Queer Gnosis

by Troy Williams

I’m off this week with an estimated 50,000 new-edge arty hipster types to partake in the annual neo-bohemian love-fest known as Burning Man.  The celebration is a phantasmagoric trip into the fringe mindscapes of the culturally unhinged. And since I know many of you love a glorious psychedelic adventure, I thought I’d share my recent interview with psychonaut, Daniel Pinchbeck. We discussed the role of psychedelia in our collective consciousness and how a quantum shift in our world-view might side-step what many believe is our pending ecological and societal collapse. Who wouldn’t be up for that? His recent book, 2012: The Return of Quetzacoatl navigates the psychic terrain of edge-culture shamans, Hopi prophecies, end day scenarios, indigenous wisdom and occult speculation. 

TW: One of the themes in 2012 is the idea of synchronicity. Three years ago I was in a bookstore in Big Fork, Montana, and I saw your previous book, Breaking Open the Head: A Psychedelic Journey into the Heart of Contemporary Shamanism.  I felt compelled to buy the book. Later that afternoon I was wrestling with my nephews in their basement, and I fell over and literally broke my head open! Blood was everywhere – the very day I buy your book, Breaking Open The Head!

DP:  (laughs) Yeah.  I’ve got the sense from a lot of people, that the books I’ve written are energetic synchronistic vortices for people.  They come into their lives at certain moments. A lot of people tell me that the books helped catalyze a change in direction or the way they are thinking about their lives and the world.

TW: Breaking Open the Head really stopped me from being so cavalier with drug use.  I really recognized a lack of the shamanic tradition in the west and had some really bad drug experiences that were reflective of my carelessness in using drugs recreationally. 

DP: Definitely.  I think psychedelics need to be considered sacramentally.  I do see an underground understanding of indigenous shamanism, the kind of power they have and why they constructed ceremonies and rituals around these substances.

TW:  This beautiful guy in Malibu gave me this psychotropic bread and I ate it and had an incredible trip — but then as the night progressed I started astral projecting and opening up dimensions and really having an intense hallucinogenic experience. Then physically my entire body felt under siege by an invading force.  It was painful, terrifying and it left me sick for three weeks after the event. 

DP: Yeah. What seems to happen is that a lot of people get a few free tickets to ride. They have great early psychedelic experiences and then at a certain point there is something like a reckoning and more shadow material rises up.  At that point you need to give up the pursuit or go into a more shamanic practice.  For me, it’s clear that when you connect with a shamanic lineage it has a protective energy around it.  You are connecting with what Rupert Sheldrake would call a morphogenic field of people who use these things carefully and benevolently. It makes a huge difference.  In the end of my new book I talk about going to Brazil and working with a religion that uses ayahuasca as a sacrament and for me that was a very healing and positive experience. 

TW: You argue that human consciousness is rapidly transitioning to a new state of awareness of both time and space and that according to the Mayan and Toltec civilization we are reaching the end of a great cycle which includes a massive shift in the human psyche by the date December 23, 2012.  How do we begin to unpack that?

DP: For me it’s clear that we are in this accelerated transformation process and for a lot of people that I know, the realm of the psyche is becoming more available in terms of synchronicity, telepathy, and other non-ordinary state experiences.  Reality itself is becoming less materially dense and more psychically responsive.  On the other hand, people who haven’t been experiencing this think you are nuts.  But you can also look at the material manifestation of this situation.  The accelerated evolution of technology, which in several years keeps meshing us together as a global brain and giving us instantaneous access to each other’s consciousness through text messages, emails, etc.  And the third aspect is the destruction of the biosphere which is making us increasingly conscious of the deviant path we have taken and the necessity to do a major course correction as a species if we’re going to survive.  We have to make a very large-scale shift in consciousness.  For me it’s this other element of the psyche coming through that is showing us a positive dimension.

TW: Let’s talk pragmatically — how we raise consciousness with a lack of shamanic tradition and no easy access to underground psychedelics?

DP: My answer to that has nothing to do with whether psychedelics or shamanism are available to anybody.  It’s really just about paying more attention to reality and being more discriminating.  I really feel that is what we are called to do right now.  In the kabala they talk about discrimination as the key virtue on this earth plane.  And we are being bombarded with so much material and information, entertainment and distraction.  But if you can be discriminating and find the core crucial elements in the threads that lead you forward, that is very empowering.  I also think that incarnating the self is the softening of ones ego desire for this or that and being connected to the sense of being conscious aspects of a planetary ecology.  We have to think of reality from those terms.  How do we help the planetary ecology sustain itself?   It’s not going to do it unless there is a radical shift in values, intentions and practices.  I think that new consciousness is crystallizing right now.  And once it crystallizes it moves out very quickly. I feel we are potentially here for a very large-scale fast transformation of consciousness.

Qcast complete interview with Daniel Pincbeck:

2012