2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl

I may have had a mini-epiphany brought on by reading something in a book I purchased a week ago called 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl, written by Daniel Pinchbeck.  I wasn’t really sure what it was about — some kind of new age-ish blending of science and spritualism intended to establish… something or other…  But the liner notes and various recommendations by editors and writers piqued my curiosity.  I like books that explore the things right in front of us in ways that we haven’t considered before — books that reanalyze accepted notions weaving together ancient myth and modern ideas and come up with surprising insights or forehead slapping moments.  Ishmael was like that.  Fingerprints of the Gods was like that.  Graham Hancock, author of the latter, was one of the people who contributed a blurb on the liner notes, so I had some reason to believe that the book would be good.

Before I get to the mini-epiphany bit, let me divulge some background.

I was raised a Catholic.  For years my mother faithfully paraded me to church and back, submitted me to Sunday school, read me bible stories and all the rest of it.  I was baptized, did my first communion, and on and on.  I know how to attend a Sunday mass, dutifully repeating all the words, knowing when to kneel, when to stand, when to make the sign of the cross, and all of the refrains.  Through all of those years from a wee youngster into my middle teens, though, I don’t think there was a single moment that I actually believed any of it.  This seems odd to me.  What does a child know?  Why would a child question the existence of God if a parent and the entire weight of the churching system is telling him He exists?  If a parent tells a child at a young age there is a God, what capacity or life experience does a child have to examine that and come to the conclusion that it isn’t so?  I would think none.  It’s as though I was born incapable of accepting it, without really having a good reason for rejecting it.  This isn’t just me, I know.  It happens to a lot of people.

And yet…

And yet, although I haven’t taken part in Catholic religious life for decades now, and my education and interests have all lain along the axes of science and technology, for as long as I can remember I have been making sideways glances at the notions of spiritualism.  It would be correct to say that I have always wanted there to be more than this.  I’ve always wanted there to be something that science and reason cannot explain.  Something that would present itself that would point to things greater than the mundane world in which I conduct my secular life.  I didn’t care if it was ghosts and spirits, crop circles, ESP, deja vu, the loch ness monster, sasquatch, spoon bending, floating swamis, or any other manner of unexplained phenomenon.  I’ve always wanted to be convinced that there was something else — something else that could not be reasoned away or made to fit into our reductionist structured view of all things.  Something… else.  But there was no way I would or could persuade myself of the existence of God.

Some many years ago, I delved briefly and lightly into Taoism.  Asian cultures were so deep and so old, so rich with wisdom, that I felt there must be something I could glean from Taoism to help me.  I bought some books and read.  I liked it.  If nothing else it offered a way to live that I could grasp and appreciate, and I liked that.  Then hoping to reconcile this system of belief, which is inherently spiritual (but posits no “God” as such), with my scientific background I discovered The Tao of Physics, which I began reading.  This book’s thesis was that what Taoism and quantum physics have to say about our physical world are completely compatible and in fact are merely different descriptions of the same universal phenomenon.  I ended up losing the book and didn’t finished it, but I found it fascinating and will return to it some day.  But I remember a conversation I had with my father when I was in the throes of this exploration.  I was describing to him the book, and began explaining to him how amazing and exciting it was that this ancient spiritualist philosophy and quantum mechanics are compatible.  He listened to my rambling for a bit and then he held up his hand and said, “But why is it necessary?”  I didn’t understand, so he tried again “Why are you looking for a justification of taoism in science?  Why do you need it to be true?”  And on this last question he had me stumped.  After some thought, the best I could respond was “I want there to be more than this.”

This brings me circuitously back to the beginning of this article and 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl.  The book posits that the end of the Mayan calendar is not really about the destruction of the planet.  It’s about evolution.  In particular, it’s about the evolution of human consciousness to another level.  I know — it sounds completely kooky and like so much new age crap.  I think I get the jist of where he’s going, though, and I’m interested to see what threads he brings in and how he weaves them all together.  I’m not really buying the thesis at this point (I’m only 30 pages in), but I expected that whatever he introduces will be laden with interesting tidbits for independent mulling.  And, indeed, I did find something quite revelatory to me already.  It is this:

In the world of “quantum strangeness” revealed by quantum mechanics, time, space, and consciousness [underline mine] are intimately interrelated and inseparable, and there exists a higher dimension outside our perceptions of space-time, in which everything is interconnected.

I take exception to his use of the phrase “higher dimension”.  I think “another dimension” would have been less prejudicial.  But at any rate, the thing that got me was the “consciousness” bit.  Of course, I’m aware of the philosophical ponderances regarding trees falling in forests and my response has always been Well of course a tree makes a sound if no one is there to hear it.  Don’t be obtuse. But in support of the quoted statement above the author points out that numerous well-known experiments in quantum physics show that matter exists in an indeterminate state until someone chooses to observe it.  This means that, just as Einstein showed that time and space are not independent things, but rather are deeply interconnected and interdependent, consciousness (the relevant manifestation of “observer”) is interconnected with time and space as well on a very fundamental level.  Consciousness.  That strange, mysteriously unquantifiable thing that we all possess and makes us who we are, may possibly be an intimate and as-yet unrecognized component of the fabric of… well… the universe.  I know it sounds nutty.  I know it.  I’m just staying open to ideas, as I’ve always tried to.  But if this is correct, then that opens up a whole field of possibilities into all manner of psychic phenomena and lends them some smidgen of possible legitimate credibility.

Could this be the “something else” that I’ve always wanted to know was there, but could never find the smoking gun for?  I remain dutifully skeptical, but always open to new ideas and look forward to seeing what else this book has to say.