The Divine Spark: A Graham Hancock Reader: Psychedelics, Consciousness, and the Birth of Civilization
320
The Divine Spark: A Graham Hancock Reader: Psychedelics, Consciousness, and the Birth of Civilization
320Paperback
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Overview
Psychedelics: Medicinal? Vital in interspecies communication or communion with the sacred? Are you reaching enlightenment or damaging your brain?
In this anthology, edited by bestselling author Graham Hancock, 22 writers discuss psychedelics and their myriad connections to consciousness. Travel to South America, the American Southwest, outer space, inner space, and back in time to revisit Pahnke's The Good Friday experiment. Explore the effects of ayahuasca, LSD, and much more.
Illuminating the topic like never before: Mike Alivernia * Russell Brand * David Jay Brown * Paul Devereux * Rick Doblin * Ede Frecska * Alex Grey * Nassim Haramein * Martina Hoffmann * Don Lattin * Luis Eduardo Luna * Dennis McKenna * Thad McKraken * Rak Razam * Gabriel Roberts * Thomas B. Roberts * Gregory Sams * Robert M. Schoch * Mark Seelig * Rick Strassman * Robert Tindall
And, of course, Graham Hancock.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781938875113 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Red Wheel/Weiser |
| Publication date: | 04/01/2015 |
| Pages: | 320 |
| Sales rank: | 181,633 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.10(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
The Divine Spark
A Graham Hancock Reader
By Graham Hancock
Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC
Copyright © 2015 Graham HancockAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-938875-11-3
CHAPTER 1
TO INFINITY AND BEYOND: THE HOLOGRAPHIC NATURE OF MASS
BY NASSIM HARAMEIN
EXPLORING REALITY
Have you ever wondered about the structure of reality? Where did it come from? How did it get here? And how did it self-organize to result in my observing it? These are fundamental inquiries that most people have asked themselves at some point in life. They might have thought of these questions in many different ways, perhaps not exactly as stated above, but most people have wondered about the source of existence, about a beginning and an end, or about an eternal continuous dynamic.
From an early age, I have felt these questions are most worthy of investigation, and in a certain way, my earlier adventures in the various sports industries became tools that I could use to investigate the reality I am in, my interaction with it, and my capacity to modify it or at least push it to the extreme. And to the extremes I pushed it: whether it was skiing, climbing, or deep-sea diving, my tendency was to see how far I could push the edge of the structure of reality by my intent and capacity to overcome physical limitations. It was a test of mind over matter, and in every case I felt that a resonance field could be established with the structure of reality—what athletes typically call "the zone"—where, as best I can describe it, I felt a flow, a type of harmony with all the various dynamics I was encountering in these extreme situations.
Whether it was the forces involved, such as gravitational in skiing, or the sensations of the material world feeding back information to my body and my body responding to it—such as the fine edge of my ski slicing through an icy surface, or the sensations in the tips of my fingers conforming to sharp crystals while I climbed a thousand-foot rock face—these moments of high communion with nature taught me that there must be a fundamental feedback relationship. Some kind of a feedback/feedforward in the structure of space-time that produced a sense of complete integration within the wheelworks of nature that I was experiencing (in the zone). In these moments of high awareness, it felt like I had reached a harmonious relationship with the self-organizing properties of the material world, which I could clearly observe everywhere in the natural environment where highly organized and complex systems can be found.
Yet there was more. My early interest in exploring the more mystical side of our experience led me to investigate the internal world of meditation, a world that is in complete reference to the event of consciousness, of a deep and fundamental self-discovery and exploration of the observer experiencing this reality. Therefore, it was both an external exploration, in which I could push the boundary of my influence on the external world (what one could call the material world), as well as an exploration of how far I could push the boundary of the internal world to identify the source of the observation. And to my great surprise, the two seemed to feedback on themselves. For instance, in those states of "the zone" during peak experiences in sporting events, nature seemed to be speaking to me beyond the receptor sites of my five senses to a deeper, more profound sense, as in a unity between my physicality and the physicality of the world around me. Similarly, in deep meditative states and moments of rapture, a profound sense of unity with the material world around and inside of me seemed to take place. The question then was: what are the mechanics of the apparent feedback between me, the observer, and the material world, and is there an information medium that makes the connection between the observed and the observer? Such discovery would generate a unified view of natural processes and the physics of our world.
In order to answer these questions appropriately, I had to conduct, on the one hand, an in-depth study of the physics of our world and, on the other hand, a study of the mores (the customs and ritual practices) of various societies that could reveal a deeper understanding of the relationship between the observer and the material world. In my opinion, both were equally important, although the task of studying both in parallel, which encompassed fields ranging from applied physics to cosmology and quantum mechanics as well as archaeology, psychology, and spirituality, seemed insurmountable. Therefore, it was with great procrastination and reluctance that I finally abandoned my professional career in the sports industry to dedicate all of my time and energy to the studies necessary in order to begin answering some of these questions.
This led to a prolonged, isolated period of my life, when I lived in a van with the bare minimum necessary to survive, living the simplest life possible in order to dedicate every second of my day (and most nights) to the study of these various fields. Still, to this day, I consider those times as some of the most wonderful, productive, and mystical times of my life. I was completely free—free of telephones, appointments, and interactions with the outside world. I was completely free to think whatever I wanted to think, to study whatever I wanted to study, and to move wherever I wanted to move, as all I had to do was put the key into the ignition, press on the gas pedal, and I was instantaneously relocating. My home was wherever I parked, and I was fortunate enough to be in some of the most beautiful and remarkable natural environments on our planet. From the alpine meadows of British Columbia and Alberta, Canada, to the high deserts of the American Southwest and everything in between, I spent many months in communion with the natural world while in deep contemplation of its physics and of the relationship between these physical structures and my observations of them.
I continued a routine of physical activities to balance the typical fifteen to eighteen hours a day I spent studying. At the time, most of my physical activity consisted of rock climbing, as I would typically start my morning with a sunrise climb after some time meditating, or I would get out of the van at sunset for a little fresh air and a quick multipitch climb to get my blood flowing. Since I was usually alone, these climbs mostly consisted of free solos (no protective gear).
At the fine edge of these experiences, where any mistake would surely result in the obvious outcome of a body falling through space being rudely arrested by the ground, I could get into that zone where, however extreme the experience of reality was, there was a complete sense of comfort, a sense of absolute trust, of harmony with all of nature at the same time as complete relaxation—and that stuff was addictive. I was in love with nature, and it felt like nature was in love with me.
I distinctly remember moments when my cheek was glued to the face of sheer rock walls, with the exposure of a few thousand feet unravelling below me, and I was gazing at teeny crystals glistening in the rising Sun and thinking about the molecules and atoms and subatomic particles that make up those crystals. Where did they begin, and where did they end? After all, these crystals I was climbing were part of a larger crystal, a large geode called the Earth, and the Earth was part of a solar system, and the solar system was part of a galaxy, and the galaxy was part of a cluster of galaxies, which was most likely part of a supercluster, and so on. Furthermore, every crystal was made out of millions and millions of molecules, and each molecule was made out of atoms, and these atoms were made out of subatomic particles, and so on. Was it appropriate to think that the Universe ended somewhere, whether on the infinitely large scale or on the infinitely small scale?
These moments often brought on trance-like states in which I would completely lose track of my whereabouts and either dive down the rabbit hole into the molecular structure of these crystals or expand into galactic and universal structures, imagining and contemplating!
A MATTER OF SCALE
From the study of the physics I was conducting and from various discoveries I had made in exploring my internal experience, I realized that if we were truly to look for a complete picture of the dynamics and mechanics that produce both the material world and the observer that experiences it, the model would have to be based on an infinite relationship of scales.
I discovered within myself what seemed to be an infinite division of the scales. This seemed to be beyond the concept of a bubble Universe from which everything started with a bang without any clear understanding of either what produced the bang or how the material/energy got there to bang in the first place.
I remember being very young, probably about seven, when it was explained to me that the Universe was like a big balloon expanding. My first question to myself was: expanding in what? Surely, if the Universe were expanding, it must be expanding inside another Universe, larger than the one we are in. And then again, if that one were expanding as well, surely it must be expanding in a larger one, and so on. There was no easy solution to the riddle. The only thing that made sense was that the Universe was infinitely large and infinitely small, that we lived in a continuum of divisions, and that our world was defined by the mere fact that we observed the Universe from a very specific scale. Therefore, from this scale (that is, the scale of our Universe) there would be a fundamental lower size that defined the pixel of our scale. Not that this pixel would be the smallest thing the Universe does but that this pixel size is the fundamental building block for a universe of our specific magnitude.
For instance, if you were experiencing the Universe from the scale of an atom or even a subatomic particle, your experience would be widely different from the experience you have of your Universe as a human being. And if I were to grow you from an atom to the size of a human, you would most likely think that you had changed universes or even changed dimensions (although that would be partially true, as you have literally changed in dimension).
These thoughts had come to me in various ways throughout the years, but how could they be appropriately expressed in physics? Were there any physics already written in our world that indicated such a principle? Furthermore, did these concepts agree with thousands and thousands of years of advanced thinking in philosophy, mysticism, and religious belief?
The first clue had come in my teenage years, when I initially realized that for almost a hundred years, a chasm had existed in physics between the mathematics and models we use for large objects, which predicts a continuum that tends toward singularity and infinities (Einstein's field equations), and the quantum world of atomic and subatomic particles, which predicts linear functions of bounded states, well-defined and with finite behaviors. Yet big things are made out of small things, so how could the Universe use two completely different sets of physics?
How could the Universe be both finite and infinite at the same time? Truly, day-to-day experience seems to point to the existence of well-defined finite boundaries. After all, your body's dimensions are defined by what appears to be a very specific scale. The same applies to the chair you're sitting on, or the pole you're holding on to while you're reading this article on the bus on your way to work. But wouldn't an infinite universe have no definition, no distinct way of identifying a boundary to define all other ones? All of this became the subject of many years of contemplation, and the answer, interestingly, came from an unexpected source.
THE ORGANIZING PRINCIPLE OF NATURE
From my study of ancient civilizations, there seemed to be a persistent, recurring theme, and that theme, to cut to the chase, seemed to have something to do with geometry and some fundamental medium permeating everything, being omnipresent, omniscient, and the organizing principle of nature. I looked to find if similar concepts were present in our history of physics and the advanced physics of today, and indeed I found similarities.
On the geometric side, for instance, was Einstein's geometrization of the structure of space-time. As well, in mathematics, fractal theory resembled many ancient concepts and symbols and provided a perfect relationship between infinities and the boundary condition, as an infinite amount of boundaries could be embedded within a finite initial boundary (the scale at which you are observing). As far as an omnipresent permeating energy was concerned, it occurred to me then that maybe, just maybe, the all-prevailing intensely energetic vacuum of the quantum world might fit the bill.
Maybe the space between all of the molecules and atoms that I was observing on my cliff face inside the crystal that my hands were so firmly gripping, the space between our planet and the Sun, the space inside our galaxy and the space between galaxies was full instead of empty. Maybe space was permeated with all the information of all things in the space and was the great connector between all these things. After all, from infinitely large to infinitely small, space is always present, since even the extremely small radius of an atom still contains some 99.99999 percent space. Perhaps space defined matter, rather than the material world defining the space.
What if matter were only the result of a discrete boundary condition of the space itself, like the feedback iterations that produced the divisions of a fractal? Was the world-space experiencing itself? Were we an extreme extension of the space, looking back at ourselves and experiencing matter? Einstein seemed to think so, as in his famous statement: "Physical objects are not in space, but these objects are spatially extended. In this way the concept 'empty space' loses its meaning."
But if space were the great medium that connected all things, gathering information from all places so as to self-organize and create the complexity we observed in our natural world, then space would have to be nearly infinitely dense—infinitely dense with information or energy. Was this possible, and if so, was there any evidence as such? I was probing deeper and deeper into the physics that had been written and into the experiments that had been performed throughout nearly three hundred years of modern physical theory, and I came across something significant.
THE ENERGY DENSITY OF THE VACUUM
It seemed that in the quantum world, a difficulty had been encountered when physicists tried to calculate the energy density of an oscillator such as an atom. It turned out that some of the vibrations still existed even when the system was brought to absolute zero, where you would think that all the energy would be gone. In fact, the equations showed that there was an infinite amount of possible energy fluctuation even within the vacuum.
To understand this better, physicists applied a principle of "renormalization," using a fundamental constant to cut off the number and get a finite idea of how dense the vacuum energy must be with all its vibrations. The cut-off value used was the Planck's distance or length, named after the great physicist Max Planck, who is considered to be the founder of quantum theory. This value is thought to be the smallest vibration of the electromagnetic field possible, being in the order of 10-33 centimeters and having a mass energy in the order of 10-5 grams.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Divine Spark by Graham Hancock. Copyright © 2015 Graham Hancock. Excerpted by permission of Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Introduction 1
On Consciousness
To Infinity and Beyond: The Holographic Nature of Mass Nassim Haramein 13
The Consciousness Revolution Graham Hancock 29
Why Richard Dawkins Is the Best Argument for the Existence of God Russell Brand 33
Stellar Consciousness Gregory Sams 36
Reflections in a Rear-View Mirror: Speculations on Novelty Theory and the End Times Dennis McKenna 40
From Cosmic Consciousness to Convergence: Psychedelics, Entheogens, and Species Activation Rak Razam 51
Expanding the Mind
The Creative Process and Entheogens Alex Grey 65
How Expanding Consciousness and Our Connection to Spirit Might Help the Survival of Life on Planet Earth Martina Hoffmann 70
Whispering Leaves: interspecies Communication Paul Devereux 77
Three Humongous Ideas and a Dozen Merely Big Ones, or, The Psychedelic Future of the Mind Lite Thomas B. Roberts 82
Serious Research
Transcending the Medical Frontiers: Exploring the Future of Psychedelic Drug Research David Jay Brown 91
Pahnke's Good Friday Experiment: A Long-Term Follow-Up and Methodological Critique Rick Doblin 102
The Second Coming of Psychedelics Don Lattin 131
Preparation for the Journey Rick Strassman 138
Experiencing Psychedelics
Ayahuasca and the Concept of Reality: Ethnographic, Theoretical, and Experiential Considerations Luis Eduardo Luna 165
Communion with the Goddess: Three Weeks of Ayahuasca in Brazil Mark Seelig 181
Is Alcohol a Spirit? Or, My Goodness, My Guinness! Robert Tindaii 190
DMT: The Thinking Man's Moonshine? Gabriel Roberts 195
DMT-The Final Frontier: What Do Hallucinations, Angels, Aliens, Dreams, and Near-Death Experiences All Have in Common? Mike Alivernia 198
Why I Don't Do Psychedelics Very Often Anymore Triad McKraken 202
Giving Up the Green Bitch: Reflections on Cannabis, Ayahuasca, and the Mystery of Plant Teachers Graham Hancock 207
Supernatural
Toward an Exploration of the Mind of a Conquered Continent: Sacred Plants and Amerindian Epistemology Luis Eduardo Luna 221
The Soul Cluster: Reconsideration of a Millennia-Old Concept Ede Frecska Levente Móró Hank Wesselman 244
Thoughts on Parapsychology and Paranormal Phenomena Robert Schoch 271
Letters from the Far Side of Reality Graham Hancock 280
Could Psychedelics Save the World? Gregory Sams 298
Permissions/Credits 303
Contributors 305
About the Editor 311
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