2012 - Science Or Superstition?/Segment/7
The shift of human consciousness
40:00
Narr: Whether or not the changes on Earth and in our solar system are evidence of a physical, real-world climax in 2012, many believe that there is a coming shift in human consciousness that was the true message of the Maya and to which we must pay due respect and to consider acting on.
JMJ: I tend towards the metaphorical interpretation here. I think that if we're due for any kind of pole shift, it should be a pole shift in our collective consciousness. We have to steer clear of that 'pole' that wants us to live in a world of dualism, you know, to be fixated to that mode of culture that seeks to dominate other cultures around the world, and instead, shift our minds to emphasise a partnership society. [Talk]
GH: The work of John Major Jenkins is very important. It's had a huge influence on my thinking about the ancient Maya. I think he's made highly significant breakthroughs in understanding what was going on with the ancient Maya and what event in the heavens they were able to predict thousands of years ago would occur in our time and in our time only.
The Maya appear to have been able to do that thousands of years ago - to cast forward to a time which marks the end of the calendar system when the Sun appears in the dead center of the Milky Way galaxy. And I take this as a marker. They knew that that would happen. It's easy to read into it a cataclysmic end of the world in our age, but John Major Jenkins' work has been particularly helpful in showing that it's easy to read another possibility into it too, which is: Yes, the world age will come to an end. Everything that has been built for the last five thousand years will be up for grabs. We may not count on things remaining the same as they have done throughout our lifetimes - things are going to change. But also, that this is a rebirth, not a simple destruction, and that, in a way, it may be necessary to sweep away the old before something new, something more positive, more hopeful, a new guiding spirit for the next five thousand years emerges.
John has shown the astronomical correlates of this and has shown how the Sun effectively seems to emerge from the cosmic womb - speaking of rebirth. And so he draws from this a hopeful message, which I happen to share with him, and perhaps this is the best way to interpret the Mayan prophecy:
We live in a time when things will never be the same again, and it is we who will preside over that change, and it is our own choices and what we do with our own consciousness that will govern whether that change is for good or for evil. [Talk]
JMJ: The Mayan calendars speak for insight into a time that is somewhat counterintuitive to western, linear time. For the Maya, it's cyclic. But it's not only an insight into the cyclic nature of time, but it's a vision of time and cycles as a breathing out and a breathing in - moving out of connection to our true selves and moving back into relationship with our true selves [Talk]
AM: The Long count cycle, which we understand as one of the grand cycles of the Maya. It was conceived as a creation moment and a completion of a cycle. These eras, as we might call them, lasted a grand number of 5,125 years. This great tally of years comes to its completion in December of 2012. Curiously enough, it also coincides with the winter solstice. This we thought was quite interesting and profound, and probably not accidental in any way for the ancient Maya, being that these two solar stations bracketed the creation to the completion. [Talk]
JMJ: The Mayan calendars also encode an insight into the inter-woven nature of reality - what we might call a fractal model, or a quantum model of reality. We see this most clearly in the 260-day calendar, the Tzolkin. This is the core building block of all the Mayan calendar systems. It consists of thirteen numbers combined with twenty day signs, so 13 x 20 = 260. 260 is a key number for the Maya because it corresponds to the human gestation period. So there's this nine-month process of human unfolding that we all share. This is the philosophy behind the Mayan calendar: time unfolds like a flower. And it's unfolding the inner essence of consciousness out of the Earth matrix, you might say.
Another use for the 260 day calendar is that it corresponds to the interval between planting and harvesting of corn in the highlands. So that's an agricultural metaphor.
Most incredibly, the 260-day calendar is used as a key in the Maya almanacs. The Mayan almanacs are that calendars that schedule the appearance of Venus, Mercury, and Mars. So there's this very, very important astronomical reference in the 260-day Tzolk'in calendar as well. What we see in all this is the use of 260 as a key to different dimensions in human experience. It's basically uniting the cycles in the heavens and the cycles here on Earth, including cycles that human beings experience. So it's an insight into that paradigm of as above, so below - the microcosm reflects the macrocosm. [Talk]
AM: We do the same thing in our cultures. We celebrate the yearly cycles, we celebrate century cycles. Often times these cyclical changes come with a deeper foreboding, ominous feeling to them. One is not certain whether the universe can be reordered, restructured. We see this happening in many of the ancient festivals such as the New Fire ceremony, for instance, when Tzolk'in and Haab' counts came to the completion of a cycle. All fires were to be put out throughout the territory, and a new fire initiated. These were moments of darkness - the darkness representing this primordial origin once again. The new fire is the creation of the hearth once again. We see these as very symbolic, and very powerful moments of recycling and renewal. The Grand cycle should fall within the same parameters, and so on the closure of the grandest cycle of all, this should also be a moment of closure, but also of renewal. [Talk]
