Interview #1 Transcription: Cliff Dunning Earth Ancients May 9th.
Cliff Dunning: My Guest today has written a book about higher consciousness in the form of myths. Now this is interesting. It appears to me that there are other forms of consciousness, development, consciousness access that the ancients knew that we really don’t understand.
My guest today is Paul Boudreau who is an ecologist/biologist and has studied ancient myths and travelled extensively through the Middle East and studied Egyptian temples. Paul, and his co-author Lloyd Dickie, have written a book called “Awakening Higher Consciousness: Guidance from Ancient Egypt and Sumer”.
It is unique to think about. A lot of this program, Earth Ancients, is based on an interest in Ancient Egypt, ancient Sumer and a lot of the wisdom that they left us. But there is so much of this wisdom that we just don’t know about.
Today we are going to talk about consciousness from the eyes of the ancients.
Welcome to the program Paul.
Paul Boudreau: Hello Cliff, how are you?
Cliff: Great! Now you’re calling from where now? What part of the world are you located in?
Paul: I’m on the other side of the continent on the East Coast of Canada, somewhere north of say Boston over here in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
Cliff: Nova Scotia – right. I’m here in California. How’s the weather there these days? Are you guys having normal weather or is it odd like a lot of the states here?
Paul: We are the one blue spot on the NASA chart. We’ve had a cold winter but today the daffodil’s are out and its 50 degrees which for our neighborhood is really quite pleasant.
Cliff: Excellent.
So this is an interesting book. What was yours and Lloyd’s motivation to write a book on higher consciousness? I’m just curious because in the early part of your book there are images of you and Lloyd around the Great Pyramids and other structures. I am curious to know what would motivate an academic scientist such as you guys to do something like this, write something like this?
Paul: I think you would have to go back to our childhood, and I know that we going to come back to consciousness and relate that to early experiences. Lloyd and I have worked together as marine ecologists and we’ve spent many days at sea studying fish of the North Atlantic coast and various scientific studies, but we both discovered in our conversations that we’ve had some sort of childhood experiences where we heard stories and nursery rhymes that just didn’t make sense and I guess in some ways just started the flow of thoughts of what could they possible mean.
Take the Garden of Eden which we write about in our book. Why would a story about naked people in a garden be passed down 5,000 years and why would I care?
So the original beginnings of our curiosity went well back before we even met and once we got together and had time on the back of the fishing boat or sitting on the West Bank of Egypt we encouraged each other to explore what could be behind these myths that really didn’t make sense to us.
Even nursery rhymes - I don’t know if you had the chance to sing nursery rhymes when you were a kid, but I remember singing the nursery rhyme “Ring Around the Rosie”. Do you know that nursery rhyme?
Cliff: Oh sure – yeah! Of course!
Paul: Well many years later I found out that it came from the Great Plague in the middle 1600’s. You, I, here we are still signing that nursery rhyme without having that connection of why would we be signing about the Great Plague? That shows that myths have the power to carry information forward. Our challenge is to figure out what does it mean to us today.
Cliff: And so what was the importance of myths created by the Ancients? Was it to carry down certain kinds of information? Was it a form of teaching that was used? What did you guys discover?
Paul: Early on we talked about myths and certainly Lloyd had the interest in Egypt for many years and introduced me to it. We were kind of struck at how the earliest explorers labeled the early Egyptian myths as spells or incantations in a very derogatory and dismissive way. They were a product of their time, much like we are of our time, so I am not surprised that the did that but I see that we are still trying to get past those initial impressions that labeled these myths, not as great literature, but as throw-away, not of importance.
The more we looked at it the more we found that we could relate those myths to what we are today not just ancient myths from ancient times with gods throwing thunderbolts and all the classical myth kind of thing. The more we looked and the more we dug into some of the early literature it became obvious to us that it was really trying to provide a language to themselves as to what they were, how could they engage in life and engage in consciousness. This fascinated us of course and set us on a path to explore Ancient Egyptian, Sumerian and Hebrew myths. So it came about very naturally and we are still working on it today.
Cliff: You referenced the work of Schwaller de Lubicz and his “Sacred Geometry” which is a fascinating read. John Anthony West in his book “Serpent in the Sky” is the greatest recount of de Lubicz’s work. Did you discover a sacred form of writing in the hieroglyphs that you discovered and read? The focus here is consciousness and higher levels of consciousness, was there something that you discovered in these myths that triggers a level of consciousness that we are not aware of or was it more just for you the recounting of ancient myth that is the important factor?
Paul: I think the best way to capture that is that it is hidden in plain sight. I think in many cases we are familiar with the images, it is just that we don’t address the images that are useful to us. As an example, in the book we talk about four levels of interpretation. There are many ways to look at it but we talk about literal, allegorical, hieroglyphic and esoteric. We think that all myths potentially have all those levels of interpretation. A good myth has all of those levels. Literal, it’s got to be interesting to people to carry it forward. The example that I use with people is on a literal level a wolf is an animal. A wolf is a wolf with sharp teeth. One can picture a wolf. Allegorically or figuratively a wolf could be a person who is preying on someone or a person who is a bad influence. That is a different level than thinking that there is a wolf in my backyard. The challenge that comes about when you start to get into the hieroglyphic and esoteric levels, which Schwaller de Lubicz called the symbolique, to get to those deeper meanings. On a hieroglyphic level it is not so apparent what is meant and what the person brings to the myth is probably as important as what the myth conveys. One has to be engaged. So the wolf in Red Riding Hood, again another simple myth, is an influence that caused her life to change. It gave her great loss because poor Granny got eaten, but it gave rise to maturity and she met the hunter and went on. So all myths I think contain these various levels and what we try to invoke is to explore myths that people are familiar with, but on other occasions we introduce new myths, that we can use to look at these various levels. The literal is easy, the higher levels are more difficult much like consciousness. But Schwaller de Lubicz is a huge influence. His looking at the Egyptian myths was critical to us pulling away from the misunderstanding, false concept that all the Egyptian wrote about death. Many people we talk with think that the Egyptians were just a funerary society. We don’t think so. We think that they were struggling with developing a language to express the higher levels of consciousness that they were aware of.
Another great influence on us has been Jeremy Naydler, Dr. Jeremy Naydler who wrote a book called “Shamanic Wisdom Restored”. He looked at the Pyramid Texts. I’m not sure if you are familiar with the book?
Cliff: Somewhat
Paul: He looked at the Pyramid Texts as a description of, not the development of the Pharaoh after he dies, but Jeremy makes a very convincing case to us that they were actually talking about transformation while alive. What better way to capture this whole concept of awakening higher consciousness but with a passage through the Netherworld, passage through the Duat. So did we find something secret or sacred? I think that it is there and we just have to find out how to harvest it and approach it.
Cliff: In “Serpent in the Sky”, John Anthony West’s book, he uncovers an ancient wisdom which de Lubicz actually reveals as sacred geometry. Did you discover a higher level of intelligence in these myths, a form of intelligence that we can actually detect in the Egyptian interpretation of myths?
Paul: Lloyd and I have played with sacred geometry as well. Trying to get your head around Phi and what that relationship is coming from de Lubicz is still an interesting challenge. Again there is no prescription. We have to take what we can. In the book we look at the Book of Genesis we think there are lessons in there that help us appreciate those creation moments of consciousness so that we can help remember for ourselves. A big part of our writing has to do with direct experience. It is a matter of being within oneself and having the ability to be aware of what is going on. Myths can help by providing some wording that will help us understand and be present at that time. Because without words it is hard to see what is going on. Whether that is inside us or outside us. I think that is where the myths play a role.
Cliff: But would you interpret the individuals who wrote these myths as highly intelligent, average intelligence or tapping into a level of consciousness that we haven’t achieved yet?
Paul: Oh boy, that’s a good question. I have the utmost respect for them I mean their ability to capture these thoughts. Again going back to the concept of Netherworld or the Duat, I mean a parallel plane of existence that one travels through to become initiated and come back. We have trouble even today capturing that kind of context. And in the world we live in now which is very engineered and mechanistic we don’t have that language that allows us to sit down and talk to one another about the experience. I think that there are cultures in the World that still value that shamanistic development whereas it is undervalued in Western culture. So yes I think they were very highly developed. I think that although we are separated by 5,000 years I think we are probably essentially the same people. For evolution we haven’t changed that much. So in our work, to be able to touch what they were touching is something that is very doable, it just takes time, effort – probably a lifetime of effort. I think they are us and we are them.
Cliff: But don’t you think in our mechanized world with Internet access and attention deficit disorder because we are all locked into our smart phones that we have lost something in terms of the ability to achieve a higher consciousness that maybe the ancients had just because of their culture?
Paul: Definitely they had stronger support for it. I mean, you see the amazing constructions that the Egyptians did and when you look at some of the writing that the Sumerians did, at least 5,000 years later it appears that the cultural support was built into their lifetime - much like now when we have cultural support for indoor plumbing and heating. I think there are always challenges and I wish I could capture for myself what my biggest challenge is. Even seeing my own operation – I want to lose weight but I also want to eat this piece of cake. Well sometimes I win, but sometimes the piece of cake wins. I am sure that that has persisted throughout the ages.
Cliff: Interesting. I was fascinated by your study of myths in this book. You make an interesting statement. You say that, “Myths are an important vehicle in building a civilization.” Why don’t you explain to our audience what that means. How do myths help in building civilization?
Paul: Let me turn that around a bit. Are you familiar with a book by William Sullivan on the Incas? You mentioned the Incas in your intro.
Cliff: Oh yeah!
Paul: He wrote a book on how the Incan myths capture what they were observing in the sky in the precession of the equinox and the strong connection between the myth and their observations of the sky. What Sullivan does is he makes the point that this strong connection, strong belief, that they held actually preconditioned them to be taken over by the conquistadors. Now I am not an expert but I love that image whereby that whole culture was based on something that predicted an end and when these strange Spanish guys arrived, this huge culture allowed it to happen. Whereas in pure logic, from 21st Century logic it makes no sense at all. He does a very good job of showing how in that case the culture came to an end because of faith and belief.
If I may, the Egyptians, people marvel at the pyramids which are fantastic structures, and I still chuckle when people suggest that they were built by slaves. It is mind boggling that slaves with all the conditions of slavery could build such beautiful perfect constructions. It would be like asking a slave to create a Stradivarius violin. It just doesn’t make sense. So obviously to build a pyramid and the temples and tombs in Ancient Egypt, required buy-in from the average Egyptian right up to the Pharaoh. Much like we are exploring Mars and sending satellites out, that takes the full support of our present day society which highly values that kind of construction, that kind of effort. Whereas we don’t value seeing the sunset as much. Is that a good example? Society makes choices and those choices can be seen in its creations.
Cliff: Interesting. Let’s talk about some of these very old, if not ancient myths, and see where we go here. Tell us a little about the Sumerian creation myth. That is a fascinating myth. What are they hoping the reader to extract from that myth?
Paul: If I may Cliff, can I step back just a little bit? I am not sure how familiar your audience is with Sumer and Sumerian? One challenge that I have had in growing up is that in my education, I was taught that present day culture has derived primarily from the ancient Greeks. Does that sound strange to you?
Cliff: That is one of the problems I have is that that is supposed to be our inception point in terms of culture.
Paul: Well democracy is supposed to have come down to us from the Greeks. This was always a problem because Lloyd and I were looking at the Egyptians and Sumerians and asking ourselves why the Greeks? We were finding examples of civilization and higher knowledge from earlier times. The best we could come up with is that it seems the Greeks get all the credit because we understood Greek. As simple as that. The Greek and Latin got translated down into English and whatnot. And the Egyptian and Sumerian languages weren’t really known or understood or decoded until a couple of hundred years ago. This has given a big disservice to both Sumerian and Egyptian because the late Greeks were trained in Egypt. The predecessors to Aristotle and Plato trained in Egypt and studied from the masters in Egypt. But they didn’t pass along all of the credit to our time. So in terms of Sumer which was 5000 year ago, 3000 BCE, 3000 years before Greece, what is coming out of the literature now is a highly refined culture which included making laws, schools for teaching kids, Their literature was highly evolved. The concept of Paradise, the story of the Flood all go back to Sumer 5,000 years ago. I think there is a lot of benefit going back to some of their actual literature and see how they captured these ideas.
I loved the intro to your show today on GoogleEarth as a tool that you encourage people to use. It is a great tool. Well there is a tool on line now for the Sumerian literature: Electronic Textual Corpus – ETCSL. Just do a Google or Bing search on ETCSL. It comes out of Oxford University and its got a listing of all known literature from Sumer so one can go on line and access this information that just didn’t exist a couple of hundred of years ago.
The same thing with the Pyramid Texts. From the same time period 4500 years ago. The Pyramid Texts were found in some of the very earliest pyramids that were built. A couple of hundred years ago no one knew what they meant and now if you do a search for “pyramidtextsonline” and you can see that actual texts and the translations.
So these tools we have to make better use of and our book is a first attempt to look at the real thing, the real information the real pictures on the wall. So these are great resources that I can’t say enough about. We couldn’t have gotten anywhere without that kind of resource.
So when you go back and look at the ETCSL and the Sumerian literature you find a lot of common themes that others have written about. I don’t know if you have had guests on to talk about the origin of the Flood story.
Cliff: Oh yes.
Paul: They come from 5,000 years ago and we contend that myths contain real information and that information exists on many levels. And we think in most myths, many myths, there is some higher-level information there that is useful.
So you asked about the Sumerian creation myths. Well we look at creation myths of Sumer and Egypt and the most useful thing that I have gotten out of our study of creation myths is its ability to draw my own personal attention to those moments of awakening as moments of creation. And I think of creation, not in the sense of physical, the ground we stand on or even the universe which are interesting question, but for me in the study of the Sumerian text it provides a language to help me understand those moments of awakening. I don’t know if you’ve had one or them? But in my life I have had a number of moments when it was like “WOW – I’m Here!” They often come out of nowhere and they are generally overwhelming. Its like “where was I before?”
Cliff: Would you say that the awareness you are talking about is that you are a physical being or is it more than just here I am and these are my surroundings and wow this is cool! Can you explain that a little bit more?
Paul: It’s got to be both. We are both. Its partly what I’m tasting, what I’m smelling, what I’m feeling. But also feeling more than that. A simple example is driving down the road late at night and something happens and all of a sudden it is “where was I?” and “Here I am.” Within seconds it’s over and I am scrambling to make sense of it. But those moments of awakening are very powerful moments in my life. And so the whole idea of creation out of the void, the undifferentiated mass, those kinds of phrases that we encounter in the Sumerian myths do a very nice job of capturing for me a memory of what happened before those events. The separation of the water from the earth these are phrases that I found very useful in my own life to say those happened and the phrases help me to remember.
Cliff: Interesting. So can we talk a bit about the Sumerian creation myth. I would be interested in what you discovered about that and how it may trigger consciousness.
Paul: Well we encountered in the Sumerian creation myths somewhat of a similar theme as in the Bible, the Genesis Story, in the very distant times there was nothing differentiated everything was the same. And then something happens. Something stirs and separates. The earth from the waters, the earth from the heavens. We publish this image which shows a mountain rising up out of the water similar to the Egyptian. I don’t want to get into the names and whatnot. The general impression of a void which somehow has to generate something is a very good analogy, description of my own experience of those moments of awakening.
Cliff: Well we’ve had a lot of guests on the program who have spoken about Enki and the other gods and their stories. Of course this gets into the twelfth planet which is Zecharia Sitchin’s work but I am just curious about what you discovered in your interpretation of these myths? From your perspective, how is it a higher level of consciousness in either speaking, reading or interpreting this myth.
Paul: I am more interested in my own world. I understand that a lot of people look at external interpretations of where we might have come from etc. For me it has to do with describing my development and finding that analogy for An, Enlil and the sweet water and the earth inside of me. It could be that these myths are talking about the external world, but we come back to using those words to apply to my internal world. So that I can better see what I do.
That is one of the challenges of experiencing higher consciousness is. Again going back to your intro, and I am not going to confess to anything here, but when one is sober. I agree with you that one gets very distracted and overwhelmed when one is using other things. That is probably why Hancock strongly recommends strong guidance when he is talking about some of the stimulates that he’s suggested.
To taste those other dimensions and to be able to work daily on trying to contact them it is a very important task for me. There are many books written on shamans and the shaman in the community who are able regularly or deliberately touch these other levels. In my understanding they are going through this creation quite deliberately in a way that I cannot. But I think that they are touching a plane of consciousness that the ancient myths have really tried to capture in their myths. I think that this is partly why some of these stories are still being told 5,000 years later.
Cliff: Interesting. Probably the most well-known if not famous Sumerian story is the “Epic of Gilgamesh” and you have it in your book and I am just curious what your interpretation of that myth is and how it may trigger a sense of the past or the future or as human beings what is the effect of that? Beause it is a fascinating story.
Paul: It is indeed, and for more than just that it is the first Flood story from so long ago. To begin with, it is a really a story of, I guess . . . the way we see it is the balancing of the two sides of my personality, well of anyone’s personality. You’ve got Gilgamesh who is ½ god. And our general concept of god is again thunderbolts on a cloud. And we have a difficult time appreciating why Gilgamesh should have so much trouble doing what he is doing. At the start of the story he is causing great havoc. But he really doesn’t become an effective person or a whole person until Enkidu comes in. Enkidu is the wild hairy beast that comes in from the forest. He is closer to an animal than to a human. And once they are brought together, once they are balanced, and once they appreciate each other, they are able to accomplish great things. They kill the Bull of Heaven, they cut down Humbaba. We come back to this concept of direct experience and for what that means for me internally in seeing my god-side and seeing my Enkidu-side. Going back to the piece of cake, I think everyone can appreciate that we are not just whole beings, we are not just one, we have these different sides. Gilgamesh is a very important description of that kind of internal turmoil, or that internal blending that can happen if we actually balance our two sides. They can accomplish great things.
As the story progresses Enkidu dies and it is very significant that Gilgamesh the ½ god who by all intents and purposes should be quite happy, is feeling this strong yearning for immortality. I am not sure that I am aiming for immortality, but I certainly feel my mortality. So the final vignette for the story is of course he is successful, he marshals his god-like, he goes across the sea, he gets the flower of immortality and wouldn’t you know it, he falls asleep. If that doesn’t describe my best intentions, I don’t know what does.
Cliff: It seems that a lot of what you are describing is human function and human frailties. Is that what the basis of the book is, to explain the human condition and the importance of understanding the human condition and not just go about your daily nine-to-five existence? To step above and beyond daily activities of our life and why the ancients understood that?
Paul: Absolutely. Understanding our frailties, but also our potential. The whole idea of the Osiris myth is that Osiris was able to travel through the Netherworld and be reborn as special person in the Egyptian culture. So absolutely, that’s a good summary.
There is so much more for us to see inside of ourselves. The myths provide us with some venues to explore that.
No question that I am also interested in some of the other studies that are going on. Robert Schoch and the Sphinx, Bauval and John Anthony West you were mentioning and Laird Scranton, those are also interesting, but in terms of our study and our contribution to this whole moving our understanding of ourselves forward, we look at that personal side and how that is seen in us as opposed to external things. Does that make sense?
Cliff: It does. I like to always give my audience some tools or suggestions based on the book and of course we are going to refer people to the book “Awakening Higher Consciousness: Guidance from Ancient Egypt and Sumer”, but if you were to give somebody a suggestion or an idea about what you have discovered and how can they better access the humanity of themselves, what would you suggest they do in reading these? Is there a suggestion for some reading? Obviously your book is a good starting point. Are you hoping that people just gain greater awareness or are you suggesting that by reading these myths they are in your estimation taping into a higher consciousness?
Paul: I think that is possible. You mention meditation. I meditate in my own form which I couldn’t describe to anyone else. Reading the myths, exploring them, teasing out the personal, the direct experience from them is what I would recommend. Rather than reading them before you go to sleep, you’re already asleep, but, before you go to sleep at night, I think there is a real benefit to becoming more active reading these myths as a literature as the words.
If I told you that I had a lovely apple this morning. That I bit into a crisp apple, the air was cool, you would have a sense of what I mean. Harder for me to explain “Oh yeah, that was a moment when I was aware.” “That was a moment when I was more than I am now.” That discussion is more difficult. Certainly for me, maybe you’ve practiced it more than I maybe. So that is what I would recommend. These myths are useful tools that draw you out of your sleep and to actually apply those myths to see what is going on in you.
The Gurdjieff work, I don’t know if you are familiar with that, but they talk of the many “I’s”. We are not one. The first challenge for us is to improve is to see all these “I’s”. It is something that we write about in one of our later books is that I have been a marathoner and one summer like many marathoners I was trying to qualify for the Boston Marathon. I took it upon myself to count every step as I ran as a sort of a mantra. So for every step I counted. I did it for the whole summer, tens of thousands of steps. There were two or three instances that summer that it was incredible. I saw the person, me, that was counting – one, two, three. I saw the person in me that was running – breathing. I also saw a complainer in me that said “Ah you don’t need to count. You’ve counted enough. Give it a break. You don’t need to do this.” And then on top of that I saw someone who could appreciate it all. So that concept of the many “I’s” is a very real experience for me. Reading these myths highlights that I wasn’t crazy or delusional, but that these were real events. Others have tried to describe these kinds of other awarenesses, these other levels of consciousness. For me it has been very useful to read others trying to describe such types of events. Does that make sense?
Cliff: I’m working at it. Yeah it does. In its simplest form, what you and Lloyd discover would you say that you have discovered a level of humanity that hasn’t been discussed before by reading these ancient myths?
Paul: Yes, I think it has been missed. When we read about the creation separating heaven and earth we look at those words and we imagine some distant time when there was a hot/cold planet and we slip into the literal. Because that is easy. Look at Gilgamesh, oh yeah he was a big strong guy and he went off and did great things with Enkidu. It is tougher to get to those higher levels of understanding - the levels that Schwaller de Lubicz mentions. For centuries people had looked at the Sphinx and the Pyramids and thought wow that’s great. But until Schwaller was able to apply a different perspective on the structures, and with his wife Isa on the language, that they were just buildings. They didn’t convey the same meaning that he was able to come up with. And when I read Schwaller de Lubicz there is a challenge that yes I have to put more into the reading. I can’t just sit back and dream. I have to actually work on sacred geometry. I have to apply myself, to myself, not just to the external.
Cliff: I guess that is my interest is that perhaps the ancients understood human physiology better than we do today and that they perhaps had to be in a state of mind when reading these texts that maybe shifted consciousness. As an example, you cannot be too excited, you cannot be drinking stimulants, you cannot be upset before you read these myths. In the quieted state of mind when you read through these documents then a form of meditative consciousness is brought forth. What do you think about that idea?
Paul: Absolutely. You’re right on. If we look at the Pyramid Texts, they were written on the inside walls of a pyramid in the 4th Dynasty 4,500 years ago. The pyramids themselves are part of a pyramid complex. There is a point to this if you would allow.
Cliff: Yes, of course.
Paul: There is the pyramid with a pointy thing made up of rocks. But it is also made up of an enclosing wall which surrounds the pyramid. There is a pyramid temple from which you enter the pyramid. There is a long causeway that people can see for most of the pyramids using Google Earth. You can see the causeway that connected the pyramid with the Valley Temple. And there is a Valley Temple on the side of the Nile. And to get into the pyramid, where these Pyramid Texts are written all over the walls, the person, say the Pharaoh, would have had to start down at the Valley Temple. He would have arrived by boat most likely. He would have had to go through this enclosed causeway which one can’t touch or see at the moment, they are destroyed. So he would have to go like a mile and a half inside this enclosed causeway and in the case of at least one pyramid, the Pyramid of Unis, there was a slit up the roof of the causeway so you’re travelling up this enclosed area and all you could see above is a narrow band of the sky. Then you get to the temple where I would assume you would do temple kind of things before entering the pyramid and going down into the chamber.
Absolutely. So by the time he was exposed to the Pyramid Texts written on the walls he would have had to do this very extraordinary journey through various physical sites and of course he would have had to be in a special condition of calm and preparation before he would have even encountered the texts. I am sure that that state of preparation would be essential to what he would get out of them.
Have you ever managed to get into one of the pyramids?
Cliff: I am sorry to say that I have not been there yet. I’ve got to get over there. I’ve spent most of my time in Ancient Central America. From everything I’ve read and what a number of close friends have described is some of the structures there are so awe inspiring that your shifted whether you like it or not.
Paul: To be in the middle of a pyramid is such a calm and reassuring yet earth shattering place to be in the world. Lloyd and I have done it a couple of times.
So absolutely it is a very special place to be reading any kind of book let alone a book about transformation, mysticism and initiation.
Cliff: So we are getting close to the end of our program. I wanted to ask you, even though you may not be able to address this, I brought it up earlier that I am just curious whether you and Lloyd, in your research of these texts of these myths, were able to get a sense of what the Egyptians, Sumerians and Babylonians these ancient cultures prized in consciousness? Do you think they understood levels of consciousness as we do today? In other words, we have all these electronics that we can measure the state of someone’s brain waves in a meditative state and in a waking state in a concentration and a thinking state. Do you think the ancients understood the importance of this?
Paul: I’ve been reading a bit on people trying to understand brain functioning. The Egyptians thought that the soul of a person resided in the heart. I don’t think we are that different from the ancients. I don’t think that 5,000 years is any time at all in the overall development of man. So I think we are almost identical if not identical. I see that as positive because it allows us to be as consciously aware as they were. I would have to get into my view of progress and history and engineering to try and give you a sense of why at the moment we in the Western civilization are not as attuned to that consciousness as they might have been. But I’ve met people in my own life that I feel were representative of a higher level of consciousness than I am normally in.
So I don’t think they were that different. I think with effort and energy we could be quite different.
So where as a civilization we go? Where Western Civilization goes? That is a bit of a challenge but you mentioned earlier Eastern Religions, there are pockets of people who know this as well now as they did back then. We have to find them, we have to make use of them. We have to put that work into ourselves.
Cliff: Ok, I gave you my interpretation of your work, the take away, the bottom line. What would you like the reader, both you and Lloyd, like the reader to take away from your book?
Paul: Well the important thing is to stop dismissing ancient writings and myths as fairy tales and approach them as valuable pieces of our culture that can give us some language that helps us personal and today to understand what goes on within us – what can go on within us – where we might be going. We are hoping that the book will at least open that option for people so that they can become personally engaged in these myths and this literature so that they might be able to bring that to their own personal development, development of awareness & consciousness and Self with a capital “S”.
“Hidden in plain view” comes to mind. What we are finding is not esoteric in the sense that it is locked away in a lead container somewhere. It’s just that we don’t know how to approach them in a way that we can actually make use of them. It is only one book so it is just introducing that idea. Hopefully it will allow other people to go back to some of the literature that they are aware. It doesn’t have to be Egyptian or Sumerian, there are other Buddhist texts and whatnot that could address this desire for improvement.
This dismissive thing, such as naked people in the garden and snakes, you can tell that tale over and over again, but what does it really mean? How can I use it today as I talk with Cliff on the phone?
Cliff: Interesting. I am not sure you can answer this last question but I’ll ask it anyway. After your research, you and Lloyd wrote this book, do you think our current evolution, where we are going right now, as a highly civilized culture, is on a correct path to higher consciousness or do you think we need to make adjustments so we continue as a sophisticated society, but maybe we look to the inner self through meditative practice, reading myths through whatever to have more of a human equation involved with all of this high tech technology?
Paul: Yes, where is high technology taking us? You are certainly aware of Gobekli Tepe right?
Cliff: Oh yeah – we have spoke about it many times.
Paul: Right. The most intriguing pieces of that site for me, and I haven’t been there yet, is the fact that it was built by hunter gathers. One of the misconceptions that I have always been given is that hunter gathers were poor, measly, died young. I’ve been reading a bit recently that that may not have been the case and that hunter gathers were a very powerful culture, i.e. they could build things out of megalithic stones at Gobekli Tepe 10,000 years ago which is 5,000 years before the Sumerian myths that I am talking about. So at the moment I am questioning whether agriculture and settlements are as necessary for human development as I’ve been taught. We live in a system where possessions, we own the land, we have to own the land to grow food, where hunter gathers at a different time in the history of the world with fewer people and all that. It intrigues me that hunter gathers could be as successful in managing to move megalithic stones and carving them and whatnot. So I am not going to make any predictions on where we are going, but I think there are other opportunities, other ways of looking at life that maybe don’t include cars and traffic jams and stress and all that.
There is a book on the Okinawa people in Japan that are some of the oldest living people as a culture still in the world. One of the final chapters says that one of the key pieces to the success of that culture and their aging is, apparently, they all get together to watch the sunset every evening. I can’t imagine that, but it is intriguing to think that a sunset could be more valuable than a six-figure salary.
My answer to your question is quite broad. I don’t know but I think we have to look a lot broader than whether another space ship is going to take us anywhere.
Cliff: Interesting – fantastic.
The book is “Awakening Higher Consciousness – guidance from Ancient Egypt and Sumer” and my guest today has been Paul Boudreau and he co-wrote the book with Lloyd Dickie which came out just a few weeks ago and I know it is on Amazon. Is it available in digital form on Amazon yet – do you know?
Paul: Yup the e-book is out there. And there is a lot of stuff on line if they want to do a Google or Bing search for “awhico” the first two letters of Awakening Higher Consciousness. “Awhico” – we’ve got Facebook, twitter, LinkedIn. We’ve got our own website awhico.com. We’ve posted a few blogs that explore some of the topics we’ve gone through today. We would love to hear from you. The contacts are on line with the social media tools.
Cliff: Are you guys going to be speaking anywhere you want to post, that you want to let us know, any conferences that people can attend coming up where you talk a little bit about Awakening Higher Consciousness?
Paul: Not at the moment. We are just getting settled with the book. We’ll have to see later in the summer. I am planning a motorcycle ride down to the States and who knows what is going to come out of that.
Cliff: That sounds good. I’ll definitely post your website on our Facebook page with a couple of photographs from the book. And best of luck to you’ve triggered the beginning of a continual exploration on the subject and look forward to seeing and reading more about your work.
Paul: That’s great. It has been a lot of fun Cliff. I hope that I’ve made some sense. It is all about promoting additional work, its never going to be all over.
Cliff: Yeah. It is a fantastic look at mythology and it has an important place. I encourage my audience to definitely take a look at it. Thank you very much for joining us.
Paul: Thanks a lot.
Cliff: That is Paul Boudreau and that is a great book “Awakening Higher Consciousness.” Check it out.