| December 12th, 2005 07:19 PM |
|
|
| Ten Thousand Motels |
Did Drug Use Open
Did Drug Use Open
Up Ancient Spiritual Worlds?
Western Daily Press - UK
12-11-5
Ancient mysteries author Graham Hancock is no stranger to controversy - for his books and TV series generate a fierce academic backlash or their themes become wildly exaggerated in certain sections of the media. Yet he has millions of readers around the world who remain hungry for his profound and provocative insights into the lives of our distant ancestors. And his new book, Supernatural: Meetings With The Ancient Teachers Of Mankind, will surely be no exception - and he's the first to admit it - as it makes a case for the reality of the supernatural.
"Now I'm exploring the possibility of beings which inhabit parallel dimensions we can relate to, I'm likely to get even more flak," he frankly told me at his 200-year-old townhouse in Bath this week.
Graham attempts to explain why, about 50,000 years ago, humans suddenly began to think creatively after having evolved anatomically millions of years before.
He believes that it was due to altered states of consciousness (ASCs) triggered by experimentation with hallucinogenic plants, such as ayahuasca, datura root and the psilocybin or "magic" mushroom.
He suggests that art and religion can be traced back to these ASCs experienced by ancient shamans and their communities.
Graham champions the view of South African anthropologist Professor David Lewis-Williams that strange symbols and figures repeated in ancient cave and rock art around the world - including creatures which appear to be part human and part animal - are the artistic record of drug-induced trance states in which the supernatural was encountered.
To support his theory, Graham went to live with tribesmen in Peru and underwent the effects of psychoactive plants himself.
"It was very much a life-altering experience for me because it impressed upon me as never before the relative nature of reality," he said.
"I just can't be confident that this material world I touch and feel and function in physically is the sum total of reality. There's much more, and it's more than likely that consciousness can survive death in some way - it's separate from the body and a very mysterious force.
"I have had direct experience of a parallel reality and I don't believe my brain made it up." Graham has found that everywhere through history the same entities have appeared to people in the visions induced by ASCs, accounting for, among other things, fairies, elves, angels and even UFO abductions.
But are they "merely" visions, or hallucinations? Graham thinks not. He likens the brain to a TV receiver capable of tuning in to transmissions from other dimensions, or realities, the "spirit realms", if you like.
He thinks a vital message from these realms, left by our "ancient teachers" - non-physical intelligences - may lie in our DNA, where it has been waiting for us since the beginning of life on Earth.
GRAHAM said it was essential for him to experience ASCs himself in order to research his book. "I do feel there's a very important issue here concerning our consciousness and our sovereignty over it, concerning areas of consciousness we are willing to explore and not willing to explore," he said.
"Everything I have learned about this subject has made clear to me the fundamental importance of ASCs. I feel our society is making a very serious error, cutting us off from these areas and demonising and criminalising their exploration.
"I didn't have a view on that before. I never really thought about the drug laws, that for taking a hallucinogenic plant someone can go to prison for seven or eight years."
Graham pointed out that our society favoured a "problem-solving consciousness", out of which many good things valued in the modern world, including our economic and technological progress had come. It was a very important part of consciousness, but it wasn't the whole story of the human being.
"We have been encouraged to value only one aspect," he said. "There are other areas of experience which we have demonised, which are regarded as drug-taking if we seek that experience. I think we are forgetting this at our peril. I think it's a terrible error.
"The right of the state to invade an individual's own head in their own house where they are not interfering with others - I don't see that the state should have that right. Having gone through my experience and researched this book on the role of ASCs I have come to feel this is an issue worth pursuing, and I do intend to speak out about it."
|
| December 12th, 2005 07:29 PM |
|
|
| kath |
doood.....the walls are melting...... |
| December 12th, 2005 07:38 PM |
|
|
| sirmoonie |
Yeah!
Acid!
Do more acid!
This one time I was playing golf on acid and I drove the ball right through the cockpit window of a 737 landing about 3/4 of a mile away. It was great. |
| December 12th, 2005 07:53 PM |
|
|
| Ten Thousand Motels |
quote:
kath wrote:
doood.....the walls are melting......
Are they? I'm not so sure anymore. 
[Edited by Ten Thousand Motels] |
| December 13th, 2005 12:58 AM |
|
|
| Brainbell Jangler |
Not a new idea; at least as old as R. Gordon Wasson's "Soma" and the work of Terence McKenna. I think he's onto something, though, even if he is on something, too.
I made the same argument for the freedom to alter one's own consciousness in Larry Tribe's Constitutional Law class over 15 years ago. |
| December 13th, 2005 09:10 AM |
|
|
| Ramrod |
I think that's a great post. The altered states of consciousness that the ancients experienced was what helped evolve the species from ape to beyond. Except maybe a little longer than 50,000 years ago. |
| December 13th, 2005 10:10 AM |
|
|
| lotsajizz |
playing football on acid can be/was problematic |
| December 13th, 2005 11:56 PM |
|
|
| Brainbell Jangler |
Perhaps. But Dock Ellis of the Pittsburgh Pirates pitched a no-hitter against the San Diego Padres on June 12, 1970 while tripping on acid.
www.sirbacon.org/4membersonly/docellis.htm
www.snopes.com/sports/baseball/ellis.asp |
|
