Alternative Science & History News

 

Through the Shamans Doorway: An Interview with Graham Hancock
By Glenn Kreisberg

For nearly 20 years Graham Hancock has been investigating a forgotten episode in human history, searching for evidence of a lost civilization. His many best selling books, including Fingerprints of the Gods, Sign of the Seal, and Underworld have been seminal works in the fields of alternative history and archeology providing scientists and researchers with hard facts and evidence that challenge the existing paradigm of conventional wisdom and push the concepts of human origins in profound new directions.

At the CPAK conference, this year held at the University of California at Irvine, I had the opportunity to sit down with Graham to discuss his most recent book Supernatural: Meeting with the Ancient Teachers of Mankind. This book seems to be a departure from Hancock’s previous works, delving more into investigations of the origin of human consciousness rather than civilization. Spurred on by his university studies in Anthropology and a desire to stay fresh and unrepeated, Hancock’s research again challenges current accepted theories regarding the dawn of modern human thought.

His first uncovered mystery: Why were we so incredibly dull? Here, where Hancock’s views usually oppose traditional academics, he found himself right in line and in fact coinciding with the conventional point of view. The fact is we were incredibly dull and unproductive for a very long time; this was no mystery, the fossil record is clear. But why were humans so boring for so long? And, why did that circumstance come to a screeching halt some forty thousand years ago? Hancock explains “It only really becomes mysterious after 40,000 years ago when, as I characterize it, it's as though a light had been switched on in the human brain all around the world at once and the entire suite of behavior that we characterize as modern human behavior was introduced. Not introduced when we became anatomically modern 200,000 years ago, it wasn't introduced until after 40,000 years ago and that's when you see lateral thinking creativity, spiritual and religious ideas all introduced virtually overnight. At the same time that this happens, these incredible paintings, the art of upper Paleolithic Europe, the cave art, the rock art of tribal and indigenous cultures appear all around the world dating roughly from the same period. I realized that is the mystery that I want to pursue. I want to understand why we went through six million years of doing nothing and suddenly switched and why it wasn't connected to any anatomical change? It was a behavioral change obviously deriving from some change in human consciousness.”

Now, there was a mystery worthy for Hancock to investigate…. What abruptly tuned on the switch in our brains that allowed for the transformation from lower to high brain function ushering in spiritual and religious beliefs as well as symbolic thinking, abstract art, language and all the other elements of what we would today call culture.

As asserted by Hancock and supported by the human fossil record the change is not anatomical but behavioral. So, what accounts for that profound change in human behavior after hundreds of thousand and possibly even millions of years? Why did we go through 6 million years of nothing and then seemingly over night we became so very clever?

After first investigating the conventional theories, which went something like…..We (humans) as we came down from the trees, began to walk upright which freed our hands to create. And, what we created were tools which we continued to refine. So, according to scientists and researchers what differentiated humans from lower forms of animals was our ability to walk upright on two legs and make and use tools. Hancock found that explanation lacking. And as of late this has been considered an out-moded theory as it’s been shown that other animals, such as the crow, walk on two legs and use tools to accomplish tasks. Hancock believes it is something different that separates us from animals. It’s the ability to express ourselves through symbolism and creativity.

Hancock began noticing a similarity between ancient rock and cave art and the images and descriptions provided by shamans and healers from indigenous cultures, both past and present. And Hancock realized there was a correlation or connection that spoke to a deeper meaning. “The creators of this fabulous cave art must have experiences an altered state of consciousness as there work depicted this. And while not a soul from that era exists today to tell how and why they made their images, the images themselves speak to the nature of their origin and meaning. We see therianthropes, half man, half beast, in all these cases”. Therianthropes comes from the Greek “therion” meaning “wild beast” and “arthropod”, meaning “man”. Hancock couldn’t help wonder what inspired the artists to make such paintings, which were not portraits depicting real life but images of therianthropes, something obviously the product of an apparent altered state of consciousness. Hancock states “There’s certain characteristic imagery that people in altered states always see. That’s true whether it’s in modern medical research where subjects are given hallucinogens or reports from modern shaman who claims to travel to other worlds in search of spiritual truth and enlightenment. Images of half human intelligent beings, combined with abstract geometrical patterns are examples of images universally seen in altered states of consciousness and universally not seen ordinarily in daily life.” What was the connection that explained the commonality between the images depicted in the cave art, what shamans reportedly encounter and medical research experiments and the findings of their test subjects?

In the past twenty years there has been a great break through in the research surrounding ancient prehistoric cave art proving that there exists a remarkable similarity in cave art found around the world. In Supernatural, Hancock superbly documents these findings. This was part of the mystery that needed looking into. Hancock continues, “And really the latest work in this field has absolutely established beyond any serious shadow of a doubt that these universal features in rock and cave art are to be explained by realizing that the artists were shamans who explored altered states of consciousness. That lead me to ask, ‘What was it that inspired the artists to make those paintings’, when you realize that the very first credible paintings, the art of upper Paleolithic Europe was imagery that was painted not of naturalistic portraits of real life events, but of supernatural beings and I began to feel too that this was a really fascinating area to pursue.”

Known for, almost literally, throwing himself head first into his research (Hancock together with his wife photographer Santha Faiia logged over 2000 dives researching Underworld), Hancock headed to South America to interview shamans and document their experiences. Quickly he realized that the shamanic life revolved around ingesting a hallucinogenic brew called Ayawasca, produced from a combination of jungle plants. The psychoactive ingredient in the Ayawasca is DMT or N-diemethyltryptamine. This compound, found naturally in other plants and fungi around the world, is also produced by the human Pineal Gland located near the center of our brains. It’s interesting to consider that the ancients referred to this gland as the “seat of the soul” or the gland through which the souls enters the body and DMT has been dubbed “the spirit molecule” for the compounds possible connection to our state consciousness. In fact Ayawasca is the hallucinogenic brew that is used by more than seventy different cultures in the Amazon jungle. Ayawasca means the vine of the soul and the vine of the dead, and its primary purpose is for use entering the spirit world to gain knowledge.

That modern shamans access the spirit world by drinking Ayawasca, Hancock believes is a huge clue into the leap in consciousness our ancient ancestors took so long ago. He believes as new plant life was taking hold in Europe after the glaciers receded at the end of the last ice age, humans new to the area, stumbled across psilocybin mushrooms which were ingested as a possible food source and which had unintended consequences. As Hancock explains, the hallucinations that ensued triggered a process, “I think it was a very complex process, but I think that was really at the heart of what was shaking our ancestors up and taking them out of the very ridged and unchanging behavior pattern into a new one. I think these experiences altered the behavior of our ancestors, and by altering their behavior, it altered the substance on which evolutionary processes work and thus it was an evolutionary leap forward. And Hancock further continues, “Shamans still today, in tribal and hunter/gatherers cultures who induce altered states of consciousness by taking hallucinogens or by other methods report that they receive teachings from the beings they encounter in their trance state and I see no reason why it would have been different for our ancestors and the teachings of these spirit beings that they encountered may be precisely what switched them from that ridged pattern that remained unchanging for six million years and turns them into the creatures we have become.”

The implications of these assertions are quite staggering. What Hancock is suggesting is that when we enter an alter state of conscientiousness and that state is taken to the point of hallucinations, that the universal images and beings encountered may be no less real than the reality we experience in everyday life. He believes it’s possible the intelligent beings that pass knowledge to shamans while they’re in induced trances, may actually exist in another dimension of reality only accessed through the shamanic process, a process also experiences by the ancient cave artists.

In fact, Hancock says, the work of South African University Professor David Lewis Williams has convinced the majority of anthropologists and archaeologists around the world that “The astonishing common features in rock and cave art all around the world are to be explained by the fact that we all share the same neurology, and that in altered state of consciousness, therefore somehow we will all have the same experiences.” But that as far as most main stream academics will take it. They just say this is characteristic imagery of disturbed brain chemistry and that is sufficient to explain common features in ancient art all over the world. Hancock’s not buying that explanation, “What they don't like to do is to ask a lot of questions about what these perceptions that we today call hallucinations, about what hallucinations really are. There is a tremendous reductionist tendency in science, and this is particularly true with brain signs, and many scientists have themselves come from a very materialistic paradigm; they don't want to consider the possibility that all the testimony of all the world's religions for the last 35,000 years may actually be right and that there may be such a thing as a spirit world or other dimensions beyond this dimension.

Hancock believes a new scientific model is needed to further explore the documented phenomenon of altered states of consciousness. In the new research model, where hallucinations are concerned, we don’t regard the brain as a factory that is manufacturing those impressions. Instead we regard the brain as a receiver as we do with many day to day perceptions. And, as Hancock observes, “Our brains are a few pounds of jelly. And somehow the light rays emitted on the eyes are transformed into conscious understanding and conscious perception and it is very difficult and no scientist can explain how that's done. And, it’s even more difficult to tell where detailed perception we call hallucinations are coming from and what the source of those might be”

If the brain is considered as a receiver and decoder of data gained through our senses is it possible that the receive sensitivity of our brains can be retuned to receive and perceive separate realities from our “normal” existence? If during our normal waking existence we’re tuned into “channel normal” can altering out state of consciousness, somehow retune the receiver, thus changing the channel? This is precisely what may be happening according to Hancock, “Our brains may be hard wired to focus on daily material reality, but in an altered state of consciousness, we retune the receiver wave length of the brain and we gain genuine access to other realities, to other dimensions if you like, which are normally closed to us and normally outside the range of our senses, but that our brain is an instrument that can receive those impressions only in an altered state of consciousness.” And, because we are physical creatures and must deal with the laws of physics and we must function in this physical world, evolution has tuned our consciousness to focus on this level of reality, but it has allowed us a way to access the other levels of reality as well. And, according to Hancock, “I think of it as a secret doorway inside our own minds, which most of the time for most of us is closed, and we cannot go through it in the normal alert problem solving state of consciousness that is useful for survival in the physical world. But when plant hallucinogens are ingested or other techniques are used to alter consciousness -- and all these techniques have been explored and developed by shamans over countless centuries, whether it's rhythmic dancing, whether it's drumming, whether it's fasting, whether it's meditation, that these techniques together the plant hallucinogens have the capacity to open this doorway inside our brains and allow us to project our consciousness through that doorway into other free standing realities, other dimensions that are real, that do exist, that are outside the capacity of any instrument that we have created with our science and that we cannot access in our normal state of consciousness.” So, the big question is: Is our brain the source of consciousness or the vehicle for consciousness? If it is the vehicle for conscious thought and perception as Hancock’s model is suggesting, then of course consciousness can survive death because the death of the brain is simply the death of the vehicle carrying our conscious existence, and not the death of consciousness itself. Perhaps our consciousness is just another signal our brain receives and interprets.

Another model Hancock believes should be considered, and which he explores in Supernatural, is supported by the fact that Nobel laureate Francis Crick, who is credited with co-discovering the double helix structure of DNA, claimed the image of the structure came to him after taking LSD. In this model an archive of common images and knowledge is imprinted on human DNA from an outside source, to be accessed in an altered state or when we’ve become technically proficient enough to decode the archive. This too would also explain the commonality of the images seen in altered states by people around the world.

Always the intrepid explorer Hancock has experiences ingesting the Ayawasca brew on over a dozen occasions under the guidance of a shaman. The results have been spiritually transformational, and coincidentally cured a lifetime of Migraines and mellowed an uneven temper in the process. He has taken from the experience a new perspective from which to view the world and universe we inhabit; a more spiritual view. “Shamans are different. Shamans are constantly having what can only be called spiritual experiences. They have those experiences in an alternate state of consciousness. For them, the experiences they have, the beings they encounter, the deceased ancestors they meet, this doesn't require any faith at all. This is simply experience; this happens to them all the time. So, in a way, they actually don't have a lot of doubt, not because they simply, blindly believe in something that has been taught to them by the previous generation, but because they are relying on the evidence of their own direct personal experience.”

As for the beings Hancock encountered and the message they brought him during his experience; he puts it this way, “I have never seen a Boa Constrictor in real life, but I immediately started seeing Boa Constrictors in my Ayawasca visions, and later I was able to verify that that was the type of snake that I was seeing, but it was much larger than it is in real life, and intelligent." And the truth and the message that was brought to him through these visions was very clear, “We are really just reaching the point in history where the greatest danger to humanity is humanity itself.” And it would appear saving ourselves will no doubt require a change in human consciousness; Hancock goes on, “Maybe that change in consciousness is just bubbling under the surface. I do think something that touched me deeply in the contact I have had with shamans is their sense that they need to help us in the north and in the rich industrialized countries. They have diagnosed our sickness very well. They understand that we in the industrial and technological countries have lost our connection to spirit; that if we wish to recover our humanity and stop destroying one another and destroying this beautiful planet on which we live, we need to re-connect to the world of spirit and the ancient shamanic planes are the surest, most certain way of doing that. Maybe dreams, maybe visions, maybe the experiences that we can only have in altered states of consciousness are the most important parts of our selves. Maybe we need to cherish and nourish those experiences and maybe we are missing out on the next step in our evolution by creating a society that does not wish us to explore our own consciousness. If I am not sovereign over my own consciousness, then I am not sovereign over anything and I live in a society where others, outside myself, presently have the right under law to tell me what I may and may not experience in my own consciousness. This is an extraordinary invasion of privacy and sovereignty, and it is at the root of many of the terrible things that are happening in the world today.”

Do psychoactive chemicals and the shamanic experience hold the key to a secret doorway to other dimensions or to a hidden archived of knowledge encoded in our DNA, we’re intended to access? Supernatural opens more doors and asks more questions than can be adequately addressed in this article. In fact the surface has merely only been scratched.

Hundreds of years ago western civilization sent out religious missionaries to “save” the savages in the wilderness. It is now the ultimate irony that these “savages” see it as their mission to now save us, modern man, lost in the wilderness of a material and technological society that disconnects us from the one path that may truly lead us to our own salvation.