Thom Hartmann: Well you know how sometimes you know what you know is right, and sometimes you know what you know is wrong, and sometimes you think you know what you know, and sometimes you think you don’t know what you don’t know, and sometimes what you know you don’t know, you know, all that kind of stuff.

Well, as the Firesign Theater points out, sometimes, "You know that you’re wrong, but you fear you’re right, you suspect you’re out of sync, you think that you’re out of your mind, everything you know is wrong". Is everything you know wrong about the year 2012?

William Gladstone is on the line with us, and just a point of personal transparency here, I’ve known William Gladstone for well over a decade, and I consider him a great guy, a brilliant writer, a friend and somebody I take seriously, so this is a little, you know, our “everything you know is wrong” segment, a little light-hearted but this is ... William Gladstone is the author of a new book called “The Twelve”. The website is 12thebook.com and "The Twelve" is “12.21.12 - A New Beginning”, the subtitle. William, Welcome to the show.

William Gladstone: Thanks so much for having me, Thom. It’s really a pleasure to be with you and your audience.

Thom Hartmann: Thank you. It’s great to have you here. Is the world going to end on December 21st, 2012, Bill?

William Gladstone: Absolutely not. The world as we know it will end, but a brand new world will start. I’ve actually studied the actual Mayan prophecies as well as prophecies from many other cultures, and there really is something that is going to happen in 2012, but it’s not this doom and gloom apocalypse that Hollywood is presently trying to sell, and that frankly thousands of people are trying to cash in on. There’s a lot of people trying to do the Y2K thing all over again, and get everyone to get into bunkers and worry about their own personal survival. Something major is happening in 2012, but it’s not what the general media right now is promoting.

Thom Hartmann: Right. Now,your book is a novel but is based on a real experience, and it involves multiple religions that share multiple, that share essentially a common worldview that sees to tie back into the Mayans, and this, you know, boggles my mind. Riff on this for a minute.

William Gladstone: Well, what's interesting is that even though everyone thinks that 2012 is the Mayans, which is appropriate because it’s their calendar, which is a phenomenal event, because we’re not talking about crossing over a thousand years, we’re taking about twenty-six thousand years. This particular Mayan calendar that ends on December 21st, 2012, is the end of a twenty-six thousand year cycle. Now there’s other cultures that have also delved into the end of their cycles. We’re talking about the Hindus with their Kali Yuga. They don’t necessarily have the exact same date as December 21st, 2012, but they do have that something major is happening, that there is some kind of vibrational change if you will.

Thom Hartmann: Right. In the Hindu calendar, we’re not in the Kali Yuga yet. What's the yuga we're that we're in right now?

William Gladstone: The iron.

Thom Hartmann: Yeah, I forget the Hindu word for it. [Kali -ed.]

William Gladstone: Yeah, I’m not a Hindu scholar, but it is partly we’re going from a denser age to a less dense age, and this is basically parallel with the message of the Mayans. However what’s most interesting about the Mayans, at least the ones that I’ve spoken with, from the scholars, is the Mayans subscribe to the idea of free will. There’s actually a bifurcation if you will, and there’s a choice for humanity to make. And, what really got me interested in writing “The Twelve” was the work that I’ve been doing for many years with scientists such as Dr. Ervin László about the breakdown of the ecology of the planet and the fact that we are reaching a tipping point. And from a scientific point of view, 2012 is just about the time where we either make some significant changes, or in certain ecological areas at least, it may be too late to change what we’re doing.

So it was very interesting to me that from both ancient spiritual traditions, modern religions, I mean, you know, you have the Twelve Apostles, and the Second Coming of Christ, the Messiah of the Jews, you know, anyway, a lot of different cultures.What most interesting is, from the scientific point of view, and if you will, traditional cultural point of view, something does seem to be very amazing about this particular time to be on the planet and December 21st, 2012, does seem to be the focal point.

Thom Hartmann: It’s fascinating. I’m curious. In my book, "Threshold", I talk about how we’re standing at all of these thresholds, I’m generalizing it. You know, 2012, the Mayan calendar and all that always seems to me, and continues, I’m frankly very skeptical about the “spiritual dimension” of it. You know, there’s a certain amount of group think here, and, but the kind of scary thing is that group think can create reality. We can create reality if enough of us think this, and if enough religions in the world and enough people are.

But in your book, “The Twelve”, we're talking with William Gladstone. His book "The Twelve", 12thebook.com is the website. In your book, William Gladstone, you’re talking about this, you’re saying, as Ravi Batra who’s an economist who's on our show regularly, he’s got a new book called "The New Golden Age". He’s a professor of economics at Southern Methodist University. And his whole point is that it’s going to get so bad that there’s going to be a revolution against political corruption, and against economic corruption, and Ravi in his book actually even throws in spiritual corruption, although he doesn’t talk about it much on the radio. And that we’re going to reboot basically, our culture and our society.

William Gladstone: It’s very interesting. “The Twelve” actually is very, very close to that exact same image, of course, and vision. Of course as it’s a novel, and because it’s primarily written to entertain, and it is very entertaining, everyone is enjoying the read, but the basic message is very much the same in that our systems have broken down. And I know that you’re not into the spiritual metaphor so much, but if you think of it as a rebirth, well there’s a certain amount of pain that happens at the rebirth, and I think some of the negative things that we’re seeing right now are because things have to break down before they can build back up.

And we are going to be in for some unpleasant events, no doubt, but I’m very optimistic that if we can galvanize enough people, and this is the main reason I wrote the novel, “The Twelve”, is to get people talking about the reality that every single human being has the power to make a difference, and if they can communicate together and collectively cooperate, we don’t need to depend upon our existing institutions, almost all of which are broken, and are not going to be the solution. I would not advise anyone to look for the solution for any problems that they see coming from our existing institutions. It’s just not going to happen.

Thom Hartmann: Right. So where do we look?

William Gladstone: We look to grass roots organizations. We look to communication, and we look to the basic values that really, you know, are at the backbone of this country, and really the world, and all civilizations that have succeeded. Integrity, hard work, caring about others. The basic principles actually will get us through, because from a scientific point of view, we have enough for everyone. We do not have scarcity. Scarcity is man-created at this point. It is not the natural course of events.

Thom Hartmann: Right. Well, we could debate that, but I won’t, but it seems to me that if we’re looking at making a transformation, it’s going to involve, of necessity, transforming our culture. I mean, that’s the premise of “Threshold”. A big piece of our culture is our religions. Are you suggesting that our religions are going to transform themselves?

William Gladstone: Absolutely. They have to. I mean, that’s the hardest challenge, and that is the main focus of the book. What I’ve done is I’ve incorporated Buddhism, Hinduism, Judaism, Christianity, even Atheism, because Atheism in a sense is a religion too, and there really is a way in which all of the spiritual beliefs at least behind these religions can unify. And they must unify, because we have to move from our small views of our particular group / family / nation, to something much more universal. Because we are much more connected than we’ve ever realized before, and unless we find a way to create a new story, that combines and respects the stories that have gotten us where we are, but builds on them in a productive new way, I think we are doomed. I really do.

Thom Hartmann: Ouch. So we figure out how to do this by reading things like “The Twelve”?

William Gladstone: That’s only the first step. I have to say that it’s only the first step. My goals with “The Twelve” are much beyond what normal authors are doing. We’ve already got some other web sites that we’re producing planetchange.tv, planetchange2012.com, we’re creating a world-wide event in 2012 to galvanize people

Thom Hartmann: There’s a major movie coming out, of course.

William Gladstone: And a major movie. I mean, we really are hoping to reach tens of millions if not hundreds of millions of people through the events that we have planned, and they all are about getting a dialogue going about the issues that matter. But in a way that does not serve any existing special interest group. We really think that we have to start fresh and that’s the real goal behind the novel “The Twelve”.

Thom Hartmann: Yeah. The essence of it, let’s reboot the planet, let’s reboot our culture, let’s reboot our spirituality. A fascinating concept. The book is “The Twelve”, it’s a novel, “12.21.12 – A New Beginning”. The author, William Gladstone. The website 12thebook.com Bill Gladstone, thanks for being with us today.

William Gladstone: Thank you so much, Thom.

Thom Hartmann: Good luck with the book.

William Gladstone: And good luck to all your listeners. We really can make a difference; we just have to be focused.

Thom Hartmann: There you go.

Transcribed by Gerard Aukstiejus.