The War on Consciousness - Graham Hancock

[Music] and you know that lemis toilet leads me to ask what is death our materialist science reduces everything to matter materialist science in the West says that we are just meat we're just our bodies so when the brain is dead that's the end of consciousness there is no life after death there is no soul we just rot and are and are gone but actually many honest scientists should admit that consciousness is the greatest mystery of science and and that we don't know exactly how it works the brains involved in it in some way but we're not sure how could be that the brain generates consciousness the way a generator makes electricity if you hold to that paradigm then then of course you can't believe in life after death when the generators broken consciousness is gone but it's equally possible that the relationship but nothing in neuroscience rules it out that the relationship is more like the relationship of the TV signal to the TV set and in that case when the TV set is broken of course the TV signal continues and this is the paradigm of all spiritual traditions that we are immortal souls temporarily incarnated in these physical forms to learn and to grow and to and to develop and really if we want to know about this mystery the last people we should ask our materialist reductionist scientists they have nothing to say on the matter at all let's go rather to the ancient Egyptians who put their best minds to work for 3,000 years on the problem of death and on the problem of how we should live our lives to prepare for what we will confront after death and the ancient Egyptians expressed their ideas in transcendent art which still touches us emotionally today and they came to certain very specific conclusions that the soul does survive death and that we will be held accountable for every thought every action every deed that we have lived through in our lives so we better take this precious opportunity to be born in a human body seriously and make the most of it and in these inquiries into the mystery of death the ancient Egyptians were just exercising their imaginations they highly valued dream states and it's now known that they used visionary plants like the the hallucinogenic blue water lily and it's interesting that the ancient Egyptian Tree of Life has recently been identified as the occasional Attica which contains high quantities of DMT dimethyltryptamine the same active ingredient that we find in ayahuasca now it's difficult to imagine a society more different from the Society of ancient Egypt than our society today we hate visionary states in this society in our society if we want to insult somebody we call them a dreamer in ancient societies that was praised and we have erected huge apparatuses of armed bureaucracies who will invade our privacy who will break down our doors who will arrest us who will send us to prison sometimes for years for possessing even small quantities of psilocybin or substances like DMT whether in its smokeable form or in the ayahuasca brew and yet ironically DMT is we now know a natural brain hormone we all have it in our in our bodies and it's just that its function remains unknown for for lack of research and it's not as though our society is opposed in principle to altered states of consciousness I mean billions are being made by the unholy alliance of psycho psycho psychiatrists and and big pharma in over prescribing drugs to control so-called syndromes like depression or attention deficit disorder in in teenagers and we have a love affair in our society with alcohol we we glorify this most boring of drugs despite the that the terrible consequences that it often has and of course we love our stimulants our tea our coffee our energy drinks our sugar and and and huge industries are built around these these these substances which are valued because of the way they alter consciousness but what all these approved altered states of consciousness have in common is that none of them contradict or conflict with the basic state of consciousness valued by our society which I would call the alert problem-solving state of consciousness which is good for the more mundane aspects of science it's good for the prosecution of warfare it's good for commerce it's good for politics but I think everybody realizes that the promise of a society over monopolistically based upon this state of consciousness has proved hollow and that this model is no longer working that it's broken in every possible sense that a model can be broken and then urgently we need to find something to replace it the vast problems of global pollution that have resulted from the single-minded pursuit of profit the the horrors of a nuclear proliferation the specter of hunger that millions every night go to bed starving that we can't even solve this problem despite our alert problem-solving state of consciousness and look what's happening in the Amazon the lungs of our planet this precious home of biodiversity the old-growth rainforest being cut down and replaced with soya bean farms so we can feed cattle so that we can all eat hamburgers only a truly insane global state of consciousness could allow such an abomination to occur and I did it back of an envelope calculation during the Iraq war it seems to me that six months expenditure on the Iraq war would have solved the problem of the Amazon forever would be sufficient to compensate the peoples of the Amazon so that no single tree ever needed to be cut down again to garden and look after that amazing resource but we can't make that decision as a global community we can spend countless billions on warfare on hatred on fear on suspicion on division but we can't get the collect together the collective effort to save the lungs of our planet and this is perhaps why shamans from the Amazon are now mounting a kind of reverse missionary activity when I've asked shamans about the sickness of the West they say it's quite simple you guys have severed your connection with spirits unless you reconnect with spirit and do so soon you're going to bring the whole house of cards down around your heads and ours and rightly or wrongly they believe that a high Alaska is the remedy for that sickness and many now are being called to the Amazon to drink ayahuasca and ayahuasca shamans are travelling throughout the West offering the brew often under the radar often personal risk to bring about consciousness change and it's true that the message of ayahuasca the universal message is about the sacred magical enchanted infinitely precious nature of life on Earth and the interdependence of material and spiritual realms and it's impossible to work with ayahuasca for long without being deeply and profoundly affected by this message and let's not forget that ayahuasca is not alone that it's part of an ancient worldwide system of the targeted careful responsible alteration of consciousness it's recently been been shown by scholars that the CAI Qian used in the Ellis and Lucy nian mysteries in in ancient Greece was almost certainly a psychedelic brew that the soma of the Vedas may well have been a brew based upon the Amanita muscaria mushroom we have the DMT in the ancient egyptian tree of life we have the whole global cultures of surviving shamanism and what it's all about is a state of consciousness that's designed to help us find balance harmony the ancient Egyptians would have called it marked with with the universe and to remain mindful that what we're here to undertake on earth while immersed in matter is fundamentally a spiritual journey aimed at the the growth and perfection of the solar journey that may go back to the very origins of what made us human in the first place and I stand here invoking the hard one right of freedom of speech to call for and demand another right to be recognized and that is the right of adult sovereignty over consciousness there's a war on consciousness in our society and if we as adults are not allowed to make sovereign decisions about what to experience with our own consciousness while doing no harm to others including the decision to use responsibly ancient and sacred visionary plants then we cannot claim to be free in any way and it's useless for our society to go around the world imposing our form of democracy on others while we nourish this rot at the heart of society and we do not allow individual freedom over a consciousness it may even be that we're denying ourselves the next vital step in our own evolution by allowing this state of affairs to continue and who knows perhaps are immortal destiny well [Music] [Music] you [Music]

Channel: After Skool

Views: 1,267,990

Rating: 4.8711624 out of 5

Keywords: graham hancock, war on consciousness, ayahuasca, ancient egyptians, life after death, hallucinogens, hallucinogenic plants, DMT, psilocybin, dream state, war on drugs, altered consciousness, amazon destruction, endangered species, visionary plants, big pharma, materialist science, shaman, ayahuasca ceremony, addiction, enlightenment, pineal gland, 3rd eye, tedtalk, banned

Id: eOUWgtbIhgE

Length: 9min 9sec (549 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 10 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/Spadeinfull]

DMT is NOT a brain hormone .. he got that pretty much wrong, but I agree with the "spirit" of this video.

[u/EinarrPorketill]

Such an important video. This is what needs to be focused on if we want to improve our world. Ideological differences aren't as important. We really need to step up our game with legalization efforts, particularly legalizing the therapeutic use of psilocybin. We need to push things like the Oregon Psilocybin Initiative. Donate to them, and follow them on Twitter at @opsbuzz. If you live in Oregon, sign up on their website, so you can get involved and possibly volunteer.

See if you have a local psychedelic group, and join it and attend their meetings. We need to organize.

[u/caniboii]

Can someone please tell me why again his ted talk was banned?

[u/TheWittyScreenName]

I dont like how “reductionist” has become almost a slur in these kinds of circles. I always think its more amazing if consciousness is an emergent property of the complex electric signals happening in the brain. To put it in terms of the video, it would be much more amazing if the brain is the tv station than the receiver.

Additionally, if it turns out that a reductionist viewpoint is the correct one, that has wild implications for AI. If consciousness is an emergent property of complex electrical connections, theres no reason to believe a computer couldnt be conscious. If, on the other hand, the opposite is true, then only hominids are special and different enough to be able to be aware. Which seems like an idea generated by the ego. But its really an impossible question to answer.

[u/Welshman96]

I truly believe drugs have the potential to change the world.

It is heartbreaking knowing that so many people will live through their life without experiencing any mind altering drugs. From the pure extasy and love of taking mdma to the magic of mushrooms, beautiful experiences all humans should have the rights to experience.

We "DRUG" users live in a world where we are seen as criminals, where exploring our own consciousness is somehow a crime.

It staggers me to see so many people follow the government so blindly, not only has the government managed to illigalize drugs they have successfully brainwashed the general public into believing the "drugs are bad" linear way of thinking.

Drugs have the potential to change society as we know it and the government knows it. I realize drugs arent for everyone but one could argue that those people who aren't compatible with drugs are a product of the society we live in.

You may not see it but we are slaves to the commercial world, we are all brought up to think a certain way and to have certain goals, to believing that how successful your life is revolves around how much money you made. These are all things the government can regulate and control.

The general public is blind, but can you blame them? They are doing everything exactly how you'd expect them to do everything, in their eyes they are just being good sencible law abiding citizens. Who are they going to believe, an "official" government source or a "drug" user who based off of their knowledge are just crazy addicts? A fool proof system right?

The commercial world is stronger than ever :

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/oct/26/worlds-witnessing-a-new-gilded-age-as-billionaires-wealth-swells-to-6tn

The war on drugs is clearly failing in the eyes of the public yet they still persist with the same strategy, why? Because the stigma on drugs still exists, the illigality of these drugs allow the government to segregate the users from the rest of society. The banks, the goverment, the media all have an ajenda TO KEEP THE CONTROL. Even now with states coming round to legalizing marajuana the government is trying to overrule their laws

Billions upon billions of dollars are pumped into the drug war every year just imagine if all those billions were spent on a proper education system, on providing testing services and regulating quality.

Drugs allow us to change our way of thinking, they give us the potential to explore our inner selves, to realize that true happiness can only be found from within, that money really cant buy you happiness. Once the public see beyond the curtains, the government will looses their means of control and grasp of power.

I'm not saying everyone should do drugs, I'm just saying that our consciousness our ego is who we are, the most personal "thing" in our lives. It should be our right as human beings to explore it as we please.

[u/exotiic_goon]

holy shit...

[u/DoctorWhimsy]

Thank you for posting this. Higher ups really need to get their act together or we'll all be in crisis.

[u/LunarNight]

Great stuff.