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297 of 321 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Best book on 2012, March 21, 2009
This review is from: Fractal Time: The Secret of 2012 and a New World Age (Hardcover)
This is the best of the 9 books on 2012 I have read. It draws from a number of sources, and leaves you in absolute awe, realizing there can be no doubt that the world as we know it will soon be very different. Gregg cites from a wide variety of countries and cultures that have pinpointed this time: India, China, Tibet, as well as the Aztecs, Mayans, Hopis, and even the Bible Code.
Gregg takes on the conventional idea of global warming being a function of air pollution, showing that the warming and melting of the ice caps is simply a part of the cycle. He discusses the Hindu tradition of "the day of Brahman" and the "night of Brahman" and shows how these cycles are actually backed by science.
I had heard before different ideas about time being "the fourth dimension" and "motion in space" but Gregg's layman explanation bumped up my understanding of the time/space continuum considerably. I now feel I have a deeper understanding of time and how it moves in spiral cycles which create a tendency or energy potential for certain events. As an amateur astrologer who has been able to predict critical events for friends, I always warned them that the energy is coming their way and what they do with it is up to them. Gregg shares that view in this book, showing us that the cycles are not destiny--but rather opportunities.
The best part of the book is chapter 5 in which the code is given to predict your own future and understand your past, based on cycles. I was in such a hurry to learn this that I tried to do it before finishing the chapter and got confused about the process. I was wondering, why isn't this working? I could not see any significant patterns at all. Then after reading the chapter and getting more clear on the instructions, I did it again. I was amazed to find that it worked with near 100% accuracy in various issues of my life, such as an eating disorder with its various stages of healing, my spiritual life, and my parents' divorce followed by loss and betrayal in relationships.
But there is also a code for deciphering world events, and Gregg gives several examples as well as the method for calculation. (By the way he has calculators on his web site if you don't care to learn the process of these cycles.)
If you really want to prepare for 2012, this is a must-read. Unlike many of the books out there, this is a book of hope with a vision of possibilities. According to Gregg, this is a once-in-26,000 year opportunity! We have the power within our hearts to make it heaven on earth. He cites science for all this; it is not merely some new age theory!
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500 of 555 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
2012 Junk Food, April 5, 2009
This review is from: Fractal Time: The Secret of 2012 and a New World Age (Hardcover)
If you want to see a great treatment of the author's approach check out this You Tube video 'Gregg Braden Debunked' My main concern with this book is that the author jumps on the coat tails of others and presents their information as his own and during the acquisition many times does not deliver an accurate message. My concerns are with his content, delivery, and his presumptive authority on the subjects he is discussing. Writers such as Joe (aka Jose) Arguelles pointed out that time was fractal back in 1987 in 'The Mayan Factor'. Frank Waters in Mexico 'Mystique: Coming 6Th World Of Consciousness' wrote about Mayan time cycles in 1975. The Maya, by Michael Coe appeared in first edition in 1966. Terrence McKenna pointed out time is fractal with his TimeWave theory. Tony Shearer was also an early source. The Olmec or Mayan or whoever invented the long count calendar are the ONLY ones who really understand what it is talking about. Non-Mayan speakers on a Mayan subject most often walk on thin ice or speak nonsense as often occurs in archeological circles. Regarding calendars there are also other cyclical calenderic systems from many cultures including the Chinese and their famous animal-oriented zodiac. Example: "In addition to the 2012 winter solstice marking the end of the Mayan Great Cycle, December 21 also signals the completion of an even larger cycle: the great or precessional year that began approximately 260000 years ago." The existence, length, and timing of the precessional year is a subject of great debate. The book is trying to say that December 21 2012 also represents the end of the cycle and the dawning of the age of Aquarius. However, no one knows in what year such a theoretical transition occurs let alone the day. According to Max Hiedel this transition to Aquarius occurred back in 498 AD. Based on other correlations it will not happen until 600 years from now. And the book does not tell you that it stole, I mean got, the idea of 2012 corresponding to age precession from John Major Jenkins which doesn't make it fact either. In fact the book lifted much of JMJs work in Galactic Alignment for this book. Anthony F. Aveni is a great authority to balance all of the 2012 hype.) Additionally, although our Gregorian year starts in January, the Zodiacal year begins with Aries in April. How can the book select the ending of the Piscean cycle with the ending of the great year of precession?. Indeed Vera W. Reid in 'Towards Aquarius' (1968) makes is clear that a cycle is a CYCLE, it has no beginning or ending, it just is. The book introduces the *concept* of the ending of a year of precession (and *when*) with absolutely nothing to back it up. The books statement about Dec 21 2012 'ending' a cycle of the great calendar of precession, and many other parts of this book, is straight from John Major Jenkins in Galactic Alignment. Many times when concepts are lifted from others there is not adequate credit. And with so much lifting you wonder what is the unique message of the book. The book also has difficulty when it attempts to borrow JMJs ideas and use the Vedic time periods of Yugas and correlate then to *fit* the Mayan calendar. There is an extremely wide set of interpretations of how long each Yuga is. Even the Kali Yuga alone has many different interpretations to it's duration from approximately 5000 years long to 432,000 years long. The book also says that the level of our consciousness has to do with how close we are to the center of the galaxy. This is clearly a silly flub as our solar system is way out in the edge of the Milky Way. What he meant to say is that consciousness may be affected by our (earth's) relative [vertical] position to the galactic ecliptic. However, even that's a stretch. So this is just one example of how you have to keep filter what he is saying. We are talking about metaphysics here and the more concrete you try to be with your statements the more error prone you will be. The domain does not fit tight conceptual models. It is clear that the book is forcefully folding and fitting in different concepts that do not belong together. He attempts to do this through a combination of fluffy language and just plain wrong conveyance of facts. Most of this book is pretty beginner material and folks who have been around the block will find it sparse with little to offer. It rides heavily on the coat tales of others without due reference. If you like it fluffy and to be told they way things are instead of digging yourself for the facts and realizations then please enjoy it. If you want some solid information on Fractal Time you should stick to McKenna, Shearer, and Joe Arguelles (with strong filters at Dreamspell which is nonsense). If you want better, much more accurate information, around 2012 and the Maya then go to the original works that the book is copying. Your first and top pick should be John Major Jenkins (Galactic Alignment). Carl Calleman also has an interesting book (The Mayan Calendar and the Transformation of Consciousness). But beware, Callemans' book is a wide mix of concepts and he loosely passes off as Mayan things that are not clearly so. Calleman also believes that Sri Kalki Bhagavan is the Kalki Avatar and that Europe, specifically his beloved Sweden, is the center of earth's energetic pulses that guide evolution. P.S. The author is even more 'interesting' in live spoken word. Go listen to the C2C interview with the author on Mar 17 2009. The author claimed that scientists have found that the center of the Milky Way is a source of tremendous energy and that scientists by studying ice cores can prove when we are close to or far away from this source at the center of the Milky Way (or 'Cyclic-tilting' as he alternately called it). It seems like he is distorting the findings of Paul LaViolette in this statement. He also referred to a study in the Journal Nature which had nothing to do with his claims (I think he was confusing a study of disc-accretion with the point he was trying to make.) He also claimed that the star purportedly next to the black hole at the center of the Milky Way (the only galaxy by the way that has a black hole and a massive star next to it) is 'the' brightest one in the galaxy. Current thinking gives that title to the Peony nebula star. There are the remains of a massive star cluster near the massive black hole but there is no single companion massive star next to it. In fact the most massive stars known just now are in star cluster NGC 3603 in the Milky Way. Regarding the Dendera Zodiac he claims there is an 'inordinate' amount of space between Pisces and Aquarius ('precisely where we are now'). Go look at an image of it. Mazzoroth has a large one you can read. There is no unusual gap between the two signs. He also said there is 'a mysterious document encoded on that stone called The Program of Destiny' which links to a Sumerian text. Someone needs to update google to find any matches of 'The Program of Destiny' to Dendera. Actually the author is referring to a statement made by John Lash ('the programmes of destiny') documented by Colin Wilson in Atlantis Blueprint. I think the author means the Sumerian 'Tablet of Destiny'. [...]. I could go on with these examples. But I hope you get my point.
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156 of 170 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
His math does not compute, May 25, 2009
This review is from: Fractal Time: The Secret of 2012 and a New World Age (Hardcover)
Mr. Braden has cobbled together a bunch of different (though interesting)ideas and attempted to link them mathematically, and he has failed at this abysmally.
Try building a spreadsheet off this man's math... I knew I was in trouble when I encountered the chart on 209-210 which gave the incorrect decimal equivalents for the months (December, for example, should fall in the range of .918 to .999, not .12). Then, the step-by-step examples he gives alternate between accurate to the day, to the month, or to the year. If you are going to apply math, you must be consistent. Use 5125.975 for December 21, 2012, NOT the rounded 5125. Converting dates accurately to three digits, December 7, 1941 is 5054.936, giving a next cycle date of March 25, 1985, a full year after Braden's calculations (March 1984) and a year and a half after the destruction of KAL Flight 007. This is not accurate enough to be useful. Further, he calculates his NEXT cycle off his manufactured date of March 1984 rather than using the actual date of the KAL Flight 007 crisis. We used an actual date for Pearl Harbor in the beginning, so why not this time? And if everything is cyclical, then the Pearl Harbor date is an estimation of some crisis years before it...
The whole Time Code Calculator makes a number of assumptions that are not reasonable. First, all calculations are based off an end of time on the winter solstice 2012. Different Mayan calendar experts suggest a variety of possible dates in this vicinity, but as the Mayan calendar was not based on 365.25 days, it is really impossible to pinpoint (as is the start of the calendar, which many put at 3115 BC, not 3113). Second, the choice of phi as a ratio seems completely arbitrary. Again, I point you to other Mayan calendar experts (Ian Lundgren, for example) who have broken the Mayan calendar into nine stages, going back to 16.4 billion years ago, with each stage being 1/20 the length of the stage prior, offering a different cycle ratio. Third, to use this formula for predicting crisis conditions or any other types of conditions, it means those conditions will keep repeating closer and closer together, until, as we near the end of time date, a new crisis (or love or abandonment or success) will be upon us every day.
By contrast, on p. 143, Braden applies the phi ratio to his age rather than to dates in his life, and the math results in a cycle that repeats exactly every 6.798 years. By this reasoning, someone who is molested at age four is going to encounter similar conditions every 2-1/2 years. Does this make sense to anyone?
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