Conference in Burbank will focus on positives of 2012

By Dana Bartholomew, Staff Writer
Source: www.dailynews.com
March 12 2009

First came Y2K and the end of cyber-civilization.

Now it's 2012, with some New Age doomsayers predicting the impending end of the world.

But others say the global cataclysm foretold by notions of Mayan prophecy - and the upcoming movie "2012" - can be avoided, an apocalypse averted.

Beginning today, up to 1,000 New Age hopefuls will gather in Burbank for a three-day "2012 Quantum Leap" to create a better world.

Call it 2012 Lite. Or Light.

"Right now, there's a big economic, political and social shift taking place in the world," said transformational artist Freydoon Rassouli, 65, of Encino, who will guide participants in fashioning art to further cosmic unity. "We will be a lot more powerful globally in 2012. There won't be an apocalypse.

"It'll be a great shift to a better, united world."

The new-world confab, at $95 per person at the Burbank Marriott Hotel, will occur in a city already famous for aeronautic and media flights of fancy.

The "passionate action celebration" will offer the latest in New Age authors, musicians, healers and sages.

Event founders Sri Ram Kaa and Kira Raa, billed as "the mystical couple of our time" and experts on 2012, will focus on the positive aspects of a year capped by the close of President Obama's first term.

"We'll be taking this event to every continent," said Sri Ram Kaa, formerly Gerald Larsen of Seattle, in a phone interview from the couple's TOSA Center for Enlightened Living in New Mexico. "This is the Woodstock of our time."

Other quantum leapers will include New Age celebs like William Henry, who claims to have rediscovered the ancient art of space travel.

Or George Noory, whose late-night radio talk show highlights UFOs to "the hidden harmonic codes of the universe."

There will be reps from the Hopi and Navajo nations, as well as Mayan elders "never before brought to the U.S."

There will be a Tibetan lama who, after living in a cave for 24 years, has emerged because of the urgency of the times.

And there will be a "bliss bar" of raw foods joined by an interactive "chocolate chakra shakedown yoga dance."

For those who drift negative, there's a healing room of crystal bowl sound therapy, shamanic pick-me-ups and Egyptian healing rods.

Artists like Rassouli will guide guests in creating globes of recycled junk mail and an eco-mural to be auctioned for world unity.

Authors will appear with books like "Live Your Wow."

And dreamy sounds will abound, including a band performing "love vibrations."

"My belief is we are in the new dawn," said StewartSt.John, a writer/director/producer and musician from Woodland Hills who will perform "vibrational sound meditations" accompanied by a giant video display. "Light workers who have been holding the vision, who have been uplifting and talking about the new energy paradigm for so long, are making it happen."

Contrast the bright quantum crowd with those who foresee 2012 destruction.

The doomsday prediction, uttered besides other dark prophecies, has for decades foretold a disaster that will befall the planet when the 5,125-year Mayan calendar ends on Dec. 21, 2012.

The upcoming movie "2012," starring John Cusack, centers on a global pole shift that ends in worldwide cataclysm.

New Age naysayers, however, insist 2012 will instead signal a global shift in consciousness and "a return of an era of light." Rather than being a victim of calamity, they say mankind can choose its destiny.

"Because you have all these (prophecies) converging at the same moment, you have the dark side, the Darth Vader side, living in fear," said Kira Raa, a self-proclaimed "angelic oracle" once hailed as Shakira Romano of New Jersey. "But it's time to say, `Enough.'

"It's time to break free of the prophet machine."

Seven years ago, the couple met on spiritualsingles.com. They were married three months later and, after shared visions during meditation, made a beeline from Colorado to New Mexico in search of a crumbling adobe built by an Indian named Adobe Joe.

Together, they co-authored three books on 2012, including "2012 Awakening: Choosing Spirituality or Armageddon."

Today, their 32-acre center is home to Egyptian-style pyramids and other wonders from the New Age pantheon of religions.

"It's important to remember that we are co-creators and that we live in a free-will zone," said Kaa, a Sir Walter Raleigh lookalike with long gray locks. "We get to choose how we live our lives."

From his Encino studio, Rassouli sits among resplendent canvas of flowing earth goddesses, heavenly spirals and bright new worlds. He said his work means to unite a world of opposites - male-female, darkness-light, hot-cold, heaven-Earth, water and dust.

He looks forward to 2012.

"You know what I predict?" asked Rassouli, a native of Iran who has a worldwide cadre of collectors. "It'll take four years for Obama to clean up (this mess), and then it'll be a whole new world that will be built - and we artists and scientists will be the architects of it.

"That's what the essence of our work is, the unity of all people."