA: As you know this article is for the Maybe Logic Academy, where Robert Anton Wilson and his works are kind of the epicenter, which is what drew me to the Academy. And we discuss a lot of different things; one of the things that we talk about is the 8-Circuit Model of Intelligence. I personally like that model. While reading your book I was thinking, This guy activated, and started really playing with and learning about what Wilson calls the Morphogenetic System/Circuit.

Pinchbeck: The Morphogenetic System? I don't really know what that is.

MLA: The name comes from Rupert Sheldrake's Morphogenetic Field Theory. And so a brief description of how Wilson describes it in his book Quantum Psychology is that the descriptions of this system appear in the language of the reincarnation model which you utilize in the book. He continues, the first scientific model of this system appeared in Sheldrake's A New Science of Life. Where Leary, Grof, Freud and Jung assumed the non-ego information, not known to the brain, must come from the genes. Sheldrake, a biologist, knew that genes can't carry such information, he posited a non-local field like those in quantum theory which he named the Morphogenetic Field. Also, The morphogenetic system may serve as a kind of evolutionary radar preparing us for future quantum jumps in consciousness by showing us the records of past mutations. So RAW predicted that it wouldn't be until around 2015 when people learn how to utilize the art and science of the morphogenetic circuit for fun and profit. Now I say that you kind of came a little early on the curve and that this book is you learning to use the art and science of the morphogenetic system for fun and profit. Maybe some people will catch up by 2012.

Pinchbeck: So is that one of the 8-Circuits?

MLA: Yeah.

Pinchbeck: Where is that?

MLA: He listed it as the 7th Circuit in Quantum Psychology. It used to be known as the Neuro-genetic circuit, which Leary put at number 6. So he switched the meta-programming circuit and the morphogenetic circuit. I don't really know why. So, any thoughts on all this?

Pinchbeck: Yeah, I haven't really studied the 8-Circuit Model. Enough people keep bringing it up to me that I probably should look into it at some point. I've only read Wilson and Leary a little bit, Leary more than Wilson. I have no particular comments on that except that I definitely get where you are headed. I feel that I'm introducing a subtle post-dialectical way of thinking, or something. I think that one of the best things that the book is doing, that really just came from sitting with the material with the book for so long, is like a 'yes/but,' 'both/and' sort of logic. And yeah this idea of quantum shift into deeper levels of complexity seems to be very crucial into understanding what 2012 might signify. That somehow in this cataclysmic crisis that we are bringing upon ourselves, that we seem intent on doing; there is going to be a shift that is going to force us to re-integrate as a singular planetary intelligence. And once we have managed to do that we'll move in a how different set of possibilities.

MLA: I see a direct correlation between the non-dual perspective with what Robert Anton Wilson calls 'Maybe Logic,' where it's not an 'either/or,' it's 'and/both' type of logic. Your concentration on the crop circles seemed to be, at one point, a meditation on how to be at home in the unknown, if you will, of this non-dual perspective, of this maybe logic. You say that, you noted how the formations were subtly and exactly responsive to the mindset of each individual who investigated or became involved with them. Skeptics became more skeptical. Hoaxers, more cynical. Believers received more information as to why they needed to believe. But the approach the you took that I find really interesting, and that I try to integrate in some things in my own life, is those who are open to the phenomenon but unsure about its origin were presented with incongruous aspects supporting both skeptical and non-skeptical perspectives. Leading to deepening cognitive dissonance and eventual illumination. So that's kind of like a Zen Koan on a major scale. Was that the tipping point for you in Chapel Perilous?

Pinchbeck: Yeah, there were a number of different tipping points. But yeah, working through that was definitely major for me. It almost suggests that maybe there is no singular past, that even the past is a construct of the present. Maybe all that exists is this moment here. And, um, obviously there is this kind of inertia of all these different kinds of systems and structures that have gotten us to this point. Maybe events in the past and events in the future simmer on the edge of quantum uncertainty, or something like that. It's similar to when you look at something like 9-11 or The Roswell Incident. It's like the possibilities are going to keep flickering. It doesn't really feel like you can collapse it to a singular thing. Maybe it's more like this idea of a singular reified event only happens when you are in waking dualistic rational consciousness. And so it's like these other events are happening in different levels of consciousness where time just seems to have a different kind of viscereality to it.

MLA: So if I'm to try to get clear on what you are saying. If only the moment is real, and the past is an illusion, in a sense, then, as John Lilly called Alternity, exists where there are so many possibilities of the past and of the future, and so when you are aware of that it really just comes down to what you choose.

Pinchbeck: Yeah, exactly. And this gets back to the thing that I think is very key to the whole book. And that's our intentions and how we direct our consciousness seems to be always key and actually becoming more and more crucial. Like Jose Arguelles; in the book he was telling me about how the calendar change will happen and how we will then move to a utopian garden planet in like 5 years or 4 years. I was like, Jose this is absurd. Everything is going to hell out there. How is this going to happen? He looked at me and was like, Well, you know it may not happen, or he didn't even say that. He stays in his frequency, but he was like. 'Look my job as a visionary is to envision the best possible outcome for humanity And the more that I sat with that, the more I realized that that was my job, and maybe it's everybody's job, you know, maybe it's only because we keep getting mired down, like we put our intention or psychic energy that that then gets magnified. Rudolf Steiner talks about this scene in the gospels that Christ and his disciples are walking by the corpse of a dead dog, and all the disciples are all really disgusted. They're all like, Oh that dog, it's disgusting and it smells horrible. And Christ just says, Yeah, but it had such beautiful teeth It's a good example where you focus your energy at any given moment.

MLA: Right on, definitely. Just how you interpret your environment and things happening to you. Speaking of Christ. I find your view very interesting. And as a New York intellectual it almost seems like you are walking a tight rope speaking about a Christian religious figure and whatnot. But Christ as an archetype of compassion and sacrifice for love is I think, really really interesting, you know. In your awareness of this archetype, do you think of Christ often now?

Pinchbeck: There is more to the Christ archetype than just compassion and love. There is a kind of ferocity there. What I argue in the book, that yes, it was an archetypical event to the psyche. He was clearly, to my mind, bringing in a kind of higher frequency of consciousness, so he was clearly some sort of avatar. He wasn't just saving everybody's souls through the crucifixion. He was providing a model for the kind of energetic intensity and oppositional ferocity and the lengths that you have to go through if you want to bring in the transcendent domain into the material plane.

Pinchbeck: Well, because Buddha was about separating, the Eastern path is much more ascetic. It's complicated. What was the first thing that Buddha did after we achieved enlightenment?

MLA: Took a shit

Pinchbeck: Maybe. Maybe that was the second thing. The first thing he did was touch the earth. Because enlightenment came from the earth. But there wasn't that sense of transforming the social and religious structures in the same way that Christ kicked the moneychangers from the temple. Buddha didn't go out and kick the moneychangers from the temple, and try to somehow bring that transcendent super-reality down to this plane. It was more like enlightenment was connecting to that super-reality. You know, reaching that Non-dual state. Whereas the western evolution, and even the western curiosity and interest in evolution, it's much more about meshing together heaven and earth, spirit and matter. And that's why I think Quetzalcoatl is such a great symbol for Western consciousness.

MLA: Very interesting. So in a sense, though, it's like Buddhism seems to be about getting back to the ground of being. And when you get to the ground of Being you don't need to do anything else, really. So I see that as sort of regressive, in a sense, but in a good way. Now, with the image of Christ, it would be getting in touch with the ground of being in a sense, but still striving, almost in a Nietzschean sense for more?

Pinchbeck: I think that part of what my book is trying to do, and I'm sure other books too, is trying to fuse together this kind of Eastern action/ non-action, the Taoists talk about supporting the world just through breathing. The true man is the one who just supports the world through his breathe, power is something that you radiate rather than something that requires action, with this more western consciousness of evolutionary processes, and striving. I've been reading Rajneesh, Osho. He was talking about how we have this whole idea that we are supposed to become more conscious, and in a sense that's true, but he thinks that ultimately what we are to do is supersede the perceived dualism between consciousness and unconsciousness. So it would be like in every moment both connected to the ground of being, as if you were in a lucid dream reality, yet fully able to act in whatever way was necessary.

MLA: And that can be described as enlightenment, in a sense.

Pinchbeck: Yeah Enlightenment is one of those words, like a lot of words that people get stuck on. So, we just have to be really careful how we use these words, otherwise we should not use them. Spirituality has become a huge problem word. You know, I talk about that in the book. Spirituality is now, you go to yoga, you eat raw food, you know the stock-broker and his model girlfriend go down to Mexico and go to a retreat and practice their asanas on the beach, and that's Spirituality. That to me has nothing to do with Spirituality. It's like a great time and you're looking really good after it, and you feel good. But Spirituality is when you make that deeper commitment to transforming the reality, and actually put yourself out there. Risk yourself, sacrifice yourself.

MLA: And accept a certain amount of suffering along the path, that it's needed for the attainment of what comes next.

Pinchbeck: Yeah, on an individual level, that's Nietzsche's whole concept is that suffering is what actually creates consciousness. But I also see, if we are at this end-transformational period, it's like flipping over the Yin-Yang symbol- right now we are in the black with a little bit of the white. Hopefully we are going to the white with a little bit of black. So there might be an alleviation of the much of the boring, banal, and idiotic suffering that everybody is experiencing. Which doesn't mean that we won't still be suffering, but it will be a more intense and carefully proscribed suffering.

MLA: Maybe with more meaning behind it. Other than bureaucratic bullshit, like parking tickets. Now, to shift into the Santo Daime. As you wrote in the book, they have their own view of Christ as well. Which seems to coincide with Steiner's view of the Christ Consciousness being born in people's hearts through the experience of Daime. What was your journey with that like?

Pinchbeck: One way to look at what's happening on a global scale right now is like there is this movement from the Third Chakra, which is the gut, to the fourth Chakra, which is the Heart. And the gut is all about material consumption, eating, devouring, kind of base needs. And so that shift is sort of shaking everything down to its foundation. I don't know what you really want me to add to my experiences with the Daime that's in the book. I found it very profound and humbling in a good way, and just a great experience ultimately.

MLA: I like the scene you were describing where you were cleaning off the Chacruna Leaves. Yeah, I found that really nice. You speak of the journey of the Chakras, in terms of their being activated. I've heard it described that a lot of, say maybe the OTO, occult practices tend to focus more on opening the Third Eye, before the Heart Chakra. Though that leads to psychic transmissions, and what not, it's not balanced by compassion or whatever, and this can lead to paranoia. I say that's not to discredit any occult studies or practices, by the way. What are your thoughts on this?

Pinchbeck: Steiner's whole thing was that visionary spiritual progress is inseparable from moral and ethical progress. So I think what you have with Crowley and the OTO is this kind of Luciferic deviation. Because it's sort of separated from the earth. Like what I quoted from the Book of the Law, Let the poor and unfit die in their misery. We have nothing to do with them. It's a very kind of haughty kind of tone. As Steiner points out, you can make progress in terms of visionary manifestations without ethical and moral progress. But the problem is that who you are in these other worlds, kind of shapes what you see and what your experiences are. So, the more off-kilter you go, the more drawn-into relationships with entities, kingdoms, principalities that may not be the best for human development.

MLA: As you mentioned with some psychedelic experiences, you might be attracting wayward entities and things like this. One quote that I like, According to Occult tradition humanity has a responsibility to all the elemental beings. We are supposed to learn to work with the elementals and alleviate there suffering. It is clear from the abduction accounts that the visitors, the greys, are suffering So this brings into play Patrick Harpur's Daimonic Reality, which also coincides with a non-dual perspective. These experiences that people are having, say Whitley Strieber, they are real to some extent just as other things are real. What do you think these elementals are asking for? What are they asking from us? Why are they suffering?

Pinchbeck: I was thinking, while you were talking, about the Tibetan Buddhists who were in prison for decades, by the Chinese. And when they came out they were so incredibly happy and cheerful. And they said the hardest thing for them to do while they were undergoing this torture was to maintain compassion for their torturers. For them that was the greatest spiritual challenge. So, I think we are in a similar relationship with the greys. Which I see to be very very predatory and destructive in their relationships with us. But are also kind of sad and tragic. And need us on such a mournful level. They are like exiles from life, you know, because they lost emotion, or never had it. Steiner then goes into this stuff. I haven't read as much of his stuff about this, I've read some but basically, I think, we are supposed to be in an interrelated scenario with the elemental beings, who are in some ways, are very ancient and wise, and in some ways are very childlike, and we are to direct them and help them in stewarding the planet. It's like we have to re-establish proper relationships with those other realms to bring things back into balance.

MLA: You would say that Ayahuasca and Ibogaine are part of that balance for the elementals. So what are some other things that people, who do not have the opportunity to go to South America, or whatever, how can they make peace with the elementals and things like that?

Pinchbeck: Some people have access to these realms without any substances. Of course there is a lot of New Age stuff related to this. It's interesting if you read; I think its Norway or Finland. One of those Scandinavian countries, they still have a very deep relationship with these elemental beings. They even have laws, like they don't put roads through certain areas, and stuff. Even in their legalist government structure, there is an awareness of the relationship between these entities. Even if it's not consciously discussed. I think there is a lot of work ahead of us, to learn what that would mean.

MLA: Maybe we should institute hugging trees more often. Yeah, in Hawaii, they say if you pick up a rock, you can't bring it with you, you have to leave it there. Something about the spirit, the mana of those rocks. And being in New York City, there are not a lot of trees. There are just sectioned off in a very linear fashion. This brings to mind what I think is a root situation that we have, which is materialism. I think you were quoting Gebser, where he showed the root of the word 'matter' as being the word/concept 'mater' which also has a correlation with the word mother. The feminine current, if you will, seems to be a big theme in the book. Is integrating this feminine perspective, which doesn't just have to do with women, but also has to do with indigenous shamanistic cultures, back into our western scientific perspective. So, I just wonder how it can be integrated into political activism. You know, because there are a lot of Marxists, fundamentalists in the Marxist tradition who believe that consciousness is an epiphenomenon of matter, and what not. And they base whole theories of activism on that. Where a kind of flip takes place, where consciousness is not the epiphenomenon of matter, but the ground of being, how might activism look from this perspective?

Pinchbeck: It sounds like you are close to answering your own question. I think we have some of that in the 60's style activism of the Yippies trying to levitate the Pentagon, or ripping up money throwing it over Wall Street or whatever. However it seems like it needs to go a step deeper into being like acupuncture into utilizing intuitive capacities and rational organizational systems. And all the new tools that the Internet provides. Flash-mobs and so on. I just think that when enough people beam into this thought system new things are going to naturally arise out of it. And as you think about it, you can begin to envision what that might be.

MLA: About ¾ ways into the book you start talking about Men and Women in relationships. I found this section to be intriguing reading, just to touch on that for a minute. You said that you had a realization about sexual desire. You said that, there was nothing wrong with these desires or their fulfilment. What seemed wrong was a form of love based on possessiveness, jealousy, and mutual distrust. Why couldn't we love someone for the way they were instead of the way we wanted them to be? That's a very innocent question, you know. It evokes images of the noble savage and things like this. I think, in my opinion, that's what a lot of people want, but unfortunately this doesn't seem to happen in relationships. Old wounds come up between a man and a woman. Basically, it's like this man, I just wanna know, how is all this going for you right now?

Pinchbeck: This whole area of relationships and sexuality was not something that I expected to be addressed in the book. It sort of came naturally out of paying more attention to reality. And, in my own reality, watching a lot of people that I knew, and my own life. And just realizing that this area of relationships and sexuality was incredibly crucial to any potential to transformation of consciousness, or evolution of consciousness. And that it was an area, just like with psychedelics throughout the first book, it was an area of repression and judgment, people wanting to shut down the discourse as soon as you opened it up. So I think that this is one area where there is more repressed energy, and psychic shadow material, in these areas of relationship and sexuality. What I argue in the book is that we have reduced our model for relationships to: Monogamy=Good, everything else = unworkable or suspicious. People just being hedonistic or flaking out or being assholes. And then when you look at the Kinsey Report, people who did this scientific survey of human sexuality in the 50's, and his discovering is that there is infinite variety in human sexuality and that most people had all these different experiences that they would discuss with their partners, so basically what you have is people out of integrity with their relationships, out of integrity with their desires. And I think the step is that people have to bring all that up to consciousness. I don't have a perfect model for how that is to go. So, for me, it's still an area of question.

MLA: I'm thinking of Nancy Friday, she wrote a whole bunch of books about female fantasies and how they can appear pretty outrageous at times. So if Kali is throwing a hissy-fit, to borrow a quote from your book, and she is unaware of her sexual powers and what not, and men are emotionally shut-off, how might this dialogue come about?

Pinchbeck: It comes about by us recognizing that there is a huge problem here. And that maybe we are not going to be able to solve social, political, environmental crisis unless we address what's happening between men and women. Because there is so much bullshit and trapped psychic energy. I live in the East Village, and I see people every night, especially on the weekends, getting hammered. Drinking to the point of oblivion so that they can find somebody that they want to fuck. What a boring, endless waste of time. Part of it is our whole Victorian inheritance around sexuality. We need to sort of consciously assimilate and then see what the matter might really be about. And another part of it is, because of modern industrial society and everything that's happened because of it we have this really deep mistrust between men and women. That's just a big problem to reckon with. I almost feel that is the main reason we are pushing our global civilization into crisis. Is so that we have to learn how to trust each other again.

MLA: So what about the case for monogamy. There are those who argue that the psychology of couplehood is not completely understood yet either. What if people are kind of dropping out too soon? Where does the line get drawn?

Pinchbeck: Well, I think that part of the problem is that when you only have one model, it's like that adage 'to a hammer, everything looks like a nail'. As long as we have only this one model of what constitutes a decent relationship, we're kind of fucked. What could be is that maybe we could articulate a whole spectrum of possibilities, in which monogamy is totally a good one for some people. But it doesn't have to be imposed and supported by institutions, tax-structures, architecture, that really make any other possibility impossible for most people to pull off. So, it's just an area where we have a lot of work to do. And what I really did in this book was really just open up a lot of those questions. And finding in my own self that there were very deep wounds connected to this examination.

MLA: Cool.

Pinchbeck: I'm already getting critiques of being misogynistic because I've raised this stuff, or that I'm advocating a hedonistic debauchery, and it's quite the opposite. I think that we would actually need to bring this up to consciousness so that we could move into a more disciplined use of sexuality. And also, if you think about it, we have this huge global population crisis right now, so we actually don't want people to keep procreating like mad. But it could be that, rather than repressing sexuality, the only way to stop global overpopulation might actually be to liberate the sexual impulse in a very rational and generous and compassionate framework. If you look at Tantra the whole idea for procreation is sort of a lower use for sexuality. That sexuality is the most available and free altered-state experience is actually an access to higher states of consciousness and spiritual sub-transformation.

MLA: That would definitely touch on trust as well. So if a couple went and sought a Tantress and a Tantrik, and so the man and the woman, OK you're my girlfriend, you go with that guy and he'll teach you how to achieve higher states of consciousness through sex, and I'll go with this woman, and we'll trust that we won't get caught up in desiring this person. I agree that there is a lot of distrust in terms of sex. And if charlatans exist in that area, there can be a lot of people getting hurt. So, how we have come about, in like a second wave of shamanism in the west where psychedelics are more mastered. In terms of having safe journeys, are you proposing that we might be coming upon this area in terms of sexual relations?

Pinchbeck: Yep.

MLA: You mentioned in the book, at one point, that you disliked the New Age obsession with the word 'healing' or healing in general, and that healers took control of the narrative of their patients, stripping them of agency. What are your thoughts on that right now?

Pinchbeck: Yeah that was pretty harsh, but I do feel that we're sort of in this adolescent spiritual culture we've created. Everybody is always looking for healing. And at a certain point, we're the most privileged people on the planet, in terms of food, resources, wealth and it's like at some point somebody has to stand up and say, Look, I'm not perfect, but I don't have to constantly be in this healing cycle. Where I'm like this victim of all these processes that have been inflicted upon me. At a certain point somebody has to stand up and say that I'm whole enough that I can direct my energy out into the world. Rather than be perpetually engaged in this egocentric narrative of healing. And that point of the book was particularly subscribed to a certain situation. I just think that this New Age obsession with healing goes and has gone to far.

MLA: With the influx of shamans doing ceremonies, and what not. And also North Americans going down to South America, and stuff like that, you mention in 'Breaking Open the Head' that there are charlatans about and things like this, in your opinion are there any objectifiable signs that one can see if a shaman in not really a shaman, but is more like a sorcerer? And doing harm as opposed to good?

Pinchbeck: I wouldn't want to be specific or prescriptive, also sometimes bad experiences can be really good experiences on some other level. But, what I think in all of these areas what's really called for is discrimination, and just using your intelligence to figure shit out. And for me that's like the key. In the Kabala they talk about the Earth plane and in every different plane in the Kabala there is a virtue that everyone is working to attain. And what we are apparently, according to the Kabala, are trying to attain on this plane is discrimination. So that means learning how to discriminate good information from bad information. Good drugs from bad drugs, bullshit from integrity. And bad shamans from good shamans. So I can't give someone a qualitative set of standards of what separates a good shaman from a bad shaman, but I would say that it is up for people to take on the more personal task of using their discriminative abilities to make that determination. Does that make sense?

MLA: Yeah, it does. So I'd like to touch on the 'Quetzalcoatl Transmission.'  One of the things that came up, in this transmission was this archetype that you channeled or got transmitted through you, I suppose, spoke about it being the Beast and the number 666 came up as well. So could you explain that please?

Pinchbeck: I don't really know, ultimately what it means. If any of this has any true validity to it that will all be manifested in the time to come.

MLA: So you realize that this is a big force, that maybe Joe Regular on the street might not be getting beamed into his head. But you are having a detached view of what came about, in terms of the Quetzalcoatl Transmission.

Pinchbeck: Yeah, it could be last week Quetzalcoatl, this week the Tooth Fairy, who knows.

MLA: Yep, perspective is definitely important. Can you provide a brief description about the Evolver Project?

Pinchbeck: Evolver is an attempt to put different ideas into practice. Part of what I recognized doing the book, was that doing a book is not enough. Even doing Media in general is not enough. So at first I wanted to do a magazine, and then what evolved was a more full spectrum concept. Using Capitalism to transform Capitalism. So creating a corporation or company that has as its mission, sort of a media membership organization that has as its model National Geographic or AARP. But the mission is to help ecologically sustainable businesses, ecological entrepreneurship, alternative health, consciousness to create a foundation for a lot new services and good and ideas to get to people's minds and to penetrate deeper into the mainstream. And even those people who are interested in those ideas don't really know what to do in their normal lives. Like, let's say you wanted to buy a skateboard, you'd probably go to a skateboard store and buy a skateboard, but if you were part of Evolver, you'd might find that there is a company that's making very cool skateboards that are environmentally sound and that use sustainable harvested lumber and have done a lot of research to find non-toxic glues. And then there'd be a discount available for those with a membership. So you might find that you'll start thinking differently about a lot of your purchases. And if Evolver works to a large scale, in a few years, hopefully it would be considered really stupid, sort of like nobody would call a black person a 'nigger' now, even they would've in the 30s and 40s, we have to get to that same level where we are factoring in ecological consciousness into all of our decision making. Because at the moment we are not doing that, and therefore the biosphere is at the point of rejecting us.

MLA: Reading in the epilogue of your book about the Hopi elder, Gasheseoma, how he believed that the US government was already building machines for exterminating huge populations when the resources run out, and the Pentagon coming up with this plan of population control, and things like this... that sounds scary. How can working on yourself and your own shadow help prevent this from happening?

Pinchbeck: Well I guess the Hopi idea is that what is going to happen has already occurred. That there is a meta-program for evolution, a meta-program for consciousness, and it's embedded throughout the fabric of the whole situation. So, on an individual level the way to get through this apocalyptic process seems to somehow be connected with incarnated the self. And it's almost like there is a self-organization on some other level of human consciousness that is now taking place through synchronicities. Much like the synchronicity in which you met me. In that you were just thinking about my book, and reading it, and had it in your bag, so something is taking place here. I am not the artist, or whoever is putting this together. I'm just participating in the show, you know. And I don't know what's going to happen. Maybe we are all going to die. Maybe tomorrow there is going to be a great realization, and we are not going to have to go through this Apocalyptic bullshit, and instead we can like Saul Williams said 'Cancel the Apocalypse' and maybe we could avoid certain cataclysmic affects. So we're just going to see what happens.