“The nine-story Mayan pyramids are thus telling us that consciousness is created in a hierarchical way and that each Underworld stands on the foundation of another,” writes Calleman. The initial level, starting thirteen hablatuns or 16.4 billion years ago, proceeds from the inception of matter in the “Big Bang,” through the development of cellular life on Earth. During the second step, beginning thirteen alautuns or 820 million years ago, animal life evolved out of cells. The third underworld, starting thirteen kinchiltuns or 41 million years ago, saw the evolution of primates and the first, rudimentay use of tools by human ancestors. During the fourth underworld, beginning thirteen kalabtuns or 2 million years ago, tribal organization began among the ancestors of Homo sapiens. During the next underworld, starting thirteen piktuns or 102,000 years ago, Homo sapiens emerged, developing spoken language. The sixth underworld comprises the Great Cycle of thirteen baktuns, beginning 5,125 years before the approaching birthdate, when we created patriarchical civilization, law, and written language – Calleman calls this the National Underworld. The seventh step, dubbed the Planetary Underworld, thirteen katuns or 256 years, beginning in AD 1755, introduced industrialization, electricity, technology, modern democracy, gene splicing, and the atom bomb. Our knowledge became Faustian power over the physical world. The eighth level – the Galactic Underworld – thirteen tuns or 12.8 years, began in 1999, with the development of the Internet into a global communications infrastructure. The final step, thirteen uinals or 260 days, will lead, Calleman believes, to the attainment of “nondual cosmic consciousness” across the Earth. By the end of this Universal Underworld, humanity will have crossed the threshold of the abyss, confronting the shadow projections of the Apocalypse, to become conscious creators of reality.
   Each step on the pyramid “corresponds to a certain frequency of consciousness,” in which evolution operates twenty times faster than the previous phase. According to Calleman’s thesis, “In the Galactic Underworld, as much change must happen in a tun (360 days) as happened in a katun (19.7 years) during the Planetary Underworld, or in a baktun (394 years) of the National Underworld.” Perhaps for this reason, the twenty-year “Generation Gap” of the previous era no longer seems applicable to our situation, which requires increasing flexibility and adaptability to navigate. Institutional structures formed over the last 250 years of the Planetary Underworld, from the nuclear family to the nation-state, seem to be losing their stability as we go deeper into the Galactic Underworld. At the same time, scientific breakthroughs proliferate, as we receive increasingly accurate data about the universe in which we are embedded. Calleman believes that understanding the spiral dynamics of evolution expressed through the Mayan calendar is, in itself, an aspect of the Divine Plan: “Taking responsibility as a cocreator with God presupposes a basic understanding of how creation works.”
   Confusingly, Calleman’s interpretation of the Mayan calendar puts the crescendo of all human history back a year – even more breathtakingly close to our dangerously fragmented present tense. According to his thesis, based on his own interpretation of the sacred calendar’s energetic shifts, global humanity will attain nondualistic enlightened consciousness by the end of October 2011, “It will simply not be possible not to be enlightened after October 28, 2011,” he confidently asserts, “or at least from a certain time afterward when the new reality has definitely manifested.” The final year of the calendar will be used, he conjectures, for celebrating and adjusting to our new circumstances of unlimited bliss and creative freedom…
   According to Calleman’s study of the Mayan knowledge system, within each of the nine underworlds, there are cyclical pulsations of light and dark energies, which he calls “Days” and “Nights,” Whether 16 billion years or 260 days long, each underworld contains a pattern of seven days and six nights, a partition into thirteen stages, each stage represented by a different Mayan deity. With its Seven Days of Creation, Calleman’s reading of the Mayan calendar neatly enfolds the Judeo-Christian creation myth presented in Genesis. He argues that the energy shifts that manifest within each cycle become predictable, once the entire pattern is understood. According to Calleman, the crucial forward step in the evolution of consciousness takes place during the “Fifth Day” of each underworld, ruled by the energy of Quetzalcoatl. The previous form of consciousness asserts itself through final acts of destruction during the Fifth Night that follows, ruled by the energy of Tezcatlipoca. The 256-year cycle of thirteen katuns that began with the Industrial Revolution [the Planetary Underworld] reached its darkest point during the Fifth Night of 1932 to 1952, the period of Nazism, the Second World War, the Holocaust, and the dropping of atomic bombs on Japanese cities (in the 5,125-year National Cycle that preceded it, the Fifth Night, AD 434 to 829, corresponded to the collapse of the Roman Empire). The cycle of thirteen tuns that began in November 1999 will, likewise, reach its midnight hour, its involutionary crescendo, during the year 2008. Interestingly, various studies on the imminent peak oil crisis point to 2008 as the year when resources of energy, food, and water will become critically stressed.
   Calleman proposes that this period could see a global financial and ecological collapse, accompanied by nightmarish misuses of power on the part of the ruling elite. “In Night Five, ruled by Tezcatlipoca, the lord of darkness…we will see the last desperate and at the same time most forceful, attempt to secure control by the forces seeking to maintain dominance.” Such an interregnum could also provide the opportunity to circulate a new vision of what this world could be, and disseminate the tools and principles to implement it."

-Daniel Pinchbeck
2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl