Quote: "Awakening from the sleep of inattention that prevails"

Quote: "Creation stories may also prompt us to inquire into the experience of awakening from the sleep of inattention that prevails in so much of our ordinary inner life."

Page 32 - Awakening Higher Consciousness: Guidance from Ancient Egypt and Sumer

http://www.innertraditions.com/awakening-higher-consciousness.html

Dreamland interview transcript with Whitley Strieber

Whitley Strieber: This is Whitley Strieber and this is Dreamland and you have reached the end of the world.

Today I am talking to Paul Boudreau about a book he has written with his close associate Lloyd Dickie called “Awakening Higher Consciousness: Guidance from Ancient Egypt and Sumer.” Now this immediately attracted my attention. All of my listeners know that I am very very interested in the past’s awareness of the soul and what it meant, and what this journey meant to them. Because in modern times for two reasons we are losing touch. We are going soul-blind. In the Western World we are going soul-blind because the beautiful, incredibly alluring material culture in which we find ourselves has a message for us, ‘This is all there is. You needn’t look beyond it because there is nothing to see. You are a meat machine.’ In the Third World the grinding agony of poverty is detaching all too many people from any of the traditional human journey. Paul however is very well aware of the long history of that journey. And Paul I would like to welcome you to Dreamland.

Paul Boudreau: Hello Whitley. Thank you very much for having me.

Whitley: Jacob Needleman said of your book Awakening Higher Consciousness, “This remarkable study of myth is a jewel of dynamic scholarship involving both the profound mystical roots as well as the all-too-human dramas of ancient civilization.” And this is where we are going to work today – together. We are going to go back, if you will take us back, Paul, into a very different world in which myth had a very different kind of meaning.

When a person in ancient Sumer was relating a myth they were doing something quite different from what we do I think when we tell such a story.  What is the difference, in which way were myth alive then?

Paul: I always like to start with myself and the present and then work back. Obviously myself is the best thing that I could know. Lloyd and I started this exploration, this journey, based on some of our earlier memories of how myth and the stories had been presented to us. And the most obvious ones for connecting with people are of course the myth of the Book of Genesis and the story of naked people running around a garden with a talking snake. And we were mature by the time we got around to discussing it, but we both shared this view that what a silly stupid thing to preserve over thousands of years and present to small Christian children in the modern day world. This opened up the doors to us to share this exploration of whether myths are useful, are they just fantasy? Are they just fairy tales? Or are they actually conveying information that is not just entertaining, but useful to myself, to ourselves, as we are today – as I talk with you right now? Over many, many years – several decades – we had the good fortune to travel the world and experience the inside of pyramids, go to Stonehenge and touch the stones together. What we found was that these ancient myths are not stories from long long ago and far far away, but they are stories of me, right now, in terms of what I am, what I am not, of what I can see, of what I need to see. We believe that through the millennium these stories, these myths, have always tried to provide some critical language, some critical images to whoever heard them that would allow them to advance in their personal development.

So getting back to your question about Sumer, there are many different themes in the Sumerian legends. They were written three or four thousand years ago but they were obviously developed before that. And when we looked in detail at what the myths were saying, such as the Sumerians having a myth of the journey through the Netherworld. When we explored it in the language and the imagery, what we have come to see is a description of what I have to go through in terms of my consciousness, in terms of becoming aware of myself. I think that myths play that role, obviously a critical role, in the Sumerian and Egyptian worlds in helping educate their spirits, their souls, to become, as you said, more than just a pile of meat going through daily life. And you are right that this is being missed in modern day world in general and in the modern day looking at some of these myths.

Whitley: Yes, because in looking at the emotional content and the story in the myth we also imprint on our own souls something that we may very well use now or later in a journey that most of us don’t believe that we will really take.

Let’s talk a little bit about that as you have brought up the Sumerian myth of Inanna who became the Greek goddess Persephone later on, and her journey the underworld and what happened.

Paul: I just want to say that the Egyptians also had a similar story of the journey through the Duat.   

Whitley: Would you like to talk about the Duat first?

Paul: I just want to make sure that the listeners are aware that it is the same story. It is the same story told by cultures separated by thousands of years and thousands of miles.

Whitley: But before we go on, let’s get into that difference and that separation and its significance.

We are talking to Paul Boudreau. His book with Lloyd M. Dickie is “Awakening Higher Consciousness: Guidance from Ancient Egypt and Sumer.” There website is awhico.com that is the phonetic for awhico.com. There is a lot of interesting stuff there. There is a very good blog, slideshow photos and you can contact them and you can get their book right from their website.

We were talking about the journey through the underworld. Let’s just broaden it out because it is a journey that is universal in the distant past. It was probably the journey that was taken by initiates of Ephesus, it is of course the journey of Persephone, it is the journey of Inanna, it is the journey through the Duat. Can you tell us in general terms what this journey and then we will get into why it is such a universal story.

Paul: The journey through the Netherworld is a story about the necessary trials and tribulations of developing one’s soul. There are a number of key characteristics that are common in the Greek, Egyptian and Sumerian. In terms of the preparation of the individual, motivation – why the person sees the need to go into the Netherworld. Very often there is a concept of clothing, talisman or jewelry that is required to make this happen. And whether it is the Sumerian or the Egyptian, the soul the spirit is challenged. There is no getting away from it – it is not a pleasant experience. Whether it is the Egyptian being challenged by snakes with knives and alligators. Or whether it the Sumerian with ghosts and whatnot. So for us it is a very clear description of those tough times in life that has given rise to an increase in my soul. It would be nice if it happened happily with sunshine, but I see it better captured in these stories of the Netherworld. At the end of the journey, the person doing the journey comes up different – quite different actually as a result of this long process of the preparation, of the journey and from overcoming those challenges.  

Whitley: Let me ask you a question. Could this be the Netherworld?

Paul: You may notice that I don’t call it the Underworld so yes I think you are getting close to that. The Netherworld is here, right now. Maybe with a different vibration or something, but absolutely. My attempt right now is to be awake, to feel my breathing. Not to get lost in my emotions, my hunger or my road rage. All those other distractions. Those are the challenges.

Whitley: You are talking with someone who lives in Los Angeles. Telling me not to get lost in road rage would be a major achievement. I would right up there with the angels – ha ha ha.

Paul: Ha ha ha - now the journey through the Netherworld is not easy.

Whitley: Let’s go to some of these specific stories because they are so wonderful and so colorful and so filled with meaning. I touched on the story of Inanna’s journey through the Netherworld and what happened to her and the surprises. Just to start us off, Inanna is a Sumerian goddess and this is a story of this journey that is 5,000 years old and this journey through the Netherworld looks very much like the journey through life. Can you tell us a little bit about her journey?

Paul: I’ve touched on it a bit already in general terms.

Whitley: But can you touch on it more specifically – the jewelry the things she gathers, and the places she went and what to her great surprise happened to her?

Paul: Well as we get into in the book there are certain things that she is required to wear and as she goes through each stage of development if I recall correctly, she loses a piece of clothing or a piece of jewelry.

Whitley: That’s correct.

Paul: And at the end of the day she is naked faced with the greatest challenges and she has to accept that all of that physical preparation that has held her is good stead until that point but there is still that final moment when she has none of her talisman, none of her protection.

Whitley: She ends up kneeling before the Queen of the Underworld buck-naked. This is the last thing that she expected to happen. All of the talisman, powers and jewels that she brought with her have been taken away. Here she is naked as she was born. And what happens to her then? 

Paul: I’ll let you tell the rest of the tale.

Whitley: I know all of these stories by heart folks so I can certainly tell you.

She dies and ends up hung on a stake as a corpse. In other words she dies to this life.

Paul: Right – exactly.

Whitley: Exactly – she dies to this life. And then what happens is that she slowly awakened with water. The waters of life are poured on her – 60 goblets I believe – a lot of water is poured on her. And she awakens to this life. Then there has to be a tradeoff. She comes back but someone else has to go into the underworld and makes numerous efforts to escape it and does not. And there she is, forever filled with new knowledge of life and death.

This story of this journey is so powerful it is repeated so many times in human literature. And yet as we sit here today, we’ve forgotten it altogether.

Paul: And the parallels with the Egyptians in the same way  

Whitley: Tell us about the journey through the Duat?

Paul: What is referred to as the Pharaoh – and I can’t emphasize enough that we don’t see the Pharaoh as a dead person. The Pharaoh symbolizes the same spirit, soul that Inanna captured for the Sumerians. The journey through the Duat by the Egyptians was recorded in the Pyramid Texts was essentially the same story. He or she goes through these challenges, he has to eat the flesh of the other gods. At the end of the day when he is coming to the end of his journey, he is elevated to the highest level above any other gods. As a result of these challenges and the work that he has done, there is the potential to connect with a world that is not common to us, to ordinary people.

It is the same issue. You can’t sit around drinking beer and kicking back, there is real work that is required. But the work pays off on a different level. That is where the title of our book comes from “Awakening Higher Consciousness”. It is higher than what we are usually in day-to-day life.

And if I may, we don’t provide a recipe for higher consciousness, we just try to see what these myths tell us about getting a little bit higher consciousness if you allow that sort of concept. Driving a car is a good example. Many times in my life I’ve been driving down the road and I “wake up.” And the amazing thing to me is where was I before I woke up?

Whitley: Yeah, that happens to all of us I think.

Paul: Those are the powerful moments that without this language of the Duat, the challenges, these concepts placed before me, I shrug my shoulders, drive on and then fall asleep again almost immediately. But myth has the ability to give us with some background, some structure so that I am in a position to pay attention to those moments and they can have more of an impact. It may be just milliseconds, but that is more than I would have without that structure.

To recognize that the journey through the Duat, the journey through the Netherworld requires these sorts of energies is a very powerful tool in my kitbag in efforts to become more of a soul, spirit, person – I don’t know how to capture it.

Whitley: It is a very interesting this journey. Because there is a sense that we can only engage it when we no longer have the body. When the body is gone and we are facing ourselves in a very unfiltered way. But the truth is you can engage in the journey right now – anytime. The journey is always there and we can take the entire journey while we are still in physical being. It means dying to a certain aspect of yourself in that you have to see ego become a tool rather than you in other words. “I am not Whitley any more, but that is a tool that I use to engage in social interaction.” It is a lovely tool, but it is still not me.

But now let’s go back to the most basic, beginning of this discussion. You touched on Genesis and the first few paragraphs of Genesis are incredible dense with meaning. That is something that I would really like to get to.

I am talking to Paul Boudreau “Awakening Higher Consciousness: Guidance from Ancient Egypt and Sumer”. His co-author is Lloyd M. Dickie. There website is awhico.com – awakening higher consciousness.com. They have a very interesting blog and you can get their book through that website.

At the beginning of the show we talked briefly about Genesis. It is as if in Genesis, and I think it is unique to the Jewish tradition, that the discovery of the Self as being separate from nature and separate from God is regarded as a sort of disaster in that God gets annoyed and mankind gets thrown out of the Garden of Eden.  We are left to wander in the stones where we still are. But it is also the beginning of an essential and incredibly beautiful journey. Could you expand on that a little bit?

Paul: You lead very nicely into this when you mention that the Western World sees all of this progress, this process is to be done after you die. That is a very Christian concept. And, because we of course look at the world through our world view which is based on our up bringing and so Christian views have had a great impact on how we see the world. And that couldn’t be more true than for the Bible. In the early chapters of Genesis there is this story about Adam and Eve and the snake and you capture it very well that God get angry and they are punished.

We’ve been to the Bibliotheca National, the National Library in Paris, we managed to stumble on this marvelous book by Fabre d’Olivet that we mention in our book. He looks at the Genesis story from a hieroglyphic point of view not a literal view. He looks at each character. Adam is ADM – three letters. He looks at what the three letters mean and we carry that analysis through to the other players in this Genesis story. What we find is a fabulous story about the interaction between the active and passive principles, between the universal and the individual. And we find equivalences with some of the Egyptian hieroglyphics. It is the same as for the Egyptians where there are hieroglyphs and they are put together into words. But rather than our common approach to this where an “A” is an abstract letter, we explore what these hieroglyphs in both the Hebrew and the Egyptian mean and what their underlying power or energy is. Such that if you reverse a glyph or a letter, one transforms a physical food into a spiritual food. Just by the way the different glyphs are placed on the page and how they are presented. Sorry, but this is a long introduction to expose what we do in our book about Genesis in terms of it not being a sin or a falling from grace, but ties very closely with what we just talked about the journey through the Netherworld. It is an awakening to a nakedness that allows us to participate in this difficult journey of life. It is only when one is aware of that and starts work, that is suffering the slings and arrows if you will, then one has the option of progressing and growing in spiritual life. This is quite different from the story that shocked me as a six or seven year old boy about these naked people in a garden. It is a question about what can I see in myself and how awakening to your nakedness is not a sin. It is something that you can use to power your further development. Quite a different story than what is commonly viewed.

Whitley: Yes and these stories, these myths are meant to be used in life. That is what isn’t understood now. We think of them as something that will happen to us after death – after the body dies – a lot happens. It is by no means the end. I can speak to that from personal experience of have lived and been in both worlds for most of my life. And even though we live in a world where we are saying to ourselves, “The soul doesn’t exist and there is nothing after life.” It is not true. But in order to have an afterlife, you have to have a life.

Paul:  Indeed!

Whitley: You have to engage and search otherwise you die in a kind of poverty. That is fine as you will be part of the circulation of the Universe. But there is so much more.

Do you think that they were conscious in the past? Let me rephrase the question more directly. Did they know that they had souls or could they actually sense the soul? Do you think among the Egyptians and the Sumerians from a very long time ago?

Paul: Definitely. Every human has the capacity to connect with this level of energy.  I have no reason to believe that 5,000 years is a long time for change. I think that the Egyptians and the Sumerians were probably very much like you and I. Their world view was different and many aspects of their life was different, but the myths we talk about from Sumer and Egypt were the very first things written down by humans.

Whitley: And that is a very significant fact. This was the earliest material. How would you characterize it general?

Paul: From our point of view they were writing about important things. They didn’t write about building a pyramid because that was probably easier than developing this consciousness that we are talking about.

Whitley: It was about the search for One Self.

Paul: And when one does connect with this, and I have for brief moments, it is incredible! Much more incredible than building a pyramid. So the fact that these earliest stories that man has ever written down in the World were about journey’s through the Duat, higher consciousness to me is the evidence we need to say that they are talking about important things. We do them a great disservice to consider them as fairy tales or fantasies.

Later on, as cultures developed there were many other things written down. But to have this as the first things written down, to Lloyd and I this is a signpost to pay attention to this, this is important to you.

Whitley: Yes, to pay attention to it. And we have in our world the potential to pay attention to it, to all of it, because it all lies before us. All of the journeys of the past have been recorded and we can use this material in taking our own journey. Over time even as we have begun to forget the soul and to abandon the soul the ability to use these tools has become much more evolved and much more developed. We can do a great deal now that wasn’t possible in the past because of the perspective we have. And when we come back we will be talking about that process. How do we use this material? I’m not awake now. How do I wake up to it? If I was an ancient Egyptian, what would I be like? How would I be different? How would my soul be different? Would I be richer or poorer?

I am talking with Paul Boudreau “Awakening Higher Consciousness.” His website is awhico.com. He and his co-author Lloyd Dickie have provided a lot of blog material and beautiful slideshow photos because they actually went there and did this. These are not armchair detectives.

This is Whitley Strieber and we’re talking with Paul Boudreau about “Awakening Higher Consciousness: Guidance from Ancient Egypt and Sumer” his book co-written with Lloyd Dickie.  Their website is awhico.com.

Now the Egyptians had connections to higher energies – very advanced. I have a question for you in relation to this. The monuments that they left behind, and the writing they left behind, were of course profoundly connected. I am referring to the stories of the secrets of the Sphinx, and I am referring to the story in the geometry of the pyramids. The story of the journey. I want to get to this in an indirect way. I want to talk about the weighing of the heart. Is this a story about the dead or not? 

Paul: Definitely not the dead! What crazy person would think a heart would weigh the same as a feather? But spiritually, psychologically it is a fantastic image. The whole idea of a scale a balance at the moment that we are in now. The balance between the two scales is a fantastic image.

The feather represents the neter or god Maat. She is very much tied with order and truth and justice, bifurcation, one or the other – just get it straight. The heart is the seat of emotion and love – those irrational things. So the weighing of the heart is something that we see as taking place, or should be taking place, in every moment of every day of every waking hour as how am I aware of my rational and irrational and how can I bring them into balance so that I am present at the moment.

It is definitely not about dead people.

Whitley: And that presence in the moment – what is that?

Paul: Awareness? Being? In many ways we still struggle with terminology and imagery as the Egyptians and the Sumerians did. Its hard to lay down. First one has to have that experience of it. In my communication with other people, if the person hasn’t experienced an awakening, or a moment of higher awakening, there is no way you can explain it or describe it. But if they have touched it, however briefly, and they remember that, then you can work to find some imagery that allows that connection to happen and say “Oh yay – that happened to you too.” And the world becomes a bigger place when that moment happens. When you get outside of yourself, your questions and your uncertainties and can say “this is real – this is something that is more than just me.”  

Whitley: You know and everyone of us actually has such a moment and many such moments. It is a question of finding that moment when the world suddenly opened up and was completely new – just like that. Maybe you were in an auto accident. Maybe you saw something incredibly beautiful. Some sort of shock to your system. And in that moment that shock gave you this energy to step back, an infinitely small amount of space and see the world as it really is in its perpetual newness.

Now in a sense it is a kind of resurrection. And resurrection is a resonant part of all of this material. When we were discussing Inanna it is about death and resurrection – dying to the world and being reborn. But we can’t go farther without discussion Isis and Osiris. Perhaps the most poetic and difficult relationship in all of myth. Can you tell us a little bit about Isis and Osiris.

Paul: Isis and Osiris. Osiris of course is a neter or god of the Egyptian and his partner Isis when through a long tribulation against Seth the brother of Osiris. 

Whitley: What was Seth like?

Paul: Well I guess the easiest way to characterize Seth is entropy is you know that word, disorganization or the winding down of the world. He was disorganization compared to Osiris’ desire to keep everything in order and on the straight and narrow. And Seth through the story actually convinces Osiris to get into a box that is made specifically to fit Osiris. Seth is able to kill Osiris and the box floats down to the Mediterranean. Isis goes and finds the box with Osiris in it in a tree in Lebanon. Osiris gets cut up into multiple pieces. Isis finds most of the pieces and put him back together again. Effectively re-membering him is the phrase that Lloyd and I like to use. He had his pieces cut up and Isis re-members him back into a whole. Then Osiris takes on a whole new form. He impregnates Isis and they have an offspring called Horus who is another manifestation of Osiris.

So you encounter a lot of the same concepts that we have already gone through such as struggle and death but coming out the other side as quite a different being. The whole story of Isis and Osiris is incredible complex and beautiful. But that is what I can come up with as an elevator pitch of what the story is about.

Osiris becomes the god of the Netherworld. He dies and takes on different role in this world that is available to us.

Whitley: You know I’ll tell a little story now that we have gotten to Isis and therefore also to Horus of my cabin in upstate New York. And I will just remind my listeners briefly of this, especially the listeners who have been with me a long long time, some of who know this story but some of you don’t. It is an interesting story I think.

We had a filmmaker and his wife at the cabin one weekend doing a documentary. They were Hollywood types and very much not in the realm of this material. And they were sleeping on a convertible couch in the living room. And early in the morning a figure appeared at their bedside. A small man with a very large head was staring down at them. Absolutely terrified them of course. They had come there to sort of laugh at us. Little did they know what could be materialized. As soon as they felt fear, he turned into a falcon-headed being – Horus in other words.

Could you go from the relationship between Osiris and Horus and the who was Horus and why was Horus so important and why Horus is still so important now. There is a message for us right now.

Paul:  Horus as I understand it, and one always struggles to understand what these great people were talking about. For me Horus is more of a present day god. A sort of a step down from Osiris. Horus gets associated with the sun god Ra and various aspects of the sun. The rising of the sun in the morning and the setting in the night. So Horus takes on more of an intermediate role between the things that I see and do and what my higher capacities are. I feel I connect more frequently with Horus that I do with Osiris. But the two are equally important. In some interpretations the two are the same thing so maybe it is just depends on which side of the coin you look at them on.

Whitley: In one strain of Egyptian mythology Horus is seen as the son of Isis and Osiris and is the heir to Osiris and he is the rival to Seth. That is to say he embodies the opposite of the Seth energy which is the energy of dissolution. He is the energy of continuation and of ascension. That is why he is a sky god.  He is the god of war because he is there to protect the Egyptian people and those searching for consciousness.

Paul: He is part of my active being more than the passive one. The Egyptians were full of these balancing and contrasting, the Yin/Yang. I don’t know if you are familiar with the Jungian concept of enantiodromia?

Whitley: Explain it to us.

Paul: Jung wrote about the concept of enantiodromia which is the one going against its opposite. One way that we try to deal with enantiodromia in the book is we look at two other neters in the Egyptian, Heka and Maat. Maat we talked a little bit about. Maat is the neter or principle of order and justice. Heka fascinates us because Heka is the neter or principle of magic. If you go through Wallis Budge, the authoritative translation of the Book of Coming Forth by Day, which some people may know as the Book of the Dead, but it is really the Book of Coming Forth by Day. Heka is very difficult to find in the classical, Christian translation of these marvelous books.

What we find is that Heka and Maat are two very powerful and essential pieces to a worldview which is more whole. Again with the Yin/Yang you’ve got the black and the white but they come together to form a circle. Christianity likes to split and divide and certainly they were not very big on magic. They try to push that away. Lloyd and I are biologists/ecologists and there is the magic of creation is a very powerful force. So the Egyptians captured this enantiodromia, the reconciliation of opposites, by these very powerful gods, the god of order and the god of magic. In our lives, both are required. Both are essential. How to resolve those two apparently opposing forces can only take place on a higher level of appreciation. It a bit like the story of Solomon who is about to cut the baby in half and the love of the mother immediately comes to resolve the question and the baby survives.

With Heka and Maat one has to see that they both exist and they are both part of life. Much like my body is part of me and my spirit is part of me. It is fun to think that I could be only spirit but I eat, I get hungry, I get tired. And this whole concept of how does one find that balance to accept as opposed to divide and conquer is a very powerful image for the Egyptians in terms of how they saw the world. You can’t have one or the other – you need both. If that requires that you take a higher view of life, well then that is what is required.

So Jung’s concept of enantiodromia, we talked about the weighing of the heart, these are all concepts that apply to me right now – seeing my different sides and seeing how they have to be weighed.

Whitley: So this weighing now within ourselves is the central theme in the Book by Coming Forth by Day. And can you tell us what it is because it is always thought that after death the heart is placed on one side of the scale and the feather on the other and if the heart is so light that it does not cause the scale to fall, that person is free to ascend. But that is something that is always happening inside our lives. To die and to be reborn.

Paul: It can. But the flip side is that if the heart is too heavy, one gets eaten and gets devoured.

Whitley: By identifications too powerful to resist.

Paul: Habits.

Whitley: Anger. The sense of injustice. All of those things. How do you have a light heart in this life Paul?

Paul: Push it further – how does one become the scale?

Whitley: Good question! How does one become the scale? What is that process? What do we do?

Paul: Your question about how heavy the heart is a good one. That also has to happen. One has to prepare the heart, but how does one become the scales? I don’t know if you play music but there are moments in music when you are hearing everything and your contributing and it is amazing that one can be that active on all those various different levels. I think that the weighing of the heart is the same thing where you have to be the feather, you have to be the heart and you have to be the scales. Those all have to be balanced and operating at the same time. These are just images and I don’t claim any expertise in that I could do them at any moment. It is fascinating to think that I have to be that image. It is not one part of the image, it is the whole image or nothing. The Egyptian carvings in the tombs are spectacular reminders of this. To be exposed to this in the Kings Chamber in the Great Pyramid hearing sounds that one can generate in there.

The Egyptians definitely had tools that we don’t take advantage of that reminded them, the initiate, the shaman in their culture to these higher energies. It is hard to not get too fixed on any one of them.

Whitley: It is very difficult because we have entirely lost the use of sound and sonic vibrations, in this journey. In other words you can use sound to affect the body cellularly – it vibrates in such a way such that the soul is able to separate a little bit and see oneself in a more objective way and therefore to have a larger vision. But that use of sound is almost unknown in our world now – almost unknown but not quite.

Paul:  It is a great time to be looking at ancient history. People are studying Göbekli Tepe, I don’t know if you are aware of this

Whitley: Oh yes we have talked about it many time on our program.

Paul: And with the Sumerian and Egyptian, Lloyd and I have benefited from the great breakthroughs in the last 100 years in terms of understanding the language. We’ve made great strides in some areas but in terms of spirituality, we are still immature, still too young to put it together I think. For ourselves personal, Lloyd and I in the book have tried to capture some of that such as what could the sounds mean? What could the pictures mean? What could the hieroglyphs mean? How could they advance my stated aim – if not a living aim to be more than what I am now?

Personally I would like to awaken more than I would like to move a big block of stone. Maybe they are connected?

Whitley: I think they are connected. But it gets to the question of why are we here? Why are we in a situation like this? It is certainly not an accident and people think “who did this to us?”  It is part of nature. Nature made us this way. Nature gave us this struggle and that gets me in a very round about way to some figures that you mention from time to time in the Sumerian parts of your book but which are of intense interest to people now because some people believe that they were actual beings.  This arise out of some material from various ancient-alien type authors and that is the Annunaki and who they were? Who they really were in Sumerian mythology?

I would like you to comment a little bit about the Annunaki?

Paul: I’ve never met an alien that I know of so I can’t say anything about them. Thinking of giants gets us back to how would we describe a person who we experience as has having a huge spirit or a huge soul other than making them physically larger in the descriptions? Were they real? Were they angels? It is not my direct interest other than what it might relate to in my own life. I have met some very big people in my life. Not people of big physical stature, but people who had more than I did. So that’s my take on what the Annunaki are. To be a whole culture of them is fascinating.

Whitley: Yeah and me to. I’ve met such people as well. I also think that the giant statuary of Ancient Egypt is soul statuary. The Pharaoh was viewed as having a great soul. The soul was there to lead the people. Whether that was actually true in the case of all the Pharaohs, if you look at Egyptian history, you have to wonder if that was more often a more hopeful thing rather than a true one.

Paul: But shamanic initiation would certainly assist people, individuals to accept that role. I prefer the phrase that some of these Pharaohs were experienced as large people – experienced based on their souls.

Whitley: And they had a much larger vision of the world.

Now one of the things about the Annunaki, if you go and Google the Annunaki, you are going to find all kinds of websites talking about the Annunaki as an actual species who lived here. And I find that in a way rather unfortunate because is not the kind of question we can actually answer. And in concretizing this element, we lose touch with the actual energy that it represents. And that has been true throughout human history. Whenever we concretize our myths and decide that they really were physical events, we separate ourselves from them. And the energy Annunaki for example, the energy that they brought to the world at that time was very powerful. It was a spiritual energy though and it was a disruptive as it was enlightening.

In that context do you have anything further that you might like to say about them or in general about the spiritual journey as it was perceived by the Sumerians as a much more intense wandering through an Underworld that contained a lot of desperate urgency in it?

Paul: The real challenge that I have is thinking whether it was just a few individuals or was it the whole culture? Because even today people with large hearts, large souls persist and I think we have both met some. To draw generalizations from a Pharaoh or a couple of Pharaohs who managed to go through an extensive initiation inside of the pyramids, and extrapolate that to everybody is a bit beyond what I would recommend. But having those individuals more apparent in the society would certainly have an impact on the overall society even though potentially all Egyptians or all Sumerians were one step from gods. So they would have had an impact, but it is hard to know the intricacies of that kind of society. There were people that were instrumental in perpetuating the society.

Maybe it is like today, but maybe it is harder to find today. I take hope that there are still shamans in the world today and that there are still people that can teach me something.

Whitley: Well I think we have reason to believe that. I think that both of us have had experience with such people. I can remember a man who had a lot of shamanic power in his life who taught me for many years. He had some very unusual skills. In fact he had the capability of simple disappearing before your eyes. My wife and I often witnessed this. Once he was walking up a path. There was a whole group of people standing waiting for him. And suddenly he wasn’t there anymore and he came up behind us. And I turned around and said, “How do you do that? I’ve seen you disappear like that a number of time.” And he looked at me and said, “You figure it out!” I’ve been working on that ever since – at least 25 or 30 years.

Paul: Those moments in my life are much more fascinating than aliens or giant Annunaki. They are with me now and I carry those moments with me.

Whitley: If we think of the giants of the past as being big souls, it transforms all of those stories completely. It is amazing. It makes them useful instead of turning them into sort of a popular comic narrative.

Paul: That captures the book as much as anything Whitley. That is what we try to expose in the book. These are not fantasies. The myths are as useful today. You have to directly experience them and bring your own person to the myth, and with that they are much more powerful than anything you’ve ever believed before.

Whitley: Well I want to thank you very much for being with us Paul. Paul’s book is “Awakening Higher Consciousness: Guidance from Ancient Egypt and Sumer” written with his close friend Lloyd M. Dickie. Their website is http://awhico.com.

Paul: Awakening Higher Consciousness dot com: awhico.com

Whitley: awhico.com

Paul: And if you do a Google search on awakening higher consciousness you’ll find us that way too.

Whitley: Yes, well thank you so much for being with us on Dreamland.

Paul: Thank you so much. It has been a great pleasure. 

Quote on Page 5 from Awakening Higher Consciousness.

Quote: "My inner awareness may be entirely missing when I am fully occupied by the external self, which is busy with what needs to be done. In fact, the externalized side of me doesn’t depend on immediate inner attention, and it seems to get along very well without the inner “I.”'

Dreamland interview with Whitley Strieber

Higher Consciousness in Ancient Egypt

Over the course of Dreamland's Year of Awakening, we will explore not only the modern threads of knowledge about how to do this, but also the ancient wisdom. 

In this interview, Paul Boudreau shows us how many classic myths and stories from Sumerian, Egyptian and other sources contain instructions for awakening higher consciousness. The illusion in which we live never stops telling us that we are small, helpless and essentially "meat machines," but there is much more to us than that, and the hungry soul can find food in ancient stories, created at a time when human beings could still sense their souls. 

Surrounded as we are by material goods in the west, or consumed by agonizing poverty in the rest of the world, we are, as a species, going soul blind. It was not always like this. The past can point the way to a future in which the human species recovers itself and continues on its true journey. Paul Boudreau is an ecologist and biologist who studies ancient myths and sites. He has done on-site explorations in Egypt, and will share his finding with us. 

Check it out at: http://www.unknowncountry.com/dreamland/higher-consciousness-ancient-egypt

Blog #13 - Digging deep into "Magicians of the Gods"

1)   Graham Hancock’s latest book entitled “Magicians of the Gods - The Forgotten Wisdom of Earth's Lost Civilization” explores changes in the global climate that occurred at the end of the last Ice Age and the impact of such massive changes on the humans living at the time. This Blog summarizes Hancock’s work, and other related evidence, to examine his logic that about 13,000 years ago a comet struck the northern ice cover resulting in;

• a.     a sudden and catastrophic melting of the ice cap;
• b.     immense amounts of freshwater discharge into the ocean;
• c.      sudden rising sea levels;
• d.     temperatures dropping 2 to 6 degrees C / 4 to 11 degrees Fahrenheit; and,
• e.     the near-extinction of an unknown highly-technical society that has left megalithic structures around the world to warn later humans of the potential for similar future disasters.

2)   Note that for at least the past 40,000 years relatively modern humans have inhabited the World having outlived the Neanderthal and Denisovan people. Modern humans would have experienced the changes explored by Hancock and would have been influenced by these overwhelming events.

3)   As much of Hancock’s arguments center around climate changes associated with the Younger Dryas time period, first we need to understand the present evidence for climate change during this important geological time period between 12,900 and 11,700 years ago (see Table 1).

4)   We currently live in a relatively stable and warm climate called the Holocene period that has existed for the last 11,700 years. But around 27,000 to 24,000 years ago the earth was experiencing the last Glacial Maximum with large sheets of ice 3 to 4 km (1.9 to 2.5 mi) thick. Between the end of the last glacial maximum and the beginning of the Holocene, the climate went through a gradual warming from ice age temperatures to what we experience today.  

Table 1. Significant global events over the past 27,000 years

5)   During this 12,000-year period of general warming there were a number of notable changes in the World’s climate that appear to have occurred over very short time periods.

6)   First, there were three notable periods of relatively rapid cooling. The three periods of rapid cooling are referred to as the Oldest, Older and Younger Dryas periods (Table 1)

7)   Second, there were periods when large amounts of freshwater entered the World’s ocean. These periods are referred to as Meltwater Pulses and the dates are also shown in Table 1.

8)   Third, these large Meltwater Pulses gave rise to periods of very quick rising of the level of seawater in the World’s ocean. Figure 1 shows the timing and the effect of these Meltwater Pulses. Meltwater Pulse 1A occurred about 14,500 years before present prior to the onset of the Younger Dryas. Over a relatively short time span, sea level rose 25 m (82 feet). Note that the data in Figure 1 do not show any sign of the Meltwater Pulse 1AO. There appears to be a later steepening of the curve at around 12,000 that could correspond to the Meltwater Pulse 1B that would date to roughly the end of the Younger Dryas period.

Figure 1. Image of post-glacial sea level rise. Meltwater pulse 1A is indicated. Note how quickly sea level rose around 14,000 years ago. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meltwater_pulse_1A#/media/File:Post-Glacial_Sea_Level.png.

9)   Fourth, this sudden rise in sea level would have flooded all low-lying coastal lands around the world. Such a rise would have been experienced and noticed by humans and this is likely the origin of the many Flood stories in human cultures around the world. It may also be the event that gave rise to the Atlantis stories recorded by Plato.

10)                   Fifth, this is also a time when two thirds of North America’s large mammals went extinct. Animals such as saber-toothed cats, mammoths, and mastodons, short-faced bear, short-faced skunk and the giant beaver went extinct at this time.

11)                   Finally, this is also the time of the sudden demise of the resident prehistoric Paleo-Indian culture of North America the Clovis Culture.

12)                   In summary, there is a lot of evidence for a major global event preceding the onset of the Younger Dryas period between 14,600 and 12,900 years ago: resulting in glacial melting, freshwater runoff, sudden sea level rise, temperatures decreased by 2 to 6 degrees (4 to 11 degrees Fahrenheit), North American large mammal extinction and the end of the Clovis Culture.

13)                   Now to explore what might have caused all of these changes? Putting aside Robert Schoch’s hypothesis for a stellar mass ejection as the cause, Hancock explores the possibility that all of this was brought on by a comet impacting the ice in the glaciers of North America. This is referred to as the Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis.

14)                   The Younger Dryas Impact hypothesis is supported by a number of pieces of evidence. In the sedimentary layers of soils there is a clearly identified boundary layer that corresponds with the onset of the Younger Dryas. At this boundary researchers have found a high concentration of anomalous materials, for example nanodiamonds that are associated with the high temperatures generated from comet impacts. There is evidence for a high heat event that resulted in extensive burning of the plant material in North America. There is also evidence from Greenland Ice cores for very high Platinum/iridium and platinum/aluminum ratios that suggests an extraterrestrial impact. Hancock argues that there are no impact craters from such an impact because they would have hit the 3 to 4 km (1.9 to 2.5 mi) thick ice sheet that would have dissipated the energy and melted the ice into the freshwater seen in the meltwater pulses.

15)                   Whatever the cause, it is important to remember that all of these changes were experienced by modern humans who lived at the time. In addition to having to deal with the suddenly cold temperature a major impact on human cultures living at the time would be the flooding of their coastal homes.  Figure 2 shows a map of the World and the light blue area roughly represents the present-day 100 m deep areas of the ocean that would have been dry land occupied by humans prior to the sea level rise of the Meltwater Pulse 1A and the Younger Dryas period. While coastal lands would have been flooded worldwide, note that some areas of the world would be affected more than other. For example, see the large expanse of coastal areas surrounding Southeast Asia and Indonesia that would have been flooded.

Figure 2. An image of the present day land elevation and sea levels. The light blue colored areas are roughly 100 m deep and would have been exposed land prior to the Younger Dryas period. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bathymetry#/media/File:AYool_topography_15)

16)  Returning to Hancock’s main storyline, he argues that there was a highly civilized, technically advanced society that was flooded out of their homelands in Southeast Asia and remnants of the population made their way around the world to seed the development of humans. He suggests that the many megalithic constructions around the World are evidence of this civilization. At this time 12,000 years ago there is evidence of humans burying their dead, creating cave paintings, carving human figurines (https://awhico.com/blog/eurasiatogbekli-tepe). Yet there are numerous sites around the world that have poorly-dated structures constructed of massive stones with incredibly fine precision such as the stone constructions in Peru (Figure 3). Hancock suggests that these all have a link to a society displaced by the coastal flood during the Younger Dryas.

Figure 3. Archeoastronomical alignments in the megalithic structures at Saksaywaman, Cusco, Peru. http://www.midnightsciencejournal.com/2014/03/29/analysis-of-the-saqsaywaman-temple-of-astronomy-presence-of-stone-age-writing-in-the-layout-of-the-temple-walls/

17)  Hancock deals with the flooded lands around Southeast Asia in his treatment of the recently discovered human-made construction at Gunung Padang, Indonesia (Figure 4). Researchers have found a large pyramid structure there that has been carbon-dated to at least 8,500 years before present - a couple of thousand years after the onset of the Younger Dryas. Maybe this is the lost continent of Mu or the land of Atlantis of Plato’ s stories? Definitely as shown in Figure 2, much of the land in the area surrounding Indonesia was flooded – and remains water covered today. Read this note regarding the non-continent of Atlantic: http://lost-origins.com/atlantis-no-lost-continent/.

Figure 4. Terrace 1 at Gunung Padang viewed from the north (copyright, Andrew Collins, 2015). http://andrewcollins.com/page/news/eq_0515.htm

18)    At about the same time as the carbon-dated origins of Gunung Padang, a major megalithic structure was built by humans at a site Göbekli Tepe in Turkey. This site has been dated to 12,000 to 10,000 years ago. This site has magnificently carved large standing stones. Embossed on some of the stones are many images of animals and birds. Hancock deals extensively with one such stone referred to as the Vulture Stone (Figure 5). He goes through a rather elaborate argument to suggest that the Vulture represents the constellation Scorpio and that the round circle on the Vulture’s wing is the sun. He proposes that such an arrangement of Scorpio and the Sun occurs at only certain point in the Precession of the Equinoxes and thus the builders of Göbekli Tepe were creating a warning for future humans that something dramatic occurred at the beginning of the Younger Dryas. I prefer to think that the scorpion on the Vulture Stone represents Scorpio and that the bird with the disc represents the bird constellation Cygnus. If there is a warning in the image, then maybe they were indicating the location in the sky from which the comet arrived – such as Encke that results in the Taurid meteor shower. I agree that Göbekli Tepe is an incredibly important site – but its meanings remain a mystery.

Figure 5. The vulture stone (Pillar 43) at Göbekli Tepe. Note the scorpion in the register below the bent winged vulture (Pic credit: German Archaeological Institute) - http://www.andrewcollins.com/page/articles/Gobekli.htm.

19)  After 1,200 years the Younger Dryas came to an end and the climate began to continue its warming trend. There is some suggestion by Hancock that the Younger Dryas period may have ended as the result of another comet impact that gave rise to global warming. In contrast to the earlier impact this event would have hit water and/or earth instead of the glacial ice sheets. As a result material and water would have been thrown up into the atmosphere and resulted in heat being trapped on Earth. Although this is very possible, it is also possible that it would take 1,000 years for the thermohaline circulation in the World’s oceans to reestablish itself. Whatever the cause the Younger Dryas period came to an end 11,700 years ago as the Global temperatures reached the present warm climate that we now experience.

20)  The final piece in Hancock’s storyline is the potential for another catastrophic encounter with a presently untracked comet that would again plunge the world into a period of major cataclysmic climate change. As comets periodically circle the sun it is certainly possible that such an event is yet in the future of the world. When and how such an extraterrestrial impact will affect the world is impossible to predict at this point.

21)                   So to return to Hancock’s many interesting and important points, there is much evidence and agreement some of his points such as:

• a.     a sudden and catastrophic melting of the ice cap;
• b.     immense amounts of freshwater discharge into the ocean;
• c.      sudden rising sea levels; and
• d.     temperatures dropping 2 to 6 degrees C / 4 to 11 degrees Fahrenheit.

22)  There is some question about the dating and timing of these changes in relation to the onset of the Younger Dryas. For instance the evidence for the Meltwater Pulse 1A puts it 2,000 years before the onset of the Younger Dryas.

23)  The most important question raised by Hancock deals with the existence and near-extinction of an unknown highly-technical society that has left megalithic structures around the world. Certainly modern day society is at a loss to explain how many of the World’s megalithic structures such as the Great Pyramid of Giza were built – and by whom (Figure 3). They are totally out of scale from the well-known societies that were carving small statuettes and painting on the walls of caves. The existence of such structures is undeniable yet we do not yet understand who built them. It is most likely that any evidence for a highly-technical society that predated the Younger Dryas is covered in 100 m/330 feet of seawater in the flooded coastal waters of the world.

24)   Graham Hancock’s latest book entitled “Magicians of the Gods - The Forgotten Wisdom of Earth's Lost Civilization” brings together a number of observations and evidence to build a plausible storyline of human history. Although many questions remain, his contribution to the study is invaluable.

Interview transcript with Susan Danz on her Frontier Beyond Fear program.

Susan Danz: Welcome to the Frontier Beyond Fear Blog Talk Radio program. I am Susan Larison Danz and I am delighted to welcome you back here today for what has been a very active week for episodes and you’ll find that the next couple of weeks are going to be that way. I am just so delighted to be bringing some very interesting and wonderful guest onto this show. I am talking with you from what is quite a rainy Pacific Northwest. We actually had an ice storm out here in the Portland area but I am on the other side of town where we just got a bunch of rain. And I had the delight of walking in the rain this morning which I always enjoy and as a result I am feeling refreshed and ready for this show.

Today in about a moment I am going to bring on the air a new guest to the show Paul R. Boudreau. His new book is “Awakening Higher Consciousness: Guidance from Ancient Egypt and Sumer.” A book that he co-authored with Lloyd M. Dickie.

Now today we are going to talk about how the research that these two have been engaged in shows how myths from the ancient world are more than mere stories. They are gateways essentially to awakening consciousness. They help with our understanding of the greater world and how to balance our world – the world that seems around us that should be the illusive world and this greater world. Well I guess illusive in the sense of illusion and then this greater illusive world using the word illusive with an “e” that can sometimes slip away from us. So we are going to talk about how the myths help us to understand this and make the divine more accessible. Paul, and his co-author Lloyd who can’t be here today, will speak on his behalf I’m sure. They both spent more than a year together in Egypt exploring sacred sites and actually Paul has had a lifelong connection with mythology. He has explored science and myths for many years and travelled extensively. He is an ecologist by trade and comes to understand these things with a societal perspective and what is meaningful to each of us within that context. His website which I am going to spell for you to help you right at the outset so that you can make a note of it is awhico.com. It is up on the page but I know that not all of you can necessarily see that. I am just so delighted to have all of you here today and bring Paul Boudreau on the air.

Paul Boudreau: Hello Susan, how are you? Thank you very much for having me and we’ll get the rhythm going here in a second.

Susan: Well you’ll find that the rhythm of this show is very relaxed and we enjoy exploring here. And you are very much an explorer Paul and I am learning a lot from spending time with your work which is a continuing unfolding, let me say. This is something that there is a lot to this.

Paul: Yes, absolutely. As you mentioned it has been a life-long interest of both myself and Lloyd in terms of some of our first memories were encountering some of these myths and it has continued through our lives so we still work day-to-day to try and understand what that means. What the myths mean for me personally and for ourselves as a society. Absolutely it is just one more step in the process.

Susan: You know something that you touch upon Paul – and really I feel that is revealed in this book and your work – is something that we all have in common, is what touch you as a child, what touches all of us is this sense of wonder. Maybe that’s a good place to start is how we all share this connection to myth, to help us realize that.

Paul: Yeah we start at the beginning I guess. For us as individuals with our early memories, well for me personally it was a lightening bolt. As I was listening to some of the stories, particularly growing up in a Christian household and hearing the stories of the Garden of Eden and naked people running around with a talking snake – how could it not catch your attention. You know that there is something here that I didn’t’ understand, but there is something important because these adults, my teachers, my parents and my associates were telling me these stories for a purpose. Not to just entertain me but to prepare me for life. So before even school started these sort of stories and myths – and I should say that when Lloyd and I talk about myths we talk myths in the very broadest sense from fairy tales that we have all heard such as Little Red Riding Hood through to the Sumerian and Egyptian stories that we analyze in the book and right to The Bible. We talk myths in the broadest sense. But they were all conveying some very important information that connected with my being without having to study philosophy. I didn’t need all that baggage. But yet these myths were able to connect and wake me up a little bit at a very young age. And I am still working through that. 

Susan: Paul what have we lost, maybe we can say it in another way, because I think you say this to some degree. But we don’t all sit around the fire and listen to stories anymore, although stories are still very much in our culture. How can we begin to understand what that was like for our predecessors, what they derived from these communal experience of sharing in stories and myths?

Paul: Let me start in reverse, have you seen the Star Wars movies?

Susan: Yes, I was just going to say that it is still happening. You know I have a ticket waiting for me I’ve been told. So yes.

Paul: You’ll have to tell me if it is good.

Susan: It is like the golden ticket.

Paul: So I thinking that it has always been there throughout humankind right up to present-day. The method may change but for my kids watching Star Wars opened up a whole avenue for discussion on these topics that we had not managed to get to any other way. Looking back in the distant past, looking up at the stars with just a campfire. We are all human and I think although the technology changes, the connection is still made in those different situations.

We see that in the myths. They take different forms with different images, but we always come back to the fact that they are help and guidance for reminding me of who I am and who I am not. Reminding me of my various parts. A good story is a very important part of that. We look in the book at several layers of interpretation of myths. I don’t want to get too technical but a good story has to engage you. It has to interest you. Just because it is a good story of good and bad, or the various sides of a person, there are other levels that as an adult, with my preparation, my training my work, I am able to see higher levels of interpretation of what appear to be very simple myths. The trick is to add more to what providing me and see more of myself in the myths so that they are not just crazy simple stories but they are actually connecting with what I can see.

In many cases myths provide us with language, or is trying to provide us with a language. Awakening higher consciousness, spirituality, the Self as Jung put it. Those concepts are hard to convey. At least I find them hard to convey. Much harder than watching Luke Skywalker flying through space. We have to find a language both for you and I to talk, and for us to talk with other people, but we also need a language for ourselves to remind us what we are. To see ourselves as our many parts. I have a body and that body gets hungry, we have emotions, etc. But every once in a while there is a flickering of something higher that wakes me up and I think the myths provide us with some language that helps me realize that yes that is a real awakening and I need to pay more attention to it, not get too distracted by how hungry I am.  

Susan: You know, something that I was reflecting on as I was thinking about this, and actually it is relevant to Star Wars and maybe this whole genre that is out there that is a new mythology, a fantasy type literature that is out there. What I have observed is, I have come from a scientific high-tech, educational background and I observed that many people who on the surface might say that they are rationalist, or they some people might call them materialist, not all of them, I don’t want to characterize any one group this way, but there can be that element of not necessarily wanting to engage in a direct spiritual tradition or anything like that yet, this group in particular, you will hear them recite all the fantasy novels, some like David Eddings, or whatever, these popular fantasy authors. Or they will be the kids, and I was one of them in the 70s, couldn’t get enough of Star Wars. I watched them over and over – well it was more difficult to watch them repeated in those days as you had to go to the theatre. But that really engaged us in a way just like you are talking about. The show was magical and it uplifted us up out of our own limitations in terms of thinking about spirituality. It is kind of a complex question but somehow it is really important because it is lifting us all to a similar place.

Paul: Yes, your right. I should point out that we don’t define higher consciousness. It is a very personal thing. There is not point in getting bogged down in defining the goal, but right now, right here I can breath and I can be a bit more awake than I was seconds ago. And that opportunity presents itself endless times in my life. And each time I’m a little bit different coming out the other side. So seeing Luke turning off his computer is like “Wow!”

Susan: I love that scene still. I use that often in my head. Its like OK I’m doing that again. Yes, yes, yes! Exactly. It doesn’t have to have a label does it. It’s the experience of it.

Paul: Some things you need a word for it, but if you label it too quickly it disappears. It falls like jelly through your fingers. It is something that one can’t grasp at.

So getting back to the book of course, we’ve looked at a number of myths in this way in terms of this. Some of them are well known to us such as the Garden of Eden. We also deal with Gilgamesh and the Egyptian Osiris story. And these are stories that some people may or may not have encountered. The question is how do you bring yourself to them? If you do that, what can you see in them?

For instance, in Gilgamesh, it is a story from ancient Sumer which is 5,000 years old. Two thousand years before the Greeks started writing. This is the very first literature of humans. In Gilgamesh, it is a story of a demi-god and his wild partner. The two guys go off and do great things. Most people are familiar with it as an external tale about a demi-god living 5,000 years ago. That is somewhat satisfying, but it really didn’t help us understand why we are still telling that kind of tale 5,000 years later. What we have done in the book is to explore the spiritual side of story. The way that we’ve looked at it is more of a tale of my parts. The demi-god is my demi-god. It’s a part of me that is in the story. The mate, the fellow helper, for the demi-god in the Gilgamesh story is a sort of wild-man. And I can identify that wild-man in myself in terms of my emotions that have road-rage and go off track. So we were able to find a number of different levels in the story of Gilgamesh that helped me see my different parts working. Ultimately in the story and in myself what is required is the balancing of my god-like parts with my body parts. I am a body and I have to work with the higher. I can’t just exist as a globe or ball hanging in the ether. And so we found the story of Gilgamesh is just one example of these myths that we looked at that does a good job of capturing the concept of the various parts of ourselves and reminding myself that I have to come back to my breathing, to my appetite, to my pains and sorrows and woes. And I have to find that other higher level that can reconcile those two different sides of me – the god-like side and the animal side – to come up with a reminder to me of what my ultimate goal that is to be real, to be more than an animal. Again the words are difficult, but the myths provided a very lovely way of expressing some of the things that we had been seeing in ourselves throughout the years. Does that make sense?

Susan: Yes actually. I had made a note about something you said in that section of the book that touched me is – and I think actually a lot of people have encountered this myth, whether they totally remember it or not I don’t know, but I think that everybody has been required in high school to, in any kind of English class had probably encountered it. But something you say about the love between the parts of our being as if not just knowing these parts exist, but loving, accepting these parts and self love and what that means. What is self love and how is self love expressed in this tale?

Paul: And how is self love expressed amongst opposite things. We talk a little bit about the reconciliation of opposites. We are often presented with love as “falling in love” and it is easy and it is glorious - love of child and such. But the love here is about how two disparate parts really appreciate each other in such a way that they could love each other? That is part of my challenge as I strive for wholeness. How do I bring my parts so that they love each other and not work against each other? Not interfere with each other? They do seem to be very separate when I develop road rage.

Susan: Yes that is a very good example. So how would it help us navigate that? We’ve all had it happen. You know we all say something, not just on the road, and then why did that just happen? Why did I do that? How does this tale help us to reconcile that a little bit better and just accept ourselves. Is there an example?

Paul: It has to do primarily with recognizing the parts and recognize that I am not one person. I can be leaving the house in the morning and say that I am going to be calm, I’m not going to get angry – and then waking up to the fact that I am angry at someone who cut me off. Its like how could that have happened?? We think that we are rationalists, in the Western World we think we are logical, yet these illogical events creep in. If I notice them, I see more of myself. That’s a part that I have to love as opposed to deny or forget about or dwell on for the rest of the day – that someone cut me off. Really why should that matter?

So seeing the parts comes up in Gilgamesh, in the story of Adam and Eve and all of these ancient myths. It keeps reinforces the need for me to look at my parts and realizing that I am not one. There is not just one “I”. There is another one 10 minutes later. To see that is huge. For them to fall in love with each other – I don’t know.

Susan: To really be able to accept that yes. And something else before we leave Gilgamesh, that I want to explore briefly because we are only able to touch on some of these things but you had mentioned that there is an element here about going to the limit of your ability. Well I see in the modern world the burnout if someone is really pushing themselves to the limits of their abilities. I wonder if you could talk about that very briefly. How does that apply to our world today and our lives today?

Paul: There are a number of grades to that. The one that comes to mind right away is music. I practice music and I write songs and I try to enjoy music. I am terrified of performing. But if I push myself to perform, I perform much better than I ever expected. I have a bigger impact that I ever expected. That is the positive side of pushing yourself to the limit. We know burnout and we live quite different lives than the Egyptians and Sumerians and we have to deal with pressures differently. So there certainly is a bad side. But we talk about direct experience and if you are really connected, if one can really get connected with one’s parts, then that opens doors for performance in the broadest sense, performance in a way that isn’t ordinary, isn’t normal.

Susan: Kind of transcendent.

Paul: Yeah absolutely. Yeah it is definitely transcendent. We can’t get into why we have traffic jams in the 21st Century but we seem to be chasing things that give us the not good stress but the bad stress. We can’t get too much into what would it be mean if our civilization could buy into wholeness and being as opposed to money and progress. That is a much different conversation.

Susan: Yes very much so. I want to take us back a little bit because you spend a lot of time, and we sort of touch upon it when you talk about the story of Adam and Eve, but even going farther back, I would like to take us back to the creation myths. We’ll start there and we’ve already started to talk about separation a little bit. We start with creation and it leads to separation. So I wonder if you could take us through because there is a rich tapestry there. So I will leave it to you to see what you would like to explore there for us.

Paul: Well if I may, can I read one of the quotes from the book?

Susan: Sure that would be perfect.

Paul: One of the challenges is making people aware that some of these concepts are much older than we ever imagine. So in the book we build on the Sumerian myth which reads, and I’ll just read two lines “When the heavens have been separated from the earth, and when the earth had been delimited from the heavens, and the fame of mankind had been established” and it goes on to say a few other things. So some of the earliest literature that humans ever wrote down had to do with the separation, this distinction between heaven and earth. This gets back to seeing the different sides of myself that we talked about a few minutes ago.  It’s about seeing the parts from a higher level. My best visual image comes from the Yin and Yang. The circle with the two tear drops inside. They are in a whole, they are in a circle, but the two sides play with each other. They have to work together to make the whole. If your not perceptive enough, or aware enough to see the distinction, the separateness, the earth from heaven, light from darkness, love from hate, its hard to see enough detail to reconcile the two parts and to have them working together.

So the first step is to recognize that there are these distinctions. There are these differences. That helps one to appreciate that I’ve got this god-like side of me and I’ve got these appetites. To see that they are not the same helps me appreciate that that’s where my work should go. It has to develop both of those sides. Its not one over the other. Its not one beating the other. In the modern world progress means that the white capped cowboy wins over the dark hat cowboy. That is not very productive for my own personal development. But to see these two sides that could work together is really very useful and well its essential. Otherwise I am just a mess. I don’t know who is going to be working me in the next couple of minutes – is it going to be my hunger or is it going to be my desire to be nice to people.

So from the very beginning, from the very early literature that we’ve looked into from Egypt and Sumer had to do with making these distinctions and seeing these distinctions in a way that didn’t have one operating against the other.

Susan: I have a question here about paradox. It seems that anyone who reflects upon experience and duality, there is a paradoxical nature of understanding of duality in the sense that by somehow reconciling, balancing it you transcend beyond it which is what you describe. I wonder if you could explore the whole concept of paradox a little more deeply. It is such a fundamental question. We struggle with this in our society. It tends to lead us to the why. It can create atheists and agnostics. It tends to be a very troubling area where there is a paradoxical nature of our world and myth expresses that and helps us I feel.

Paul: It helps us live with the paradox. Many paradoxes are not going to be resolved such as in the story of King Solomon ready to cut the baby in half. That resolved it but even in modern day physics, if I can take a little diversion, you could explain it better than I, but in modern physics the particle and wave nature of light. Light is something we encounter every day. You turn on a light, we need it to see, and yet there is no resolution to the fact that it exists as both a particle of light as well as a wave. We just have to accept that and accept that those are just two different states of the same thing. So love and hate I believe are on the same level. I would like the think I could be saintly and love everyone but to-date, this hasn’t happened yet. So I have to accept these paradoxes and they live in me and our rational world tends to drive us to a resolution of the paradox whether it’s a good resolution, a necessary resolution. I don’t think that that is very beneficial for us to always drive to resolve the paradox. I think it is better to just appreciate both sides and in some case strengthen. Its not just the field of spirituality, but also physics, hard physics still has to struggle with these kinds of paradoxes. And that’s not without trying to resolve them.

Susan: Yeah, yeah. Somewhere along in your exploration I know that you speak of the heart versus the mind and how these are expressed. And it seems like the mind tries so hard to logically resolve things and yet the heart sees beyond it in. It can’t quite explain it. Its like looking at an object in the sky without looking directly at it where you can see it better.  I always found that odd. People into astronomy always say “Don’t look directly at Andromeda and you’ll see it.” or whatever. And there is something there related to this that. Just to form a question here, since this is a topic that we’ve explored a lot on this show such as following one’s heart and listening to one’s heart, how does myth help us that? How does it help us get in touch with the heart.

Paul: Most myths contain a very strong relationship, Gilgamesh is an example, between participants. Garden of Eden is another example of relationship. There’s a lot of interactions and relationships between all of the players in the myths we have looked at. I don’t know if that gets directly at how we can strengthen our heart and our intuition over our logic. In the western world we are well conditioned to use our logic and our heads in formal fashion. We go to grade school and university and whatnot. We are not formally trained in terms of how we could follow our hearts. That may be something that we need to address down the road but there are certainly many people that I’ve met that are guided more by their heart than their head. In many ways I am envious because as you said, I am an ecologist so I see some of my logical side.

Susan: You categorize things perhaps.

Paul: Yeah, but one of my own personal experiences here in Nova Scotia has been to spend some time with our First Nations people and participate in some of their talking circles. And they definitely demonstrate a movement that leads from the heart much more than logic. It is an incredibly powerful force when you experience it. There are certainly cultures and people that well versed with leading with the heart that am I and that is one of my challenges to learn from them and appreciate that.

Susan: As long as we are talking about place for a minute, and its good that you mention that you’re in Nova Scotia, maybe this is a good place to talk at least a little bit about your amazing travels and how this has connected you to these myths. I wonder if you could talk just a little bit about them? Where have you been such as exploring the pyramids, the hieroglyphics and things. I would love to hear about that a little.

Paul:  I have been very fortunate to be an ecologist and scientist. My specific field was marine ecology so that gave good reason to many of the world’s oceans and coasts for conferences and mangrove swamps in Malaysia. But there were always a few days where I could find some free time and so Lloyd and I have experienced together Stonehenge and we’ve spent some time in the King’s Chamber when we were in Egypt. Lloyd has been to Bolivia and Cambodia to Ankor Wat. We’ve made it a point of “well we are going here, well what else can we see and where else can we go.” Another place we’ve been that has been very influential has been the back of a fishing boat in March off the Atlantic coast cutting up fish doing some of our research. Seeing the moon rise and the planets above you and really appreciating our place on the world as you sit on this little piece of bobbing steel in the middle of the ocean. We try to make the best of all of our opportunities and again I express gratitude more than anything else that my life was able to put me in those places. Of course there are many many places to visit and it is a very exciting time actually Susan with relooking at archaeology and finding new places that still intrigues me and that I haven’t gotten to yet.

Susan: Yeah they are discovering these new things and the way they are scanning the pyramids now and finding new chambers. It is very exciting isn’t it?

Paul: Yeah very much so. Things that we couldn’t image when we started the book so many years ago are now being discovered. There is the site in Turkey, Göbekli Tepe that is 10,000 years old which is 5,000 years older than the Pyramids that we were in. I am encouraged by that because there is much left for us to learn about the world around us as well as ourselves.

There are different things that one picks up in these different places of course. The pyramids is one example. We were in the King’s Chamber which is in the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt. I can’t express how beautiful and gorgeous the place and to get into was incredible. Someone had tipped us off that we should sing when we were in the chamber. So we were in this King’s Chamber in the very center of the Great Pyramid in Giza and we started humming, singing, sort of chanting. Lloyd has a lower voice than I. I did the mid-range and there was a women who did the high voice. It was incredible. We were isolated by thousands of tons of stone and yet the whole world felt alive. The whole pyramid seemed to be singing back to us which still raises the hair on the back of my neck. So that was the experience in that pyramid. In the King’s Pyramid there are no carvings. There is nothing on the walls of the big pyramid but it sings, its glorious. Where some of the older pyramids are covered in these embossed letters or hieroglyphs. We present some in the book. And here you could read. It was a totally different experience. It was a totally different way of communicating. One was with just sound and the other was with letters and words. It is amazing how many different ways we can take in this information. And once you start looking at the astronomical alignments of these various ancient monoliths, Stonehenge I haven’t been there (at the right time) to see the sun come up over the Heel Stone at summer solstice, these are all different ways that information has gotten entombed, I don’t like that word, embodied in these structures. In many cases you have to be there. You can read and Google is great, but actually be there for the sound and vision, to see these things, you do take away something from having those experiences.

Susan: Yes I’ve had guests on the show who have had transcendent experiences just visiting sacred sites. They’ve spoken about this that it is an experience that goes beyond the senses. That you talk about the singing – oh my! That is amazing. I haven’t heard that before. When you were talking about this I was bringing it to popular culture. There is this scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark that captures this feeling. Its that scene where he is holding in his hand and the light is coming in and the music rises and he shines this light on this ancient city. To me that is capturing in a way what you are talking about. Even if we had never been to any of those places. There is something very magical about this connection that reaches us even today. Even when I saw that as a child, or maybe a little older, that had an impact on me and I wondered why, why that? When you talk of singing, I can’t explain it except that it was powerful. And that is how I relate. I haven’t travelled a lot. I haven’t had that opportunity yet.

Paul: Yes – exactly

Susan: I hope to travel some. Probably not as much as some people have. We find these experiences in the ways that we do. They find us.

I have a question for you. You refereed to this and made me think about this a couple of times. At some point I know that I read in your book about how our modern experience of the sky is so different now. All lot of us are in cities, but maybe we are fortunate enough to get to Crater Lake near me where you can see more of the night sky. But we don’t see the night sky and in general our relationship, you talked about the solstice just now. Our relationship with the sky is so different. How that kind of changes how we might see some of these myths compared to how they did it in the ancient world. I wonder if you could reflect on that at little bit how our relationship with the sky has changed. So we may not see the same things on the surface level as those in the ancient world saw every day. It was part of their reality.

Paul: Yeah coming up to the solstice and Christmas we have embodied some of our modern day myths but we don’t experience it in the same way. The most interesting question for me has to do with the Milky Way. I think everyone has heard of the Milky Way, it’s the galaxy that we are in. It lights up a band in the sky. Getting back to my personal experience, I’ve managed to see it a couple of times a year. When you see it from the back of a boat our on the ocean it is spectacular. Its undeniable, its unmissable.  Its not just the Milky Way, there are holes in it, there is the great rift which comes down from it, but in the city you would never see it. Even in a small town you will never see it. From what we’ve seen the Milky Way is a very important visual that is captured in the myths. We equate it with the Netherworld or the Duat. This land that the pharaohs traversed through to get to a higher level. We equate the Milky Way with the Duat. When you see this band of light above you it is remarkable how it sticks out as opposed to being in a city where you might see some of the bright stars of Orion and maybe the North Star. But the Milky Way for me has a draw that you don’t experience in normal day life driving down the highway. So to not have that visual, to not have that symbol in your life, to not know what the Milky Way looks like is a loss. It is a bit of a challenge. That’s a shame.

Susan: It actually kind of sad that so many of humanity don’t have that experience any more.

Paul: And when you look at pre-history at the time that some of these earlier structures were built, you realize that they were built aligned to things that people saw every night. In one way its amazing, in another way its just that its there, its so obvious. But for us its kind of missing. That goes the same for a much more powerful image of a good sunset or sunrise. To see the sunrise or the sunset while I sit on a beach I get a real sense that the earth is moving. And we are moving pretty fast. Some of the images carry forward, but some are purely intellectual as in “I’ve hear about the Milky Way and I know what it is.” As opposed to “Wow! Look at that!” Its right out there and its arching over our heads.

We get a little bit into Jungian archetypes in terms of images that we all have. Some of the stars and the sky are some of the more powerful archetypes that connects us all around the world in terms of we can all see it. When you look up at the full moon and someone in Africa is looking at that same full moon. Someone in Australia is doing the same thing.

Susan: You know there is one area that we haven’t explored too much, and maybe we can enter into this a little bit, we still have time left, is more deeply exploring relationship a little bit. Maybe you could talk a little bit about Osiris and Isis maybe? I am not sure how you would like to explore that? We talked a little about it in the Gilgamesh legend and how that is about relationships but I wonder if you could explore that a little bit more.

Paul: Well my favorite relationship is between the Egyptian gods Heka and Maat. They are Egyptian gods/neters/principles, principles of action. Maat is much more well known in the Western world. Maat is a female god, she is the god of order, justice, truth. She very much aligns with some of the Greek principles of order and everything is set out. In the book we look into her mate or the person who she has a relationship with which is Heka. Heka is magic. Heka is creation. Heka is generation. In the Pyramid Text which is written in a dozen of the pyramids in Egypt, in the Pyramid Texts there is a lot of mention of Maat – or at least in the translations one can see references to Maat all over the place. The Pharaoh is lining up the farm lots and regulating the river. But Heka, the god of magic, is not really apparent in many of the 18th and 19th Century translations. We were struck by this because of our interest in the role of magic. Being biologist, you know creation, ecologist – order isn’t the only thing out there. There is something more that is generally required. And so we explore the god Heka and how Heka and Maat, magic and order, play a much bigger role in creation than we were lead to believe. Its one of those paradoxes. They seem opposite one another but yet, in our reading of the Pyramid Texts, it became apparent that they both seem to be always present when there is creation. So you need some order, but you need that extra little bit. Whether it is that spark of life or that little unknown that irrational imputes that gets things going. And so we found this really fascinating that the two gods are often paired and often working in consort to give rise to creation and the production of higher things.

            Now Heka, Magic, was very much dismissed by the Christians in medieval times and so maybe what we first encountered was the history of that interpretation. Whether that is so or not I don’t know but we would like to promote Magic, the god of Magic and his relationship to Maat, to better reestablish the myth of these two very important Egyptian creation gods so that we in our Western World can start to appreciate that unknown.

            As an ecologist there is always that question of what gives rise to things and what is the right level and how do predator and prey interact. And this relationship between these two opposite gods seems to capture that very well. You need enough hares/rabbits to support the foxes, but if you have too many foxes you don’t have any hares/rabbits. So we found this relationship to be very useful in applying to some of our professional questions in terms of what is that “more than just order” that is required to make our ecosystems work.

            We are still exploring that particular relationship. But it was fascinating to see, once you dug a little bit into the early text, that both sides were there even if they weren’t equally represented. Hopefully we can somehow contribute to looking at the Egyptian myths in a way that gives us the opportunity to introduce Magic and creation.

Susan: Oh I love that actually! Because when you think about it even the quantum physicists for example if you want to bring physics up again just briefly, is that some of that can appear like magic. It defies the order that everyone thinks should be there. Of course that’s the whole point that something that is there should have an impact. It doesn’t make any sense. It seems very magical and Jungian synchronicity comes up. That always feels magical. And so I love that there is a myth encompassing that. I think that’s very cool. We need to bring that forward for sure.

Paul: And not just a myth, but this is one of the first myths ever written down! How could that be?

Susan: Yes! Yes! It makes sense actually. In a magical way yes!

Paul: They were writing about important things. You only have you’re one shot to carve your story into a pyramid, you are going to write about important things not trivial things.

Susan: Yes! I would consider magic quite important – yes - if it has to do with creation.

Paul:  And Magic in terms of creation in particular is

Susan: very important!

Paul: Looking at quantum physics you are right, two particles that are separated influencing each other and we don’t know how.

Susan: Yes, it seems like magic!

Paul: It seems like magic! Absolutely.

It also borders on love making the world go round. I mean, what’s love and how could love influence things? Well it influences who we associate with and who we don’t. It is not easy to fall in love and it is not easy to not be in love. Its part of that magic, part of the magical side that is represented by Heka as opposed to order and logic and justice. And we need both and the myths remind us that we need that balance to find that right level for those two forces is really critical. Not one over the other. Not one beating up the other. It’s a matter of let’s let them both exist and see where that takes us.

Susan: Yes, very much so. Well Paul what a wonderful hour. I’ve really enjoyed this conversation with you and I think we’ve come full circle. We’ve come to this concept that you emphasis so much that you call wholeness. And that is really what you have just expressed so beautifully and I just want to thank you very much for being here today and just exploring. I’ve really enjoyed our conversation today.

Paul: And so did I it has been great fun. I wasn’t going to mention physics but you brought that in.

Susan: Well it just comes up doesn’t it? But you know it is still very approachable. You know that these things are all becoming discussed. You don’t even have to remember your physics if you’ve taken it. Most people have taken physics in highschool. All of us have been exposed to physics and some of these things at some point - although not quantum physics. So that is blowing everyone out of the water.

Paul: But the wholeness lives on that level as well.

Susan: Yes it does.

Paul: You know you can’t partition spirituality off in one corner and not deal with it in the rest of the world, so I really appreciate the time and it has been fun chatting and you’ve got me thinking about a few other things that I’ve got to follow up on.

Susan: That was good! That’s wonderful! I want to remind people about your website. I’m going to spell your website, why don’t you spell your website. The best place where people can learn about your work. Once again.

Paul: It is the first two letters of Awakening Higher Consciousness. So it is awhico.com and on the website we are posting blogs about some of human history, and various things that we have followed up since the book was published. If you do a Google search, or a Bing search for awhico you will find links to our Facebook site and a Twitter site. And of course we would love to hear from anybody – good or bad. Feedback is always important. Definitely all of the social media tools are there if you have a question or some point that you want make or that we could all benefit from. So awhico.com.

Susan: Well I know that I’ll continue to explore your work. You’ve given me a lot to think about to Paul. Give my best regards to your co-author and co-traveller Lloyd cause I find your work really interesting.

Paul:   I will

Susan: And I hope the listener become readers. Readers of your work and explorers of myth. This is a gateway to a richer world.

Thank you so much again Paul and I look forward to more exploration in the future. Take care.

Paul: Thanks and bye.

Adam as Universal Man

“No one translation conveys the full sense of the original,” replied Pisces. “In an earlier chapter of these books of Moses it was shown that because Adam, the Universal Man, was created in the image of God, he has within him both active and passive principles."

Page 80 - Awakening Higher Consciousness: Guidance from Ancient Egypt and Sumer

Enantiodromia - resolving opposites towards synthesis.

Quote: "When contradictory elements appear, they invite a possible synthesis, which #Jung called enantiodromia."

Page 91: Awakening Higher Consciousness: Guidance from Ancient Egypt and Sumer

http://awhico.com