Customer Reviews:
| Showing reviews 51-54 of 54 | | « PREV 1 ... | | |
 The Key Questions June 13, 2006
18 out of 40 found this review helpful
There is a very basic question to be asked of this (very long) book: are subjective experiences "real" in any objective sense, or are they deceptions we play on ourselves by altering our perceptive senses?
Hancock, of course, insists on the first option: subjective experiences brought about by drug-induced hallucinations transport one to another realm, an alternate reality populated by living, supernatural beings. This, indeed, has been the claim of mystics and shamans since time immemorial.
The problem with this claim is twofold. First, no two hallucinations are the same, often for the same person on the same drug taken on different occasions. If the realm of the supernatural is objectively real, it seems to change every time drugs are ingested. Indeed, an entirely different "realm" is entered if different drugs with different effects are ingested, or if different doses of the same drug are taken.
So what seems more likely? That the "reality" of the supernatural realm differs from person to person? Or that when you play with consciousness (a mysterious phenomenon in itself) and alter perceptions your brain plays tricks on you? Do we really think that when we dream, for instance, we are actually entering a different reality or is it more likely the case that our brain is just working through issues with images and impressions? I know which option seems more likely to me, esp. given experiments that can stimulate impressions of, say, a foreign presence in a room by applying mild electrical currents to certain parts of the brain.
What do you say about people who, without taking any drugs, live in an alternative reality due to a stroke, accidental brain damage, an inherited chemical imbalance in their brains, or a mental illness (see the bizarre cases documented by Dr. Oliver Sacks)? Have these patients moved house into an alternative reality? Or are they struggling with damaged brains, brains that are playing cruel tricks on their perceptions and rendering them, effectively, invalids? Often these people can be brought back to the real world by giving them drugs to suppress their symptoms. What does all this tell you about how our brains interact with the world? What does it say about a supposed "alternative" reality, in this case entered by brain damage and left by taking drugs?
The second problem is that centuries of attempts to "prove" the supernatural realm by charting its alleged intrusions into physical reality have come to naught. Investigation after investigation of spiritualists, mediums, seances, psi-factor, talking to the dead, efficacious prayer, ghosts and spirits, dreams, etc have all produced either null results are highly disputed claims, quite distinct from the replicable results in genuine science. At the very least, the claimed intrusions of the supernatural into the physical realm should leave some documentable traces somewhere. But they don't. They are *always* highly controversial claims, often solely personal testimonials from witness with no testable, physical manifestations to look at.
So, once more, the basic question has to be: are the subjective experiences of meditators, mystics, shamans, dreamers, and hallucinators "real" in any objective sense, or are they phantasms conjured by our brains when we play with its perceptive capacities?
 More long, strange trips May 19, 2006
8 out of 16 found this review helpful
Science bashing is easy, particularly if you're a bully. Research over the past century has revealed an immensity of new information. The cosmos has expanded and retracted. Our planet's "skin" proved to be a dynamic surface with continents wandering about dodging and clashing. Humanity, once considered the "peak" of Nature's many living things, has proven to be another member of the animal kingdom. While all those areas of study have resolved many questions, they've raised many more. Journalists like Hancock need only select one of those remaining questions, formulate their own answer, then castigate "mainstream science" for not answering it to his satisfaction. It's a bullying tactic that he's used before. The sniping is boring and the dismissal of good researchers is insulting.
One of the last, and latest, areas being investigated is the human mind. What happens in that gob of porridge-like material in your skull. Is it truly a gateway to another universe? Hancock thinks so, but he follows a tortuous path in arriving at his conclusion. He opens with a physical trip into the Amazon region, and a mental journey prompted by a South American drug. Ayahuasca is a "shaman's drug" which evokes visions while purging the gastrointestinal system. People returning from the trip describe all manner of shapes, colours and creatures they encountered in their heads - or somewhere. Modern shamans apply the visions to many aspects of life, but "healing" and "rites of passage" are the major features [there's probably a fee schedule worked out]. Hancock tripped on ayahuasca with predictable results - including the purging. This isn't a pioneering venture - people like Wade Davis [among others] have made the trip on local ground. Hancock's derivation, however, is rather novel.
While we don't know when hallucinagenic drugs were first used to improve bedside manners, we have some indication of what hallucinations can evoke. The evidence is painted on the walls of caves in France and Spain, rockshelters in Africa and temples in the Western Hemisphere. Hancock introduces us to David Lewis-Williams, a South African palaeoanthropologist who devised the term "neuropsychological" to explain the condition cave artists experienced to produce those beautiful, fantastic images at Lascaux, Chauvet and elsewhere. Hancock accepts Lewis-Williams' thesis the cave art was inspired by images perceived by those in an "altered state of consciousness". Fair enough, says Hancock, who wants the scientist to go further. "Trip out with me!", he says in effect, "Otherwise your conclusions aren't valid". That's like saying if cancer researchers aren't infested with tumours we should scorn their results!
The reason Hancock wants scholars to ingest all those fancy chemicals is that he thinks they're missing something. What they're missing, he argues, is the gateway to another realm. About 2% of us, he contends, can do this without either chemical or physical stimulation. It's those people we should trust to guide us into the "spiritual world" since they don't need stimulation to visit this "outside". Those people, Hancock suggests, have a surplus of a chemical called "dimethyltriptamine" [DMT] in their brains. This tricky molecule turns out to be the gateway to the supernatural. To prove that, one of Hancock's more amenable researchers injected volunteers with DMT. They came back with tales of "the other side". Hancock weaves these studies with alien abduction tales and modern shaman's accounts to declare that the commonality of reactions across humanity says there's something there. Someplace, actually, and for Hancock it's the spirit realm. We can all get there if we try!
Hancock builds his case with style, enthusiasm and scope - sprinkled with a heavy dose of self-esteem. He cites numerous interviews, defends Lewis-Williams against his detractors, and shows us how easy it all is with accounts of his own jaunts into the supernatural. The interviewees seem pretty sympathetic with Hancock's thesis - or at least they don't object to it. Lewis-Williams is quite capable of defending himself. And Hancock's chemistry experiments only show that drugs play havoc with human neuronal nets. He might have learned this prior to his fearsome mental journeys if he'd spoken with some real neurobiologists. They could have explained about "sensory deprivation" and how the brain reacts to it. The information might have opened a few new doors for Hancock, while shutting down a few of his more bizarre speculations. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]
 mysterious skeptics April 27, 2006
12 out of 12 found this review helpful
The realm of the skeptic is a strange one. Certainly, it is always immersed within fear, denial, arrogance, and, quite frankly, laziness. I had completed graduate level work in human evolution and development many years ago, and I didn't exactly have an easy time accepting the tremendous possibility that 95% of what I had read and regurgitated many times over was simply false, given the compelling frame work of the vast (often hidden) evidence. But, I have always been interested in the truth, no matter how bizarre, so I moved on and contemplated other theories and ideas that were not solely politically based, but rather were rational and simply "workable" in their presentation. I understand academia all too well and I realize that "science" has been bought and paid for for too long, which is why it is somewhat sad for me to encounter the skeptics. They don't understand that the "facts" that they are clinging to have precious little hard science supporting them. Science has become like a group of little tyrants all trying to maintain control and grab a buck while being patted on the head by their financiers. Where has the courage, the curiosity, the thirst for knowledge, the adventurous spirit of science gone? Surely it goes well beyond ego, conservatism, or even money. This is why alternative theories within science always must somehow come to terms with the obvious conspiracy of it all, whether naming it the Illuminati, or Sons of Belial, or space Aliens, or mind control, or Satanism, or whatever, because there is most certainly an agenda operating that is keeping incredible information from us. My humble advice: just let it go, open your mind, and move on. A good start is reading books like this. We may all find that we are far more special, more powerful, more truly bizarre than any "alternative" book has speculated thus far. And what would be so bad about that?
Courageous exploration of our shamanic history. March 1, 2006
15 out of 15 found this review helpful
I've followed Graham Hancock's work through the years with great interest and appreciation, even when he has been on a few side trails. History is less easily tested than the "hard" sciences, but Hancock has made a career of gathering together many small bits and pieces of things to reveal the underlying patterns that were not as noticeable before, but now appear strongly and certainly to be true.
Always in pursuit of the presumed lost civilization that gave birth to our own, Hancock has been all over the world and even under the seas in his recent book, Underworld, searching for empirical evidence in ruins of human structures dateable to a time before the commonly accepted genesis dates of civilization. It was quite a twist for me, then, when I learned that he was writing a new book on a totally different angle. In Supernatural, Hancock takes us on an epic journey from the famous pre-historic cave art of Europe and rock art from Africa with its strange menageries of part human-part animal beings, through modern expressions of shamanistic beliefs and techniques, and the use of and research into psychoactive substances that seem to open a doorway into another reality. These things, he maintains, are all connected and should be given the consideration of representing something real rather than being casually dismissed as primitive superstition or "brain fiction" caused by chemical reactions in the molecules of the brain.
This is a philosophy I've been personally exploring for some time, and it is quite a treat to have a researcher with the time, resources, and courage of Hancock, to forge so strongly ahead in a direction I was going. He has locked on to the same literary resources that propelled my own interest - Narby's "Cosmic Serpent", Shanon's epic "Antipodes of the Mind", Strassman's "DMT The Spirit Molecule", etc. Plus, he has now personally experienced the effects of those natural psychoactive plants that have opened a portal for humans for millenia, from magic mushrooms to iboga to ayahuasca. Far from being "pleasure trips", most of these substances are difficult and extremely unpleasant to use. The ritual and sacremental use of them is endured in order to experience the non-ordinary realities that they can reveal. Realities that seem to include non-human entities. Hancock takes us through the centuries with stories of angels, demons, fairies, goblins, and all the "other beings" called by various names through the centuries. Not the least of these are the modern concepts of extra-terrestrial aliens. He shows how these are all expressions of the same phenomenon, from the part-human/animal cave art depictions to the grey aliens of UFO's, and how their interactions with humans over time has seemingly evolved towards some purpose.
The first part of the book dealing with the cave art can get somewhat long and repetitive, but I realize that Hancock is being rather more careful these days to back up what he is saying with the most thorough research job he can achieve in order to deflect as much of the certain academic backlash as possible.
Supernatural is a very important book for those seeking a quantum jump forward into unknown but extremely compelling territory. Its subject matter will certainly cause it to be profoundly ignored or at most crassly denigrated by the orthodox scientific/academic community, but that is the nature of human nature. It takes someone with courage who has no turf to protect to simply go in pursuit of these things with the golden purpose of finding out what is real. That is certainly my goal, and it is a valued resource, as well as a pleasure and a comfort, to have Graham Hancock on that road with me.
|
