12-21-12

[UFO]

Does anyone believe we are headed for something earth changing on this date?

Or do you dismiss it as nonsense?


Too many people and civilazations predict pole shifts which would possibly be the end of life for us as we know it.

What say you?

[ccbatson]

Pure nonsense. Here is the clue, anything that is based on a completely arbitrary observation without any basis in reality, or rational thought, is nonsense.....take, for instance, man made global warming, or socialist utopia.

[Pam]

Does anyone believe we are headed for something earth changing on this date?

No.

Or do you dismiss it as nonsense?

Yes.

[elganned]

I am bemused by this constant Romantic [[as in the literary period) notion that somehow Ancient Peoples had a firmer grasp on Big Truths and Esoteric Wisdom that we somehow have "lost" and need to find again.

There is nothing magical about the Mayan calendar. All clocks eventually have to reset to 00:00; what happens after is that the counting cycle starts over. That's it.

The notion that somehow the "poles will shift" or some momentous cosmic syzygy of planets/stars/galaxies/black holes will precipitate a cosmic calamity has been debunked time and again by serious astronomers and geologists, yet people continue to place credence in what is merely wild fancy.

The New Age loopiness of the present is nothing more than a re-packaging of the Aquarianism of the 60's and 70's, where a sizable fringe population believed that if we got enough people attuned to the "right vibe" we could re-shape the universe into perfect peace, harmony, and happiness. It is sympathetic magic at it's most sophisticated, but is still fundamentally a belief in the ability and necessity of man influencing the Spirit World to his benefit.

On the bright side for people like Bats, if the world does end in 2012 the conservatives will be spared having to live through the last year of Obama's second term.

[jcole]

On the bright side for people like Bats, if the world does end in 2012 the conservatives will be spared having to live through the last year of Obama's second term.

Wouldn't that be just the last month of his first term? He'd be inaugurated on January 20th 2013 for his second term.

[elganned]

Well, there you go. Bonus!

[Lorax]

Pure nonsense. Here is the clue, anything that is based on a completely arbitrary observation without any basis in reality, or rational thought, is nonsense.....take, for instance, man made global warming, or socialist utopia.

Or all religion. Which is man-created. Kudos.

[Maof]

three years ago, my daughter came home from school [[elementary)and informed me that the world was going to end on this date! asked her where she heard this....you guessed it, her teacher

[gazhekwe]

Wow all that Christmas shopping wasted!

I am with elganned on this one. They must have just decided they would continue the calendar at a later date, as they didn't have room for more on that stone. If they had been predicting the end of the world, they would have ended it in 1521 when the Aztecs lost to the Spanish invaders.

[UFO]

I understand the scepticism regarding this. I do.

But I need to ask , is it hard to believe that the future can be for seen?

Nostrodamus , Edger Cayce both predicted some very important items in our history
More exact were Cacye's predictions. The man had something about him .
You should read him up.

The Mayan calendar has been exact in its predictions thus far. Why does this prediction seem unbelievable?

[Pam]

But I need to ask , is it hard to believe that the future can be for seen?

Yes.

Nostrodamus , Edger Cayce both predicted some very important items in our history

The so called predictions of psychics are vague or general and can be interpreted different ways.

[Papasito]

Y2K!!
OMG!!
ITS THE END!!!



....oh wait, it didnt happen

[gazhekwe]

there is no prediction associated with the last date recorded on the Mayan calendar. That is just as far as they calculated the calendar. This is because the calendars run in 5,125 year cycles, and that is the end of the cycle.

End date predictions have been attributed by others, not the Mayans. Here is one explanation:

There have been many projected dates for the ending of the Mayan calendar, ranging from 1957 to 2050. The 2012 end-date was defined by the Thompson Projection. Thompson's projection used a day-by-day count to cross -reference the Mayan to the European calendar rather than a count of years. This bypassed the problem of year names in the Gregorian system. Jose & Lloydine agreed with Thompson's 2012 date. More importantly, the 2012 date works with the hard facts evidenced by the accuracy of the July 26, 1992 Time Shift. Terence McKenna and Peter Meyer's Timewave Zero software that graphs time as a fractal demonstrates by graph the accuracy of the winter solstice of 2012 as the correct end-date of the Mayan calendar with graph anomalies appearing in the months of July.

The references in that snippet are discussed earlier in the article:

http://www.world-mysteries.com/sar_3.htm

Reference for the 5,125 year cycle: http://www.13moon.com/prophecy%20page.htm

[UFO]

So basically you think they pretty much ran out of paper or stone in their case.

So what explains the exactness of astrological predictions of the calendar?

[elganned]

But I need to ask , is it hard to believe that the future can be for seen?

Ditto what Pam said. There exists not one shred of evidence that the Mayans--or anyone else, for that matter--were able to predict the future.

Nostrodamus , Edger Cayce both predicted some very important items in our history
More exact were Cacye's predictions. The man had something about him .
You should read him up.

I read up on Cacye when I was a teenager. Also Jean Dixon and Nostrodamus. All of them made enigmatic pronouncements which were assigned in retrospect to certain events and were then claimed to have been about those events. Not one clear, concrete prediction has ever been made that can be watched for to see if it is valid; they are all interpreted retroactively.

Notwithstanding, there is nothing to link Nostrodamus or Cacye to the Mayans, so without any sort of connection they are irrelevant to the conversation. You can just as easily say that Bob must have fixed his car because Joe is a good mechanic. Without any way to link Bob to Joe, it remains mere speculation.

The Mayan calendar has been exact in its predictions thus far. Why does this prediction seem unbelievable?

I am unaware of any predictions made by the Mayan calendar other than the return of various astronimically observed events. My desk calendar is just as accurate when it "predicts" the phases of the moon this month.

[elganned]

...take, for instance, man made global warming, or socialist utopia.

You forgot to end with "Obama delenda est!"

[gazhekwe]

UFO, I had to refresh my memory and update on that, the end of the calendar coincides with the 5,125 year era they were recording, 3113 B.C. - 2012 AD), the Fifth Sun. Running out of room would apply to the Aztec calendar. It wasn't that they ran out of room so much as they had a rock they wanted to use to record the caledar and they planned the space accordingly.

Elganned is correct, the calendar was astromomical, not predictive of world events. The world, BTW would have been the world they knew, not the globe as we know it now.

If you want to look at other calendar devices and prophecies, there is the Anishinaabe one. I will post on that on the Connections thread, paging Gazhekwe.

[Lowell]

I liked the bumper sticker that came out after YK2.

"What are you waiting for? YK3?"

[Alfie1a]

Amazing that the Mayan calendar ends at a time when our solar system is in alignment with the galactic plane. An event that occurs once every 13,000 years. So, were they predicting calamity or the dawn of a new age? Or were they merely measuring time? And how could they know this?

This is interesting stuff and fun to think about. But for me, it's really hard to wrap my mind around all of it. Maybe I can try some of the cool psychadelic drugs the Mayans liked so much and gain a better understanding.

[ccbatson]

Hard to believe? No, impossible to see the future.

[gazhekwe]

Well, it isn't impossible to see the astronomical events that are shown in that calendar. It is amazing to modern science and lay people that the ancients could figure this out, but they could. Human events and things like weather or geologic or galactic catastrophes aren't so predicable.

[Lorax]

They are if you believe in relativity and quantum physics.

Most prognosticators like Nostradamus could "see" events while in a trance-like state, which they had a difficult time explaining. Edgar Cayce was particularly remarkable, with his visions being transmitted to pen and paper by a stenographer while they happened. Many were cut & dried, and fairly easy to explain, in the case of Nostradamus, many of the things he saw involved technologies yet invented, so it made it more difficult.

Having had an out of body experience, I can say, you don't need to fear death, certainly, and if the prognosticators are correct, life is circular, a round trip, if you will- we move between planes of consciousness, and time is not a straight line, but assembled in a circle, repeating, ending, and repeating like a tape recording over and over.

[Detroitej72]

Having had an out of body experience,

How could you have had one of these?

Don't you profess to be an atheist, which would mean that you believe there is no such thing as a "soul", which is necessary for an out of body experience?

Inquiring minds want to know!

[elganned]

Just because one doesn't believe in God doesn't mean one can't believe in a soul.

Only in Western thought do the two concepts appear inseperable, because for centuries the only context in which one heard of the soul was that of the Christian church and its teachings.

But there is nothing other than tradition which specifically ties one idea to the other.

[Lorax]

How could you have had one of these?

Don't you profess to be an atheist, which would mean that you believe there is no such thing as a "soul", which is necessary for an out of body experience?

Inquiring minds want to know!

Happy to share.

After my experience, as I call it, [[I had acute botulism poisoning) I had an overwhelming sense that there is more to death than simply nothingness. I was declared clinically dead, and for these 2-3 minutes I was weightless, and observing the scene below with great interest.

My senses were heightened, clear eyesight [[I wear contacts), but had no awareness of a body, limbs, etc. It was a supercharged consciousness that existed for those few minutes. My hearing was sharp, my cognition intact, and I was able to recount what was said during this period.

Looking down on the scene of paramedics attempting to revive me, I began to drift away from the scene, then, as when your vision narrows as you black-out, I was conscious again, looking up from the gurney. The pain was more intense, my limbs twisted and contorted from the poison, and it was a month before I was able to comfortably walk again.

Also, with that overwhelming sensation, there was no pain, no worries while in this state, more of a curiosity at what was happening, staying engaged with what the paramedics were doing.

Is it spirituality? I have no idea. Was this my "soul" leaving my body, perhaps, I still have no idea. I certainly believe in something more after death now, but I don't equate it with a belief in a "god" or a religious affiliation.

I do know that there is no reason to be afraid, and in fact, knowing that if my consciousness returned to my body, that the pain was going to be alot worse, which it was, so that selfishness was apparent, even to me!