So last night I listened to the interview with author Daniel Pinchbeck on Coast to Coast AM. It was very instructive. Not so much because of any information Pinchbeck conveyed, but to hear the difference in “paradigms” between him and host George Noory.

Noory is a great interviewer, I will give him that. But I’m never sure, when he’s asking questions, how much of it is his own thoughts, how much is his writers, and how much of it they are just asking because they know that’s what their listeners want and/or need to hear. In any event, hearing their style of thought paired off again Pinchbeck’s was pretty interesting.

Pinchbeck, I would dare to claim, thinks much more along the lines that I do. He seems to be first and foremost interested in the imagination, and in how symbols operate in the imagination. He’s also into shamanism and psychedelics. He seems to be much more interested in what’s possible than in nailing down the “real.” At a certain point in the conversation, Noory asked him if he believed the Mayans were in contact with aliens. And Pinchbeck said, “Well, I don’t necessarily believe in anything.” Noory was shocked. “What?!” he exclaimed. Then he made Pinchbeck go back and elucidate. Pinchbeck referred back to Jung, who took the stance that he can only rely on what he knows, and can only know what he has experienced. Since he’s never experienced aliens, or at least not in Mayan times, he’s not able to make any kind of definitive statement. Even if he had experienced them, it’s unlikely he would say categorically that they are real, since he seems to believe that even things that are real have roots in the imagination and the mind of the experiencer.

If you’re a regular listener of Coast to Coast, this is not a frequently championed viewpoint. The sort of omni-jective “Everything’s real and everything’s not real” is sort of counter to what most of the guests come onto the show saying. Each person generally believes they have the answer and can give it to you (often for a modest fee). So it was very refreshing to hear PInchbeck subtly blowing all that away. Of course, Noory seemed to not be able to get past that. They would talk about aliens or something, and Noory would blurt out, “BUT ARE THEY REAL??” And Pinchbeck would sort of pause and say, “Well, it’s possible…”

The whole thing goes very much to the heart of what I talked about in my post on the “New” New Age. I think Noory is part of the old paradigm of looking at the paranormal & mystical, and Pinchbeck is more of the new, like us. Not to say that the old-fashioned one is bad, outdated or irrelevant - far from it. I just think that Noory represents a much more literalist way of approaching the “other side.” And Pinchbeck is much more of the “stream-crossing” variety that we’ve discussed. In fact, a few days before he was on the show, I discovered quite accidentally that Pinchbeck is involved in the creation of a new magazine called Metacine (pronounced like “medicine”) the stated purpose of which is to foster a new paradigm of thinking about this type of thing. He uses the term “New Edge” instead of “New Age” to describe a way of thinking which combines mysticism, ecology, science, economics, etc in an umbrella of individual responsibility and experimentation. It actually sounds pretty cool, and I’m thinking of trying to rework a few pieces of writing from this site to submit there.

The other thing I though was cheesy was that Noory was very hesitant to listen to what Pinchbeck was saying about the use of psychedelics as a tool of exploration. When he brought it up, it seemed like Noory just sort of quickly cut him off, and then re-worded what Pinchbeck was saying into something about weird “taking drugs”. It just seems like sort of a goofy thing to be scared to talk about - especially if that’s part of the specialty of the person you’re interviewing. Noory was much much more interested in talking about prophecies and “end times” and shit like that. Which is interesting - to a certain extent - but it’s unfortunate that they had the opportunity to really explore new angles and sort of blew it. At least in my eyes.