The World You See Is The Myth You Are In

A new book of my essays, with an introduction from Adam Green

Hi folks,

I am delight to announce the release of a new book, The World You See Is The Myth You Are In: Essays on Politics, Consciousness, Technology and the Occult, with an introduction by Adam Green (singer/songwriter, formerly of The Moldy Peaches). The book is available as an EPUB here and on Kindle via Amazon. It will be available as a paperback on Amazon in a few days.

Adam writes, in part:

Like Allen Ginsberg before him, Pinchbeck is our consciousness transforming figure of the East Village. As Ginsberg convinced Leary to get LSD to the public, Pinchbeck has performed a similar service by initiating so many of us into the mystery worlds of ayahuasca, Iboga, and DMT. Likewise he has played an important role in initiating us as well into the current planetary dialogue and the important decisions we must make as a species. Can we all become initiates in time to respond to Pinchbeck’s calling to protect the lungs and heart of the world?

We are all interconnected nodes of the same consciousness. Let’s allow Daniel to be our guide for a moment, let’s see what Garden of Earthly Delights his work might inspire us to create. We must find in ourselves the ones who we are looking for, who will transform reality. 

It’s glorious to be alive at this moment of such reckoning and rapture. We all need somebody to take care of us and sometimes it’s everybody. If we can indeed make our wishes and myths come true, it’s time to change the nature of what we wish for.

The essays were originally published on Substack over the last few years, but it feels different to read them together in a book. The themes and ideas are more clearly delineated and connected.

As a token of gratitude, I am giving the EPUB version of the book to my annual paid subscribers — please take this opportunity to join up for a year and I will happily gift it to you as well.

Also, for anyone who joins as a Founding Member ($150) — a great way to support my ongoing efforts — I would be delighted to send you a signed copy of the paperback, with a little drawing. If anyone wants to write a review of the book for a magazine or their own newsletter, please let me know, and I will send you a copy.

What follows are some quotes from the book, which I hope you will pick up!

The World You See Is The Myth You Are In

My own shamanic work, and the psychophysical phenomena I experienced as a result, convinced me that we are immersed in a vast ecology of consciousness. Only a small part of this range is physically embodied or visible to us, in the same way, our eyes only see a tiny part of the total light spectrum. (Terrible Mineral-Plant-like Spiders Trapping the Earth in a Web of Super Intelligence)

One of my pet theories is that humanity’s rapacious exploitation of the Earth’s nonrenewable resources is one element of a bio-cosmic evolutionary process, as exquisitely timed and sequenced as fetal development leading to birth, or the metamorphosis of the caterpillar into the butterfly, after devouring the finite resources in its cocoon. What is being incubated or gestated, in our case, is not a new physical form, but a new expression or condition of conscious life. Instead of random or entropic, the universe is innately synchronous, harmonic, playful, and purposeful. (Happy New Universe)

What if Psi not only exists but is exponentially more powerful than electricity? What uses could we make of it? My perspective, to paraphrase Andre Malraux, is that the future will be psychic and mystical — or it will not be. (A Purple Future)

Perhaps in some way, true liberation is not “freedom” so much as it is freedom from freedom — freedom from the illusion of freedom that we are trapped in, while in this particular modern condition, with its beliefs embedded deep in the syntactical structures of our language. (Freedom is Freedom from Freedom)

If the universe is consciousness itself, exploring itself, as quantum physics apparently reveals, then we are allowed, once again, to conceive of reality allegorically, mythopoetically. We can realize there is meaning and purpose in the smallest serendipities. (Does the Earth Reincarnate?)

Archetypes have negative and positive polarities. In a positive sense, Apocalypse – the word literally means uncovering or revealing – represents, for Jungians like Edward Edinger, “the momentous event of the coming of the self into conscious realization.” This means it is a threshold when humanity has reached a stage of maturity where we can integrate all of the contents of the unconscious — its darkest and brightest aspects — into consciousness. (The Apocalypse Archetype)

The snake can only shed its skin when there is a new skin ready beneath the old one. Otherwise, it will die. Similarly, we cannot abandon the current post-industrial, Capitalist system until we have another functional system. (From Climate Apocalypse to Mass Metamorphosis?)

I think Capitalism was necessary and inevitable. In a few centuries, the power of markets, driven by human desire, meshed the world together into one giant whole. However, the dynamism of Capitalism is based on debt and instability. This has unleashed an existential crisis that the system cannot address internally. Therefore, we need to build the next system, just as Capitalism replaced feudalism, which was even more unjust. (System Change as Initiatory Opportunity)

There are, I believe, charged historical moments when certain individuals or avatars receive high-voltage energy transmissions from other levels or dimensions of reality. The holy books, the sacred texts, are the record of past high-voltage transmissions, and hold a psychological imprint of that original force and charisma. (Imagine No Religion)

Considering the current level of divisiveness and uncertainty, we need to focus more intensively on our epistemology. We must constantly keep asking ourselves: how do I know what I think I know. Ultimately, we base many crucial choices (whether to support a particular political candidate, whether to prep for accelerating climate change, if we should have our children vaccinated) on the state of our current, incomplete knowledge and on our ongoing act of discernment or discrimination. If we foreground the limits of our knowledge, perhaps we can build a non-acrimonious bridge to people whose ideas are different from our own. (Toward a Post Post-Truth World?)

Arguelles imaginatively linked the noosphere to the Van Allen radiation belts, proposing this thought-layer is woven between them: “As the mental "thinking sphere" of this planetary being, Earth, the noosphere is above and discontinuous with the biosphere, the hydrosphere, and the atmosphere. It is contained by and functions within the vast, invisible electromagnetic field of the Earth.” This idea has similarities to the Akashic Records, the idea that the Earth contains an imprint of past and future that can be accessed in visionary states. I link it to Rupert Sheldrake’s ideas of “morphic resonance” and “morphogenetic fields.” We might imagine Sheldrake’s morphogenetic fields — patterns of evolution, thought, and potentiality — held in this surrounding field, in a kind of nonlocal quantum state. (The Noosphere and the Rainbow Bridge)

Humanity and the Earth are gestating, straining together, to birth some new realization of Being. We pursue a new idea, a hidden dimension of reality itself. Technology is an integral part of this process. Technology is human consciousness projecting itself into the material and physical realm, reshaping this dimension according to thought, will, imagination, and intention. Technology is a mirror, reflecting us back on ourselves. (Infinite Transgression)

We don’t need self-driving cars, Mars missions, or AI chatbots. We need redistribution of wealth, participatory democracy, truthful media, and system change. There is no reason our world has to be like this, except to serve the myopically short-term interests of a tiny elite. (When an Angry Bum Spit at Us on Eldridge Street)

With the combination of AI and robotics, we are actually approaching that utopian prospect of a society where humanity, as a whole, can be liberated from boring and deadening labor to refocus on meaningful, regenerative and creative work. But we have to break through the ideological barriers, both on the Left and the Right, if we are going to achieve this. As Shapiro correctly notes, the most powerful obstruction to achieving a future of collective liberation is intergenerational trauma, which leads to the perpetuation of violence, wars and mass repressions, as we currently see in Russia and elsewhere. (Could Artificial Intelligence Unleash Utopia?)

The main problem with Burning Man — and with the current psychedelic renaissance — is the lack of a meaningful systems-level critique. Such a critique would understand humanity’s natural vitalizing impulses — our innate yearning for ecstasy and transcendence through altered states, eroticism, liberated movement, and community communion — as antidotes to the planet-killing monstrosity that is post-industrial Capitalism, reductive materialism, and alienated consumerism. Beyond making a critique, we would turn it into collective action. (How Burning Man Failed)

There is an occult, esoteric aspect to reality: This is not something specious or fake. It is as real as anything else. However, the occult and esoteric domains function according to their own laws and principles. I find the suppression of occultism (the domain of the Psyche in Jungian terms) by the mainstream liberal/materialist orthodoxy to be one critical issue, at this point. Until we can find a coherent way to speak with each other about these hidden aspects of reality, we are unable to respond effectively to what is underway. (Qanon, Burning Man and Neoliberalism)