Graham Hancock on Psychedelics and the Origins of Modern Human Behavior
There's a correlation worth chasing, and I find myself drawn to the idea that experiments with psychedelics and visionary states are what carried us across the threshold into modern human consciousness. That became the thing I could actually study as a researcher. I could examine this unusual reading of ancient cave art and the part it may have played in the birth of modern human behavior. Better still, I could have the experiences myself rather than sitting in an armchair reading other people's accounts.
So I went to the Amazon. I sat with shamans and drank Ayahuasca, the visionary brew they use, and took part in the experience firsthand. That has always mattered to me as a writer. I need to meet the story directly, and this gave me the chance. What began as a project about human origins turned into a book about the origins of modern human behavior and its link to psychedelics and altered states.
It opens up a possibility I can't present as fact. When shamans in visionary states meet beings they take to be spirits, intelligent presences that pass along information that feels coherent and real, it may be that on some level those beings are not merely the brain hallucinating under the influence of a drug. Maybe the psychedelic, or other routes into deeply altered consciousness like trance dancing, is retuning the brain the way you'd retune a receiver, letting us pick up other dimensions of reality and the intelligences that live there.
Rick Strassman, at the University of New Mexico, ran the key research with Dimethyltryptamine in human volunteers back in the 1990s. By the time he finished, he was open to the idea that we might be brushing up against parallel universes, against dark matter, ordinarily sealed off from our senses but reachable in deep altered states. I found that an irresistible thread to follow. It's the reason I gave my book the subtitle it has: "Supernatural: Meetings with the Ancient Teachers of Mankind."
Erik: Wonderful. We'll be featuring Dr. Strassman in today's theme, and also Rabbi Joel Bakst, who speaks to the Jewish Kabbalistic reading of these multi-dimensional experiences people report. I suspect you've caught a lot of listeners' attention by mentioning that early project on ancient civilization. Is that the thing people might call the mythical Atlantis, or is it something else entirely?