Transcription
Through your journey through ancient civilizations, what have you come to learn about what this consciousness thing is, if anything at all, or at least what people believed?
Yeah.
Um and how those mythologies were similar?
Yes. I've partly I've partly come to this through the ancient texts. There's a very specific uh scene in a number of the ancient Egyptian funerary texts. It's called the judgment scene. And what you see is you see the deceased entering into a hall into a room at the end of which sits the god Osiris enthroned. And uh the deceased is led into the hall by the goddess Ma'at. She's recognized by a feather that she wears in her headdress. She's the goddess of truth, justice, and cosmic harmony. He enters the hall. There's a scale in the hall. In one pan of the scale is an object that represents his heart. Oblique his soul. Heart and soul were the same thing for the Egyptians in that sense. And in the other pan is the feather of Ma'at, the feather of truth, harmony, and cosmic justice. You do not want your heart to outweigh the feather at that moment. You want at the very least to be in balance. And in order to be in balance then comes into question the whole way that you've lived your life. Up on the wall of the hall there are 42 little figures. They're called the 42 negative assessors. Each one of them is going to ask you a question. Did you steal? Did you kill? Actually, the ten commandments are all in there and a lot more as well. Ideally, you should be able to answer no to all of those questions. But the ancient Egyptians always understood how frail human beings are and that we can always make mistakes. The question is what do we do when we make a mistake? Do we learn from it or do we keep on repeating it? And what I read into that is you were given you the deceased. You were given an incredible opportunity. We allowed you to be born in a human body. You could have a range of experiences that no other physical form on your planet could have. You you you had this huge brain. and you have this enormous capacity. We gave it this to you. What did you do with it? Did you use it well or did you squander it and waste it? And at that moment, you'd better be there with some answers about how you used it well.
So, as I come towards the end of my life, I look very carefully at my life. I and um I try to undo wrongs that I have done in the past if I can and I try to make sure I don't do any more in the future. I want to be a nurturing and positive and useful person to the people around me.
The the health situation you've gone through has clearly made you quite introspective. Probably more so than you you might have been 10 years ago, I'm guessing.
Oh, yeah. AB: Absolutely. I was still immortal 10 years ago.
Listen, each and every one of us, every single human being on this planet could die in the next minute. Life is that fragile. It's that sudden. You can never predict you you how long you're going to live. But what something like this does, it focuses the mind and it does make me wish more and more that I can leave this life with as few regrets as possible and that I can feel that I played a useful and positive role in the life of others and that I even played in some way a useful and positive role in the life of the species to which I belong.
Are you happy?
I am very happy in a lot of ways. I'm blessed to have lived the life I've lived, to have traveled the world, to have the adventures that I have had. I am blessed with a beautiful and wonderful wife and companion. My wife Samantha.
Got this wonderful picture of her.
Yeah.
Glows.
That's me and Samantha. We met when we were about 40 years old. And um I don't think we've been apart more than 4 days in the entire 30 plus years uh since then.
Wow.
Uh we do everything together. We travel together. Samantha's a photographer. Brilliant photographer. And and and uh I do not have a great visual eye. So we work together. I do the words. Sa does the pictures. We have the adventures together. We did the scuba diving together. Samantha nearly lost her life twice in intense currents scuba diving. She's brave. She's an adventurer. She's a wonderful mother. This is so important. Samantha and I have six children between us. Samantha brought two from her previous marriage. I brought two from my first marriage and two from my second marriage. So, six children from three broken marriages is a potential disaster. Santa brought them all together into a group of loving, deeply committed siblings who care for one another, who are constantly in each other's lives, who are there to support one another. SA did that by just being a brilliant, loving person. So, I'm very happy to have such a great partner who's stood by me through thick and thin and who's brought out these wonderful characters in in in our children and now our grandchildren. You know, nine grandchildren, six grandkids, all of it's down to Santa. It's remarkable that through all the wonders of human history and all the things we talked about that love like this kind of romantic love is so central, so important, so central to our happiness. I just thought, oh, it's it's just a wonderful reminder of um how easy it is to get caught up in the material and and all the toxic whereas, you know,
so much of it comes from just the simplicity of falling in love with someone.
Love is what it's all about. And and love is love is giving. It's giving yourself to somebody else. It's putting the other person. Sorry, I'm going to end up crying. This This is what my wife does all the time with everybody. She puts other people first and uh others benefit enormously from that. I'm very fortunate. I think I think if I hadn't met Samantha when I did and we hadn't formed this joint life, I think I would have made nothing of my life. Nothing at all really.
I think it would have just gone down the tubes. I needed a loving steering hand at that point. Anyway, very lucky. I I I am happy. There are things that make me unhappy, of course, just like every every every other human being. I I don't understand why those who are bitterly opposed to my work want to try and present me as some kind of fraud or grifter. But I suppose it's a easy way to lazily dismiss somebody else. Uh, another thing that has been used is because I've considered the possibility of a lost civilization having an influence on other known historical civilization. Uh I've been accused of racism as well that I've been I've been accused of taking away the authenticity of indigenous achievements. Um and and that again has been without without any receipts. It's not been it's just thrown out there as an accusation. Now for me with with a multithnic family uh that racism abuse that has been thrown at me constantly uh is extremely hurtful and extremely painful. It's one of the few things that have been thrown at me that I actually cannot forgive. It's unforgivable to use that lazy easy dismissal in a society where a lot of people don't read anymore. I mean, pretty much guarantee people who hear that on the internet, they're not going to go and read the books and actually find out what I said. They're just going to take it as face value. So, that does hurt and it does make me sad. But generally, I'm blessed. I'm lucky. I've lived a fantastic privileged life. I've explored the world. I'm surrounded by love and onwards and upwards as far as I'm concerned.
Well, you know, Graeme, I think at the end of the day, the thing that endures is the impact, the curiosity that you've you've provoked in people, allowed them to wander beyond the narrowness of our lives, which is quite miserable.
A narrow life is feels quite like a miserable life where you can't be open-minded and explore. And and that's why I love these conversations. It's not to say that I that I always accept when I have these kind of conversations everything to be 100% true, but the net benefit for me
is just expanding my mind
to possibility.
Absolutely.
And like please don't rob me of the opportunity to expand my mind to possibility. What would my life become without possibility or hope or these things? And and actually when I look at
graphs like this that show how our beliefs uh and scientific understanding has changed even in recent times as as recent as 2017 on this particular graph. I go well I have some arrogance to assume that I know it all today.
Totally. Things things are constantly changing. You know every turn of the spade in an archaeological dig can change the whole story.
Change the whole story. This is not limited to archaeology. This is found in all fields where there are specialists that they they tend to get locked into a particular reference frame and actually defend it in a territorial way. It becomes like a war and they they feel absolutely responsible to defend that territory against all comers and will use any dirty tricks that are needed to be used in order to defeat the enemy. So you asked me a straightforward question. Am I happy? Yes, I am happy. And I honestly answered you that there are certain things, particularly the racism assaults on me, that do make me extremely unhappy.
What else do I need to know about the the possibility of an ancient civilization that might inform how I think about myself, my life, and I guess also our future. What I found so fascinating is especially we're in a moment of this AI revolution where you've got these sort of big forces of you got nuclear weapons over here, you've now got this advanced intelligence, there's humanoid robots on the horizon. And if there was ever a moment where the word, you know, existential is being used in a way that is probably appropriate for me, it feels like now.
Yeah, feels like now to me, too. Uh this is uh no doubt uh our species is poised on the edge of an abyss right now. Uh our technology has outgrown our mentality. Uh and we're not uh we're not in good shape to deal with the challenges that lie ahead. I I un unfortunately the chances of a nuclear exchange are just higher and higher. That's just a realistic assessment of the way the world is with these maniacal leaders. So what could we learn from the past? We can I I I believe we can learn that there's another way to live that we don't have to do it this way.
I I that's that's something I believe.
Okay. Believe.
That's something I don't know.
Okay. I guess I'm optimistic that human beings have made it through all these centuries, all these thousands of years, all these hundreds of thousands of years that we've made it through. We've made terrible mistakes and terrible. I mean, look at the Second World War. God know how many people were killed there. 20 million Russians alone if I remember correct. It was just horrific. Absolute horror. It's only when I was born in 1950, the Second World War was only 5 years away. and at the end of it and it hung over us. You know, you our our generation were aware of that, but it seems to me people today aren't aware of the horror of global war in the way that they were and and uh that adds to the to the danger that we will emulate ourselves. I think a new approach to the nature of reality is really vital. I think we we need to begin to understand consciousness better. Uh and what I would wish for the human species is that we understand we are actually all one. Incredibly diverse, full of creativity and differences, but but all one. And a mother in the middle of subsahara and Africa and a mother in New York City, they love their kids in exactly the same way. They hope for their kids in exactly the same way. There's no difference between them at all. As long as we're as long as we're indoctrinated into this notion of divisive differences, I'm all in favor of differences between human beings. That's part of our creativity as our species, but divisive differences, that's what's going to kill us off. Uh, and that's, I think, the message that comes down from the past. Whether it's a correct message or not, the message is we, a former civilization, made a terrible mistake. and it resulted in a cataclysm that brought us down. I think we need to realize that can happen again. Uh and that we are most likely to be the cause of that cataclysm ourselves. Uh there may there may be a danger of further comet impacts. The younger drius comet fragments. It's called the torid meteor stream. The earth passes through it twice a year in June and in October, November. Uh there are hundreds of deadly objects in the torid meteor stream. It could happen. But I think a much more likely way that we're going to bring our civilization back almost to the stone age is nuclear war. We're going to do it to ourselves. Unless we wake up, unless we become more conscious of what it is to be a human being, of the privilege and the gift of being a human being, and how that privilege of gift belongs to every human being, not just to us. But I don't know how that's going to be done. I I I do think psychedelics can play a role. I've said many times and I'll say it again. If I if I had the power to do so, I would insist that every world leader has at least at least a dozen sessions of Iawaska before they even apply for the job.
Because you believe that would give them the same feeling of oneness that
I think most of them wouldn't apply for the job at all.
Oh, really?
And those who did would would probably do a much better job
because they'd understand themselves better. Graeme, what is the most important thing we haven't discussed as it relates to our past and what it might teach us or, you know, how it might inform how we choose to live our lives today?
Um, that we haven't discussed. Look, the most important thing as far as far as I'm concerned is independent inquiry. We need to start thinking for ourselves and that's true of the past and it's true of everything else. uh to the to the extent that I that I do get positive feedback from young people and I do a lot that feedback is thank you for being an example to question everything.
Mhm.
It happens that what I'm questioning is the past but that can be a model for questioning everything. I I feel that that very poor journalism being used to smear my name because I asked questions and because I asked them vigorously and because most important of all I reached a large audience. That's it really. They won't sneer smear your name if you don't reach a large audience. You're not worth their trouble.
I know the feeling.
Yeah. But I think but you know for me my thing has always been that um all it's done has made me clearer like you know you have a bigger platform more people um watching you etc and talking about you all it's done for me is made me clearer on my principles and what I believe and I'm actually really thankful for that in a weird way. Yeah,
because you're forced to, you know, when you hear so many things said about you or written about you, whatever, it does focus one minds on, okay, like who am I and what matters? What am I where am I uncompromising in terms of the conversations I want to have, the way I want to do it? And that's given me a huge amount of clarity and one of the things that I'm really
I really want to make sure is that it doesn't make me um bitter or resentful in any way.
Very important.
And you can see how it happens. Yeah, I can I can absolutely see how it happens
because you you have to live with this sort of um injustice potentially or being mischaracterized or whatever. So, it's easy to see how one can slip off into bitterness and resentment and
that's a that's a big part of the work I'm doing on myself at the moment. I I'm confident that I am doing the right thing with my life. I'm doing no harm to anyone and I'm putting ideas out there that are worth thinking about. I'm confident of that. I have no I have no doubts about that. And what will you care about on your on your last day?
Most of all, the love of my family. That's the most important thing to me. And um I don't know, the feeling that I did my best. I did the best I could to carry out the task that uh fell upon me quite by accident. I didn't I was a current affairs journalist in the 1980s. I had no idea I was going to go down this rabbit hole into the ancient world. It was a series of accidents that led to it. But having gone down it, I feel very very very committed to it.
It's interesting because one of the ways that I um I've always chosen to conduct my interviews is just to um judge people as I find them. I remember once upon a time I had Brian Johnson coming on my podcast and you know he's quite a he's a he has some radical beliefs about living forever etc. He's the longevity guy. And I remember one of my team members walking up to me beforehand and saying before he had arrived and saying, "What do you think of him?"
And I remember saying, "I have no idea. I've not met him yet."
Yeah.
And then I sat down with him, had this interview, and he said this thing to me at the end of the interview where he goes, "Thank you." And I go, "What do you mean?" He goes, "Thank you. This is the first time I've done an interview in my life where the interviewer had like no preconceptions of me."
And he goes, "It meant that I was relaxed and able to be myself and blah blah blah blah." And I and I say that because my opinion of you is someone who is really curious about about humanity and has this interesting idea that is really expansive for one's mind about what could have happened. And um again, the net benefit for me of that is just expanding my mind in a way that makes me empathetic to other people.
Yeah.
Makes me feel like me and you aren't different.
Yeah. like I've met you today, but we're probably, you know, we we we go back a long way. Maybe consciously we're the same, but
in our history and our lineage, we are
we are one of the same. And um it also gives me a huge amount of respect for other living things, including my ancestors,
in a way that you kind of think of your ancestors as these like monkeys that lived in trees potentially.
But actually hearing some of these stories makes me go, "Oh my gosh." And actually, it gives me a huge sense of responsibility
to leave this planet and this earth in a way that it's going to be good for, you know, the future the future kids that will live 20,000 years from now in the future and that will probably look at our um fossil records and wonder.
I I think I think those of us who have a a platform do have a responsibility
very very very definitely. I mean, we're living in this strange new world. This this world was inconceivable even in the beginning of the 1990s. this this this world of communication that we live in now. And there's no doubt that that um this is where influence can be applied and and if that influence is encouraging all that's good in the human race, then that's really great and it's a wonderful thing. And if it's encouraging all that's dark and negative and cruel and unkind and vicious in the human race, because that's also out there on the internet,
then it's not so good. If you love the D CEO brand and you watch this channel, please do me a huge favor. Become part of the 15% of the viewers on this channel that have hit the subscribe button. It helps us tremendously and the bigger the channel gets, the bigger the guests.