A live conversation, recorded before December 2012, between Pinchbeck and Reggie Watts, the musician and comedian known for improvised looped vocal performance. Pinchbeck asks what role the Mayan calendar end-date plays in Watts's cosmology. Watts calls it spiritual Y2K, says he plans to sit it out on a friend's farm rather than in a grid-dependent city, and reads the date as an opportunity for a shift in consciousness rather than a catastrophe. Pinchbeck summarizes John Major Jenkins's galactic alignment thesis, in which the winter solstice sun arrives at the dark rift at the center of the Milky Way, read in Mayan cosmology as a meeting of great mother and first father, while conceding no known mechanism for terrestrial effect. Watts describes reality as an operating system organized around conflict, and takes musical improvisation as his model for collective consciousness.
Guest: Reggie Watts
In brief
- Watts treats the 2012 date as an opportunity for a shift in consciousness toward seeing things as hyper-interconnected, rather than as a predicted catastrophe.
- Watts says he intends to be away from a high-density, grid-dependent city, on a friend's stocked property near Montana, and that being with people he loves matters more than whether anything happens.
- Pinchbeck relays John Major Jenkins's account of the winter solstice sun approaching the dark rift at the galactic center, understood in Mayan cosmology as the great mother meeting the first father, while acknowledging there is no known reason it would affect Earth.
- Watts describes reality as an operating system whose built-in conflict, including differences engineered to produce hatred, functions as a distraction.
- Watts argues that any such shift requires active participation, calling it lazy and naive to expect change from doing nothing.
- Watts uses group improvisation, the moment players lock into a groove and time seems to slow, as his image of collective consciousness, and advises close attention to the cadence and texture of how people speak.
Full text
hey Reggie what do you think of I mean you've talked in your stuff about M calendar in 2012 like what do you think might happen how do you what what what part does it play in your personal cosmology well um I'm not going to be in New York when it happens I'm going to think a high I don't think a high population density area with uh you know hyper dependence on grids and systems would be a good place to be um I mean my thing is like it could happen it could not happen it could happen in a way that we would never expected it could happen in a way that we completely expected it's like I I don't know you know I I I often joke and say you know spirit I call it spiritual Y2K but I think um I think that the evidence I think that the evidence um is interesting and compelling and um and and I've read excerpts by yourself and other contemporaries and uh I like the direction of the idea of an opportunity for Consciousness change and I do believe in the idea of um magnetic signatures and in the way that like when when we're each born the the snapshot of the universe at that relative point is essentially a unique magnetic fingerprint so that creates kind of a uh a signature with Tendencies behavioral tendencies but then Consciousness can hopefully evolve above that and change the actual nature of the tendency or the default setting so so I think that um to me what it represents is an opportunity for the human consciousness to kind of have you know I view it as like you have a circle and you draw a line down the circle but then if you like put an axis in the middle and then you kind of shift it and then you continue the lines from there it turns into a spiral so it it it moves onwards and think I think of that during that time whether it's a subtle tiny shift in realization where we where we stop we stop viewing ourselves as important in every aspect of the of our everyday lives and and see things in a in a hyper interconnected way I think that uh that could grow even if it's just the smallest idea so I mean my thing is I'm going to hang out in Iowa no the other I State Idaho no but I'm Idaho with my friend Melanie close to Montana with all my friends she has a property out there with a farm and um and everything that you would need couple years food stored underneath yeah basically yeah yeah I mean cuz I don't know why not I mean and if if nothing happens you know if something very subtle happens whatever it's it's cool to be at least with friends that you love and you know and kind of like wow we did that so I mean that's my plan well I mean it's the winter solstice which was you know very important for the Mayan cosmology and according to this work that John Major Jenkins did uh and other Scholars kind of somewhat agreed with there's a uh the winter solstice sun has been approaching uh this this point where it rises at the exact center of the dark RI at the center of the Milky Way uh which is the center of our galaxy which they talked about that as the uh the great mother and the son was the first father so it's a kind of aot meeting up of the of the you know great mother and the first father on the solstice which was for them like this most important day so uh why would that have significance why would that have any type of effect on us on Earth you know no reason that we know of you know it's funny when I was when I was a wee little lad I I always thought that um I was always interested in uh the idea of simulation you know to a certain degree I I didn't think maybe think of it that way I thought of it is like a dream state but I always thought that life is so uh fishy all the time like like there if you notice there are these correlations and and and you're like what the what the is going on like it's almost like someone occasionally like peeking their head up and going and going away you're like what the going on what's what's hen what's happening who but so I think of like but I've always thought as a kid that there would there would be some way or wouldn't it be fantastic if you just you you came into another understanding of reality on a large Collective level with many people like you know like like that that could be possible like and then you're like oh right that's what this was that was awesome guys all right this time I'm going deeper take me two notches down or whatever you know but like but but it feels like it feels like it's an operating system and the operating system has certain personal Tendencies and so forth and they're like okay well let's see if these particular beings of Consciousness uh well they should have conflict that's really important so we'll make them different and you know they'll be like really different looking and they'll be different looking and they're going to hate each other based on that and then as that evolves it'll leave you know gain resolution will be higher resolution hatred will be really refined hatred but then people like you know going that's not cool man you know and like and then they're in another battle within a battle like I feel like the operating system is just about like conflict and that's the distraction just like you know so so if the opportunity comes where there's some type of a magnetic alignment um a gateway to shift um uh the way that we think or even something more fantastic than that I think that that's a welcomed and almost like oh okay that figures like it's I think it's more that than it than anything else for me how do you think people like participate in this if it's is it something that's just happening or do people have to actually like you know make something happen I think it's a very active process I mean I think it's it's it's lazy and kind of uh naive to think that anything changes by just doing nothing and I mean even visualizing takes something so I mean takes a lot to do nothing but I I mean I guess I guess um no I mean it's active I mean you have to like I don't know understand your potential you know understand the uh uh the infinite potential that we all have but we have like restrictions and limitations in a way that I feel are just kind of challenges I think that Consciousness comes uh as an I don't know I I'd like to think of it as an instant Collective it's like when you're uh uh when you're jamming in music and you're just having this free open improvisation and you're and you're and and it's kind of rough at first and then suddenly you find this groove and then you're in this groove and you're doing this repetitive thing and you're not getting tired of it you just find this little thing that you're doing and you're not getting tired of it it's amazing it's like always great and it's essentially the same thing and then everyone kind of locks into this pattern and it all comes together and then suddenly time starts to slow and then you're able to see this pattern that you're a part of and I think like that is um how I would imagine it's it's the work on self you know education talking with people having having meaningful conversations and trying to be as sincere as possible because there's that capacity for Consciousness to radiate out through these kind of immaterial networks absolutely I don't know so let's uh let's take this somewhere if you are we're talking about levels of consciousness new reality psychic abilities and um people here are looking at both Beauty and also we seem to have a little Discord what would be your Milestone like for for change on a mass scale how do you see change on a personal scale when do you know you're opening something up good question what do you look I think on a personal scale it usually come with shame when somebody like you know when something reveals to you you know just what an you've been and how much you're shadow that you thought you'd like kept in a cubby hole was actually just as Raging as as ever and then you're finally somebody has confronted you on a level where you're as shamed enough that you have to then deal with it you know until it finds the next little cubby hole and the process starts again it's I mean it's just one of those things you just I mean it sounds stupid but but but you just know it when you know it it's you know it's like it's the moment that you realize you're riding your bicycle without training wheels you know or it's that moment that you jumped off of a high dive and you were afraid to do it but you're you're past that point of no return and you're just heading towards the water but like these these types of things these realizations I think we just know them as they when they happen to us I think when we're looking it feels as though we may not know if it happens or we'd like to know when it does but it's one of those thing that's things that's neither neither nor need neither neither many many I mean on on a global level I tend to think it's going to be very extreme that it's actually going to have to go to like you know the zapatistas have a slogan where they say everything for everyone nothing for ourselves you know that uh actually the you know the the resources of the Earth have been very disproportionately shared and uh if if there was a shift to a more kind of Consciousness Paradigm where people valued immaterial qualitative experience over material Goods then I think we would Rectify that on on a global scale blah BL blah you yeah well that's what I like what he does because it's kind of more about just like the frequency of thought rather than anything that's like you know a tangible iteration of concept but you do need to think I mean but you know then the other argument is like we haven't really learned to think so we actually don't even know what that would be like that you know the the the the enlightenment philosophers try to make people reason but then our our system is a propaganda system where people Consciousness is controlled by a giant indoctrination mechanism so actually we have to now go through the lumbering cumbersome unpleasant you know attempt to learn how to think from from basis you know again you know like what if someone your book and then cool I mean that's that's why you write a book really sure you know they can do whatever they want with them you know I mean yeah and ideas are Shar shared shared experiences you know and uh and and people have gifts to be able to channel them into a clear form format so that we're like oh yes um but you know I also think this I think that absurdity holds the key uh to to surviving in reality I think that um seeing the the universe is as a silly place um and there are there there are it's not to not acknowledge the real consequences but there is a way that you can view uh the world in reality in a healthy perspective I I always call it I always say when in doubt zoom out but I just want to like make a counter proposal I mean I don't really know the answer but I mean for instance drinking is this tap water I assume and people know about the fracking the hydro fracking in New York you know so basically like you know all of our water systems are being compromised tampered we're being you know increasingly poisoned you know so we'll go in you know thousands now to take our pants off or to hit each other with lightsabers in the park and I love all that stuff you know but you know what are we going to do about this like nobody seems to like or there's a small group of slightly to Solemn you know environmental activists who people in Mass don't really associate with because they're kind of like holding too much pain and anguish for the collective you know so so what do what what do we do to bridge that so actually we can take our pants off and you know clean the stuff up you know is or don't or don't we or maybe we prefer as he said that maybe we want to skate into the abys like maybe somehow that's one of the hypotheses that I've worked with in my in my ideas is that maybe like you know we we're we're we're we're self- willing a uh you know total catastrophe on every level to force a uh you know unconsciously to force a transmutation of human consciousness because we can't for whatever reason do it consciously and coherently and in and in you know logical ways I mean in my book I wrote about like y yung's ideas around the archetypes you know and it's like they're obviously the the these archetypes exist and then they they constellate you know so this archetype of the apocalypse and the Armageddon and and the second coming these are like super deep you know complexes in in the individual and Collective Psych and yeah it does seem like the Christians are you know pulling pulling on them um you know the question is what what do we what do we do about it I mean somehow we have to like supersede these organized religions you know in some way but obviously you can't do that you somehow have to find a way to communicate with those people and and you know it's almost like reverse anthropology or something like how would you go back and you know say to them okay well why do you believe all this stuff in this old book you know but then on the other I mean there's some maybe positives like that's probably like all those churches and those communities is probably one of the only cohering forces in a lot of America you know so it's like if you could access what brings people together and then somehow cut cut off the negative ideology you know maybe that would be a path to a positive change the thing is those systems are I mean in a way I like to view those systems as kind of irrelevant because because because the idea of thought and connected Consciousness is kind of something beyond that those are kind of complex layers on top of something that's already connected but there's the illusion of disconnection you know like well there's like the the history and the and the reinforcement and and even the architecture that we exist in or the way that we build things or the way that doorways are shaped or the way that cars are shaped or the way that jacket jackets button up and so forth those are all things that inform us our local in time and space our local you know but my but my inkling suspicion is that is that especially through physics you know the world of physics uh is such an interesting place because it's far more fantastic than any religion can or science fiction writer can come up with I mean the things that they discover are things that make our world even more impossible to understand as the person with the Nova ringtone will attest to but uh but you know I cuz I think of uh you know I think I think of it as essentially an operating system we're in a we're in a hard we're life is like a hard drive and there's an operating system and so it's all made of the same stuff and hard drives work by just allocating digital information different patterns in various locations but they're spread throughout various locations they still represent one whole unit of an idea but it's still made of the same information that the entire hard drive is made of so it's the perception of the information that makes us either buy into the reality or forms the way that we relate to and of course the fact that you're using all the metaphors from computer shows how your own Consciousness has been phenomenologically shaped by the digital technology well here's the thing here's the thing it's like I think that we reproduce the ideas of what we are constantly because we are we are completely we are no different you know there was like a time where I would look at a skyscraper and say that's a man-made object or or a a barrel of toxic waste and say that's that's unnatural and it's just not it's not it's it's natural yeah I mean it's natural because it's made of all of the same exact ingredients that everything is made of and so it's just a different formation of that at that point you just collapsed distinction and we still have to come up with a term that defines I mean like you say nature and second nature or something like that sure I mean what do you mean explain that well I mean because I mean yes on one level it's all natural in fact I like to look at The Skys scrippers in New York if you think about underneath the city they're being this incredibly hard Granite with the ice age you know the glaciers came to a stop here and it's almost like they are like you know stalagtites like the rocks have like push so yes you look at them as natural but Som when we discuss these things we still need to be able to make distinctions we're on this scale yeah so we need to yeah I mean it's the only way to navigate it's like everyone is looking at the entire picture through a straw you don't have enough in don't have enough memory to actually hold the entire image of the map as it's being processed you know and so I think like we need things we need to call things things and have systems and and say hey you're Sarah right you continue to be that particular formation of molecules Sarah will'll call you Sarah that is important well for example I go to burning man you know we throw all these parties all year around and we eat a bunch of drugs and go wild in the desert what's the point where's it going like well I mean I I have you know I have theories that I've written about that I think that like we're seeing like the evolution of kind of new new neot tribal living patterns that you know ultimately as the resources go bust you know and and we're you know those become kind of a template you know and also even the idea of the way music structures Community there I think is really fascinating for how the future might evolve you know and and the fact that you know when you're there there's no money exchange so you're experiencing a sharing economy and it feels so natural you know and the fact that you see how you know a cultural situation can just be programmed with a set of rules and if they better rules everybody immediately adapts and is much happier you know and and the fact that we see that when we're there that you know this this idea that there's a distinction between the individual and the collective is a false dualism that actually if if the collective is proper then the individual can be encouraged to individuate more and that'll actually lead the collective to be more collectivized so I think that's all part of what Burning Man is about and I you know I do see as like I tend to see things as like transition like we're in some type of transitional phase and then we can kind of pluck out what are kind of the The Melodies you know in a way that are leading towards the next sequence you know reie I was wondering if uh Curious feel like sharing anything about your formative psychedelic experiences and how they may have influen your music um I mean they influenc me a lot I mean I mean the first time the first time that I did a psy psy psychedelic uh drug was uh it was LSD and uh I think it was micro Dot and it was in Montana when I was probably like 16 years old but um I just remember it being the most hilarious thing in the world I remember it was like maybe four of us and I was really nervous you know and I didn't know I know what the LSD was and and uh when it hit we we tried to go out of town to go camping we made it about 2 miles 3 miles outside of the edge of town and Montana Town's just end in an edge you know it's just the edge two miles here like in the darkness but we're like stopped there and we realize we're getting too high we can't drive out there and I and this is is the moment that I remember the most is is getting out of the car and jumping into the ditch on the side of the road and it's just being lit by headlights but I I find this this you know those construction bars that are like you know orange and white whatever stripe but just the bar part not the like little horsey part and so I found that and I brought it up and I just stood in the middle of the road holding this thing up and I was just like laughing my ass off just just holding this thing going I thought it was the most hilarious thing but but the reason why I bring that up is because that opened uh my eyes to how funny things are like things are funny all the time there and even in you know I've had several good friends go through tragedies and my dad has died and through through through that process I've always kept with the humor but compassionate humor it's not making fun of things it's just celebrating how goofy things really are from different angles you know and so I think that's the thing that I learned that's the thing I learned music's the same way sometimes I just like to say things that are slightly wrong to people so so um so I'll say I'll always say good morning like whether it's afternoon or evening I I always say good morning and the interesting thing about that it's fun to say cuz just stupid it's just it's just like you mean uh good afternoon you know that's usually usually the response but but not all the time some people are just like oh good morning and they just continue on even at night it's like good morning morning hey hey wait what but but um but just playing around being playful in the world um and that can be either an outward expression or it can be just an inward observation but um reformatting your world constantly like your relationship to it you know I always think it's amazing that I can pick up a glass of water and drink it I'm just like it's so cool my hand doesn't pass through it you know the stuff that this is made of doesn't make the water leak and and I have this like depth perception and motor control and just goes up to my mouth it's like it doesn't leak when it's going down you know but um those types of things I guess speaking towards the uh colletive ious shift and transformation I don't really know a lot about this I was wonder if you guys could maybe talk about the age of Aquarius shift or like the shift from the age of Pisces into the age of Aquarius and how that's supposed to represent kind of stuff we're talking about in terms of you know the collective Consciousness actually taking place where we understand what we're thinking and kind of just live in more Unity that yeah yo Yogi Bon who was the founder of Kini yoga he was once asked by a bunch of his disciples you know what's going to be the true meaning of the age of Aquarius and his answer was no more which always seemed to be like I mean almost unimaginable you know Yogi ban Kini yoga um but yeah I mean that's the theory is it'll be a Unity Consciousness experience you know at some point is it happening over aan of years or yeah the the the these these ages are like 2300 years each so it takes a while to settle into a new one was sh to shift yeah so we're in in that shift apparently what art is is just the craft of observation and the expression um uh with the you know you were saying co-creation earlier it's like it's a co-creation you know with the forces of chaos and your in need to find some type of order or or lack thereof but I think that art is the kind of the key element to seeing things differently constantly so that you're time essentially time traveling from moment to moment you feel like I mean I I tend to do this like as I'm moving walking down the street I go oh it's 1965 and it's like you know or I'll walk through a doorway and and be like oh it's Holland you know just for a second you know or like someone you know does some weird body gesture as they're picking up a coin and I'm like oh it's Poland it's an old woman it's cold outside she's getting that coin but like there you know like like you can literally see the world in so many amazing ways any given moment it's the greatest gift that we have the ability to to see to have perspective it's the thing that people talk about when under the gruesome circumstances of torture the things that save them it's their ability to see the whole picture and to feel something more inside of every micro moment I that that's that's what I tend to look at it and then in that way the world is it's infinite and it's funny and it's funny and it's a good time but I guess I guess what I was going to say is like what I had to do was learn to be like um kind of impervious to being attacked because I got a lot of you know negative comments from mainstream like Rolling Stone and your times and so on um and then that becomes kind of like it always you always feel it you know if you get attacked or if something seems totally like a like a Reviewer is just like a swindling you know what you're doing or whatever but um if you can you know if you can use it to strengthen your resolve to kind of like find your own truth and hold your authenticity then I think that that helps and then maybe also just having like ridiculous willpower you know and and that's something that you can actually train yourself to do um and most people give up way too soon why do you guys think negativity is so sey what's what's so what's so attractive what's so what's so habit foring what's so addicting about that's a good question yeah I mean I I think it's necessary I mean negative energy is is a necessary thing and and we are are we are you know I believe binary individuals and the binary is kind of the illusion um in a way and um Carl Young talks about how the wound is also the gift probably most people know that here feel it to some extent I mean I mean it's like I mean it's why it's why people who tend to be dark um can be extremely joyful um they they Embrace an aspect of themselves which is generally in Christian societies puritanical societies they push for this uh this clean positive extreme um sterile um and uh and because of that it takes so much energy to keep it there you know it's like the pendulum wants to swing but they just keep holding it up and the mass is building the more that they hold on the more that it creates and eventually it will break that's the way all systems work but I think that um it's it's sexy in a healthy way it's not sexy when it's a feedback loop it's like if you shift Loop and create a spiral in everything that you do you can dance around the properties of extreme negativity or extreme uh positivity I I think I think it's all it's also a pro programming it's like a cultural programming that affects people on a deep psychological level so it's it's kind of like you look at um you know you like you know if if somebody is abused then in a sense that becomes like attractive to them that that that represents a form of attention you know so so so um you know so I think that you know I mean if you look at the idea of of the yin-yang or whatever like you know we we've been in the black with a little dot of the white you know there's a potential to go to the white with a little dot of the black you know it's not like you don't want to eradicate negativity because I I do think s said the wound is the gift but the the the the negativity and the aggression and the violence could move to like much subtler dimensions of of being you know not not explicitly explicitly played out in depleted uranium killing hundreds of thousands of kids in the Middle East and all this this crap you know so so so you know that that's why you know the shadow has to be kind of recognized and integrated from The Young in perspective but at the moment yeah at the moment we have to figure out you know how deep that that psychological programming towards negativity is you know individually and then do the work on ourselves then we can actually help others to resonate you know at that more positive thing I guess I I say I say for me I just like to notice language I like to I like to notice while I'm reading I like to notice the way people are speaking and through imitation sometimes you can kind of come into phase with the knowledge that just generally gained by going through a structure you know and so for me mimicry enabled my ability to have a slightly expanded vocabulary because I was just mimicking I wasn't even paying attention to the words necessarily I was just saying things that sounded like you know they're going somewhere with a pre- loiz aesthetic that gets us closer to a place where we can all come to a congruous agree perhaps you know PR linear or anti it's up to you but but you know what I mean but but just noticing language like reading it and like listening to the Cadence of language the way that people say the texture of their voices all of those things are about communication because as we communicate some people speak in a very monotone kind of a way and after a while it just kind of starts to drown out but when it's Dynamic and you can bring it down to different levels and raise the intensity and so those are helpful things I'm just saying notice notice the way people speak um because that's everything I mean every way of being and communicating is around you at all times yeah I mean I guess uh I would just say that like I recommend listening yeah I you know because actually like I I tend to listen more than I talk and I think like that's really like um most people are confused by that you know because everybody has you know wants to like Express their own little thing all the time but actually if you if you'll just sit and like witness somebody you know iterating their their existence their story you know you learn you learn so much and and and and you take that in and then then you can it's a gift to listen I I just am super grateful for you guys getting together and coming tonight and like talking to us about what's going on with you because it seems like it seems like that it's done it's over it doesn't matter if like what the hell happens on 2012 if you're with people you love and you're doing what you like should be doing it doesn't matter and anyway I wanted to thank you guys for coming and just like letting your mind you
Automatic transcript, lightly edited for readability. Originally published on the Liminal News channel.