- 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.
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- "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.
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- Graham attempts to explain why, about 50,000 years ago,
humans suddenly began to think creatively after having evolved anatomically
millions of years before.
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- 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.
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- He suggests that art and religion can be traced back
to these ASCs experienced by ancient shamans and their communities.
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- 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.
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- To support his theory, Graham went to live with tribesmen
in Peru and underwent the effects of psychoactive plants himself.
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- "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.
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- "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.
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- "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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- "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.
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- "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."
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- 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.
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- "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.
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- "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."
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- http://www.westpress.co.uk/displayNode.jsp?nodeId=145809&
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