Time is the unacknowledged ruler of our lives. It is strange that we do not consider how the divisions of the clock condition our experience of reality. Our perception of reality is created by the divisions we make in the day, year, seasons, and so on.

Our days of the week are named after long forgotten gods and our years are dated from the life and death of a Jewish saviour whom only around 25% of the population literally believe in.

Even if we use the “common era” designation, we are still dating our culture around a religious event that is fast fading into the past and around which most of our culture seems unsure.

Calleman offers an alternative. He believes that at the heart of the Mayan culture was a deep understanding of the world soul (we could also call it a global mind or brain) and that this understanding transcends cultural forms and has application within any time period or heritage.

He outlines in some detail how this global brain works and how it unfolds through various patterns and its relevance to modern man.

These patterns or calendars form the basis of The Mayan Calender and the Transformation of Consciousness. On first reading it would be easy to find Calleman a little too evangelical, so to speak, and become sceptical of his claims. However, if one puts aside his natural enthusiasm and engages with the text the evidence he presents is extremely persuasive.

The major Mayan cycle of the Long Count began on August 11, 3114 BCE and moves through thirteen baktuns to completion in 2012. This sequence is especially significant as it not only decodes the unfolding of cultures, religions and events around the world, but predicts great changes in the immediate future.

The Long Count is central to this work and is extremely well documented. Calleman provides abundant examples of the changes that took place at each stage and how they clearly relate to the “energy forms” the Mayans correlate to each level.

He offers a decoding of history covering a vast period that has many different stages and aspects, and all of these seem to fit snugly into his model. It would be statistically unlikely such a correlation could be reduced to simple random chance.

The more you read this book, the more impressive and meaningful Calleman’s historical focus becomes. At times the change of Baktun explains events that would seem otherwise random, and it gives certain coherence to the patterns of world history. This gives credibility to the prophetic aspects of the work.

Calleman also discusses the nine levels of consciousness or underworlds within Mayan cosmology and how this relates to global evolution and change.

Along the way we are also introduced to minor cycles and other pertinent aspects of the system that help explain the nature of evolution, a deeper interpretation of global history and what the future holds.

This system is not blind; we are not buffered along like ships on a rough sea. If we choose we can become co-creators with the world soul and this certainly is the future that Calleman sees, one where mankind awakens and works in conjunction with the forces that be, rather than at odds with them.

This is a fascinating book, packed with quite an astounding level of research. The historical detail is to be marvelled at. It is a volume requiring a number of readings to get to grip with a totally new way of understanding our history and our possible future.

This is a very relevant work for an age of conflict where new paradigms are needed to see beyond our current crisis.

– Reviewed by Robert Burns in New Dawn No. 88