End of the world as we know it

This year's final phase of the Maya Calendar has sparked one of the biggest doomsday phenomenons of all time. Speaking to a calendar expert, JOEP DERKSEN reveals the financial and natural collapse we face in 2012.

What goes on in the mind of the so-called doomsday prophets? Consider those who predict the end of the world and suppose they are right. Who would remain to confirm their uncanny accuracy?
And when they are wrong, which until now has always been the case, they are the laughing stock of the planet. But 2012 will be another chance for daring prophets of doom, and this year they have already suggested it is the end of life as we know it.

The ominous omens are abundant: the most ancient of all democracies, Greece, is about to tumble. Along with them the old Roman empire (Italy), taking down with them Spain, Portugal and possibly even France and Belgium. It is just too bad that we had a lousy summer, otherwise global warming would be another hot prophet topic. That subject is about to end in the same deep drawer as acid rain and the Y2K bug.

Still, millions of people around the world are anxiously waiting for Friday 21 December 2012. On this date, at 21:12, the famous – or notorious – Mayan Calendar ends. According to their belief, the world is destroyed and recreated after every pictun cycle of about 7,885 years. Peter Toonen (53) is one of the acclaimed experts on the Mayan calendar. He is not only an energy coach at the Andromeda Academy in Middelie, North Holland, but also runs his own practice in personal coaching, aura reading and healing. He is the co-author of 10 books and winner of the Frontier Award for his work in spirituality and science. On his website, he counts down the days, hours, minutes and seconds until the world as we know it comes to a standstill.

“There is no such thing as the Mayan Calendar,” he explains. “There were 17 calendars altogether. The calendar that ends in 2012 is the Long Count calendar. It started on 11 August 3,114 BC and will complete the end of 13 periods of 144.000 days.” When it does, Toonen does not think that the world will end in a big bang. Instead, he is convinced that the lives we live will be subject of investigation to many future scientists. Did the people in the early twenty-first century really listen to a small group of people who controlled politics, stock exchanges and the global financial system? According to Toonen, these are the questions that will be asked of us.

“This is related to the environmental, energy and money crisis,” he says. “Throughout the past five thousand years, we have become so materialistic that this system will collapse and transform to something new.” As he sees it, we have been ruled by a small group of men at the top. After the Mayan calendar end-date, this will change. “I see that things start to come from bottom up, just like the Arab Spring in the North African countries,” he says. “The current cycle started 5,000 years ago in the Middle East and that’s exactly where it will end. Ultimately, it will be up to the women. When they interfere, they will seize the power.’

This change will not bring the Armageddon so many would have us believe, but will be something equally frightening to a great many individuals: the collapse of our current financial system. According to Toonen, our current dependency on banks and multinational corporations rather than politics must end. “Only in this way, a new system will evolve. One where the richest people will not become richer and where the poorest people will not become poorer. The value of the euro is in the hands of a few computers and a small group of traders,” he says. “When an old man at the IMF cannot keep his wiener in his pants, the value of the euro falls.”

Currently, too much power is in the hands of these people, who Toonen says may not be the most suited to their positions. He sites research published in the magazine Intermediair that suggests 20 percent of managers are psychopaths, obsessed with control and power. “With the current technology, too much power is given to too few people. The Mayan Calendar indicates the moment when the current financial system will end. We just don’t know whether it will deflate or explode.”

And if this were not enough, Toonen predicts that nature will change as well. “For the first time in 26,000 years, the earth and sun will align at the centre of the Milky Way galaxy,” he says. “The electromagnetic fields could turn around, causing storms, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions as we have never seen before.” At a certain point, Toonen too sounds like a doomsday prophet, and perhaps we cannot hide from our predicted doom. But he offers a hint of encouragement that 2012 may not be the end of the world, but the next step towards reaching our highest state of self-fulfillment. “The crisis we now face, I call the awareness crisis. We ask ourselves who we are and what we want to achieve.”
Artikel verscheen in The Holland Times, editie januari 2012.