The end of the world looks like the nothing we thought it would. because IT’S STILL HERE!
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2012 Mayan EndTimes Prophecy. Day 8 and Counting
NASA is at it again. The American Space Agency has released a video meant to be a Nyah, Nyah, Nyah, Nyah video allegedly to be released the day after the Mayan Apocalypse! The social networks were less concerned about the content of NASA’s video and focus more on why the video was released 10 days early. With only 8 days left to the planet, it seems the blogosphere is getting quite antsy. At the beginning of 2012, this blog foresaw the ridiculous antics that would emerge as the hallowed date drew nearer and nearer. So, submitted for your approval:
IT’S not the end of the world, but it is embarrassing.
NASA scientists are so sure that the Mayan Apocalypse won’t happen, they’ve made a video saying “We told you so”.
Only problem is, they released it 10 days too soon.
The video looks like it was meant to be aired on December 22, the day after the Mayan Apocalypse.
Titled The World Didn’t End Yesterday, the four-minute clip explains how the idea of the Mayan Apocalypse is a huge hoax and how the rumours began.
But, as several bloggers have pointed out, if the video was meant to be seen on December 22, the day after the Mayan Apocalypse, why release it 10 days early?
Was it a genuine mistake? Or are the NASA boffins unsure about whether anyone would be around to see the video on December 22?
2012 Mayan Prophecy Endtimes. Day 21 and Counting!
3 weeks until the End of the World. Are you busy getting your affairs in order? Have you spent all your money or are you hoping that maybe, just maybe, the people who claimed that the Mayans foretold the end of the world on Dec. 12, 2012, were WRONG? We couldn’t be that lucky, could we? No, our fate is sealed. There will be an astronomic event that will be our doom that Solstice morning. Oh, blessed are they that wait for the coming of Space Brothers on that propitious day! Our troubles will finally be over, once and for all. And the best part is that we never had to take responsibility for ourselves and for our world. Intervention is our Holy Savior. Amen.
2012 Mayan Prophecy Endtimes. Day 22 and Counting!
Day 22 until the end of the world. The 2o12 Mayan Endtimes Goodtimes Hour continues for 22 days! You excited? I know I am. I haven’t scoffed at such a colossal hoax since the Harold Camping Endtimes fiascos. The Raptures (which were predicted twice by Camping) failed to commence with the end of the world a la the Book of Revelations.
“We realize that many people are hoping they will know the date of Christ’s return,”Camping wrote. “We humbly acknowledge we were wrong about the timing.”
Reports that the Mayan Calendar skipped Leap Years, has some jaws a-flapping that the veracity of the “prophecy” has been dealt a life-threatening blow. However, the bigger blow would be if someone could prove that even if the Mayans predicted the end of the world in 2012 (which they certainly DIDN’T), they absolutely failed to predict the end of their own civilization. And yet, the believers of the Mayanist Prophecy of 2012 are crawling all over the web. Even NASA had to get involved by making a statement that no planet was going to hit the Earth and kill everyone on the planet.
NASA’s David Morrison: “While this is a joke to some people and a mystery to others, there is a core of people who are truly concerned,”
Morrison went on to say,
“I think it’s evil for people to propagate rumors on the Internet to frighten children,”
Not really evil, but certainly stupid, inappropriate and fuck-up filled with fear.
Notes
[1] By Elizabeth Tenety and Elizabeth Flock, 11:51 AM ET, 05/23/201
2012 MAYAN PROPHECY ENDTIMES. DAY 23 AND COUNTING…
The Mayan Code is a book by Barbara Hand Clow who is the leading propagandist for the Mayan 2012 end times prophecy that relies mostly on the “scholarship” of Carl Johan Calleman. What is so great about this book is that it is destined to be an occupant of the 2012 Failed Prophecy Hall of Fame in 23 days! It’s like History in the Making.
For those of you into the UFO channelling, SaLuSa, a “Sirian” channelled by Mike Quinsey, has gone on record that December 21. 2012 will be a great day for Ascension. “Nothing will stop the Ascension process from finally manifesting at the end of 2012.” The messages of Quinsey and “Salusa” have been stuck on repeat with their never-ending yammering of “Galactic Federation,” “full consciousness,” and “ascension,” dear ones. I made a parody of the Galactic Federation a few years ago.
Yeah, I don’t think these UFO channellers have it right.
25 Days and Counting to the Mayan Prophecy!
COUNTDOWN TO THE MAYAN 2012 END OF TIME HAS OFFICIALLY BEGUN! 25 DAYS and COUNTING!
Aren’t you excited. I’ve been waiting nearly a YEAR for this end-times prophecy to occur. When the space ships don’t arrive and the clock keeps ticking away, I will be on the Internet YEEHAW! and having a laugh at the gullibility of MILLIONS.
Today RuPaul (not to be confused with Ron Paul) tweeted:
Follow
RuPaulVerified@RuPaulNo one’s talking about the Mayan end of the world prophecy anymore. Are we over it or ignoring it in hopes it won’t happen?
I tweeted in response:
Darryl Thomas @DarrylWThomas@RuPaul It was a con, sweetness. 25 Days and Counting!
YUUUUP! 25 Days and Counting. The team at Process 2012 Tower in beautiful down-town Columbus, Ohio, will be hard at work manning the land lines and the Internet to bring you the latest, greatest news about a supernatural event that will never take place. Bookmark this blog. It’s gonna see a lot of hot, failed prophecy action!
Human Potential Movement Part 3. The New Self-Help Gurus
Wanna make a million? Write a self-Help book.
The New Self-Help Gurus
They’ve given seminars, been on television and made millions with their self-help books flooding the market. It is the Holy Trinity of Eckhart Tolle, Deepak Chopra and Wayne Dyer. Their messages are essentially interchangeable, based as it is on a mash-up of various spiritual and philosophical sources, mixed in with a penchant for giving their followers opinionated homilies passed off as “truth.” All spiritual teachings are essentially one teaching: that if one listens to this transference of “wisdom,” then one will become more healthy, wealthy and wise. But the reality is that nothing practical will ever be given to aid all humanity by these super-salesmen.
Eckhart Tolle (Ulrich Leonard Tolle), experienced an epiphany which eventually led to Tolle writing books and holding seminars discussing enlightenment and other subjects, namely the transformation of human consciousness, which may be the highest form of human potential possible, according to these gurus.
Tolle, like everyone else involved in the consciousness-raising business, often engages in opinion-making that he presents as fact. For example, the well-known experience of Tolle’s “epiphany” – an event which changed a once-suicidal depressive into a spiritual leader and best-selling author, has colored everything the man says. So when Tolle gives an opinion delivered as “fact,” it sounds like this:
“Life will give you whatever experience is most helpful for the evolution of your consciousness.”
The “evolution of consciousness” is a narrative that just about explains anything. Unfortunately, nobody can prove such an evolution is happening. The trite simplicity of Tolle’s quote above, however, causes one to wonder why people choose to believe such things, as the quote suffers badly when lightly taken apart. So when we go through our day, are we responsible for our experiences, or is “life” (?) dictating what befall us? Am I choosing to experience an event, or is “life” selecting events for me against my will? Why is “life” interested in the evolution of my consciousness, anyway? Obviously, Tolle’s epiphany has a lot to do with the shape and content of his opinions. He believes that he experienced some form of enlightenment which has “evolved” his consciousness.” But he doesn’t actually know what happened. Besides, if you read any of Tolle’s books, you will not be able to find one single new idea anywhere. Tolle’s works, along with those by Chopra, Neale Donald Walsch, etc., are nothing more than a spiritual stew full of rehashed mash-ups of ancient ideas and philosophies, without the nuance and mystery. Seems more like a devolution of consciousness is happening here, folks.
Fact is, metaphysicians have urged others to evolve the human being metaphysically for at least 30 centuries. Shamen, gurus and spiritualists have forever been proclaiming that raising one’s nature “high enough,” one becomes as “God.” The New Self Help gurus of the 21st Century are merely regurgitating commonly known spiritual language and dressing it up modern parlance. It seems that the metaphysical experiment has reached the end of its life as a living art; a deadening hollowness exists at its core, failing to offer anything truly new in 3000 years; it has endlessly repeated itself to the point of absurdity. It offers nothing but ancient, discredited promises dripping from the voices of a disingenuous, but crack metaphysical sales team.
At the beginning of its reign, the Human Potential Movement was largely a program for profit. When someone discovered, like Dale Carnegie, Norman Vincent Peale or L. Ron Hubbard, that there existed a sizeless, titanic market of selling people their own desire to “improve” themselves, they most likely couldn’t believe their luck. The mass consumption of self-help books has turned out to be insatiable and everlasting (Dale Carnegie materials and courses are still available and profitable after 80 years). The best advice to someone wanting to be published is to write a self-help book.
Listen: self-transformation ingeniously linked to the dollar and spiritual perfection has given the self-help industry enough legs to continue its run well into the 21st Century. Although the movement’s heyday occurred during the 1960’s and 70’s, the program of focusing on intense personal achievement by the individual is still being pushed to this day by an opportunistic and self-aggrandizing sales pitch, and many of them only give broadly vague or distasteful solutions for the intractable problems in this world. For example, Osho’s solution for homosexuality was to segregate gays from the rest of the population. Esther Hicks and Abraham only solution to poverty, suffering or abuse is to not dwell on negative thoughts. Seriously. And as stupid as that sounds, people eat it up.
The irony should not be lost here. The teachers of the Human Potential Movement concentrate on getting the individual sorted out mentally and “spiritually” first before concentrating on getting what they want and make their dreams come true. While humanity’s world continues to devolve and splinter apart, listen to the Human Potential Movement – it wants you to become a “winner,” although it fails to offer any solution to rampant human suffering, the nature of evil, or inequality. It promotes an agenda based entirely on imagination. Remember the message of The Secret: get what you want by thinking about it. Physical action not necessary. That message clicked because of an agenda built upon “spiritual” fabrications, human desire and most of all, the glorification of personal self-interest while everyone one else can go screw.
The Human Potential Movement Part 2. The New Age
The “Secret” with dealing with Rhonda Byrne? Sign the contract.
Human Potential Movement and the New Age
At the beginning of the 20th Century, the followers of a Greek-Armenian mystic with a message of awakening to a “higher consciousness” promoted George I. Gurdjieff (1866?-1949) as an enlightened spiritual master. Gurdjieff claimed that human beings were helplessly caught in a “waking sleep” unable to perceive reality fully, thus Gurdjieff’s teachings were necessary in order for the student to transform his life into one of enlightenment and clarity.
Gurdjieff’s theories were allegedly given to him through a mysterious association of a secret spiritual group called the “Sarmoung Brotherhood,” an esoteric Sufi group that Gurdjieff claimed descended from the Assyrians who live somewhere in the “heart of Asia.” Modern critics claim that the Sarmoung was a fictive device Gurdjieff used to promote is ideas.
In America there was a concurrent, if small movement that taught that humanity was spiritually evolving. In 1924, Baird Thomas Spalding (1872–1953) began publishing a series of books called, Life and Teaching of the Masters of the Far East. These books allegedly depict Baird interviewing beings of great spiritual power, “Ascended Masters” much like the “Mahatma” figures made popular by Helena Blavatsky and the mysterious Sarmoung Brotherhood of G. I. Gurdjieff.
Guy Ballard (1878–1939), who happened to be a friend of Spalding, claimed he met the Ascended Master “Saint Germain” on Mount Shasta. The message from the Ascended Masters was that they were once human beings after becoming perfect during reincarnation; their spiritual perfection allowed them to be immortal, residing in the higher planes of existence. They invariably mentioned that their evolution from human to god was destined to occur for all humanity, in accordance to the Divine Plan.
Even though the core of the HPM was wrapped around the pole of existential humanism, there was a metaphysical slant that appeared at the beginning, thanks to Esalen’s attraction to Zen Buddhism, and Esalen’s attraction to the ideas of Sri Aurobindo (1872-1950), who had worked on his theories of spiritual evolution and what he called, the “Supermind.” For Aurobindo, the Supermind is similar to the nous or the Logos of Classical Greek metaphysics, and the familiar all-pervading Brahman of Hinduism; the divine creative consciousness, transcendent and immanent within the world. According to Aurobindo, the potential exists within every human to access the consciousness of the Supermind which would lead the humanity into a realm of supernatural transformation.
Alice Bailey (1888-1949) produced a multitude of densely complex spiritual material that covered, in part, the role of what Bailey termed, the “Spiritual Hierarchy.” This squad of immortal masters were behind the physical and spiritual evolution of humanity. Whereas the “Mahatmas” of Blavatsky claimed that depictions of “God” were “imaginary,”[1] Bailey’s Masters argued that a “spiritual plan” presupposed its creation by “God,” and included an intervention of cosmic avatars who would descend to Earth and prepare humanity for the arrival of the cosmic Christ, who would then rule the Earth along side the Spiritual Hierarchy (which sounds much like a New Age reinterpretation of Christian fundamentalist view of the Book of Revelations). Bailey believed that the raising of one’s consciousness to the divine, as will as recognizing one’s inner divinity would initiate a golden age for humanity. [2]
In 1963, Jane Roberts (1929-1984) and her husband Robert Butts where playing on a Ouija board when she began receiving messages from a spirit who came to call himself, “Seth.” The material dictated by “Seth” energized and gave shape and form to the emerging New Age movement of the 1960s and 1970s. Seth repeated stated that the key to self-transformation was to “create your own reality.” The Seth Material almost single-handedly gave the New Age in the 1970’s its vocabulary, shape and cosmology. “Seth” continuously referenced “Inner Selves,” “Higher Selves” and that consciousness creates and influences the physical. Seth also loudly echoed and reinforced positive thinking principles. New Age luminaries like Shatki Gawain, Marianne Williamson, Deepak Chopra and many others have referenced the Seth Material as being a great influence in their thinking.
J.Z. Knight (Judith Darlene Hampton) and her channeled being, “Ramtha,” who claims to be a being from an ancient and advanced race of humans in the distant past and became an “ascended master,” speaking through Knight and continuing in Seth’s path in the wake of Roberts’ death in 1984. The message from Knight/Ramtha was that consciousness and energy can change reality. Consciousness and energy are the same. Human beings, according to Ramtha, are on a path towards enlightenment, and we are also “divine” (echoing many spiritualists of the past).
Rhonda Byrne and “The Secret”
However, the culmination of 20th Century spirituality occurred in 2007 with the release of the film, The Secret. Rhonda Byrne, the film’s creator, claimed that the core ideas for the film were the messages from a book written in 1906; “Thought Vibration or the Law of Attraction in the Thought World,” by W.W. Atkinson (a New Thought writer) and Wallace Wattles’ 1910 book, “The Science of Getting Rich.” The Secret contains many New Thought ideas such as, “No rules according to the universe… you provide the feelings of having it now and the universe will respond.” The Secret, although considered as “New Age” as anything, was primarily a reiteration of a century-old New Thought spirituality.
The Secret, with the help of media attention, slick packaging and being in the right place at the right time, made millions for Byrne, and brought attention to the stable of speakers featured in the film. Byrne was embroiled in a legal dispute with two former associates who claimed they were promised a cut of the profits from Byrne’s film, which reportedly grossed $20 million in the first eight months (The film and books ended up raking in over $300 million collected worldwide). When the subject of payment came up with her Australian director and co-author of the screenplay, Drew Heriot (who had personally kicked in $10,000 towards the production), Byrne instead fired him.
“Essentially, she said my company wouldn’t be working with her again and they’d be using another writer and director for the sequel. I said, ‘I can’t believe you are doing this. Are you saying there is no profit-share?’ She said, ‘Yes, but I can return the $10,000 you gave me.’”[3]
Heriot sued Byrne for copyright infringement and fraud. Heriot sued Byrne, but lost in court in 2009. [4] Heriot vowed to appeal. Apparently, the Law of Attraction works better if you get it in writing.
Esther Hicks and “Abraham”
One of the main speakers in the original cut [5] of The Secret was Esther Hicks and her channeled entity (or entities, as Hicks claims Abraham is a collection of beings), who carried their Law of Attraction message to a wider audience. Esther Hicks was influenced by Seth Material, in particular, “Seth Speaks” and (not surprisingly) Napoleon Hill’s “Think and Grow Rich,” which seems to be the go-to book for anyone wanting to make a splash in the Human Potential Movement. Abraham/Hicks goes a step farther beyond being indebted to the Law of Attraction, for if you visit the Abraham/Hicks site you’ll see a rebranding of the Law of Attraction as the “Teachings of Abraham” and where your grandfather’s Law of Attraction took time to get what you wanted, the Teachings of Abraham offers of manifesting your desires “instantly.” I suppose we can call this Law of Attraction 2.0.
Next: The Human Potential Movement Part 3. The New Prosperity Gurus
Notes
[1] The Mahatma Letters to A.P. Sinnett, 2nd. ed., TUP, 53, 1926. pg.142- 43.
[2] Bailey, Alice. A Treatise on White Magic, Lucis Publishing 10-11
[3] Guilliatt, Richard. “The secret of Rhonda.” Australian Magazine. 28 2008: n. page. Web. 31 Oct. 2012.
[4] “Heriot recalls that early on Byrne promised him a percentage of the film’s profits, but rebuffed his request for a written contract. “Rhonda actually insisted that we not have a contract – she said they limited people’s freedom, that they’re designed to guard against things going wrong, which is not the way of The Secret because it is focusing on the negative,” he says.” (Guilliatt).
Indeed, since Heriot did not get the promise down in writing, he effectively failed “to guard against things going wrong,” allowing Byrne to “burn” him out of millions.
[5] Salkin, Allen. “Shaking Riches Out of the Cosmos.” New York Times, 25 Feb. 2007. Web. 31 Oct. 2012. Byrne promised the Hicks 10% of the DVD sales, but just before the big money came in, Byrne told the Hicks that they would either have to accept ripping up the contract or be cut out of the film. The Hicks took $500,000 and went away.
October 14, 2012, Snake Oil for Sale!
Not sure to where I begin with this one, but here goes…
I want to post this review of a YouTube video created by some woman named, “Teal.” Don’t know if it’s her real name. In her video called, “How to Raise your Vibration,” “Teal” claims, though she never divulges her authoritative sources, that “raising one’s vibration” is the result of one’s “commitment to personal happiness.”
Now, I get that the notion of “raising one’s vibration” or “frequency” has enjoyed some popularity for some time. The notion that vibrations were sacred appeared first in the East, in ancient Brahmanism, from which Hinduism descended. The Vedic cosmology claimed there were 14 planes (or worlds) of existence. Buddhism asserted that there were 31 planes of existence. However, it was Hinduism, primarily through Advaita Vedanta conceived by Adi Shankara, that claimed that the universe, represented by Brahman, was a “pure consciousness.”
Thus, the idea that the universe is a form of consciousness is very old, and existed long before the West got wind of it through the ancient pre-Socratic philosophers like Parmenides and Anaxagoras who conceived the universe as something like “the mind of God.” The idea that consciousness evolved or was capable of being “raised” in modern times seems to be first recorded by Ramakrishna, the 19th Century Hindu mystic and later updated by the 20th Century guru Sri Aurobindo. These spiritual metaphysicians, along with the Theosophist master Helena Blavatsky, who lived about the same time as Ramakrishna, all asserted the idea that the planes of existence, divine consciousness and sacred frequency were the same. These streams of spiritual ideas helped formulate what has been called since the 19th Century as the “Law of Attraction.”
The Law of Attraction’s main premise is that consciousness is superior to the physical, an idea that runs back to the ancient Vedantic principle that Brahman is the divine consciousness and the material world an illusion. In the West, this idea was latched onto by Theosophy and the New Thought Movement in the late 19th Century. The New Age spirituality and the principles of the Law of Attraction are essentially the culmination and combination of Theosophist and New Thought ideas.
Which brings us back to “Teal” and her video, which purports to be a “how-to” manual in drawing good things by only engaging in “good thoughts.” According to “Teal,” if one is to live a full and complete life one must make a “commitment” to “personal happiness.” This is done through the “raising of frequency” through “feeling good.” Yes, we’ve heard this all before. It’s from New Thought author W.W. Anderson and his book, “Thought Vibration or the Law of Attraction in the Thought World,” published in 1903. Napoleon Hill followed with his, “Think and Grow Rich,” which was followed by the Secret, up to the present day with LOA proponents and New Age trance-channeler Esther Hicks.
While Theosophy and the New Thought Movement often placed humans as “divine” figures, neither movement tried to elevate personal happiness, or enlightened self-interest, at the forefront of their philosophies. That occurred with the rise of the New Age, with its emphasis on spirituality as commodity. Capitalism has long corrupted all forms of religious enterprises, so this isn’t such a surprise. It is interesting to note the uniqueness of the New Age shift to the concerns of the person and not say, the redemption of groups of humanity, as we have in the Organized Religions. This shift of elevating personal happiness to a spiritual goal coincides with neoliberal conceptions of personal liberty, acquiring property and the rights of the Individual.
“Teal,” like all who wish to ignore the scary parts that make up existence, is promising her hapless clients the virtue of magical thinking that will transform them into perpetual happiness machines.
This teaching amounts is the worst of snake-oil salesmanship, which may not be fair to snake-oil salesmen because at least they had oil, which was something tangible. People like “Teal” only give lip service and fluffy-sounding claims that cannot be verified by anyone.
How convenient.
08/13/2012: 2012 & the Incoherence of the Religious Rebels
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| Russia’s FemPunk Pussy Riot. Can Art overcome Ignorance? Probably Not. |
I was 21 years old when I finally decided to dispense with the belief in God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost. The decision was precipitated by a “mystical” White Light episode which led me to two mistaken beliefs that (1) I was somehow “special” and (2) that what we call “God” was something that could not be contained within any religious vocabulary. The more I studied and compared religious ideas the easier it became for me to scoff and ridicule people I saw still locked within their accepted belief systems. All they had to do was read the same books I had and they could see for themselves that their precious religious beliefs were based on a cultural transmission based on nothing more than hearsay.
I have been following the Pussy Riot trial story in the media for a few weeks now. The story is simple yet one heavily laden with of supreme postmodern irony.
The “trial” of three members of the band was precipitated by a 51 second anti-Putin performance at an altar of a Russian Orthodox Church in Moscow in March 2012. The three ran off and only after a video of the performance went viral on YouTube were the three members hunted down and arrested. The Russian state prosecutor wants three years in prison for the defendants for… wait for it… “abusing God.” Not sure if he meant Jehovah or Vladimir Putin, but like I said earlier, what supreme irony. Lenin and Stalin must be spinning in their graves.
While the performance was unquestionably brave and the closing statements of the defendants worth reading, I’m afraid they won’t be ultimately effective or triumphant in their battle against the religious and political systems that have been arrayed against them. There have been many, many examples of how fruitless a career being a religious rebel actually is. Most probably one would lose their head or their life. The biggest danger for a religious rebel is to believe that the battle can be won by virtue of their will and intelligence. But as we have seen throughout history, ignorance is far, far more formidable than knowledge or intellect. And one overarching reason why ignorance, especially religious ignorance, is still so pervasive is because people are hard-wired to defend their ignorance to the bitter end. People who claim knowledge of spiritual matters actually only speaking as if they know in fact that what they speak of God or spiritual matters is true. The priests only need people who are even more ignorant in these matters than themselves to make the enslavement complete. When one of the Pussy Riot members complained during the trial that, “(t)he biggest problem is that nobody listens to us,” one may be forgiven to hear the faintest note of disappointment or puzzlement that their art is too incoherent for public consumption.
The character role of the Spiritual Rebel has its antecedent with the figure of Jesus Christ, the archetype of all religious rebels. And we all know how that fucking story ended, and more importantly, how it failed to bring about any kind of decent world in its aftermath. It seemed that nobody listened to or understood what Jesus said either, and merely reacted to what they imagined he must have meant and twisted, diluted and distorted his words until they came out as so much nonsense. No wonder the words of Jesus could never be lived by people who call themselves “Christians.” Jesus’ words (what little remain) of love and peace must forever be destined to be incoherent. The members of Pussy Riot will not achieve anything by playing butterflies being tortured on the rack. It’s already been done. Nothing was proven and nobody cared. If only the human ego was not so tied up in preserving religious fantasies, but let me tell you, it is the rare person who will admit to what they previously believed in was wrong. Let me say that I “get” what Pussy Riot is attempting to do. But in attempting to shock or rouse their fellow Russians from their acceptances and allowance, Pussy Riot is bravely going down a fruitless path. But what good is bravery when it’s wasted on actions that do not effectively get people to question their scene? Better to work on one’s self-transformation and be an example to society before taking on society.
