Interview #2 - Transcript of Katz June 8th interview on line

Jerry Katz: My Guest is Paul Boudreau. Paul lives in Dartmouth right across the harbor from Halifax. Paul Boudreau is co-author along with his Dartmouth neighbor Lloyd M. Dickie of the new book – and it’s a good one – Awakening Higher Consciousness: Guidance from Ancient Egypt and Sumer published by Inner Traditions. Ordering options are available at http://www.awhico.com.

Paul R. Boudreau has a Masters Degree from Dalhousie University right here where the radio station is located. Paul worked in fisheries ecology as a career. Ancient myths and sites have captured his attention since childhood. We want to find out about that. And he struggled to understand what was important in what he was taught as fairy tales.   We will learn about that.

Paul has travelled the world and experienced many of the higher creations both ancient and modern. His onsite exploration of Egyptian temples, tombs and pyramids – again something we want to hear about. They demonstrated the need to Paul for more detail and precision in how we look at ourselves and our world. Really fascinating. 

Paul and Lloyd write in their book: “The pursuit of those lost elements in our lives is what led the authors to these explorations of myths.”

So welcome Paul Boudreau.

Paul Boudreau: Hi Jerry, how are you doing?

Jerry: I’m good. Interesting book. I really like your take. The title is Awakening Higher Consciousness. It is not just a study for academic purposes or to just look at the symbols. Your really make it personal. So can we start with a bit of background on the book and then say something about higher consciousness. And jump into your experience starting from childhood and what’s it been like.

Paul: It’s been a lifelong study for both Lloyd and I in terms of both myth and consciousness. And the book is our effort to look at what many people see as fairy tales and spells, as tales of far far away long long ago. We look at these myths to explore how ancient myths and literature provide us with some valuable language for us here today in our present world in our search for who we are and who we might be. That goes back to us as little kids listening to fairy tales as well as the religious literature and the Bible and not making much sense of these stories that seemed ridiculous. The Genesis story for instance of naked people running around a garden with a talking snake.  Obviously we knew that these stories have been conserved and cultivated for a long time and presented to us as children. But it didn’t make sense that the theme should be someone eating an apple. It had to have a deeper meaning.

A little background, Lloyd and I worked as fisheries ecologists which gave us a bit of time on the back of fishing boats cutting up fish and measuring fish. It gave us a lot of time to chat about the ways of the world and what we have experienced. We came to find that we had these shared interest both in our early experiences as younger people as well as our experiences in encountering myths. As scientists were curious in what the meant and undertook on a study of exploring where we might go.

Jerry: So you were really kindred souls the two of you. So was Lloyd a mentor to your? You worked together.

Paul: Absolutely. He was a strong mentor to me. He was a senior scientist at the time that I was just learning how to cut fish.  So we’ve been working together for 35 years. He was interested in Egypt and the Egyptian culture long before I met him and he introduced me to both the mysteries and the knowledge that Egypt contained from 5000 years ago.

I always bought into the view that the Egyptians were a funerary culture and that they were only worried about dead people. Through our many years of work andour multiple visits to Egyptwe found higher meanings in many of their constructions and their literature that seems to be missed today.

Jerry: Still seems to be missed today. What about in the academic world today? Do they consider the higher conscious aspect? What do you mean by higher consciousness? Maybe you could talk about that?

Paul: Yes, higher consciousness. We don’t define it - quite deliberately so. The title is awakening higher consciousness, not awakening highest consciousness. So in this particular book we are just trying to engage those moments of awakening that I certainly remember in my lifetime that highlights the fact that I am not always at the same level of consciousness. Sometimes I am physically asleep in bed. But I have had a number of instances where I awoke to see that I wasn’t present before, but there was a moment when I was more aware and more consciousness, but then such is life that they pass and I go back to sleep again. But I have experienced enough of those moments of higher consciousness to realize that my consciousness is not always at the same level. If I can identify those moments of higher consciousness and try to encourage them or work at reencountering them, then my life will be better off. I am reluctant to define higher consciousness. It is easy to say that I experience most of my life as a lower consciousness and to try and get away from that is part of the task.

Jerry: You talk of the big Self and the Big I, so maybe its better not to define higher consciousness because anyone reading the book or attracted to the title will have their own understanding of what that is. You use the phrase “engaging moments of awakening”. Anyone who is interested in that idea of higher consciousness has an understanding of know what that is for them. Whatever that is. Maybe it is better to not define it. Leave it to the reader.

Paul: I can’t speak for anyone else but myself. We’ve explored these various levels of consciousness through what we read into the Sumerian and Egyptian literature. Even today I don’t think we have a very good vocabulary or language for the discussion we are struggle have about the higher and lower. We see in the ancient literature, that they have some excellent images that help me identify those moments.

Jerry: I did ask how the academic world feel about the pursuit of higher consciousness in the course of studying of myths or mythology.

Paul: I know that there is a full diversity. Some people would like to think that the ancient Egyptians wrote about people dying and that was it. But there are other people exploring the other aspects of the Egyptian culture. It is hard to characterize what academia looks at in terms of what this all means.

Access to the literature is so much better now than we Lloyd and I began 30 years ago. The internet is a huge resource where we can now look at all of the original Sumerian literature on line from a website coming from the Oxford University. Listeners can do a Google search for on the Electronic Textual Corpus of Sumerian Language (ETCSL) and they can read all of the Sumerian literature on line. The same with the Pyramid texts. You can search for the PyramidTextsOnLine. You can see all of the pictures of all the text and all of the translations.

This really helps to get it outside the expertise, outside of academia and put on everyone’s laptop.  That is a part of our book is to try encourage and get people to get engaged in this kind of direct experience with direct the study of these text.

Jerry: Excellent! It is good that you mentioned those web sites. Are there others doing what you do? Accessing these great myths to support the search for higher consciousness?

Paul: Absolutely! We've built our work on the work of numerous other people. When we started working we were quite engaged with the book called Hamlets Mill. Which basically was a fantastic insight into the ability for myths to carry real knowledge. When we started we weren’t sure if they were just fairy tales. We built quite strongly on some of the earlier writers who had to prove that myths held real information. It wasn’t clear then.

Jerry: That must have been interesting. Here you guys were working together as scientists and cutting bait and measuring fish and you find this connection with myths that you’re both interested, then you knew there was somewhere in the myths the possibility of expanding consciousness and then you had to find out who else, or wondered if anyone else, was talking about this.

Paul: We were both drawn to this. Both Lloyd and I were trained as ecologists. That gave us a bit of extra and insights into levels of organization and context which was a bit different than studying one fish – when you look at predator and prey. We obviously were atuned to look at relationships in the searching for the proper level organization and that certainly carried over into what we are talking about now in regards to levels of consciousness.

As a simple example, when I was a kid we played in the schoolyard and sang Ring around the Rosie. Do you know that one? We sang it “Achoo, Achoo, Achoo, we all fall down”. It was decades later before I was able to find a reference to the origins of that nursery rhyme which had to do with the Great Plague of the 1600s. I mention it here because hundreds of years later kids are still relating the story of the great European plague without knowing it. I don’t think many people at all know that this is where it comes from. So the idea that myth and early literature can carry real information through the ages is a very important point to us. It is not just airy fairy imagination, there is real information carried along with.

Jerry: It is interesting that they would make it a kids game. Well even you said that as a kid you felt that. Is that true?

Paul: Absolutely. I already mentioned the Garden of Eden.  Why were they teaching me about naked people and the snake. The desire to look beyond the obvious, beyond the first level. In the book we talk about the levels of interpreting myths. We talk about the literal, the figurative the hieroglyphic and the esoteric. I am not sure people make it so explicit when they read myths or literature.

An example is on the literal level in the fairy tale of Red Riding the wolf is a hairy carnivore with long teeth, it’s an animal.  But with a little bit of reflection most people can see the wolf as a bad influence that could be leading someone astray.  On the next higher level of hieroglyphic or symbolic, it is a force operating within the story.  It is unfortunate that granny has to get eaten, but through the process Red Riding Hood matures, meets the hunter and goes off and does other more mature things. So the challenge of looking at myths at different levels, not just the right level or the correct level, but different levels helps to tease out how these myths really could apply to us now as we struggle for our own lives and figure out what we are doing. 

Jerry: In talking about levels, do you find as you read the myths, as the years go by, as you re-read them, that you see more in them and get more out of them?

Paul: Absolutely. For myself to bring myself to the myth, any myth, helps me get more out of it. The idea of participating in the reading is critical to getting anywhere. Obviously you can read any of these myths as external entertainments and many people to do. But for me, to bring myself and my experience to the myth highlights certain aspects that I’ve missed in my own operations and helps flag certain things like these moments awakening. It helps understand that they are real and provides some details I would not otherwise have noticed.

Jerry: I am looking at this quote that I did earlier, “The pursuit of those lost elements in our lives.” This whole thing about the pursuit of lost elements. And I am thinking about this personal drive as a kid that you felt pulsing behind these fairy tales, biblical stories and myths. What is behind that for any individual? As a kid or any point in our life where we suddenly get a calling, something comes knocking on the door – check this out - something whispers to us. We have to follow it. What is that? Is there anything in mythology that speaks to that you can think of off hand?

Paul: Certainly some of the writings that we have encountered talk about the desire to reconnect with a higher. For me life is more interesting when you ask those kind of questions.

Jerry: For someone else it might be something else. Might be drawing pictures or paintings. That whole idea of we get these callings in our life. Some do.  Maybe some don’t feel they do. Some have been called and have missed the opportunity. They didn’t know how to approach it, how to ask questions, how to investigate it.

Paul: I don’t know where I would be if I hadn’t started up the conversation with Lloyd.

Jerry: And that’s the other part of it. Then you met Lloyd in order crystalized the whole question and push it forth.

Paul: And we still proceed. That is fantastic.

Jerry: No end to it.

We talked before in our last conversation and forgot to ask you something. Maybe I’ll ask it here.

Paul: What’s that?

Jerry:  In an interview you said that visited the pyramids and said “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.”

Calm, reassuring yet earth shattering. I would love to hear about the journey there and whatever you want to talk about.

Paul: Obviously in the book we talk about the pyramids and the Pyramid Texts but we have also experienced the King’s Chamber in the Great Pyramid of Giza just outside of Cairo. We could have a whole show on that. One thing in particular that we encountered and experienced was to sit in one corner of the King’s Chamber and hum. At a particular note the whole world seems to vibrate. Certainly the chamber is vibrating. So you are sitting in this massive mass of anchored stone so isolated from the world, and yet with a minimal effort at humming, the whole world seems alive and active. At one point there was a female voice that joined us and we had three octaves going. It was an incredible experience which I will never forget. It was a very personal experience that goes beyond measuring the orientation and the number of blocks which are all true, but it was a personal experience of the Great Pyramid to be in that room and share that vibration – its was overwhelming and still sticks in my mind and body.

Jerry: Mind and body – yeah.

Paul: That is one way to connect with the ancient civilization of Ancient Egypt from 5,000 years ago. But we also look at the literature that was written down at the same time as they were building the great pyramids. We look at a number of different aspects in the book, and we focus on the Pyramid Texts that are engraved in stone -  engraved in stone, now I wonder where that phrase comes from? They were written stone in some of the earliest pyramids ever built. We have some pictures on our website http://awhico.com which shows the clarity, the beauty and the precision of this very very early writing 5000 years ago. The Ancient Egyptian culture was exploring all of this higher consciousness from a number of different angles – physical, intellectual and emotional in a way that is astounding considering that it was at the dawning of civilization. We buy into the idea that we are the result of progress. Over 5,000 years the Egyptian, Babylonian, Greeks, etc. are somehow more advanced. When you experience the ancient literature and sites, I am not sure that we are more advanced. I think they were struggling with the same issues that we have in understanding our consciousness. But they had some tools which they employed that even 5,000 years later are quite impressive. The King’s Chamber as an experience is one, the literature on the Pyramid Texts is another, fabulous art, they represented their higher thoughts in many ways. To put them all together in a way that could be understood by modern man is quite a challenge. But the first step is to not look upon them as fairy tales. We need to look at these people as highly advanced even though we don’t know where they came from and that they were operating at the dawn of civilization. Once you move away form the dismissive role that they were somehow primitive one can see the results of their culture in a totally different way.

Jerry: You said “not know where they come”. I am picking up on those words. Maybe I’ll go out in left field. Everyone listening to this type of show wants to know what do you think about ancient aliens and architecture on the moon. You said yourself that they may not know where a lot of this knowledgecome from.

Paul: I’ve never seen a UFO or never met an alien. Being a biologist, I have seen some very weird, peculiar strange things difficult things to understand in nature. Just because se don’t understand them, we must get lazy and start thinking oh they must have come from aliens. Where in fact humans even that long ago could have been quite ingenious and having their own techniquest that have now been lost.

You may be aware of recent research into Gobekli Tepe the ancient historic site in Turkey which has been archilogically dated to 12,000 years ago. Which is quite a bit older than the Egyptians. It is a site of megalithic carvings at a date and age that preceded agriculture, cities; preceded most of what we talk about. I am fascinated that the modern evidence, this Gobekli Tepe which a number of people are studying at the moment was built by hunter gathers who I always taught that hunter gathers lived a short mean hard life before they died young. Where they come from is a very real question but there is a lot left to learn about where we come from. It is much older than the Greeks who generally get named as our beginning. The Greeks, only 2,000 years ago gave rise to city states and democracy a lot of things that we view as being important to our present day civilization. But the evidence shows that the  Greeks were educated by the Egyptians. Most people may not be aware of it the Greeks learned what they held important from the Egyptians. The same with the Sumerians. In Sumer 5,000 years ago they were writing, they were making laws, teaching kidst hey had literature recorded. That whole time period is very interesting and we have a lot more to learn about it.

Jerry: The way that myth looks at the world and the way that Eurocentric views are quite different. You say in your book, “Surely, the interaction between two different ways of thinking is the essence of myth itself.”

Looking at two different ways of thinking is different than the European way. And the so called primitive; they are really the advanced way of the myths.

I have another quote, “At each level of interpretation, literal, allegorical, hieroglyphic and esoteric, these myths express opposing forces that underlie our personal struggles for coherence. When contradictory elements appear, they invite a possible synthesis, which Jung called enantiodromia.”

My studies tell me that the mythological way of looking that things is to look at the dualities or opposing forces and allow them both to exist and somehow transcend them. The European way, which is the western way in North America, you are either or. Its not a synthesis of opposing forces. You are either a liberal or a conservative, a fan of one a hockey team or other, male or female.

Paul: You are either wearing the white Stetson as the good guy or the black Stetson as the bad guy.

Jerry: Yeah, there is no in between. And that seems to be Eurocentric view. Do the myths talk about synthesis of opposing views.

Paul: Primarily we look at creation myths. Our concept of creation in creation myths are the moments where we are the void and we start to differentiating within that void. Going back to the Sumerian myths from 5,000 years ago, talk about the separation of the heaven from the earth or the land from the water. This is a common theme through many, many myths. Yes we see the initial creation has to be something coming out of the void. Duality, if I understand the term correctly, coming out of this homogenous undifferentiated being that I am. We see this as the first step of creation. But to get beyond that, analogous to higher consciousness, we have to let the two sides co-exist. Our view of enantiodromia is the reconciliation of opposites so one has to get a higher level to allow the two opposites to exist; love – hate, male - female. Those are all evident only at a certain level. Because if you get above it (male – female) we are all people. As an example of the reconciliation of opposites. You are right, the western world like to jump on one and identify one not the other. We think there is more to be seen.

We can talk about Gilgamesh.

Jerry: Yeah, go ahead and talk about that one. That would be great.

Paul: The Sumerians had the Gilgamesh myth about 2,500 years BCE. We know it primarily because of the Babylonians writing it down 1000 years after the Sumerians had it well formed. But you can read on the ETCSL site the Sumerian literature which talks about Gilgamesh a demi-god and his companion Enkidu. We see that the two sides of ourselves; the demi-god like and the animal side of Enkidu the hairy man from the forest. The story goes on that Gilgamesh is causing trouble and then he meets Enkidu. Together they partnered to do great things, the kill the bull of heaven and cut down the great forest. In the end Enkidu dies. Even though Gilgamesh is an enviable character, a demi-god that we would love to be. He notices the lack of his other side – his animal side. And he starts yearning for immortality. After Enkidu dies, he sets off by himself to find the key to immortality. Again he does a number of incredible feats. Towards the end of the story, he holds in his hands a flower given to him which is his ticket to immortality so he wouldn’t die. But after all the has gone through with Enkidu and the loss of Enkidu and what he has done himself, he lies down by a pool of water, falls asleep and a snake snatches it away. The whole image of this great hero fall asleep and losing what he has worked his whole life for relates so strongly to my own moments of falling asleep whether it is trying to be aware of my breathing or any of my other higher aspirations. We look at Gilgamesh as highlighting these two sides that when they work together can do great things, but yet as an individual I still fall asleep, I still forget and I still lose thatwhat I am after – that immortality I am after. 

Jerry: Yeah, it is so great to make it personal, to bring it to exactly your personal experiences.

Paul: Otherwise it is just a story of far away and that doesn’t engage me. But when I am reading it and I am trying to remember my moments of awakening and sleeping it is a much more powerful tool.

Jerry: Do you go to a lot of movies? A lot of movies are based on myths and they just bring them up to date and place them into modern life.

Paul: Its like Ring Around the Rosie. These things have been around for a long time and they finding different ways that they can be used in that way. Star Wars is full of good – evil, getting to the higher. There is a lot of imagery there that is available to a culture.

Jerry: I think that is something your book can do or even this conversation. You can invite people to look at, not just myths, but everything, as it applies to them personal.  It could be a popular movie too as so many are based on stories and mythology. This whole idea to make it personal. How does it apply to my life? On one hand movies and the reading of myths could be an escape, but they can be turned around and made quite personal.

Paul: Again I go back to that we are not searching for the right level, but all of these stories exist on many levels.

Jerry: At the same time. Right. What I quoted earlier, the interaction of two ways of thinking and the transcendence of them which allows them both to exist rather than taking an either or. A myth has to be either exoteric or esoteric, its both at the same time. For me it is an important way for me to look at the world in general.

Paul: The world is more interesting then.

Jerry: Something else I’ll quote here about the study of opposites. I think I’ll read this one from page 88 in your book. I should mention your book again before the show ends, Awaking Higher Consciousness: Guidance from Ancient Egypt and Sumer by Lloyd M. Dickie and Paul R. Boudreau.  We are talking to Paul Boudreau and we have a few more minutes left. The website is awhico.com.

Paul: People can do a Google search for awhico to find facebook, twitter and all of the other ways of communicating.

Jerry: I am going to read this from page 88, “It is, of course, the age-old problem of communication, that serves to remind us of the duality of all our perceptions – esoteric and exoteric, internal and external, reality and illusory, etc. , This external study of myth can help one to find the place within us that is discovered through them. The study of such opposites leads to discoveries that are supported by insights that lift us to an unexpected level of understanding, maybe even an awakening of higher consciousness.”

The study of opposites leading to discoveries that can lead to higher consciousness. It is so important to keep this in mind. As an ecologist, does this hold true in ecology.

Paul: Absolutely. The predator-prey. You watch the nature shows. Well some shows are about the wolf that is starving that has to eat the rabbit. Some shows about the rabbit that is trying to survive. Nature is full of that. It is the proper pairing, the proper level of organization that makes it all work. If the predator ate all of its prey and there was none left then the world would come to an stop and vice versa. So finding the right level of seeing these opposites and letting them co-exist is pretty critical to the way we see the world.

Another pair of opposites that we talk about in the book is the Egyptian gods or the Egyptian neters, ntrs - the Egyptian gods Heka and Maat . Again apparently opposite. Maat is the Egyptian god of order, truth and justice. If people are aware of Egyptian gods, Maat is often mentioned because we order, truth and justice and Maat stood for all of that in Egyptian society. We bring out Heka the balancing force of Maat. And the balancing force in the Egyptian order and justice was magic. We find that Heka and Maat are often found together in these creation myths. So order, justice and truth – goes back to what I was saying about the initial movement of creation that recognizes the difference and identifies theparts of the void, but we see magic as essential to the whole process of life the whole process of creation. We spend a bit of time on Heka and Maat because we feel it a shame that one is supported in our modern Western world, but magic is certainly not supported in common thought. Maybe it’s too frightening for people to think about. As ecologist there is a magic in the world that has to be functioning to balance the order, ridge center line of truth and justice.

Jerry: Magic – what a buzzword for people. Can you talk a little bit more about magic? What else can you say about it? People use that word a lot. It has something to do with something transcendent, something that can’t be described, something that has to do with grace or a gift for nature. What else? Those are my words.

Paul: They are certainly not spells in terms of incantations and external things. Magic comes as close to describing my own awakening as anything. I don’t know why those moments are any different than any other moments that I’ve lived. Magic comes to help me appreciate that there is something there. I could say luck or good fortune, but it is certainly something that is unknown. There is an unknown that we should be paying more attention to in our lives. There is an intangible force. You know the phrase “love makes the world go round.” I don’t think you can describe love in terms of atoms, attraction of molecules. I see love on the order of magic and it can do great things for people in their lives.

Jerry: You mentioned the void out of which dualities and opposites of existence seem to arise. Magic sounds like something that comes in between the void and the ordinary world to bring the two together.

Paul: It happens so quickly and then we move on.

If I may – one of my earliest recollections of live has to do with Christmas time. I was a young boy and I was looking out the window and Santa Claus walked down the street. I remember waking up with a great force to note that I wasn’t in bed and Iwasn’t going to get any gifts. This was at a very young age long before I was actively studying myths. I don’t even know if I could read back then. I don’t know how else to capture what happened in that moment as a young child that made me aware that I am here. It was my first memory of “I was.” Magic - that comes as close to describing it as anything I can image. At that point there was a little boy, Santa Claus and all my wishes for gifts. But there was a moment when “I was.” It was quite a powerful moment for me.

Jerry: It is that realization – not everyone has it – some have other experiences, but that realization that I was or I am, maybe everyone does experience it but not everyone values it.

Paul: Some people notice it and forget. Some people don’t pay it enough attention. There lots of different ways to respond to it.  Luck, magic, grace - whatever it is, thatis very helpful to me when I approach myths and the myths reinforce those moments in my life. This is how the ancients tried to capture these moments and this makes sense to me as an adult as I try to interpret what I saw. Otherwise it is hard to put words to it. It is hard to realize that those moments happened. 

Jerry: And if a person wants to be reminded of it or investigate that moment of “Beingness” or “I am-ness”, the myths are a way of re-exploring or re-investigating.

Our time is up. Paul Boudreau believe it or not for the radio show. I want to thank you very much Paul Boudreau author of Awakening Higher Consciousness: Guidance from Ancient Egypt and Sumer. The book is co-authored by Lloyd M. Dickie and Paul R Boudreau. Both of them living in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. Ordering information is at awhico.com.

I just want to read a nice passage that sums things up from page 148 of your book, “The essential wisdom expressed in these myths is that the need for wholeness, or oneness, is the most basic, innermost longing of humans as individuals.” That bears on that investigation of this sense of“I was” or “I am.”

And you write, “Without any sensitivity to or awareness of our individual natures, and the consequent superseding of self-interest, we are condemned to a state of disregard and entropy, which leads to an eventual destruction of society.”

That brings it to the societal level. So far we have been talking about individuals.

“Our present-day lack of perception of this basic need can only lead to disaster.” This lack of perception of this basic need to understand our wholeness.

“Without the intervention of an higher influence that can fill the place left by our current ignorance of ancient wisdom, it is difficult to see how Western civilization can survive on the basis of technical sophistication alone.” So mythology teaches the individual to restore wholeness and the same for our civilization and our culture.

Thanks you again.

Paul: Thank you very much Jerry. Its been a great pleasure.

Jerry: Really enjoyed it. You have been listening to NonDuality Talk. Our website is nonduality.org.

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Interview #3 - Gary Goldberg - In the Spirit Interview Transcript - June 11, 2015

Gary Goldberg: We’ll be welcoming our first guest Paul R. Boudreau. He along with Lloyd M. Dickie wrote the book “Awakening Higher Consciousness: Guidance from Ancient Egypt and Sumer”.  In this study of ancient Egypt, Sumerian, Babylonian and Hebrew myths, authors Lloyd M. Dickie and Paul R. Boudreau show that many classic myths contain instructions for awakening higher consciousness allowing access to an enlivened experience of the world and an awareness of the divine within and around us. Inspired by the work of R.A. Schwaller de Lubicz, the authors deeply examine creation myths and well know ancient myths from Mesopotamia and Egypt such as the epic of Gilgamesh and the story of Osiris and Isis. They reveal that these myths are not behavioral morality tales, but actually delineations of how a higher order can arise within each of us. The authors explain how these stories teach us to distinguish the heaven within us from the earth within us and find the essential part of being that provides a link with our higher powers. Spending more than a year onsite in Egypt to personally connect with the myths, the authors explain how ancient storytellers intentionally choose myths as a vehicle for teaching because story has a seed-like capacity to implant itself in the unconsciousness and develop without the individual being aware of it. By crafting these sacred narratives, the Ancient Sumerians and Egyptians provide tools to awaken us to the presence of higher consciousness as well as a road map for the individual to come into conscious alignment with the perpetual unfolding of the universe.

Paul R. Boudreau is an ecologist and biologist who studies ancient myths and sites including on site exploration of Egyptian temples, tombs and pyramids. He lives in Dartmouth Nova Scotia. He is with us right now.

Let’s welcome Paul R, Boudreau. Hello Paul.

Paul Boudreau: Hello Gary, how are you?

Gary: Doing great. I am very fortunate to come across this book. It is quite an adventure to read.

Paul: I am glad to hear that.

Gary: He has some very interesting things to say about the book that he co-wrote with Lloyd M. Dickie called “Awakening Higher Consciousness: Guidance from Ancient Egypt and Sumer.” I really loved the book and I want to share it with you.

Awakening Higher Consciousness - what an adventure! For people who are interested in looking at these ancient myths, you can really discover something. If you are anything like me, and want to find out who I really am, not something that I’ve been told, but I want to discover it for myself. Some of the ancient peoples were telling us. But it was not easy. You had to go search for it.

Paul: It’s never going to be easy in that sense. But making it personal makes all the difference for myself. What sounds like crazy stories from long, long ago and far, far way – like The Bible stories of naked people in the garden. It didn’t do much for me. So finding another way to approach them has been key to my own personal interest in life.

Gary: You’ve actually, with Lloyd M. Dickie, both of you went and discovered it for yourself.

Paul: Yes, its been a long journey and yeah we have not restricted ourselves about one form of knowledge, the book is primarily about literature because it is easy to treat that in writing, but we have journeyed to Egypt and spent some time in the King’s Chamber in the Great Pyramid, we’ve walked around Stonehenge and hugged the stones, Lloyd has been to Bolivia, so there is a lot out there that we have to make use of.

Gary: Now as far as the pyramids are concerned there are a lot of misconceptions like they were built to be tombs for the pharaohs. You dispel that.

Paul: We certainly try. There may have been some connection with the Pharaoh’s passing, but from our point of view, the earliest pyramids ever built, in the 4th Dynasty, have inscribed in them on the walls the Pyramid Texts. Working with a friend and colleague, Jeremy Naydler who has written a couple books on this, we explore the nature of the Pyramid Texts as really being directed towards a living person. Someone in the process of transformation, mystic initiation, rather than the common view that it is just for the dead pharaoh and he will survive for centuries. It is a much more fascination and interesting story than when I look at it as a tomb.

Egyptians did build tombs no question. But the pyramids are something special and to relegate them to just something funerary is a sad sight to see.

 Gary: Are there many pyramids in Egypt?

Paul: I believe that there are a hundred or so. Most pyramids, the older ones, are always a part of a pyramid complex. We see the pile of stones that has survived. Let’s work backwards. The pyramid was surrounded by a high fence, a high stonewall. You entered the pyramid through a temple with images on the walls. The temple was connected by an enclosed causeway to the Nile Valley. The way we envisage it, is that the initiate, the Pharaoh most likely, had to go through this long journey to be exposed to these sacred texts that were caved inside the pyramid. He probably would have arrived by boat, and gone through this the mile-long causeway that was enclosed except the roof that had a small slit along in so that he could see the stars as he progressed up to the pyramid. There is much more to be seen about the pyramids than just a pile of rocks that someone might have been buried in.

Gary: There are chambers inside the pyramids and there is a lot of inscriptions right?

Paul: The ones we talk about, there are eight or nine specifically which were built at the very beginning of the Egyptian civilization and they started with a bang. These pyramids have fantastic carvings and this very extensive literature all over the inside of walls with images of awakening, progressing and being initiated into higher dimensions. We feel that one has to really pay attention to some of these fine details rather than just the tourist sites.

Gary: What is a neter – ntr?

Paul: Neter is the Egyptian word for god, small “g”, or principle. It is often translated as god, not as the almighty Ra, but as lower principles, lower processes in our lives.

Gary: One of the “ah-ha” moments, and I had many in reading your book, was that we tend to think of ourselves, self-centered as we are, that we were the first to have come along, but what they have discovered in these ancient cultures, Sumerian Babylonians, and Egyptians, there was a whole world of gods.

Paul: There is a lot we still have to learn about where we come from and who influenced us. Western civilization ties our birth to the Greeks – democracy and all that fun stuff.  But the Greeks learned all of their values from the Egyptians. Most of the early Greek philosophers went to Egypt to learn.  The Egyptian and Sumerians were dealing with these issues 2,000 years before the Greeks.

Now there is some fascinating archaeological work going on in Turkey at Göbekli Tepe. There is an archeological site in Turkey which has been dated to 10,000 years BCE or 12,000 years ago which is that much further back from the Egyptians. And this site has megalithic stones carved quite a bit further back than we have ever imaged. The indications are that this culture in Turkey were hunter gathers. I always bought into this concept that you need agriculture, civilization and progress to build things. I am fascinated that 12,000 years before now there was a population of humans which was carving up huge stones in a way that we don’t know today.

So what came before? How that all developed? What they knew? How that come down to us today is quite a field of study and much more interesting than the average school person learns if you buy into all the normal story lines about the Greeks city states and did democracy. What came before I don’t know but it is an exiting time.

Gary: But to engage our imagination this is what happened to me from your book, Awakening Higher Consciousness: Guidance from Ancient Egypt and Sumer. It awakened my imagination and in so doing it opened me up to what I don’t know.

Paul: Fantastic! Those are the kinds of moments that Lloyd and I have gone through over the years. We would approach something like the Gilgamesh story from Sumer, you think you knew it but then you probe a bit deeper and reflect on it personally. There is much more to see there if one becomes engaged and you bring yourself to the myth.

Gary: All of the myths that you break down Orion, Isis and others.

Paul: Those are just our favorites. It is really just an invitation to our readers to look at the world, and look at myth and look at literature this way.

When I talk to people I use the simple example of Little Red Riding hood and the role of the wolf and the different levels that one can perceive a wolf in a common fairy tale - it is a hairy carnivore with big teeth. We have phrases in English about someone being led astray by a bad wolf. At a higher level, just an example of some of the levels one can see, the wolf is kind of key to Red Riding Hood’s development, it is too bad that granny gets eaten, but she goes on with life. I think the need to look at our lives at various levels is key to seeing it for what it is and awakening out of that sleep that takes everything for granted and moves on.

Gary: Why don’t you speak a little bit about the complementarity of opposites?

Paul: The psychologist Carl Jung used the phrase enantiodromia – the reconciliation of opposites. The best way to see it is in terms of our work on creation myths. Most of the book works on creation myths from the various cultures. We see the creation out of the void as being an analogy of what we go through ourselves as a person. We are that void. We live our lives as homogeneous undiversified mess of emotions and hungers. But we at some point, most of us wake up and see ourselves as different from the world.  Then we can see inside of us that there are different parts within us - a head that thinks, a stomach that wants to eat, etc. In ourselves we have all these opposites working one against the other.  There are different sides – heaven and earth, land and water. Enantiodromia, this reconciliation, requires something higher to balance those two. If I am hungry but in a lecture there is a maturity which I have to bring to those opposites that says, “no for my higher good I am going to sit here for the lecture rather than running off for a hot dog.”

The recognition of opposites is key because it gives some definition and order to our lives and to who we are. But it is not enough to just see the opposites. It is essential that we get to a higher level so that the opposites can co-exist with each other. We think this is a very powerful process in creation.

Gary: Explain this in terms of some of the gods in these myths.

Paul: Let’s go back to Egyptian. There are two gods in particular that we deal with in the book. The god Maat. Some people may know the neter Maat who is the god of order and truth and justice. She is the principle that maintained order over Egypt. A fair number of people are aware of Maat. But in our research of Egyptian and the Pyramid Texts and visiting the tombs, it became apparent that there was a partner or opposite god to Maat and that was the god Heka. Heka is the god of magic. We don’t talk much about magic these days. But we present the essential role for both of these gods to participate in creation and development.

So when we started looking, very often when we found Maat, truth, order and justice, in the background we found Heka.  Lloyd and I are biologists, and interested in the whole idea of biology, basic creation and what makes physics into biology. We were very interested to see this concept of the unknown, the intangible in the Egyptian creation myths, as being captured by the god of magic, and always being present and as an opposite of the god of Maat, order and justice.

So that is one example of the kind of opposites we discuss in the book in terms of different sides of creation, how the two have to play a role, you can’t have one without the other. The acceptance of them both at the same time is the reconciliation to let them both be what they are and let the process take place.

Gary:  This is a book that you want to take time with. This is something that I really didn’t know much and so I wanted to know about these myths. For instance how the Sumerian is different from the Egyptian. To see that these cultures came from, what they were teaching, how they were similar and different.

Paul: They had shared similarities but they were somewhat different. I believe that these ancient cultures were struggling for a language to deal with consciousness just the way we are today. They captured what they knew about consciousness in the various myths, stories and art. It is powerful to see that translated into my life, our lives, 5,000 years later. It adds a whole different dimension to what could otherwise be just a nonsensical story.

Gary: Thank you for being with us at In the Spirit here on WRPI in Troy. My name is Gary Goldman.  We have Paul R. Boudreau with us talking about his book Awakening Higher Consciousness: Guidance from Ancient Egypt and Sumer.

Another thing that I would like to discuss Paul is that you tell us about the gods. We have a tendency in the Western culture to take things literally, mechanistic and rationalist. But what about gods - “I don’t believe in that because it doesn’t fit into our framework.”  Yet, these gods that the Egyptians spoke about were qualities, so were not literal beings, but these qualities exist in within us and this is how we grow - to recognize that in us.

Paul: Absolutely. To learn more about what is in us that relates to that. Not all gods, principles, neters are not all on the same level. It is possible to see some of the lower and it is possible to see some of the higher.

Gary: What are some of the things that you learned in your discoveries that was really beneficial to you when you were writing the book?

Paul: I have to go back to the beginning. One of the first challenges that Lloyd and I dealt with as scientists was to explore whether myths have meaning. Was there something in the myths or were they just story tales? We found that all myths have a strong story component to them. When we started we encountered a book entitled Hamlet’s Mill by de Santillana and Dechend. It is a huge tome, but it was one of the first books that we explored together. What they did was to look at the myth of Shakespeare’s Hamlet and were comparing the myth with observations of the sky. What they concluded was that the myth of Hamlet is really the story of the precession of the equinox over very long time periods. To us it was a fantastic ah-ha moment. It is fantastic because precession takes place over 20,000 years before it comes back to its own original place. This gave us hope, if the Hamlet myth could contain some high level astronomical information, then in fact myths do have a place in our current studies.

Gary: Why don’t you define for us what a myth is?

Paul: We view myth as a very wide collection of stories that have come down to us through the ages. One person’s myth might be another person’s prayer. Myth for us is any long-standing story that comes down to us today that we can understand. We don’t define it as rigidly as some people do. Any story that is useful to me today generally has a myth basis to it.

Someone the other day pointed out that a lot of our movies these days are based on myth. Star Wars is an example, there is good against bad, find the higher, find yourself. Is Star Wars a myth – yeah.

Gary: Yeah – and something we can learn from.

Paul: Something entertaining there is more to it than just entertainment. 

Gary: I love the dialogue between Aquarius and Pisces. That is a good one. Tell us about how that was set.

Paul: We are dealing with a very sensitive subject in Western culture that is the Genesis story of The Bible and we were searching for a way to present the Genesis story to invite our readers to look at it again and look at it in more detail.  So we went back to some of the great Greek literature with dialogues and it came up quite naturally that we could put this investigation and exploration of Genesis in terms of a dialogue between Aquarius and Pisces. There are the astrological signs that we wanted to convey. Basically it is a discussion among friends about what the Garden of Eden story is. I am pleased to hear what you say.  It presents a tough topic in a way that is more freeing and more open as opposed to get into a theological or academic discussion. It is listening in on a conversation is an easy way to pick up some information.    

Gary: I identified with Aquarius. I like the wisdom of the open minded Pisces, the patience of Pisces for answering the questions and appreciating the curiosity and willingness to explore. 

Paul: Without being too heavy handed without laying down the rules it is tied into our personal experience of some of the better moments of instruction that we’ve encountered.

Gary: Can I share some of this?

Paul: Absolutely – sure.

Gary: “The Dialogue of the Ages.

“The experience of awakening higher consciousness within us is as old as the stories of the gods. The fact that the concept is rarely considered in our time is a sobering reminder of how limited has been the approach of Western culture to the difficult questions of reality. In our time we seem confined to differentiating between the dichotomy between “reality” and “illusion.” Those interested in questions of reality therefore must endeavor to re-establish a fully dimensional perceptual world to provide a context for the wisdom that is embedded in ancient myths. Despite one’s impulses to take action that could remedy this situation, history shows that our natures are not readily open to the required sense of order, even when we believe the undertaking to be of great importance. However, it is sometimes seen, in studying one’s direct experiences, that our personal impulses to take action can cooperate in creating a requisite level of being.”

A special note here, I say “direct experience”. I like that.

Paul: If it is not direct experience it is second hand. Going back to my own life, my experience, the few moments that I directly experience “I am”. I tell the story of being a pre-school age kid growing up. It was probably my first experience of Being. It was Christmas Eve and I had my nose pressed up to the window and I saw Santa Claus came down the street and in a flash I saw all of my Christmas gifts disappear because I was still up while Santa Claus was roaming around. But that was a very powerful moment that  “I was”. I don’t know where I was before that and of course I have lived a lot of life after that.  That is a direct experience of my being different than the world. I was not the void. I could see something. I could see myself. This was at a very young age. I trust some of your listeners and maybe yourself have had one of these early experiences that sets the tone for what direct experience means.

I have gone on to do a lot of book learning.  I have a degree from a University and I’ve worked as an ecologist, but that moment still stands out as something that set things going for me.

Gary: A wakeful moment in your early life.

Paul: I don’t think I had enough intellect to interfere at such a young age. There was no concept of philosophy.

Gary: Santa was a big myth for us. I wanted to believe. When I figured it out I wasn’t happy.

Paul: That’s a different show. Don’t forget that people give presents on Christmas and they don’t do that every day.

Gary: I love the magic of going to bed and then waking up and this mysterious man was in your house loading presents under the Christmas tree. That is outrageous and so nonsensical – with reindeer landing on your roof. It is the most ridiculous thing in the world.

Paul: But think of it as the spirit of Santa Claus operating around the world on one night.

Gary: I’ve bought into the spirit of it. I really love the magic of it.

Paul: I think we teach our children a lot of those higher concepts in those kind of moments in those kind of myths that that they couldn’t get from an encyclopedia.

Gary: I like a few of these words in this book like the Duat.

Paul: We have a chapter on what we call the netherworld, what the Egyptians called the Duat. The Sumerians had a very comparable concept of a place, a time-space, a dimension through which a spirit/person could or should journey through to gain higher knowledge to gain higher consciousness.

The Duat, the netherworld is well captured in the myths we look at as a place or a process but something it has some characteristics that I make very personal for myself.

Before one embarks on this journey through the Duat or the netherworld one has to prepare. One has to learn the magic words, one has to remember oneself, one has to cloth oneself.

The myth of the netherworld involves journey where you are challenged by various beings and one has to remember oneself and give the right response. And if all the preparation and all your work and all your awareness can come to bear on this very important journey, one can expect to come out the other end of the netherworld as a higher being.

To me this is an excellent description of the struggles in life. What do I have to learn? How do I prepare? We see this as an analogy for the development of a person on earth captured in a literature 5,000 years old in words that are slightly different than what we are familiar with. But it is a very good description. It is a much better description of what I have encountered in modern language. The whole concept of the netherworld and the Duat gives me a language that I can use to look at myself and to talk to others about in terms of the process of growing up.

Gary: Thank you. There is so much in this book. I would like to read passages but they would be out of context because you would have to read the preceding ones. So I would recommend that people just get into it. “Awakening Higher Consciousness: Guidance from Ancient Egypt and Sumer” by Lloyd M. Dickie and Paul R. Boudreau.

The website is Awakening Higher Consciousness.com?

Paul: AwHiCo.com – the first two letters in Awakening Higher Consciousness. If people do a Google search for awhico we have a Facebook site, twitter feed and Linkedin we have some blog material with some addition symbolism of the Egyptian view of the Milky Way. Hopefully we are making ourselves available and we would love to hear from people and get their feedback.

Gary: I do appreciate that you have used Facebook so well for promoting this and for putting this out there. You actually made it an event on the Facebook page. Which is great. So those people who are listening because of that, put together by our friend Paul Boudreau, who is with us right now – welcome. Thank you Paul for doing that and bringing people to listen to this wonderful program and you and what you have to offered here. What an incredible journey to take. I am really glad that I am on. Once you are on board your on board.

Paul: Thank so much for having me. It was great to chatting. We are still discovering new things and we have much to learn.

Gary: Are you going to be writing more?

Paul: We have two other books in the works. We are polishing them off. In Book 2 we get into quantum physics and how it ties into some of the things we’ve been talking about. That’s just a little bit of a bait for you.

Gary: When reading the glyphs, how did you do that?

Paul: Lloyd has taken a number of years of studies in Egyptian language so I rely on Lloyd’s ability to read the Egyptian hieroglyphs - although he has shared a few of his insights with me.

I still remember a powerful moment when I was in an Egyptian tomb and we were studying the hieroglyphs and it wasn’t readily apparent. And what all of a sudden came across us was that we were reading the phrase, “Our Father who are in Heaven.” It was an incredible moment that you could still read a prayer, a myth from 5,000 years ago. Lloyd’s ability with Egyptian language made that moment possible.

Gary: I would like to make a point that when those who have been raised in the Western culture, the Abrahamic culture, they didn’t begin there. They took their myths from ancient myths.

Paul: Absolutely.

Gary: I want to point that out that it didn’t begin with an original discovery. These things were already discovered. They were just re-calibrated, rephrased put together for the sake of their interpretation of it. Would you say that is accurate?

Paul: Yes. Christianity has a lot of this ancient knowledge embedded in it if you look around for it. I think that’s a strength to we still have such a robust lineage of this information.

Gary: Even the Adam and Eve myth goes back. It’s an ancient myth. But it wasn’t as The Bible says, that Eve that choose the fruit, it was Adam. It depends on how it’s written.

Paul: Chapter 3 of the Book we get into this all the way. It is the active principle that bites into the apple – not the passive. I couldn’t agree with you more.

Gary: This book is loaded with great photos. I love all the illustrations. This is fascinating stuff.

Paul: We couldn’t publish color photos so we put the color photos online at the awhico.com website. Thank you. We feel that the photos are very important to the story. You have to look at the myths from different points of views. Sometimes the words connect, sometimes the photos, sometimes an experience. They are not extras, not just entertainment they are meant to invoke things that might not have connected.

Gary: All these photos along with your words have really opened me up. Wow! I need it. It is like refreshment. You don’t want to fall on old thinking you want to shake things up a bit.

Paul: I think we shake things up and hopefully to good effect.

Gary: Tell us about you were inspired by R.A. Schwaller de Lubicz?

Paul: He was working in Luxor, Egypt. He was a mystic interested in higher knowledge. He spent 20 years working in Egypt studying the temples and tombs. He’s written a couple of books on the symbolic and the symbolique. He wrote in French and we are quite lucky that Inner Traditions, our publisher, has translated a lot of his work. He wrote a lot about the higher knowledge of the Egyptians. Both the geometry, Pythagorean triangle 3-4-5 he finds evidence for that through the Egyptian work. He finds evidence of higher mathematics embedded in the Egyptian. He is not easy to read but with some effort a bit of work he brings out a lot of the higher knowledge from the Egyptians and presents it to us in the modern world. It may not be easy reading, but we found him a great inspiration and we always reference him. Schwaller de Lubicz wrote about sacred geometry. He was an incredible guy who wrote a lot of very useful things.

Gary: Thank you Paul. I also want to acknowledge Inner Traditions. I love the books they put together. I interviewed a number of authors from Inner Traditions and appreciate what they do.

Paul: They publish a lot of things that I would never see anywhere else. They shake things up which is what we need.

Gary: Inner Traditions and innertraditions.com

Awakening Higher Consciousness: Guidance from Ancient Egypt and Sumer by Lloyd M. Dickie and Paul R. Boudreau is the book. As mentioned they are very active on Facebook and into social media.

Type Awakening Higher Consciousness and you will find the material regarding this. There is other material as well that people can explore.

Paul: Its been a great pleasure. Good fun.

Gary: Good fun. Thank you.

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Great review on Amazon - Thanks Jerry!

Great review on Amazon:

 http://www.amazon.com/Awakening-Higher-Consciousness-Guidance-Ancient/dp/1620553945/

"The blending of scholarship, ancient myths from Sumer and Egypt, and the pursuit of diunital (“reconciliation of opposites”) and nondual (recognition that our true nature is not separate from the void, the “limitless, undifferentiated waters”) -- the pursuit of diunital and nondual consciousness, inspire a force for personal and cultural transformation. This blending is fused by the commitment of the authors to performing the magic of transformation. A powerful book for anyone, regardless of their apparent state of spiritual consciousness, who wants to become further aware of the vastness of the experience of being alive."

Jerry Katz, http://nonduality.org

Thanks for the encouragement!

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