The Danger Of Worshipping A Machine God

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And with a one hundred and twenty night trial, you've got four months to prove it to yourself. You can get twenty seven percent off at helixleep. com slash diary. That's Hixleep. com slash diary. This could be The last time I speak about myself, my work becausecause there's a chance that I might not make it off the operating thing and a journalist who has very bad blood towards me It's been trying to publish a story on me for more than two years now and it will come out in the next month or two and I didn't want that to be the last word of my life the last word of your life to be. I'm here to communicate about the possibility a major forgotten episode of Human Story. I'm talking about a lost civilization So most people think civilization started six thousand years ago? Yes. But you believe there is strong evidence that there could have been a previous civilization twenty thousand years ago. and I'm going to present the evidence for that here, Stephen. And it suggests a golden age, where there was no violence, no cruelty, where great healers and sages were at work. They're extremely sophisticated. However, if you follow the myths further, as I've done, you find something odd happening that they've stepped away from the original purity and become a culture that begins to impose its power on others around the world. And then thrown into those mists is scientific information which record a gigantic all but wiping out the human race. If what you're saying is true, what does that mean for our lives? I guess also our future? Well, there's always this feeling in the myth that we've brought this upon ourselves And When I look at our civilization today, I see a civilization that ticks all the mythological boxes for the next lost civilisation and that we are most likely to be the cause of that cataclysm ourselves. Unless we wake up Graham Hancoke What will you care about on your last day Most of all I've got a favor to ask before this episode begins. The algorithm, if you follow a show, will deliver you the best episodes from that show very prominently in your feed. So when we have our best episodes on this show The most shared episodes, the most rated episodes, I would love you to know. And the simple way for you to know that is to hit that follow button, but also it's the simple, easy, free thing that you can do to help us make the show better. And I would be hugely grateful if you could take a minute on the app you' listening to this on right now and hit that follow button. Thank you so, so, so much Graham Hancock I guess the first question I wanted to ask you is what is it you've committed the last more than thirty years of your life to understanding What it is is a puzzle I'm puzzled by aspects of the human past. . And I think there's a lot to suggest there was A major forgotten episode in the Human Story That's why I refer to us as a species with amnesia. And When I use that phrase, I need to give credit to Emmanuel Velikovsky, who wrote a book called Mankind in Amnesia. I think we are a species with Anesia. I think we have forgotten. something very important in our own past. And when I turn to The experts, I find much of what they say very interesting and very useful But some of what they say extremely unsatisfactory and not responding to the problems that I have in the past. and that's led me to take my own approach to the past to look at that and to offer readers because I'm mainly an author. Occasionally make TV shows to offer them an alternative point of view, which is rational and solidly based, but which is contrary key aspects of the mainstream narrative We only have decipherable written scripts from the last five and a half thousand years, maximum. Before that, we don't have any any writing that we can At any rate read, go back ten, twelve, fifteen, twenty thousand years All you can base it on from an archaeological point of view is what they can dig out of the ground And I think what they're missing The ancients did leave us memories of what they went through We have myths and traditions and scriptures from all around the world which record a gigantic cataclysm affecting the human race and all but wiping out the human race, everybody knows the story of the fllood of Noah. The Flood of Noah is just one example of hundreds like that of stories from around the world Archaeologists pour scorn on Plato's story of Atlantis But Atlantis is another of those stories that remembers a global flood that wiped out a former era of existence, leaving only a few survivors. And the archeological response to them is There was a local river flood They exaggerated it. It was a big deal for them, so they said it happened to the whole world. and I'm sick of archaeologists saying that. This is the memory banks of our species. This is the record, the only record we have period before six thousand years ago, and we shouldn't desp it and scorn it as primitive superstition. We should say what can we find in here that we can coordinate with scientific facts that we're aware of? Let's see if there's something to this rather than just dismissing it Many of these myths contain Imagery And a series of numbers, a very important academic study published in the nineteen sixties, a book called Hamlet's Mill by Giorgio De Santiliana, Professor of the History of Science at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Hartha von Desen, Professor of History of Science. This is not me speaking. This is major, major historians of science in the nineteen sixties. They found encoded in those myths Numbers and an imagery that could only relate to one thing, and that's an obscure astronomical phenomenon called the pre session of the Equinoxes. I'm not going to go into the technical details, but to observe it and to record it and toredict it to predict its effects in the future involves very precise astronomical observations maintained over a very long period of time, hundreds and hundreds of years at least So here we have myths of a global cataclysm. There is just so much else. There are ancient maps that show the world as it looked during the Iice Age, again, dismissed as just total coincidence and not significant by archaeology. I feel that archaeology has failed miserably in providing a nurturing, satisfying answer to the questions we all have So when you say global cataclysm. What does that mean? means that something hit the planet, we were wiped out? Yeah. There are a number of options. and again, I need to stress this because there's so much propaganda in this business, I'll be immediately accused of lunatic fringe.l The science that's been done on this is twofold One aspect of it, the one that I think I find most persuasive is called the Younger Dryas impmact hypothesis. and this is a mainstream hypothesis, but it is severely criticized within academia. The hypothesis is that about twenty thousand years ago very large comet came in from deep space and went into orbit around the Sun. This would be a comet of the diameter of a hundred Kilometers maybe two hundred comes in gets captured by the suun's gravity, goes into an orbit. That orbit crosses the orbit of the Earth While you're dealing with one large object The chances of getting hit are extremely low. It would be very bad if you did, but very low. Trouble is Nobody disputes this. Once comets are caught by the gravitational field of a very large planet or of a suun, They start to break up into multiple parts, and this is what happened to the younger Dryass comet. Instead of being a single bullet, it became a shotgun blast, it became thousands and thousands of objects, of which we've cataloged quite a lot. numumbers of them Comet Enky is the best known bit of that Cet many of the academics who look at this think that comet Eky, which is about six kilometers in diameter and which does cross the orbit of the Eth. They think that that was the source comet. But whereas the other team are saying, no, that's a bit of the source comet. There were many other bits as well. And twelve thousand eight hundred years ago, twelve thousand eight hundred sixty approximately The Earth went into a storm of these fragments. None of them Big enough to compare with the object that wiped out the dinosaurs sixty five million years ago. But all over the world, the Eth is turning. This stuff comes in They found it in the west cooast of North America. they found it in Belgium, and they found it as far East as Syria. So it's like The earth turns and this stuff is just coming in Most of it is blowing up in the air. It isn't even hitting the ground, but an airburst from an object that might be a hundred meters in diameter is equivalent to a very substantial nuclear blast. So their argument is the Earth was hit by com storm. And this, they then argue, and I think they're right, explains what happened then because twelve thousand eight hundred years ago We were still in the ice age But the Eth was coming out of the ice age. In fact, for about a thousand maybe two thousand years before that, the Eth had been getting warmer, getting quite nice. and You would normally expect that to continue but then suddenly, twelve thousand eight hundred years ago, give it take sixty years There's a huge interruption. There's a radical change. The Eth instead of warming, it suddenly goes back into a massive deep freeze. And this is the time when all the famous big animals of the Iice Age, the megauna are wiped out, The woolly mammoth, the mastodons, the giant sloths, these things like fourteen feet tall, you know, they're all wiped out in that window around about twelve thousand eight hundred years ago Most important of all There's a very mysterious sea level rise that occurs then this you would not expect when the eararth is entering a cold phase Normally when earth enters a cold phase, ice accumulates on the existing ice caps It doesn't melt and go into the sea. The next thing is how do we explain this sudden rise in sea levels at the beginning of younger drives? It shouldn't have happened Comomet theory explains it perfectly. the mass, the impact, the heat, the airbursts, that would have been enough to send the ice sheets into meltdown and to cause this pulse of melt waterater. thenen the freeze sets in. You have about one thousand two hundred years of freezing perately cold conditions And then again, eleven thousand six hundred years ago, whomp. it suddenly warmsps up. I mean, these are radical climate changes. They're beyond anything that's happening now And I think explanations are needed for them. And because twelve thousand eight hundred years ago may sound a long time ago, but it's really yesterday in the human story So something very big. to the Eth and happened to our ancestors twelve thousand eight hundred years ago. If it wasn't a comet, another theory that's been put forward is a radical change in solar activity. This might have been involved with it as well. We don't find that as persuasive as the Younger Dryas impact hypothesis. And maybe some other explanation will come up, but what nobody disputes is that the Younger Dryas was a catastrophe. It was global and it had huge effects You you chose intentionally to come and have this conversation today What why today Well I've been quite unwell really noticeably unwell since January February this year, particularly very Very short of breath. It's because one of the failed valves in my heart is causing blood to regurgitate inside the heart rather than pumping it through the body. and that means that oxygenated blood is not getting to my lungs. Probably would live another two or three years without the surgery, maybe even five. But the quality of life would be very low. I can't even walk up three stairs without being being exhausted at the moment. so I've definitely decided to have the surgery Why am I doing this interview now rather than postponing it until after the surgery and I've recovered? Well there's a Tiny chance, absolutely minisule chance. that I might not make it off the operating table This month. Yeah this month. And if that were the case, this would be The last time I've spoken about myself, my work my life, challenges Ive faced in an open forum like this. I choose to do that, and I'm going to say specifically why without giving without mentioning names I choose to do that because a journalist who has very bad blood towards me. ' been trying to publish a story on me for more than two years now and it will come out in the in the next month or two and I didn't want that to be the last word on my life That's why I'm, Steh What you want the last word of your life to be I would I would hope that peopleeople will come to understand that I'm not the person that veryy small minority archaeologists have mobilized social media to present me as I'm not a grifter, I'm not a hoaxer, I'm not a con man. I'm deeply committed to this. I've devoted my life to it for more than thirty years. I'm passionate about it. It matters to me. and I think Again, I'll be laughed at for saying this, but I feel called to do this. I feel I feel it's my obligation and my responsibility to do this How is that because I guess I need to understand human history to understand why The fundamental belief that you have that there was a civilization that we aren't talking about I'd like to be clear, it's not a belief. This another is a mistake that my critics often make. They think that I'm dealing with some sort of belief system or some sort of cult here. No, I'm not puzzled I'm just puzzled by the past and I'm puzzled by the memories that have been passed down to us, and I'm puzzled that those memories occur all around the world. O a serious cataclysmic event What is it that the your people that aren' pzzled and I are certain believe. Yeah, they think that glacial lakes in North America gradually grew in size and overspilled the ice dams that held them in place and that the water from those lakes, some of it went into the Atlantic Ocean and cut the Gulf stream I don't dispute that. gllacial lakes were involved, but those lakes were filled up at a massive speed. Nobody disputes that the younger Dryus was a cataclysmic event. It's just the degree of the cataclysm that's disputed and what caused it that's disputed. But everyone agrees that humans are three hundred Yeah fifteen thousand present When I started on this quest back back in the late eighties, early nineties, it was felt that anatomically modern human beings had not existed for more than fifty thousand years Very recent really. But this turned out to be complete rubbish because anatomically modern humans are much older than fifty thousand years ago. We have one hundred ninety six thousand year old anatomically modern human remains from Ethiopia And then finally, three hundred fifteen thousand years ago, a recent find in Jbal Hood in Morocco again, anatomically modern humans. So we can say that If we define ourselves by ourur anatomy. u brain size ity of the skull if we define ourselves in those ways, we've been around for at least three hundred fifteen thousand years and probably much longer. That's just an accident of discovery And that's one of the things that puzzles me. If we're anatomically modern, if we've got all the modern kit, if we've got the same brains, we've got the same neurology, everything is there Why do we wait moreore than three hundred thousand years to establish something recognizable as a human civilization Why do we wait so long? We got all the kit There's evidence that our ancestors were aware of Agriculture just chose not to use it, much, much, much earlier than that complex of events that leads to a city based civilization. which is the kind of civilization we have now all over the world that you can only really trace that back to six thousand years ago. Yes, you can say that before six thousand years ago, there was buildu became the high civilizations But my question is why not much earlier? Why did we wait until that moment And I don't find a satisfactory answer to that question, except perhaps we didn't wait. Perhaps we're missing part of our story And when I say a lost civilization, I do not mean a civilization like ours. I do not mean an industrial civilization. I don't mean they had cell phones or flew to the moon or any of that bullshit. I think they were very different civilization from ours, but they had conquered a number of peaks. And one of those peaks was navigation and ocean seafaring Hence the survival of maps, which show the world as it looked during the Iice Age, and another was astronomy. and another really important breakthrough evidenced by the ancient maps, particularly a category of maps called the Portolanos is accurate relative longitudes. This is the Auruntius Pineus map. It shows Antarctica right there Uh and and u This is interesting because this map was drawn in fifteen thirty one. The problem is that Our civilization It didn' discover Antarctica until eighteen twenty. So its appearance on a map drawn in fifteen twenty one partarticularly when we know that the map was based on older source maps, and the map maker tells us in his own legend that he has uncovered material previously hidden in darkness When we find that we have to begin to wonder what is what is going on here? Had somebody foundound Antarctica long before, long before we did. and mapped it with extremely accurate relative longitudes And that's important because our civilization didn't crack the longitude problem until the mid eighteenth century. What that meant was that if you're on a vessel sailing west or east, you might be three hundred miles closer to a coastline than you think you are. and suddenly you're on it in the night and you're dead. Once you've got longitude workout, you know exactly where you are. We didn't get that until seventeen fiftty, seventeen sixties thereabouts with Harrison's chronometer. So finding good longitudes on very ancient maps is another puzzle that I don't think archeologists solve So you think there could have been a civilization twenty thousand years ago, which was before this young dryest moment where I mean, I've got this photo here which I'll thr up on the screen. Yeah. I think you say is evidence that something totally It is. That's the Younger Dryass boundary. And I'm with Alam West, who's one of the scientists from the comet research group who're working on the Younger Dryas hypothesis. and our hands are on that black stripe running through the middle of the draw. that is That is evidence of wildfires burning. It's full of nanoiamonds, tiny little diamonds, microscopic size, which are a classic product of comet impacts, micros fherules, some platinum, some iridium All signatures of a cometary impact. and there it is, it's about five inches thick. That layer is the younger dryest boundary layer. It dates to twelve thousand eight hundred years ago So anyone that can't see, it's just like a slice of earth and there's this black line going through the earth. We're in a drawer here where a river has cut a channel. And it's exposed the sides of the channel. And on the sides of the channel, we can see this black stripe running through and that is precisely the Jnger Dryas boundary And the current hypothesis from a lot of archaeologists is there wasn't a human civilization before this point twelve thousand years ago. but you believe there's strong evidence that there could have been Yes. So civilization then in your definition of the word How do you define that A group of people gathering and working together. Fundamentally, invol it involves the willing organization or the unwilling organization of labour If you look at a site like Gobek Teppi in Turkey, we have it on our timeline here somewhere. It's eleven thousand six hundred years old. This is really an extraordinary site. It's a very sophisticated site. It's very large. It consists of Large T shaped megaliths that can weigh up to twenty tons. There are precise astronomical alignments in it. This was not done by two or three people working together. This Well, that's the Gbecky Tepeppi today covered by a modern canopy to keep fair enough to keep the weather off it because it was previously deliberately buried by its builders But of course, there's much more around. hundredundreds and hundreds more pillars are still underground. We know they're there because of ground penetrating radar They' not been excavated yet. So this was a major project And interestingly, the people who built Gobeli Tepei at the time Gobekli Tepei began There was no agriculture happening there All hunter gatherers Nevertheless, they did something that archeologists used to say hunter gathrs couldn't do They organized themselves, they made a huge project, they implemented it and they delivered it. and Gobeki Tep is not alone. It's one of dozens of sites like that all over Anatolia in Turkey. This was a highly organized, sophisticated to gather a civilization that was involved in making this place. I'm a little bit confused. So if the Iice Age ended eleven thousand seven hundred years ago and Gabbeki Tepei is eleven thousand six hundred years ago That means there's a hundred year gap between the end of the ice Age and something as sophisticated as Gabbecki Tpeppi. Not exactly, because dates in this frame, they're not ot on accurate date. Some will say the Iice Age ended eleven thousand six hundred, someome will say it ended eleven thousand seven hundred years ago. But the fact is that in this window, the world was warming up again It was getting better. And that's when this project was created. and the is mystery for archaeologists anyway, is that it was hunter gatherers And archaeologists are now having to come to terms with that. You see, the idea was you had to have an agricultural community first. in order to create projects like this Because that allows people to become specialists. If you generate a food surplus that you can rely on, then you can take people with certain skills and say, focus on that, become an astronomer, become an architect, become an engineer. we'll support you in doing that. That was the idea, and that was why it was felt that something like Gobeck Teppi couldn't be built until about six thousand years ago widespread agriculture. But that turned out not to be true It was built by hunter gatherers, but within a thousand years of it being built, agriculture becomes present in that whole area Hmm Origins of agriculture are definitely earlier than we've been taught So it's funny because I don't know a lot about the Iice Age, but humans survived the Iice Age. Oh Godd, yes. We did. it's just Where do you want to be during an ice age That's the question What are my options If you were a rational being, which most human beings are You would immediately exclude Northern Europe. abbsolutely no point in being in that frozen, miserable wilderness You'd immediately exclude the northern part of North America too. Be man is' just horrible Siberia, pretty rough No, you'd look for the tropics.d you'd go down close to the equator. You'd go to the places that weren't by the ice Age that were actually the best real estate on Eth. That's where you'd go. That's why if we are looking for a missing episode in the human story. We're wasting our time looking for it in Northern Europe or North America. We should be looking for it in Mexico, we should be looking for it in India. We should be looking for it in Indonesia. We should be looking for it around Papua New Guinea, all of these areas that were really great places to live during the Iice Age. That's the kind of place that the sort of civilization I'm talking about could have thrived. What is the different? you know, because on here it says the earliest known humans were three hundred thousand odd years ago. Yeah What is the difference between these humans whoed a thousand years ago And the civilization you're describing twenty thousand years ago that you believe existed Apart from what is perhaps wrongly described as a slight refinement in human features. Natural selection operating on what humans perceive as beauty. I don't know, but otherwise the same The same. The same. Yeah And again, that'ss not disputed. Nobody's saying that Jebil Ihud human beings were somehow different from us. They're anatomically modern humans But how did they live versus your definition of a s? civilization a simple huntter to gather a life. O, in small groups. Yeah But somehow Around eleven thousand six hundred years ago. peopleeople started cumulating Monuments that can only be made with large groups and organiz organized labor. You've got to you have to have a system. you have to can't build something like Gobeci Teppi without planning out in advance, you've got to draw it out somehow there has to be a plan It's not something you just wing U so there has to there's a missing background Well this me And again, so most people think civilizations started, what six thousand years ago? Yes, That would be when civilizations become archaeologically visible. So You have ancient suumer Tamia. u which Roughly three thousand five hundred. I'm going to use BC because everybody's familiar with that. roughly three thousand five hundred BC which is five thousand five hundred years ago, approximately, we start seeing cities being built. We start seeing the beginnings of writing taking place r about the same time, the same thing is happening in Egypt. mayaybe a couple of hundred years later, but the new work that's being done in Egypt is pushing Egypt much closer to Sumer narrowing that that window. Effectively, you can say that these two civilizations become archaeologically visible at the same time. And they're not alone because on the other side of the world in Peru There's a civilization now recognized called the Karal Supebe civilization, which built pyramids, which also goes back five thousand five hundred years. And this is one of the mysteries I'm looking at now is why we have these Apparently coincidental emergence of high civilizations in the same window all around the world In this vali civilization roughly the same, five thousand years old Yeah, we're looking at Cral here, I think, yeah of these classic these the feature is these circular plazas in front of them and then the pyramid with a And you know, these were not not expected in Peru. When archaeologists think of Peru, they tend to think of Maru Picu, the Inca civilization. That's what gets all the coverage And that's six hundred years ago. That six hundred years ago. That's yesterday Whereas these Cral pyramids, Koral, Aspero, Banduria Tenico, these ones are Much older. Thousands of years older, they're extremely sophisticated. They built with an earthquake proof technology. Instead of using blocks, they put small stones in textile bags. and those allow a certain amount of shifting so the thing doesn't collapse in an earthquake. And this is five thousand five hundred years old getting on. So again, not an agricultural civilization at that time They're hu to gatherer civilizations. Archaeologists are having to confront a reversal of their model at the moment, and I think there's room in that reversal of the model for a forgotten episode in the human story. Tell me about this forgotten episode in the Human Story. Yeah,'sembered it's remembered all around the world as a golden age where there was no violence, no cruelty Um, Great healers and the sages were at work play Powers that are scorned in our society today. such as telepathy and telekinisis, which are regarded as non existed by our socientists were regarded as a matter of fact of life in this ancient world. That's a civilization that emerged out of Samanism U and madeade something good Then If you follow the myths further, as I've done, you find something odd happens l that they stepped away from the original purity that they've become culture that begins to impose its power on others around the world, and that's always given as the reason for the cataclysm in the myths that we angered the gods. It might have been with our noise, it might have been with our irreverence. We angered the gods and they sent a flood. They weren't happy with their creation. They wanted to start again slate clean. And so there's this there's always this feeling in the mth that' and I can't explain it. I don't know what what it comes from, but it's always there is that in some way we ourselves brought this upon ourselves. Is this those people not understanding the forces of mother nature and trying to sort of justify it as O perhaps a deeper understanding of the forces of mother Nature. Maybe. Perhaps the way that human beings are operating in the world Today U should be included amongst the forces of nature We are a geological force. And worse than that, we're a psychic force which is full of anger and hatred and suspicion and mutual destruction. That's not going to be good for ure That's going to be disturbing. We're an integrated system in my view. We're not separate. humuman beings are part of all of this and what we do affects all of that. And that's what the ancient myths seem to testify to So If I may finish on that When I look at our civilization today, I don't want to go off on a rant, but when I look at our civilization today, I see a civilization that ticks all the mythological boxes, every single one for the next lost civilization And I envisage a situation ten or fifteen thousand years from now When we will be a myth The fant to see that are Our ancestors actually could speak to one another on the opposite sides of the planet that our ancestors, they could fly to the moon. you know, they could go to the depths of the ocean. The archeologist of that time was sa Complete fantasy, just made up, never happened But it did We're that lost civilization And we don't need a comit. we don't need solar activity Because if we're so psychically messed up as a species, we' probably end up doing it to ourselves. That's what nuclear weapons are about. mass species suicide and the mental processes that drive that Very dangerous very effective of the world we live in Hyatrediz. Psychic force and the way it's being generated around the world at the moment and mobilized and focused is it's got to be bad for all of us. Especially when we have such powers to self destruct. That's terrible. This is what drives me nuts is lookingoo at the low consciousness level of the so called leaders on this planet When I look around the whole bunch of them I just see very low consciousness individuals who define everything in material terms, who are who are focused on This also gets me into trouble but I I think nationalism is something that humanity needs to grow out of. We need to grow out of nationalism. It's just an extension of tribalism. We need to grow out of it soon And let me be clear, I am not talking about World goovernment I don't want anything like, I don't want any government. I'm an anarchist, basically. that's what anarchy means, it means without government. I don't want any government at all But we have to get past this notion that By accident, I was born with this particular skin, you know, The notion is that these accidents of birth define us that we must somehow massively respect and love people who look like us and kind of hate and fear people who don't look like us. We have to get past that. We have to get past that as a species. It's really important All human beings everywhere All the same fundamentally. Of course, we're vastly diverse. We have incredible different gifts I value and appreciate the differences in different cultures all around the world. This is wonderful, but it doesn't have to come with and we are better than you And we're going to kill you because you don't share our ideas. This is insane.'s crazy. We're not a mature species We're a childish species. and leading our species are leaders who have the mentality of deranged teenagers We elected them Yeah, we did very unfortunately, which shows how easy it is to manipulate That's the narrative in the world today. Today who wins in elections isn't the best person, isn't the good person, isn't the person who's going to do good. It's the best communicator who wins. So this ancient civilization that we could have theoretically forgotten, you were somewhat implying that maybe they were right that their own actions caused the greatreat flood, as they say they talk about in mythology. Why floodated that nototion ye., they they might have been. But it's enough to say that that's what they believed because that's what all the myths say. The Noah story is prefigured in ancient Sumer. u with An almost identical flood myth. The gods are angry Great flood is going to be sent The intention is to wipe out humanity this god is called Enki says to Utra hases, I'm going to save you Build a boat, builduild it now, a big one putut into it the seeds of all things that you will need bring each animal of every kind into your boat. This is a kind of survival arc, which is exactly the same as no. Noah's arc is just copied on that it's borrowed from And to people that say, well, these are just stories, these are fictions that someone wrote and then they passed them down and there's no truth in these things. They're welcome to say that I just happen to think they're not. and my job been to make that case. I do not claim that I have proved there was a lost civilization. Any archaeologist who says Hancock claims he's proved that is lying. I don't claim that. I claim I'm puzzled and mystified. and I' I'm going to complete that journey as long as I can. I'm going to carry on investigating and looking into all aspects of this because that's what I'm here to do And that lost civilization, you said they were sea bearing, potentially. Seafaring, yeah. ye. whichans they had boats? Yeah, ye. we know, for example, that anatomically modern human beings reached Australia sixty thousand years ago. Th those involve significant sea journeys. They reached Cyprus in the Mediterranean fourteen thousand years ago.gain they involved sea journeys engine boats, not metal boats. you can do it on quite simple craft.ook at the Polynesians, look at the vast distances that they explored on out rigger canoes. So yeah, boats, but not All kind of boats. I just don't understand how if they're traveling the season boats. however they aren't classified as a civilization Be According to the mainstream model, which I am trying to provide an alternative to, they never existed There was no such people. They never did these things. The maps are just coincidences, irrelevance. just odd. They put Antarctica, they put a landmass in Antarctica because they felt it would balance the world. That's the theory that's given. And it's just To me, it's not satisfactory. It just doesn't add up. These things need to be explained And it's why in every society which wishes to make progress H Mavericks, people who go against the grain No matter How much shit they have to take are needed They're needed in our society to provide a balance to this overwhelming mass that science now occupies. Science has now come to occupy the space that religion occupied in many people's minds Again, I need to emphasize, I'm not against science. Science science is about to save my life. I have major heart surgery coming up in two weeks time. I'm not against it at all, but I think it should be one weapon in our armory, not the only weapon One of the things I was super curious about because I was actually there last last week. is this place Giza. Pyramids of Giza. The greatreat Pyramid of Giza Here we look at it attributed to the Paraoh Pharaoh of the fourth Dynasty What is the mystery here? So again, pyramids are this big stack of like concrete blocks in Egypt What is the whyy is it so mysterious? Well, first of all, they're not concrete. They're hewn limestone and granite First of all, it's mysterious for The sheer size of it. look Roughly seven hundred and fifty feet along each side, okay They vary in length by only fractions of an inch. They've got it just about spot on exact on the side length and you want that in a pyramid. Because if you get it wrong, you're going to end up with a corkscrew rather than a pyramid. If you get it wrong at the bottom, those errors are going to magnify and they're going to get worse and worse and there's not going to be a pyramid at the end of the day Secondly weight calculated at about six million tes two million individual blocks of stone. I climb the pyramid five times. Once I climbed it when there was an event taking place on the Giza pllateau, Picnics basically and a lot of Cyrene just decided to climb the pyramid As I said, I've tried it four other times without other people there. but this time There were hundreds of people on the pyramid. That's when I realized how difficult this thing is to make because the biggest danger was the other people Once you're up two or three courses, you fall you're dead. It's a fifty two degree slope There's no way you're going to stop. You're going to come down and still every year, people die on the Great pyramid. That's why they've made it illegal to climb it now. So there's that. Then there's the almost perfect alignment of the Great Pyramid to true North Compass North, which is about ten or eleven degrees off true north, but to astronomical north. realal north. The Great Pyramid is aligned within sixtieths of a single degree. I put it that way because degrees are divided into sixty minutes. So three minutes of arc. Great pyramid is aligned with that level of precision three sixtieths of a single degree to true north And they've done that on a six million tonne monument, which is four hundred and eighty one feet high. take account of its original height, which has a fifty two degree slope which is filled with internal corridors and spaces. Grand Gallery, the ascending, the descending corridors All of this is extremely difficult to do It's not impossible to do because we see it there. Could our civilization do it? Yeah, I think we could. But would we do it? No, I don't think we would. The motive wouldn't be there. People say, Well why? I mean, why? do you want to align it perfectly to true North? It's enough to ask me to build a six million ton monument But you want it aligned to trrue North as well? Come on. I mean, that's a really difficult specification We try that hard Um kindind of Artistry work on the great Pyramid as well as skill. Let's get rid of any notion that slaves were involved They were not. There wasn't slavery in the Old Kingdom anyway, but this is a work of love from the first to the last stone. It's a work done with great skill and care. beautiful and extraordinary thing inside And out It sits Almost exactly on latitude thirty which is one third of the way between the North Pole and the equator And it incorporates the dimensions of the earth On a scale of one to forty three thousand two hundred in its own dimensions. So if you take the height of the G pyramid and multiply it by forty three thousand two hundred, I'll explain why that number matters Multiply it by that number, you get the polar radius of the Earth Measure the base perimeter of the great pyramid, multiply it by the same factor, forty three thousand two hundred and you get the equatorial circumference of the earth Arch killilders know this. They say it's a coincidence, tootal coincidence just by chance However, I could agree with them actually If the scale was not one to forty three thousand two hundred. But the fact that it's one to forty three thousand two hundred changes everything. Because that belongs to a sequence of numbers that is found in ancient mythology all around the world And those numbers are all multiples of the number seventy two And I mentioned at the beginning of our discussion by the great historian of science, Giorgio D Santigiano, professor of the History of Science at MIT. He was the first to identify that these numbers and the imagery that go with them derive from a phenomenon called the precession of the Equinoxes. I'd better explain that a little bit. The precession of the Equinoxes Everybody's heard the song, We Lve in the dawning of the Age of Aquarius Im sure you've heard No comment. We live in the dawning of the Age of Aquiris That's astrology. At the moment and for the last two thousand years, on the Sring Equinox The sun has risen against the background of the constellation of Pisces That's the age of Pisces. We live in the Age of Pisces. It's not an accident that the early Christians used the fish as their symbol The next constellation on the Zodiac When you go backwards around it is aquarius Pcession is actually caused by a wobble on the axis of the earth. I'm going to pretend that this is the earth.. Instead of just doing this While it's doing that, it's also doing that It's wobbling. And that affects the rising time and season at which particular stars rise. It affects wo things noticeably. One thing it affects is the pole star. At the moment, the pole star is Polaris. The pole star this is astronomical north. It's the star towards which the extended north pole of the Eth points most directly pres it's Polaris. It hasn't always been P pololaris four thousand years ago, it was Tuban in the constellation of Draco. That's because the Earth Aaxis is doing this. At the horizon, it does the same thing with the Zodiakal constellations. We shift gradually through each constellation, last about two thousand years in each constellation. The great year where we come back to square one Just under twenty six thousand years, twenty five thousand nine hundred and twenty years is the convention that's applied in ancient mythology. So the fact that one of those numbers is the scale used to encode the dimensions of the earth in the Great pyramid, cannot be accidental in my view. It's a deliberate choice. If it was one to fifty seven thousand I wouldn't pay attention to it. if it was one to twenty One thousand, I wouldn't pay attention to it, but one to forty three thousand two hundred That's the number of syllables in the Rig Vader, for example. You find this all over the worldwere So what does that imply P suggest What it suggests is that incorporated into the building of the Great pyramid was knowledge that was not supposed to have existed four and a half thousand years ago. In fact, knowledge that was not supposed to have existed until two thousand years ago. Hippocus of Alexandria is the Greek who was supposed to have discovered procession The incorporation of precession in the structure of the G pyramid says to me that that knowledge is much older. It was already old then I really want to make sure I'm clear on this precession thing because I'm not super clear. Yeah. What does it mean? precession? It means that there's a certain star pattern that we see once every twenty thousand years. It precesses, it goes backwards.. The direction through the zodiac is forwards in the normal year, but in the long term year because of the wobble, the sun rise against the background of the spring equinox. The sun rises perfectly due east. It always does. It also rises perfectly due east on the autumn equinox. On the summer solstice, the sun rises in the northern hemisphere north of east and south of east on the winter solsters. The key moment for the ancients was the equinox was considered to define the character of the year And what defined it was the constellation that housed the sun, that was the house of the sun Okay, so the star pattern. Yeah. Zodiacal constellation. Th the constellations of the Zodiac lie along what is called the ecliptic, the path of the sun. Okay Okay The Eth, the moon, we're all on the ecliptic within a few degrees above or below it And therefore, these are constellations that we can see the sun against the background of constellation like Orion, you'll never see the sun against the background of it. You're only going to see it against the background of the Zodiacal constellations that lie on the so called path of the Sun And those are the twelve familiar constellations of the Zodiac And as I say We're living in the age of Pisces right now. and according to ancient astrology, we're going to be making the transition into aquarius within about the next one hundred and fifty years, the some will have left Ies and will be rising in Aquarius. So actually the song is true. We do live in the dawning of the age of Aquarius. The only question is whether that means anything or not. The ancients thought it did. We think it doesn't I'm not who's right So I'm going to repeat this back to you to check if I've got it correctly, but I suspect I might not have. Within the design of the pyramids, there was a number, which you said it was forty three thousand do. It a scale.' a scale.' a scale's used for the height And the base perimeter of the Great Pyramid. base perimeter, measure four sides, add it together, height the actual height of the Great Pyramid. It's true original height. It lost about thirty feet in an earthquake in thirteen hundred one But you can calculate the true original height from the angle of the of the sides. A yeah And when you take that height and multiply it by forty three thousand two hundred the polar radius of the Earth You get the radius of theth Is that's from the center of the Earth to the edge of the earth. It's not the diameter of the earth. The diameter is twice the radius. It's the polar radius. a keyimension of the earth Measure the sides On the same scale, one to forty three thousand two hundred, you get the equatorial circumference of the Earth, what the Earth measures at its equator, lar its largest measure And that is either a coincidence or it's deliberate. and because of the number chosen and because that number is all over ancient mythology I it's deliberate that means that they must have known the circumference of the earth? Yeah. It means that they knew the circumference of the earth and it means they chose place to put the Great Pyramid, which also was relevant. This isn't latitude twenty three or latitude. thirty seven This is just a fraction of latitude thirty degrees north. so therefore one third of the way between the equator and the North Pole. It's a significant relevative. What it iss telling us is This monument speaks to the earth This monument is locked into the true north of this planet This monument gives you the dimensions of this planet This monument is speaking How could they possibly know the circumerence of the Earth four thousand five hundred years ago? Because they're a lost civilization. Because the knowledge comes down From a former time, I don't think the Egyptians knew it. I think it came down. I think it was inherited knowledge fromrom When I'm here to advocate for and to speak for possibility of a major forgotten episode in the Human Story twenty thousand years ago. And they've passed it down in myths and stories. Yes. passassed it down but not only in myths and stories U this is something else that I will just hint at here that I intend to get into is that there appear to have been organizations In each of these civilizations, in Egypt, they were called Followers of Horus In Sumer, they were called the Akalu They served as advisors to kings. They were called sages. There's a reference to them. Many cultures refer to them as the Sven sages They provided advice to kings in the historical period. And I'm wondering whether we're looking at some kind of long lived organization here. carrying down information, looking for the right time to switch the engine of civilization back on again I know it's Sounds extreme, but that's what I do. I explore extreme ideas and see whether and see whether they fit or not. And I'm beginning to find this idea does fit. it fits with a whole range of information, which will be in the next book. A sage that reports the king andvery reports to the king that advises the king O what On everything, on what to do. Oh o. Yeah Kalu in the ancient traditions of Sumer, they existed in the pre Deluvian world, they were there in the world before the flood. then they and they taught mankind Knowledge then flood came, the cataclysm came they were white tab. someome of the Apkalu survived and they appear after the flood as advisors to the earliest historical kings of Sumer. And I'm just wondering whether you know, there are there are religions in the world, which have maintained traditions and maintained offices, priesthoods, for example, for thousands of years. I don't see why the same shouldn't be true here, why there shouldn't have been some driving motive at the end of the Ice Age to preserve in a way what they knew and to find mechanisms to pass it down, onene mechanism is to embed it in wonderful stories that will go on being told. And another mechanism is to set up some kind of secret society, which is operating behind the scenes to guide and steer society. I'm not going to present the evidence for that here, but it's an avenue I'm pursuing. If I don't find it a satisfactory avenue, I'll abandon it. But at the moment, it's looking very interesting Then where did all this information Beacause if the people who built the pyrids of Giza had this information, where did the sages go and with their information? Yeah, it's very odd actually. What happens after Gizer is fascinating because Once you Once you leave the fourth dynasty period, get into the fifth and sixixth dynasties. Pyramid building collapses. The stuff they're making in the fififth Dynasty like the pyramid of Uas Dynasty pyramid in Sakara inside It's stunningly beautiful. beautiful tomb chamber stars on the ceiling, incredible hieroglyphs on the side, is magical. But outside it's just a pile of dust. It's a mess.'t you could hardly recognize it as a pyramid and it's true of all those. So this is odd in itself Normally, when human cultures create something. They continue to work on it and it tends to get better and better, not worse and worse So it's odd what happens to the pyramids that they get worse and worse in Egypt. It's like Job done, done that, move on And that's there And that's going to speak to human beings, not just for a generation Not just for a hundred years. It's going to be there speaking to us for thousands of years. It's going to be sitting there on the Giza pllateau like an enormous question mark. callalling towards it those who don't see it just as a heap of stones, but actually see it as something wonderful and magnificent and mysterious. calling them to it and saying, learearn about me Thig of me out And in the process of learning about me, you're going to learn so much else. Well, in learning about the Great Pyramid, I find that it is encoded with astronomical information that should not be there if the current model of history The science is correct I think the current model of the history of science is wrong. I think this information was known much earlier, and it's encoded in the Great pyramid. Once I know that Then I have to start thinking what else does that mean? and what else it means to me is a big forgotten episode in our story Meggan why Because they had intelligence that they're not credited with having at that time. Yes. Because it's there, because there should not be a monument of this Scale which incorporates into it information that was not supposed to be available to human beings for another two and a half thousand years So they must have got it from somewhere. Yes. they must have got it from somewhere. And the fact that it's there is 's just a fact. all that's left for us to say is Either it's a coincidence Ppleteinstance Or It's the result of a deliberate decision And if it's the result of a deliberate decision, that weighs much more towards a deliberate decision because of the scale chosen becausecause the scale is part of a system that is found all over the ancient world. It's not a random number. it's a very specific number. And it's a number that is derived from a motion of the Eth itself, from the pre scession of the Earth's axis. It is derived from that. So I'm situated at a significant latitude. I'm oriented to true North, and I incorporate the measurements of your planet On a scale derived from your planet itself. That's what the Great Pyramid is saying to us, and it's saying, Take of that out Do you think there's something underneath it? Oh, there's definitely something underneath it. You think of it as sort of like building with tunnels inside it, but yeah, when you go into the G pyramid now, you go in through what is what is called a robber's tunnel or Mahoon's hole, the Caliphal Mahoon had a notion that There would be an entrance to the Great Pyramid in its northern face. Other pyramids had been found with entrances in their northern face. But at that time the Great Pyramid was completely covered with perfectly smooth limestone facing stones and nobody could see the entrance They came off later in that earthquake in thirteen hundred one, but when he broke in in the ninth century They didn't know where the door was Apparently there was a place you could almost literally press a switch and open that door, but they couldn't find it so. they broke in with sledgehammers and chisels and they smashed their way into the G pyramid and then At a certain moment, when they're about sixty or seventy feet into the G Pyramid, they hear something dropping in a hollow space something has fallen in a hollow space, make head towards that sound And then they enter the original corridor system of the Great Pyramid. And that's the way we all go in now. We go in through that Robert tunnel and then we go up the Grand Gallery, but we can also go down. we can go down to the subterranean chamber which is a hundred feet vertically beneath the base of the Great Pyramid deep in the bedroom I actually think that was the original sacred site on that monument is that subterranean chamber. I don't advise anybody with claustrophobia to go down there very conscious that you've got a six million tonne monument sitting right above you in a place that has earthquakes it can be quite oppressive That's just a hint of what's under the Guiza Plateau. That's an accessible bit. But it's already obvious that there is so much more. Some of it's being picked up with ground penetrating radar. And I'll take this opportunity to say that the hysterical reaction of mainstream scientists to the announcement by Filippo Beyondi What is he saying? He's saying that there are enormous structures under the secondecond pyramid, not the Great Pyramid, under the pyramid attributed to Kafre Kufu's successor, the structures that go hundreds of feet deep. under there structures that involve spiral kind of stairways The reaction has been overwhelmingly They dismissing this. Acheologists have they won't look further, they say it's impossible and they won't look at it. And I think that's shameful for people who imagine their're scientists. They should be looking further. I'd like to see the technology trialed in Turkey. There are underground cities in Turkey, Kaimakli, for example. We know every room in those underground cities run this technology on them. If they accurately reproduce what we already know is there, then we can be pretty sure they're accurately reproducing what's under the Giza pyramids We need to do a lot more work before dismissing this. So I remain open to the notion that a huge underworld awaits discovery under Giza. and the ancient Egyptians themselves felt that way. They felt that Giza, the ancient name for it was Rostal. It was an entrance to the underworld. They saw it as an entrance the afterlife realm, it makes sense that there would be much, much underground structures there been alone in the pyrids? Being with large groups in the pyramid is difficult in the sense that the pyramid to me feels like a personality. When I'm in there with a large group, I feel the pyramid withdrawing 's like it doesn't want to speak to you anymore. The place becomes a dead space But if you can be in there with a very small group or be there alone, Be still Let the silence descend Sit in that silence in the very low lighting that's in there. Ps and Remind yourself that you're in the last surviving wonder of the ancient world It's been an incredible privilege to be there. Just let it speak to you And it does This is, of course, my critics will say another proof that Hancock's a ludatic. But I'm just telling you what happens to me. I think it's a monument that communicates What did it say to you? I said to me go further Very much so I feel is a weird way. Validated the greatreat pyramid I think it's Not only me, others as well devoted big chunks of their lives to the great pyramid like Robert Bval Great man, by the way. The Orion correlation The recognition that the three pyramids on the ground are laid out in the pattern of the Bt stars of the constellation of Orion makes radical and important changes to our understanding of ancient Egypt. Again, that's another thing that's been leapt upon by the archaeological mafia, because they want to destroy every new idea rather than spend a bit of time thinking about it You guys know that I only drink one type of coffee these days and it's called Cometia. 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The whole human story is not us It's not inevitable that it comes to this and that we are temporary like every other civilization We arere so filled with arrogance and pride right now with our technological achievements, our great abilities, our great powers And the arrogance that comes with that Greeks used to call that hubris. ultimately ends in Nemesis, ultimately brings you down. arg, arrogance is not a good thing. It's not a good thing in an individual. And it's a terrible thing in a civilization It also means that a lot of the things that we've dismissed as you know, conspiracy or, you know, hoccus pous or whatever might not be. mean you talk a lot about like astrology and stuff like that. and I think we should keep open to systems that the ancients used, which we've dismissed which might be very astrology is one of them. What does astrology ultimately say? It ultimately says that We, these beings, these humans aren't isolated, but are connected to the universe and are affected by everything that happens in the universe. and it's recognizing that there may be patterns in that And instead of Instead of just rubbishing that or doing a few investigations, I think it maybe worth looking further into that. worth looking further into telepathy too. My friend Rupert Shechldrag, a serious scientist, one of the very few who's doing serious scientific work on issues like telepathy and like telekinesis, being able to move things with your mind Mainstream scientists, most of them will just laugh at that. Absolute rubbish. S go away, you're a lunatic But why are we lunatics to look into those things? It's really interesting and it's really worth investigating. We should realize that we have a heritage of hundreds of thousands of years, and I believe it's even older than three hundred fifteen thousand years. We do not have a heritage of one hundred years, which is the heritage of modern science. Well, let's be generous. Let's put modern science even back to the Greeks in a way, but it doesn't become what we would recognize as science until then now enth century really? So it's a very young thing. If you take the human being as the 's the heart of this, and You were to find a little pimple on the nose of that human being, that would be science. It's a pimple on the nose of hundreds of thousands of years of human experience. Why should we be so arrogant to dismiss those hundreds of thousands of years of human experience in the favor of a one hundred and fifty years maximum of so called science. I mean, one of the interesting things is I actually did go to the Amazon rainforest in Peru They've discovered these like big square things underground. I've been involved in that. What is that The name that's been given to them is geoglyphs Geoglyph I think I know this one. Nobody knew they existed at all. until about forty years ago. Really? And u Because the Amazon rainforest is a rainforest. densely covered with However, It's constantly being settled. This is a problem in itself. It's constantly being settled. The Amazon is being cleared and it's being turned into farms. It's the clearance of bits of the Amazon initially that exposed these huge geometric structures under the rainforest, no longer under because they cleared the rainforest. Now with LIidDar I've been involved with Marty Parsonan. In fact, he was on my Netflix show. He's an archaeologist from Finland and with Alteo Ramay, a Brazilian geographer. What they're doing is dense Lidar survey of the whole of our Kre province in Brazil. This is in our Krey province as well. The areas that are still under canopy rainforest. and Lidar can see through the canopy and it can see raised objects underneath and it can actually give you the shape of that object. Then they can go in you know low impact Just a few of them go in. Check it out, see what's there and then begin the archaeology on the site. I mean, this is a prime example. I've got a list here of things that we used to believe and things that how those beliefs have changed. one of them was that we used to believe that the Amazon was an untouched wilderness. But in the nineteen seventies, we discovered a thousand of these structures? At least. They're confident now from the Lidar work that they're talking of thousands three five, six thousand. There are also roadways that run for one hundred kilometers plus. There's absolutely no doubt that the Amazon once supported a population of millions with extraordinary clever management of rainforest soils by creating a man made soil that they call terrarata. It's still used in Brazil today. We are having to completely reconceive the Amazon. It was thought of as a pristine rainforest, which a few human beings wandered around aimlessly in Now we know that it was The homeland veryy large population who lived in city sized communities Um join those communities with Long straight roadways It's as though the veil is being pulled back and we're beginning to see a completely untold story in the Amazon. And these geoglyphs precise rectangles, triangles, circles, squares, all of these it's geometry. Geometry. what's it doing there in the Amazon? And when I talked to a local shaman about this and I did on camera in the Netflix show Um, he talkalk to me about how important these places still are to him, that these places were made by their ancestors, that they're places for shamanic gatherings. places for shamans to use specifically to Contact the world beyond. Let's be clear about this. All civilizations, including ours, although we may deny it All of them emerged from shaminism. Chaminism is the essence of the human adventure and all civilizations ofotion shaminism and the shamanisism. Shamanism, Yes. Shamanism being the system of using altered states of consciousness to gain direct access to other levels of reality. L Psychedelics. Yeah. Psychedelics or you can fast for a month. that will give you some visions too. There are other ways, but psychedelics are the most efficient way enter the altered state of consciousness. and shamans are masters of the use of plant medicines everywhere in the world, but particularly in the Amazon rainforest. This is where you You see it most strongly. and DMT, the active ingredient of Aahuaska It's very fast acting in the way that it's normally consumed It's normally vaped. or smoked. It produces a ten minute journey literally to the other side of reality. and there's not much you can do about it once you're in there Then you're out again Ayahuaska is a very clever technology. The Ayahasca Bw contains DMT D emT is not orally active. So you can drink a tea made of with loads of DMT in it and it's not going to do anything to you because there's an enzyme in the gut that destroys it. The Ayahuasca vine contains a chemical that shuts that enzyme down. and allows the DMT to be absorbed orally P prodducing an experience that can last for hours that can be physically very uncomfortable U What they're doing at Imperial College is they're giving them DMT by intravenous infusion. Oh using basically anesthesia technology constantly top up the dose to keep the individual in the peak state. and unlike other psychedelics, there's no tolerance with DMT, so you can keep on dosing people When you've taken, I ask about eighty times? Something like that. somethingomething like that It's not just It's important to be clear about a number of things First of all All psychedelics are extremely serious matters. They are not to be taken trivally. They are extremely serious. Experienced Juice of Ayahuasa One of the very common reports is this moral dimension that you are presented with your own life with what you've done with your own life, with the pain that you may have caused to others. And suddenly, that pain that you causeed to another person, which you dismissed as they just deserve that. They just deserve those words. You suddenly get it from their point of view. You feel the agony that your words cause that person You find yourself did I do that? Did I say that? You suddenly see what you are You can't go back into your own past. and change negative and useless and pointless things that you did do that. but you can avoid repeating them in the future And it's that teaching of a moral lesson that I find most valuable in Iowuaskir's helped me to come to terms with my tendency to swift anger I'm very aware that that's a problem I have and it's something I need to do something about. and Iasco has helped me with that. I've become gentler and softer, not gentle enough maybe. It's a journey. It's not an overnight transformation, not a magic pill. the main work with Ayahuasa comes after. medicine. The main work comes with what you do with the experience, how you integrate it into your life. That's where the work begins. People say it's so easy to take a A brew. Well, it's actually not that easy because you're going to vomit have diarrhea, but easy. But that's where the work begins, not where it ends And that emotion, is that does that stend back to your relationship with your parents Because I was reading about Uurelli, Uurelli. Yeah. Look, we're all frail human beings, we're all messed about in lots of ways. We all have We all have issues in our lives. And regret Reret? Yes, I do regret saying hurtful and unkind things to a number of people over the years. I do regret that very much. I do regret very much I wasn't I wasn't mature enough to realize why my parents were so difficult. I never really forgave them for that. and never really forgave them for The strangeness of my childhood and u the various things that that happened. I never really saw it from their point of view. My mother lost three children aside from me. I'm an only child, but her first child was carried to term before me unborn dead Then I was born, I lived, and then the next two both died at the age of a year Well, I know now as a father, I know, I know what what astrop that is for a person, for a mother to lose three children like that. You said Weir childhood. So this is me This is littleittle Graham here. with my mother and my father It was nineteen fifty four. that we landed in India, which my father was a consultant surgeon. and so he went as a missionary surgeon to India place called the Christian Medical College in Velor in South India. And we lived in a tin hut But he was following his faith. He was doing was what was right for him. He was giving his skills help to help people. I realize that now and a lot of resentment I have towards him. probablyrobably You know shouldhouldn't have. He was an odd guy. He was very eccentric. He used to take me in to watch dissections Um There were still hangings in India at that time and he would dissect the prisoners after the hangings. He had me in there, watching it. He took me later onage U You were watching bodies being cut up by five. I was yeah. abbsolutely. Very strange. See it was presented to me as completely normal, but it it was strange. Fundamentally he was a good man I believe But I think allowing a for to five year old child o see those things is deeply traumatic in a way that you probably don't recognize until later. I agree. It's come home to me more and more As the years have gone by, What happened to me in those years in India. God me It wasn't just the operating theaters and the dissections, the dissections. It was Blue misery and the despair that settled over my family at that time, and I don't think I ever really recovered from that. Did you have nightmth Yeah. And what were those nightmares Usually nightmares of loss, usually nightmares of Suddenly I'm alone. I'm in a in The isolated lost alone The reason I ask these questions is there's only ever been one other guest who I sat here with a couple of years ago. who I believe' dad was a surgeon and his dad brought him in to watch operations and dissections when he was young. Pan it scarred him in a way that he didn't realize until later. And he told me about the nightmares of waking up in the night and seeing those bodies of those people around his bed on a predictable basis and told me he's actually the guyy that coached M called Jordan and then Mbe before Kobe Bryant passed away and he told me still as an adult, those Bodies join him at nighttime so he'll wake up at nighttime and he'll see them around around his bed. so Well, than you, Universe. That didn't happen to me. do not have I don't remember having gruesome nightmares. I remember a feeling of loneliness and abandonment That's what I remember Loneliness and abandonment I've always felt that way. I was always an outsider at school Uh Everywhere I've been. all my life. That's what I'm for. I'm here to be an outsider. I've come to that conclusion And and u I need to do that well provide an alternative point of view on the past. There's a real cost to being an outsider? Oh yeah, but there are also some benefits. You know, we are what we are. And for me, I was always strange. I had this childhood in India. I didn't fit into the British school system I was a total failure at school. I could not connect. I could not connect with any of it. It seemed I just didn't get it. What was this about? And the cruelty, the viciousness. My dad went to a boarding school and had a good experience. so he sent me to a boarding school in Durham in the north of England. It was the cruelest place Beatings going on I was repeatedly beaten about the bear buttocks by a sadistic headmaster with a cane. I couldn't fit in with the other kids at school. and I don't feel victimized for being an outsider. I feel it's a privilege I feel I've beenven I've been given an opportunity to take a different view of things as a result of being an outsider Other words unset here? with these two people. There are so many words unsaid. I'd like to go back to my mum and say You know, I understand why you were so obsessed with keeping me alive and making sure that I did something with my life. And I'd like to say to my dad, look, you were pretty crazy, but You did at least inspire me to be eccentric It's funny, getting older. I'm seventy five, seventy six in August. One of the things it does is you realize how collapsed life actually is. I remember being a teenager and I remember being a young man and I remember being middle aged and the feeling is You're immortal. It's going to go on forever. Everything's going go on forever, and it's long It's long, lots of time to do the things you want to do I have a message. No, it's not long. There is not lots of time. If there's things you want to do with your life, start now. Start right away. Don't wait. otherwise you'll not have the opportunity. Life is very short. It's a beautiful, beautiful gift that the universe has given to us. We are responsible for returning that gift byy as far as possible within the circumstances that the universe has given us, living a full life ributing something worthwhile. being a robot, not being commanded what to do, not we need to learn to think for ourselves. This is something that so easily forgotten It's a miracle that you and I are sitting here at all. I'm here that you're here that we're together. It's an absolute miracle. It's the result of billions and billions of years of processes in the universe, which had nothing to do with us, randomly bring us together at this point. It's really quite a miraculous situation. To be alive, to be born at all is a miracle. I think it was Voltaire who talalking about reincarnation who said it's no more extraordinary to be born twice than to be born once And I think there's a point in Are you religious do you believe in a God or? I would say that I am that I pay ent close attention to what I would regard as the spiritual non physical side of life. but I do not belong to any organized religion. One of the things I don't like about organized religion is that your relationship to the divine, whatever you call the divine, spirit world, whatever you want to call it, your relationship is mediated. in some way, some priest or rabbi al Mullah teaches you how to mediate that relationship. And I think what's important for me anyway in spiritual inquiry is a direct relationship, a direct experience. rather than being taught something. I want to experience it for myself. And that's why I found Iahasca very, very valuable because it has enabled me to experience something that absolutely impossible to experience in normal everyday life. We're so plugged in, we're so plugged into the physical world and we have to be. We got to be. We've got to obey the laws of physics. We've got to deal with the economics of our circumstances. You know, we have to make our way through life. all of those things Do. Um But If they become our total focus we become shut off from Every and anything else that may exist big psychedelics can do If they're taken in the right circumstances with the right advice With sincere intention, what they can do is get you out of your own way and allow you to connect to that wider realm that normally you cannot connect to. And yes, I do believe that a wider realm exists Just in the same way that you know, before the invention of the microscope, we had no idea that there were bacteria. I think I'm right about that. We start seeing these tiny little things swimming around. Gsh, major discovery. Well, they were always there. We just didn't have the kit to see them And I'm suggesting that what psychedelics can be and certainly what theyre used as shamans by for is technology, a device for getting you out of your own way and allowing you to connect with other levels of reality In daily life, it doesn't serve you to be connected with The interesting thing about DMT in particular is when you speak to people who have done DMT. You know I spent about a year working in a quite a big psychelics company, just I got really fascinated. I'd left my company. I didn't have anything to do with my time. So I started this podcast and I also on YouTube and I also started working in a psychedenics business because I found the studies on mental health. and psychedelicss really interesting. So I have quite a deepper understanding, I guess. higher than average of Ive againain in Iasa and DMT and my partner is very, very spiritual and has done all these things as well. So One of the fascinating things is how similar people's experiences are on something like DMT. The funnily enough, your description of these preaches saying Y You belong to us now ormiss verbatim Well, one of my friends described two weeks ago that they were teleported into this like four K realm where these creatures that are like slightly animal in that anatomical structure, maybe slightly a little bit human as well basically was like had taken hold of him And they were very curious in inspecting him, very colorful realm, and then they kind of sent him back or at least, you know, after that And it does make one wonder. I think one of my conclusions was if inhaling a small chemical can completely take me to another place. And if you from a recent perspective, it's just it was an one inhaled of a chemical then It goes to say that my current perception of reality is just is as fragile as an inhale of a chemical. L mee thinking that I'm here with you now is as fragile as inhaling One chemical. So to think that this is base reality difference between this and being with some grasshopper people in four K Exactly. It is literally an nail.. for me, I was like, oh wow, o. It's an extraordinary realization. Yeah when that comes and it causes us to question the nature of reality itself And this is This is what's really important about these medicines. First and foremost, you're right. these psychedelic medicines are proving incredibly effective as therapeutic tools. And that's great. I really think that's incredibly valuable. but there's another level to go, which is the inquiry into the nature of reality and the inquiry into what consciousness is. These medicines are very effective means to conduct that inquiry, and that's why I applaud what they're doing at Imperial College in London They're also going to be doing trials at the University of California, San Diego. They're going to be doing trials in Costa Rica. A whole range of places now are looking into this because it's really interesting coming back and reporting the same experience when they haven't compared notes yet. How do we explain that? Because it's in a vision, People say that at the moment the default mode is to dismiss it and say that's just rubbish, donon't waste time on it. preconceptions about the nature of reality should not limit our inquiry into the nature of reality. And at the moment, still, unfortunately, there are preconceptions about the nature of reality, which is that it's material based, that there's nothing else to it really. Everything is reduced to matter, even consciousness is reduced to matter, It's reduced to the physical matter of the brain. We don't know that for sure.'t know going on consonsciousness is absolutely not understood. And so when we have mysteries like people who are injected small dose of a chemical like DMT and go off into a completely other reality That's really interesting. And it's at least as interesting, if not more interesting than exploring other planets right now. I think I think we need to explore ourselves first. to We're not in shape as a species to start exploring the universe. We don't want to export our toicity to other parts of the universe until we've overcome it, until we've grown up as a species, which we haven't done yet. We need to know ourselves. Psychedelics are one way to do that. used irresponsibly, but used responsibly in a structured, careful, thoughtful way They can be very helpful in knowing ourselves. That's the journey we need to do first. go to Mars by all means, you know, go to the moon, We go even further. but do this first. Kn who you are first before you start doing those bigger and wider investigations. Get all that sorted out because we've hardly sorted out anything on this planet and we're talking about exploring other planets. Well, I'm all in favor of exploring other planets, but I'd like to sort out things on this planet first. That's where the resources should be going. and we should stop kidding ourselves that we can just escape this planet make a complete shitole of it, leave it and go and live somewhere else. No, we can fix this. We are capable of fixing this. We' capable of fixing everything. Human beings have enormous potential. We're just using fraction of one percent of it at the moment The question I you I mean, the obvious question that comes to mind is how Iious see, you know Maybe I don't know, maybe some kind of leader comes along could be, I think we need to need to move past leaders. I just don't know how else humans would change without some kind of leadership. It's very difficult to see. I agree with you. It's very difficult to see how it happens one person at a time slowly through word of bouth, through experience. But look Everything in the Ayahasca garden is not all flowers either. There's a lot of Very wrong behavior going on there. People are exploiting that medicine. Basically drug dealers are exploiting that medicine and offering it irresponsibly to people in groups of a hundred or even more that's that's actually really, really stupid to do that Iasa is an intimate experience and it needs to be done in a very small group not a very large group So it's not it's not all roses. I'm not, you know, I'm not trying to paint these medicines in a false light. They have their downsides, they have their problems. they are extremely serious. We should always research and investigate before any experience with psychedelics. but they have a part to play. And it's an important part and thank God, we're seeing its effects of psilocybin effect on long term depression Very important Post traumatic stress disorder, very important. These therapeutic breakthroughs Hopefully will open the door to further inquiries into the kind of work that's being done at Imperial College. What does this really tell us about the mystery of consciousness What does this really tell us about what we think is real? If you're thinking about starting a business, one of the first decisions you'll have to make is actually one of the most important, which is where do you build that business? Our product team who manages everything we do from our conversation cards to our diaries, has always used our sponsor, Shopify. There are a few reasons for this, but one of the big ones is that when you're running a business, you really need your own store And your own customer data. And Shopify gives you exactly that. You aren't renting space from someone else's platform, hoping the rules don't suddenly change, and you avoid the classic founder challenges that inevitably come like sorting out payments and logistics and storefronts because it's already built into Shopify. Those early days are messy enough without the infrastructure challenge to create extra problems for you. And Shopify's distribution piece is underrated too, because your products automatically get in front of people on Google, TikTok, YouTube, chat GBT, which again, isn't something you have to figure out yourself, it's just already built into their platform If you are serious about starting your own thing, start your free trial at shhopify d. com slash Bartlet Through your journey through ancient civilizations, what have you come to learn about what this consciousness thing is, if anything at all, or at least what people believed and how those mythologies were similar? Yes, I've partly come to this through the ancient texts There's a very specific scene in a number of the ancient Egyptian funerary texts. It's called the judgment scene And what you see is you see the deceased entering into a hall into a room, at the end of which sits the godd O Cirus enthroned And the deceased is led into the hall by the goddess Mart She's recognized by a feather that she wears in her headdress. She's the goddess of truth justice Cosmic harmy He enters In the hall, there's a scale in the hole In one pan of the scale, is an object that represents his heart his soul Heart and soul were the same thing for the Egyptians in that sense And in the other pan is the feather of Mart The feather of truth, harmony, and cosmic justice. You do not want your heart to outweigh the feather that moment You want At the very least, to be in balance And in order to be in balance, then comes into question whole way that you've lived your life. Up on the wall of the hall there are forty two little figures. They're called the forty two negative assessors. Each one of them is going to ask you a question Did you steal Kill actuallyually the Tenh Commandments were all in there and a lot more as well Ideally You should be able to answer no to all of those questions, but the ancient Egyptians always understood how frail human beings are and that we can always make mistakes. The question is What do we do when we make a mistake? Do we learn from it or do we keep on repeating it And what I read into that is You were given the deceased, you were given an incredible opportunity We allowed you to be born in a human body You could have a range of experiences that no other physical form on your planet could have. You have this huge brain, you have this enormous capacity. We gave if this to you. What did you do with it Did you use it well Did you squander it and waste it? And at that moment be there with some answers about how you used it well So as I come towards the end of my life, I look very carefully at my life. and try to undo. wrongs that I have done in the past if I can, and I try to make sure I don't do anymore in the future. I want to be a nurturing and useful person the people around me The health situation you've gone through has clearly made you quite introspective, probablyably more so than you might have been ten years ago, I'm guessing. Oh yeah, absolutely. I was still immortal ten years ago Listen. Each and every one of us, every single human being on this planet die in the next minute Life is that fragile It's that sudden. you can never predict. How long you're going to live? but what somethingomething like this does, it focuses the mind and it does make me wish More and more that I can leave this life with few regrets as possible. and that I can feel that I played a useful and positive role in the life of others and that I even played in some way a useful and positive role in the life of the species. which I belong Are you happy I am very happy in a lot of ways. I'm Basted to have lived the life I've lived to have travel the world to have the adventures that I have had blessed with beautiful and wonderful wife and companion, my wife Santha Wonderful picture of her. Yeah, Gows. That's me and Santtha We met when we were about forty years old And u I don't think we've been apart more than fourour days in the entire thirty plus years since then. We do everything together. We travel together south as a photographer brilliant photographer and I do not have a great visual eye. So we work together. I do the words, Santa does the pictures, we have the adventures together, we did the scuba diving together. Santa nearly lost her life place in intense currents scuba diving She's brave. She's an adventurer She's a wonderful mother This is so important Sana and I have six children between us. Sana brought two from her previous marriage I brought two from my first marriage and two from my second marriage So six children from three broken marriages is a potential disaster. Santa brought them all together into a group of loving, deeply committed siblings care for one another, who are constantly in each other's lives, who are' there to support one another. Santa did that Being a brilliant loving Listen So I'm very happy. to have such a great partner who's stood by me through thick and thin and has brought out theseese wonderful characters in our children and now our grandchildren. you know, nine grandchildren, six grandkids. All of its down toer. It's remarkable that through all the wonders of human history and all the things we talked about that love this kind of romantic love is So central, so important, so central to our happiness. I just thought, oh it's just a wonderful reminder of how easy it is to get caught up in the material and and all the toxic whereas, you know, So much if it comes from just the simplicity of falling in love with someone. Love is what it's all about and love is Love is giving It's giving yourself somebody else put in the other person So I'm gonna end up crying.. This is what my wife does all the time with everybody with other people first. And u Others benef Eormously fromom that, I'm very fortunate I think I think if I had met Santo. when I did and we hadn't form this joint life I think I would have made nothing of my life. nothing at all really. I think it would have just gone down the tubes. I needed a loving steering hand at that point. Anyway, very lucky I am happy. There are things that make me unhappy, of course, just like every other human being. I don't understand why those who bitterly opposed to my work, want to present me as some kind of fraud or grifter, but I suppose it's a easy way to laaserily dismiss somebody else. Another thing that has been used Because I've considered the possibility of a lost civilization having an influence on O known historical civilization, I've been accused of racism as well that I've been accused of taking away the authenticity of indndigenous achievements And that again has been without without any receipts. It's not been it's just thrown out there as an accusation. Now for me with a multi ethnic family, That racism abuse that has been thrown at me constantly is extremely hurtful and extremely painful. It's one of the few things that have been thrown at me that I actually cannot forgive unforgivable to use that lazy Easy dismissal in a society where a lot of people don't read anymore I pretty much guarantee, people who hear that on the internet, they're not going to go and read the books and actually find out what I say. They're just going take it as face value. So that does hurt and it does make me sad. but generally, I'm blessed, I'm lucky. I've lived Fastic privileged life. I've explored the world, I'm surrounded by love and onwards W as far as I'm concerned Well, you know, Graam, I think at the end of the day, the thing that endures is the impact, the curiosity that you've provoked in people, allowed them to wander beyond the narrowness of our lives, which is quite miserable. A narrow life is feels quite of like a miserable life where you can't be open minded and explore And that's why I love these conversations. It's not to say that I that I always accept when I have these kind of conversations, everything to be one hundred percent true. But the net benefit for me is just expanding my mind to possibility Aolutely. And like please don't rob me of the opportunity to expand my mind to possibility. What would my life become without possibility or hope or all these things? And actually when I look at Graphs like this that show how our beliefs and scientific understanding has changed, even in recent times, as recent as twenty seventeen on this particular graph, I get well, I have some arrogance to assume that I know it all today. Totally. thingsings are constantly changing. you know every turn of the spade in an archaeological dig can change the whole story, change the whole story. This is not limited to archaeology. this is found in all fields where thereer a specialists. that they tend to get locked into a particular reference frame and actually defend it in a territorial way. It becomes like a war And they feel absolutely responsible to defend that territory against all comers and will use any dirty tricks that are needed to be used in order to defeat the enemy. So you asked me a straightforward question, A I happy? Yes, I am happy. And I honestly answered to you that there are certain things, particularly the racism assaults on me that do make me extremely unhappy What else do I need to know about possibility of ancient civilization that might inform how I think about myself, my life, and I guess also our future. What I found so fascinating is especially when we're in a moment of this AI revolution. We've got these sort of big forces, of you've got nuclear weapons over here, you've now got this advanced intelligence. There's humoid robots on the horizon And if there was ever a moment where The word, you know existential is being used in a way that is probably appropriate. For me, it feels like now. Yeah F feels like now me too. This is no doubt species is poised on the edge of an abyss our technology has outgrown our mentality Uh and we're not we're not in good shape deal with the challenges that lie ahead, unfortunately, the chances of a nuclear exchange are just higher and higher. That's just a realistic assessment of the way the world is with these maniacal leaders. So what could we learn from the past? I believe we can learn that there's another way to live that we don't have I don't know. That's that's something I believe Okay, believe.'s something I don't know. Okay I guess I'm optimistic. that human beings have made it through all these centuries, all these thousands of years All these hundreds of thousands of years that we've made it through, we've made terrible mistakes, The terrible thing. I mean, look at the Second World War. I know how many people killed there? twenty million Russians alone, if I remember correctly. It's just horrific, absolute horror It's on When I was born in nineteen fifty, the Second World War was only five years away and at the end of it, and it hung over us, you know our generation were aware of that. but it seems to me People today aren't aware of the horror of global war in the way that they were and that adds to the danger that we will imolate ourselves I think a new approach to the nature of reality is really vital. I think we need to begin to understand consciousness better and what I would wish for the human species is that we understand we are actually all one incredibly diverse. creativity and differences, but all one. a mother in the middle of Sub Saharan Africa Mother in New York City They love their kids in exactly the same way. They hope for their kids in exactly the same way. There's no difference between them at all we as long as we're indoctrinated into this notion of isive differences. I'm all in favor of Diffnces between human beings, That's part of our creativity as our species, but divisive differences That's what's going to kill us all. And that's, I think, the message that comes down from the past, whether it's a correct message or not, the message is We A former civilization made a terrible mistake And it resulted in a Cathollyism that brought us down I think we need to realize that can happen again and that we are most likely to be the cause of that cataclysm ourselves there may be a danger of further comet impacts. The Younger Dryas comet fragments, it's called the Torid meteor stream The Eth passes through it twice a year in June and in October, November There are hundreds of deadly objects in the Torid Meor stream. It could happen them. But I think a much more likely way that we're going to bring our civilization backack almost to the stone age is nuclear war We going do it ourselves. unless we wake up, unless we become more conscious of what it is to be a human being, of the privilege and the gift of being a human being and how that privilege of gift belongs to every human being. not just to us But I don't know how that's going to be done. I do think psychedelics can play a role I've said many times and I'll say it again. if I had the power to do so I would insist that every world leader has at least At least a dozen sessions of Ayahasa. before they even apply for the job Because you believe that would give them the same feeling of oneness that I think most of them wouldn't apply for the job at all. Oh, really. And those who did would probably do a much better job because they'd understand themselves better Grham, what is the most important thing we haven't discussed as it relates to past and what it might teach us or how it might inform how we choose to live our lives today. that we haven't discussed Look, the most important thing as far as I'm concerned, is independent inquiry We need to start thinking for ourselves, and that's true of the past and it's true of everything else too the extent that I do get positive feedback from young people and I do. A lot That feedback is Thank you for being an example to question everything happens that what I'm questioning is the past that can be a model for Questioning. Everything I feel that very poor journalism. being used to smear my name because I asked questions and because I ask them vigorously, And because most important of all, I reached a large audience That's it really. They won't smear your name if you don't reach your large audience. you're not worth their trouble I know the feeling But I think you do. But you know, for me, my thing has always been that All's done has made it clearer, like you know, you have a bigger platform more people W watching you, et cetera and talking about you. All it's done for me is made me clearer on my principles and what I believe.. And I'm actually really thankful for that in a weird way. Because you're forced to, you know when you hear so many things said about you or written about you, whatever, it does focus one mind's on I like who am I and what matters? What Where am I uncompromising in terms of the conversations I want to have, the way I want to do it And that's given me a hugeount of clarity. And one of the things that I'm really I really want to make sure is that it doesn't make me bitter or resentful in any way important I see how it happens. Yeah. I can absolutely see how it happens. Bea you have to live with this sort of injustice potentially or being mischaracterized whatever. so It's easy to see how one can slip off into bitterness and resentment and That's a big part of the work I'm doing on myself at the moment. Im confident that I am doing the right thing with my life. I'm doing no harm to anyone Putting ideas out there that are worth thinking about. I conffident of that. I I have no doubts about that And what will you care about on your last day Most of all love of my family That's the most important thing to me And u I don't know, the feeling that I did my best did the best I could. to carry out the task that fell upon me quQuite by accident. didn't I was a current affairs journalist in the nineteen eighties. I had no idea I was going to go down this rabbit hole into the ancient world. It was a series of accidents that led to it, but having gone down it, I feel very, very, very committed to it It's interesting because one of the ways that I've always chosen to conduct my interviews is just to of people as I find them. I remember once upon a time I had Brian Johns com on my podcast and you know, he's quite He He has some radical beliefs about living forever, etcetera. He's the longevity guy. And I remember one of my team members walking up to me before hand and saying, beforefore he had arrived and saying, what do you think of him And I remember saying, I have no idea. met yet. Yeah. And then I sat down with him had this interview and he said this thing to me at the end of the interview, where he goes, Thankk you. I go, what do you mean? He goes, Thankk you. This is the first time I've done an interview in my life where the interview had like no preconceptions of me And it goes it meant that I was relaxed and able to be myself and blah blah blah. And I say that because opinion of you is someone who is really curious about humanity and has this interesting idea that is really expansive for one's mind about what could have happened. and um Again, the net benefit for me of that is just expanding my mind in a way that makes me emmpathetic to other people. Yeah makes me feel like me and you aren't Different Yeah Like I've know I've met you today, but we're probably you know we go back a long way. Maybe consciously we're the same, but in our history and our lineage, we are We are one of the same and it also gives me a huge amount of respect for O living things, including my ancestors in a way that you kind of think of your ancestors as these like monkeys that lived in trees potentially. But actually hearing some of these stories makes me go, o my gosh, and actually it gives me a huge sense of responsibility to leave. planet and this Eth in a way that's going to be good for You know, the future the future kids that will live twenty thousand years from now in the future and that will probably look at our fossil records in wonder. I think those of us who have a platform do have a responsibility Ver very definitely. I mean, we're living in this strange new world. this world was inconceivable even in the be beginning of the nineteen nineties. this world of communication that we live in now. and there's no doubt that This is where influence can be applied and If that influence is enncouraging all that's good in the human race, then that's really great. And it's a wonderful thing And if it's encouraging all that's dark and negative and cruel and unkind and vicious in the human race, because that's also out there on the internet, then it's not so good Gam, we have a closing tredition on the show where the Las guests leaves the question for the next, not knowing who they're leaving it for And the question left for you is Is there a danger of us sleepwalking into worsihiping a machine god You want me to answer that question? Yes, We're already worsihippping a machine god. As I said earlier in our discussion in the minds of many science has already been elevated to occupy the space that was once occupied by religions That is a belief in a machine fundamentally that's taking place there. Science should be seen as a tool one amongst many tools that we as human beings have at our disposal It should never be the only tool And it should never be worshihiped I don't ever want to hear the words Trust the science The words for me are investigate the science See whether it's right for you or not. See what else is available in the in the situation. Don't just routinely without thought, without question The science don't do that. That's betraying science as well One of the fundamental ethics of science is not to trust the science. It' to question challenge the science. That's what we should be doing with the science. And yes, we are in danger of creating a kind of multi dimensional machine which reaches into all aspects of human consciousness and controls us. ye We've got to stop worshippping science That's for sure. We got to put it in its rightful place as an incredibly valuable tool, which can do great things for human beings, but which can also do terrible harm and damage Be when we trust science there's something we stop listening to Well, when you put your trust in anything, you better have good reason to put your trust in it If I if I'm going to Trust another human being with my life I really want to know that I can trust that person. I'm not just going to say You're a doctor so I trust you. No. that's not enough. I want to know more about that doctor. And indeed I have pursued that just recently Science is great. Science is really useful, but we're not We're not being what we should be. we're not living up to the potential that the universe gave us if we just go around trusting everything all the time. We're here to ask questions. That's what we've got these enormous brains for and this incredible connectivity is to ask questions Anybody who says don't ask questions is doing a great deal of harm Well I hope my audience are very curious and I think they must be by now if they're still hanging around on this platform because we've had lots of very curious conversations and hopefully expansive. with this acronym DOAC obviously stands for diarysia, but also we think of it as like Being for dreamers and open minded people which is the O and A being about expanding awareness and the C really being about feeling more connected. Like hearing your story and about your partner and your journey and your parents all makes me all you know, I think it makes us look spiritually connected in a way that's increasingly rare People want to learn and read more am, Where did they go? I mean, you've written so many wonderful books, you've got another one on the way I'll link all of these books you've written and others that aren't here below. Okay. veryer briefly, The book that put me on the map was fingerprints of the gods And th's the book where I reallyestig begin to investigate the possibility of a lost civilization. Before that came the sign of the seal, which was about Ethiopia's claim to possess the lost ark of the covenant. It happened that as a reporter in the nineteen eighties, I spent a lot of time in Ethiopia And I came across this tradition, which is fundamental to all religious life in Ethiopia. and ended up writing a book about it. put me on the track of a lost civilization, led to fingerprints of the gods Then after fingerprints of the gods, there's a book that's not here, which is Keper of Genesis that I wrote with Robert Baval. Underworld. This was seven years of scuba diving that Santa and I did all around the world Following up tips from local fishermen, local divers, they'd seen something interesting, something that looked man made at a depth of thirty meters just offshore there. and they would take us and we would find it. So Underworld is about all those flooded continental shelves, twenty seven million square kilometers of continental shelves were flooded at the end of the ice A age That's twenty seven million square kilometers. That's Europe and China, a bit more combined. were the best real estate on eararth twenty thousand years ago and are all underwater today And there's signs that there was life there. Oh yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Civilizations there. Yeah. we found very large stretches underwater. So that's Uworld. thenen after Underworld, I wrote Supernatural, which is that one there which has been reissued in America under the title Visionary. And that's where I went deep into the shamanistic medicines, the Ayahuasa Silo Sybin and the whole notion that cave art The art that we see in the painted caves is an art of visions that this is shaman's