For many years I explored consciousness via psychedelic shamanism. My trips seemed to warp time and space. I encountered synchronicities, paranormal mysteries, occult dimensions of reality. Psychic effects spilled over from these journeys, echoing, rippling out, for weeks or months afterward.
Reality seemed revealed as what the Buddhists call Maya, a dream-world or illusory play. At times I spiraled into what I believed to be transcendent, ecstatic, enlightened states. I also fell into hell realms; inner eviscerations that were difficult for my ego-self — the personality bearing this particular name-and-form — to assimilate or comprehend.
In 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl, I studied the prophetic expressions found in many ancient and indigenous cultures. I started my research as an observer, a journalist, detached from my material. Eventually, against my will, I was forced to confront my own direct relationship to prophecy. I became a vehicle for prophetic transmission.
While in the Brazilian Amazon, sitting in ceremonies with the Santo Daime, a syncretic religion that uses ayahuasca as its sacrament, the voice of what seemed to be a separate entity or outside consciousness spoke within my mind for a week.
This entity announced itself as Quetzalcoatl — the “feathered serpent,” a creator deity found in many sculptures and friezes, wrapped around ruined temple complexes. This visitor dictated a prophetic text to me. It gave me real-world clues; evidence of its validity that seemed, subjectively, irrefutable.
I had read about such transmissions. Similar things had happened to grey-bearded prophets like Moses, Muhammad, Swedenborg, also, in modern times, Aleister Crowley, Carl Jung. Even Terence McKenna and Jose Arguelles. I didn’t believe it could happen to me, until it did.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Liminal News With Daniel Pinchbeck to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.