An overwritten, self-indulgent and sometimes incoherent mess of a book, but oddly engrossing at the same time. (I read it in a few sittings.) 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl gets its structure from Daniel Pinchbeck's own peripatetic interests and self-absorption. That's both good and bad: it prevents 2012 from becoming a dry academic treatise because it's deeply (sometimes cringingly) personal, but it also flits from topic to topic, depending on the author's level of enthusiasm or disillusionment. 

Contrary to popular perception, 2012 won't necessarily be apocalyptic; it's a movement into a different stage of consciousness. Pinchbeck plunges into a wide-ranging examination and comparison of cross-cultural (and atemporal) phenomena and theory that deal with the eschatological; social scientists (and physicists too, probably) would fling the book against the wall early on, but it's fascinating regardless. It's not often you find one place that discusses the Mayan calendar, alien abduction, Terence McKenna, crop circles, quantum physics, Teilhard de Chardin, Burning Man and ayahuasca at the same time -- well, if you were at Burning Man, maybe.

It's all fun until the whining takes over. There's nothing wrong with all this self-reflexivity in a memoir, but Pinchbeck later justifies his cold behavior towards his family through his theory that polyamory as a more "evolved" form of interrelationships. Sure, we're carefully led through his process of self-realization, but it smacks the reader of self-aggrandizement at this point in the narrative. (And I won't reveal the ending concerning the author's role in all this, but let's just say it concerns the subtitle.)

There's no relation to the Roland Emmerich disaster movie 2012, which is a good thing, but at least the movie had a better sense of humor.

I could only read about a half chapter at a time before I got really sleepy but it found that I was questioning and underlining many passages within the book. There is this link between drugs and mental elevation within the book I was reading at the time. I wonder if enlightment and new pathways through the brain can be forged without the use of these stimulates or if the lose of control over your known way of thought during these eposides causes non-rational jups to be made thereby creating a union with a higher plan of thought.

Plus, I think the world as we understand it will be considerably altered at a date in and around what people predict simply because a mass amount of people believe something will happen. But I do not think it will be distruction, I believe it will be a creation of new linked pathways between individuals who are open to it.

Daniel Pinchbeck certainly has a knack for weaving together words, drawing on sources to back up his points in an entertaining way, and using his intelligence to invite us to rethink how the world works. I found the deep exploration into phenomena presented as fact came across more as artifacts of imagination, and detracted from what were promising lines of inquiry.

Daniel Pinchbeck is such an annoying egomaniac, which actually is a good thing 'cause it's entertaining. He has no quality control on his own roller-coaster-ride experiences, then offers them up as gospel. Lots of excessive research, in case you weren't convinced, or you still questioned how smart he is. He's a bad writer too. Wait -- I upped it another star, because it truly is entertaining what a "guy like that" (NYC Bohemian intellectual) would come up with if he got into new age consciousness experimentation.