Graham Hancock

It's happening state by state where cannabis is being legalized and that draconian hand of government is being taken off the back of people who are consuming a medicine that is far less harmful than alcohol, which is glorified in our society. We cannot say that we are free.

if we allow a government to dictate to us what experiences we may or may not have in our inner consciousness while doing no harm to others. And the point there is we already have a whole raft of laws that deal with us when we do harm to others. Do we really need laws that tell us what we may or may not experience in the inner sanctum of our own consciousness?

I think it's a fundamental violation of adult sovereignty. And we would have much less drug problems And these drugs were all legalized and made available to people without shaming them, without punishing them in any way, but just part of normal social life.

And then you could be sure that you were getting good product rather than really shitty product, which has been cut with all sorts of other things. The way forward is for adults to take responsibility for their own behavior and for society to allow that to happen and not to have big government taking responsibility for decisions that should be in the hands of individuals.

We've seen a revolution in the way science looks at psychedelics in the last 20, 25 years. They were in that highly demonized category. But again, it's one of those paradigms which gets overwhelmed by new evidence. And it began to be realized that psilocybin and other psychedelics are very helpful in a range of conditions from which people suffer.

Post-traumatic stress disorder, the fear of death when you're suffering from terminal cancer can be overwhelming. And it's been found that psilocybin can remove that.

deep depressions can be evaporated with one single massive psilocybin journey they just go away there's really good science on this and and they are being integrated into conventional medicine more and more we'll see it happening i'm not sure if it'll happen as much as as fast as i would like to see it happen in my lifetime but it is going to happen

I was talking about ayahuasca and I was talking about the view that I hold very strongly that as long as we do no harm to others, sovereign adults should be allowed to make decisions about their own bodies and not face a jail sentence or shaming as a result. So it was a TEDx talk, not a TED talk, organized by a local TED group. They call them TEDx talks.

And I gave this talk about the war on consciousness. And it was immediately pulled down from Ted's main channel with all kinds of bizarre reasons being given. But unfortunately, it was too late because a number of people had already downloaded the talk and then uploaded it onto other YouTube channels.

And actually, their banning of it made it go viral in a way that would not have happened otherwise. But again, it's a sign that that points of view that are not acceptable to those in positions of power are simply dismissed and shut down, or at least attempts are made to do so.

uh to humans from 100 years from now you bet it will especially if we harness psychedelics to investigate consciousness and and you know that is that is what is happening at uh at imperial college right now is is the investigation of the experience they're not looking there are other trials that are looking for the therapeutic potential of dmt but in this case

they're looking entirely at the experiences that people have and why they're so similar from people from different age groups and different genders and different parts of the world are all having the same experiences.

Yeah, but why not? We're a vehicle for consciousness, in my view. I think consciousness is present in all life on Earth. I don't think it's limited to human beings. We have the equipment to manifest and express that consciousness in the way that a dog, for example, doesn't have, or a snail doesn't have, or a pigeon doesn't have. But when I look at two pigeons sitting on my garden fence and...

rubbing up close to each other and enjoying each other's company and taking off together and hanging out together. I think they're conscious beings. And I think consciousness is everywhere. I think it's the basis of everything.

And I suspect that fundamentally consciousness is non-physical and that it can manifest in physical forms where it can then have experiences that would not be available in the non-physical state. That's a guess.

And see if consciousness enters, if they become consciousness. Isn't there some suggestion that artificial intelligence is already becoming conscious?

Well, look how other people make us uncomfortable, too. I mean, look at the state of the world today. All the conflicts that are raging. That's because we're afraid. When I say we, I'm speaking nation by nation. We are afraid of other people. We fear that they're going to hurt us or damage us in some way, and so we seek to stop that. It's the root of many, many conflicts, this fear.

And so fear of AI may not be such a good idea, after all. It might be very interesting to go down that route and see where it comes. Certainly, in terms of exploring consciousness, it is very interesting.

Well, it can be destructive, and it can shut you down completely.

Well, I'd really like to know how the Great Pyramid was built. And we now have, with new tech, with scanning technology, it's now become apparent that there are many major voids within the Great Pyramid. Right above the Grand Gallery, there's what looks like a second Grand Gallery that has been identified with remote scanning.