Welcome to Mind Escape. Are you ready?
Are you ready to escape your mind?
All right, folks, welcome back to Mind Escape.
I am your host Mike. We have episode #323 tonight.
If you were wondering, has it been a while?
Yes, it has been. It's been about 3 months here
since I've taken a little bit of a hiatus, break and break from
social media. I just needed to reset and
recalibrate. We've been doing the show for
over 7 years now at this point, so I just wanted to address that
really quickly. Maybe the next episode I'll do a
solo episode. We'll talk about everything
that's happened since cause some major things have happened.
But tonight we have a special episode.
I am joined by author and historian Gregory Schuchen,
who's a PhD and he's written decent amount of books.
I think the one that I've read recently that everybody should
go check out is Near Death Experiences an Ancient
Civilization. That link is down below.
And you can check out Gregory's website as well.
And he I have the Inner Traditions page.
Shout out to Inner Traditions for setting this up.
Thank you so much. And there's also the Amazon link
there too if you buy your books on Amazon.
So check those out. Gregory is a, as I mentioned, a
near death experience researcher for ancient civilizations.
He is a historian of religions, award-winning author, leading
authority on near death experiences in the afterlife
across cultures throughout history.
Doctor Gregory is a visiting research fellow at the
University of Winchester Center of Death, Religion and Culture,
and he's also a Fellow of Parapsychology of the
Parapsychology Foundation. He holds a degree in religious
studies at the University of Wales.
Lampeter, his research methods for the humanities, and well,
let's see what else here. Oh, he's also an Egyptian
archaeologist with a degree from the University or University
College of London. And let's see here.
Yeah, quite the resume. How are you doing, Gregory?
Welcome on. I'm good, Mike.
Thanks. I tried to get it all in there.
There's so much you you do have a ton of qualifications and
certifications and degrees. So I just wanted to make, yeah,
I just wanted to, you know, get get get that out of the way.
But so, yeah, welcome on the show.
This is something, as I mentioned to you off here, we've
talked a lot about on the show near death experiences.
I've actually had my own near death experience, two of them
within the last year and a half. I was already fascinated the
topic. We had already been discussing
it a lot on the podcast, and then I kind of had my own.
It's kind of added more questions than I even had
before. You would think if going through
something like that, you would have more answers, but actually
just added more questions to my repertoire.
But why don't we start about your origin story with this?
How did you get into it? What made you write this book?
And let's start from there. Sure, yeah.
And any perspective you have as an experience or on all this
stuff, I'd be happy to hear that too.
So yeah, I, I started out in Egyptian archaeology at
University College London. And actually before that I had
done some Eastern Mediterranean archaeology as well.
So I was pretty focused on, you know, things that didn't have
anything to do with parapsychology or near death
experience or anything like that.
I wasn't, you know, I don't still don't consider myself a
parapsychologist really. I'm, I'm really a historian of
religions looking at certain kinds of, you know,
parapsychological phenomena in relation to the ancient world,
in relation to different religions around the world.
So, but I knew about a near death experiences that I'd, you
know, read about them. I read Raymond Moody's book, I'd
seen Flatliners, whatever, and I always thought it was a really
interesting phenomena. I didn't really have a take on
it one way or another, whether I believed in them or not.
It just kind of one of these things that's like, wow, people
have these experiences and come back to life and talk about it.
I wonder if there's something to it.
And then I moved on to other stuff.
So but so I'm doing my Egyptian archaeology degree and you know,
we're reading the ancient texts and some of these ancient texts,
well, a lot of them have to do with the afterlife.
So there's the pyramid text, the coffin text book of the dead and
and so on. And they're pretty similar.
They, they do evolve over time in some ways, but for, for the
most part, you know, it's 3000 something years of, you know,
consistent beliefs in, in this stuff.
So as I'm reading them, I'm starting to think, you know this
actually, if you strip away all of the the specific cultural
cultural elements and just look at them as almost like
symbolically, then it started seeming like a near death
experience to me. So for example, the spirit
leaves the body, travels through darkness, comes out into a place
of light where there's a being of light, which is in Egypt was
the sun God. They then have a encounter with
their own corpse, which is symbolized by the the deceased
being associated with the God Osiris.
So the text basically say, you know, you get to the center of
of this area of the underworld and you encounter your own
decaying corpse in the form of the God.
And that experience is what enables the soul to continue to
the next stage in the afterlife. And to me, that was symbolic of
in near death experiences, people will see their body lying
there. And it's that realization that,
you know, I'm dead and yet here I am having sensations and
perceptions and consciousness realizing makes them realize
that they're dead, that they've transcended their physical
death. And then they're able to
continue into the next phase of, of the experience.
So exactly like the meaning behind the Egyptian expression
of, of this idea, they meet their disease relatives.
There's like a life review type thing where they're, their
actions on earth are kind of evaluated.
There's no return to, to the body except for visiting it
because they, the soul has to visit the body, an Egyptian
belief to kind of keep it maintained.
But it's not a near death experience per SE.
But it's just the, the concept of the afterlife was, was so
similar. So I just started thinking why
that would be the case. And, and given the fact that
near death experiences happened all over the world, it seemed
like the near death experience would be the basis for the
belief rather than, you know, Egyptian afterlife beliefs
influencing near death experiences around the world, if
you see what I mean. Absolutely.
And I was pleasantly surprised when I got into your book, not
just because of your impressive background, but because of you
approached it from a comparative analysis standpoint, which I
really appreciate. I feel like there's not enough
bird's eye view on these topics and that's why you get some of
the more woo takes on things and then or the Super strict takes
that are, you know, don't allow for any kind of movement there.
So I really appreciated that. How did you approach studying
the ancient texts and the archaeological evidence to, you
know, identify the different parallels with the modern NDE or
near death experience? Yeah, So the only, so the
civilizations I compared were Egypt summer and Mesopotamia and
the old Babylonian period of Mesopotamia, China before
Buddhism, India before Hinduism specifically.
They kind of have some of the same gods kind of developed with
as as Hinduism developed. And then also from Mesoamerica,
the Maya and Aztec civilizations.
So the the reason I chose those was because they were mostly
developed independently of each other.
So there couldn't be any argument that like, Oh well, the
Egyptians influenced the afterlife beliefs of the ancient
Chinese and that's why they're similar.
So I wanted to kind of nip that argument in the buds because
nobody can really argue that there's no evidence for anything
like that to happen. And the farther away the
civilizations get in time as well as geographically, then the
less likely it is. So despite what people might see
on ancient aliens or whatever, there's, you know, no influence
from Egypt to the Mayan or Aztec civilizations or, or, you know,
anything else. So.
Yeah, you'll see stuff sometimes, like the cocaine
mummy stuff, you'll see, you know, you know, actually the the
Vedic stuff I found very interesting.
We did a deep dive on what was soma, the ancient elixir, and I
went through all the comparisons from the Rig Veda and the Avesta
and all the translations that obviously these people were
having this experience from this elixir.
What was this elixir? I can't, you know, there's
different books on it. Chris Bennett's cannabis
historian, he believes it was cannabis.
Other people, who else? There's Matthew Clark, who
thought that it was maybe some sort of ayahuasca analog or
something like that. I came to the conclusion that it
was some psychoactive compound with ritual.
It didn't matter 'cause there's different descriptions and when
you look in the, what are they called?
Yasnas, The Yasnas and the the different parts of these books,
it just seemed like there wasn't super, you know, consistent at
least translations because I'm like, I'm not able to read
ancient Sanskrit or Avastan or whatever, so I have to rely on
the translations. But it's so when you look at
these tacks and all these different things, how much room
do you leave for interpretation or do you try, are you making
like leaps to try and connect these things or is it pretty
plain if if you were able to show the person like some random
person, a translation? Yeah, well, I'm, I worked only
with the most up to date, most scholarly translations out
there. So for example, there was when I
first was working on this project.
This goes back 25 years by the way.
I first started it when I was doing my master's at, at the
Institute of Archaeology and I, I, that was the section kind of
comparing the Indian and Egyptian afterlife beliefs.
At that time there was no complete translation of the
Rigveda at all. And now there is I think 5 or 10
years ago, maybe a brand new like 3 volume translation, the
first complete scholarly one in English ever.
So I updated everything with that and I actually was able to
find more accounts of Ndes and more, more examples of, of
relevant kinds of texts. But really it's a, it's a case
of with Egyptian, I was able to check some things to make sure
that I was understanding correctly because, you know, I
had the hieroglyph Middle Egyptian background.
But with the other languages, it's really a case of, you know,
standing on the shoulders of giants, as they say, and, and
accepting, trusting that all the generations of previous
scholars, you know, have have come to basically a more or less
correct translation that, that I can trust what they're saying.
So aside from that, I, I really let the context of the text
steer me. So if something was a purely
shamanic text, like for example, you mentioned, you mentioned a
soma, if it's a, a soma generated vision without an
afterlife or death or near death context, I didn't really
consider that at all. It had to have that, that death
and afterlife context. So, so, but you're right that to
some extent, because these are texts about the afterlife and
not, you know, technically descriptions of near death
experiences, like they don't say somebody died and came back to
life. Then there was a degree of kind
of speculation to it. And really kind of looking at
like, if they're similar in all of these societies around the
world, then how can we explain them?
And it seemed to me that because we have this experience that's
also similar to these same phenomena that we're fighting
around the world, and that seems like a good place to to start in
explaining it. And then on top of that, we have
a few actual NDA accounts from all of the societies except for
Egypt, which is which is interesting.
Yeah. What's because you would have to
know the mythos behind that particular civilization or
religion or whatever, and then from there parse out these
different experiences, if you will, from what was already
known at the time, right? Or something along those lines.
Yeah, and, and again, the context is a big thing.
A good example is, well, first I should say with Egypt, you know,
the, the uses to which writing were put in ancient Egypt were
extremely limited. So it was these religious
priestly texts, which were essentially ritual texts for the
afterlife to to, you know, help the the money transition to the
next World and have a positive afterlife there.
Otherwise, it was used for accounting and business and, you
know, kind of royal types of occurrences.
It wasn't used for, you know, personal narratives or or
stories very much at least not until the Middle Kingdom.
And there's no context for people to write down a near
death experience that they had. So but a good example of the
kind of parsing the different types of texts that you
mentioned. If we look at ancient Zuma,
we've got stories like the myth of Inana where the where the
goddess Inana descends to the underworld and she goes there
with the intent of over overthrowing the goddess of the
underworld and taking her place. This is kind of power play so
she can become the queen of the underworld.
And it's got this whole, first of all, she's a goddess.
So it's, it's not happening to a human.
And it's got all these kinds of very mythological kinds of
features to it. It's involved also with
fertility ideas, the circuit of Venus through the sky.
It's, it serves to explain different kinds of phenomena in
the world. So in contrast to that, we've
got an account called The Death of Bill Gomez.
Bill Gomez was the Sumerian name for Gilgamesh who everybody
knows from the Epic of Gilgamesh, but this particular
text didn't make the final cut. Basically it's it's a pre Epic
of Gilgamesh story I like. That better?
Was it Bill Gomez, did you say? Bill Gomez.
Yeah, yeah. I like that better.
Yeah. And so this, this account,
basically he's and by the way, he's believed to have been a
historical king. So he's the first like real
individual, whereas Inana was a goddess.
Well 'cause they have that kings list too that goes back super
far where you can't really justify through historical
records. Right?
Like their kings look similar to what?
Is it the the Egyptian one that with the old kings list too I'm
I'm drawing a blank on? Yeah, yeah, the text, a lot of
those earlier kings are, you know, probably not.
It's. Probably not like mythological
or maybe exaggerated or obviously the timelines and
everything. Yeah, and they put gods on them
and everything to to kind of have this origin myth of divine
kingship that's, you know, extending into the present day
to show, you know, my origins, you know, lion, Osiris and the
sun God or, or whatever. But, but in.
Yeah, in contrast to all that, we've got the epic of the the
death of Bilgamed's text where, you know, he's known to have
been a historical king, at least, you know, that's what
archaeologists and and Assyriologists think.
And this text describes his NDE. He's he's lying there on his
deathbed after being, you know, almost mortally wounded.
He goes to the other world, traveling through darkness,
meets the sun God, who's Utu. So he's a being of light.
His relatives and friends are there people, other people who
had died before him. There's like a life review.
They they look at the deeds of his life and then he's
transformed by the experience because the the judges in the
other world decide to make him into an underworld judge.
So when he dies, when he comes back, he'll be one of those
judges of the dead. And then he goes back to his
body and prepares his funeral and everything else.
So, so again, the context there is everything.
The context is we have a historical king and the account
doesn't involve like some mythological type of event.
It's it's presented as being factual in contrast to like the
story of Inanna or whatever. So to me that's a huge
difference. In the Mesopotamian cultures,
obviously we're talking about Syria and Sumair and Acadia.
The the underworld was depicted as dark and like a foreboding
place. How do you reconcile this as a
positive element similar to some of the more positive elements
that people have of like modern day interpretations of ND ES?
Yeah, that's a great question actually, because this is one of
those kind of byproducts of my work that that I love
encountering, but I don't expect along the way.
So. So the kind of received wisdom
in Mesopotamian Sumerian seriology studies is that
exactly what you said, that the afterlife was seen as this
gloomy shadowy kind of place and it was either punishment or you
just kind of like half alive in this shadowy realm sitting in a
corner doing nothing, this hazy kind of non semi existence.
But I actually found lots and lots of references in the
Sumerian text to feasting in the other world, to light spring
rivers, birds, meeting your deceased relatives, happiness,
transformation rewards. And just the fact that there are
judges to judge you implies that, you know, there's a choice
of of fates in the other world. So I think this was something
that was vastly exaggerated by previous scholars.
And I think it lies in the fact that like in the 19th century, a
lot of these scholars came from Old Testament studies.
So I think they were viewing the Sumerian and Mesopotamian
beliefs as like the precursor to Jewish afterlife beliefs, which
are more kind of the shadowy half life kind of thing.
So it's almost like they systematically ignored a lot of
these other descriptions. And in fact, there's a fairly
recent book about the Sumerian afterlife where the author says
something like, because we have all these descriptions of
positive afterlife beliefs in these texts, that means that
they're not orthodox that that that we should we should kind of
dismiss them and not really consider them as representative
of Sumerian beliefs. But the evidence is there.
So, So I don't think there is a conflict between those texts and
the more positive features that we see in your death
experiences. Interesting.
As we mentioned, the Epic of Gilgamesh and now the Bill
Gamesh, which we just learned about, which again, I like that
name. I don't know, it just rings a
little bit better around the Dome for me.
But so we're talking about Mesopotamia that obviously their
mythos is always some sort of hero or somebody goes on a
journey. How does that compare to modern
Ndes? Is that something like maybe
that person's NDE was like a dream, Not a dream, but like how
you know, people come back, they had this fantastic journey in
the afterlife and then came back.
Is it, are those connected or is it just building off of this NDE
and turning it into something more or something along those
lines? I think it's exactly that, yeah.
I think it's a case of this idea that people die and come back to
life, that they can in, in exceptional circumstances, die
and come back to life and tell about the experiences that their
consciousness had while they were separated from their body.
I think just that one thing. Well, combination of one thing
was enough to influence a lot of these mythological stories about
descent to the underworld and returning and things like that.
Again, a big difference like Bill Gimez, he goes outside the
body. He's explicitly described as,
you know, his soul leaves his body.
Whereas Inanna and Demuzzi and, and these other kinds of
Mesopotamian characters or gods, they usually go in the body or
it's just not described at all. And it's kind of presumed that
they're in the body. The myth of Demuzzi, he's that
has a few really interesting features.
He, he realizes he's dead. He's, he's in the other world.
And then he isn't in the out of body state, but he's able to see
what's going on on earth. And he only realizes he's dead
when he sees that his mother and his sister are making beer out
of his blood, out of the blood of his corpse.
And once he realizes that, it's again like that corpse encounter
from ancient Egypt, that's like a transformational moment for
him and he's able to to move on. But that myth, it's like
involved with wine and beer and the cycles of nature and
basically the harvest. I say the the blood beer or
something similar to almost like Christianity, like drinking the
blood of Christ or something along those lines.
Yeah. Have you found any?
Was there any carryover between Mesopotamia into Egypt or is
Egypt a Mesopotamia as far as you're concerned with the
obviously there's tons of differences, but was there any
overlap or are they completely distinct in their beliefs of the
afterlife and and ES and things like that?
Yeah, they seem to be really distinct actually.
I mean, they, they did have trade and contacts and you know,
from from really early periods, but it really seems not to have
impacted their religious cultural development all that
much. There's a couple of references
to Mesopotamian gods in the Pyramid Texts or like one God
from Biblos, I think a couple of, and they were like minor
deities. So you know, how that crept in
there we don't really know. But yeah, it doesn't seem like
there's there's really much that was shared culturally between
them and or religiously. I've so we've talked a lot about
ancient Egypt. I mean a lot of the ancient
civilizations in general in the show, but specifically ancient
Egypt. I've always been fascinated with
Egypt and Greece. I don't know why.
I just feel, you know, some sort of interest or connection to
those two ancient cultures, Greece for the philosophy and
you know, all that stuff. And then metaphysics and in
ancient Egypt for, you know, the architecture and megalithic
building, the possible psychoactive compound use.
And now we're talking about near death experiences.
When you look at stuff like the the Book of the dead, let's say,
what are do you, is there specific examples of what is
considered to be, you think an NDE based in that book or do you
have to interpret it? Is it like hard to find in
there? I mean, I feel like I've read
part of it. You know, I have like a picture
book somewhere of it over here somewhere.
I can't find it, but yeah, like when you're looking through the
like the diagrams and the pictures and the translations
and everything is there, have you found specific things that
you're like, that's an NDE or that's part of an NDE, or is it
up for interpretation? Yeah, I think it's up for for
interpretation, but all of the NDE elements are embedded in the
text somewhere. For sure it's I've worked mostly
with the Pyramid Texts and and coffin texts because they were
the earliest. And again, I wanted to kind of
mitigate this idea that they could have been influenced by
another civilization. And so the coffin, the pyramid
Texts, for example, are ritual texts and we're not even sure
the order in which they're to be read.
They think that, you know, certain walls are to be read
first as the as the coffin is, you know, wheeled into the
pyramid. But it piercing together like a
sequential narrative of events of what happens in the afterlife
is pretty difficult. And to some extent it it's
speculative, but in a lot of cases it's also pretty clear
where where it's going. So because, you know, obviously
the soul leaves the body first. It goes through all these kind
of caves and caverns and perils has to like overcome different
threats like it like a a venomous snake that attacks and
apes with swords and all these kinds of, you know, half animal,
half human, deep demons that that kind of try to annihilate
the soul on the way to the other world.
So obviously you overcome those obstacles on your way to get to
the sun God. So it's really just partly a
matter of logical conjecture. But then at the same time with
Egypt, it's it's more complicated because they also
describe the afterlife is like a circuit.
So you, you join the sun God and you, you join him on his, his
boat. And that sails through the Milky
Way and the cosmos. And then it sails around the
earth into the netherworld under the earth and then sails back
again. So in some texts it's that's
portrayed as like a kind of eternal circuit of joining the
sun God. But then another is it portrays
like the marsh of, of offerings or you know, particular
paradise, kind of like area. They portray that as the
ultimate goal. So, you know, whether that's an
internal contradiction, which a lot of early Egyptologists
thought, or whether it's a more kind of transcendental kind of
description of, of omniscience and omnipresence of the soul,
which is kind of what I tend towards is probably unknowable
ultimately. So yeah, there's lots of
interpretation in all these texts.
While we're on the subject, I don't want to go too deep into
this. I just want your opinion as
somebody who's an academic and a scholar.
What do you think about what's going on between this battle
between online creators, content creators, people with pull and
influence versus kind of the academic establishment in terms
of archaeology right now, it seems like you have this battle
between alternative and mainstream, as they're calling
it. Do you have a take on it?
Because personally, from doing the show, I've met a lot of cool
people, scientists, authors, academics, and I've met a lot of
cool free thinkers too, you know, So for me, I've met cool
people on both sides. I got into this through the
alternative stuff and slowly kind of OK, now I'm going to
look into what science has to say or academics has to say.
And I'm at the point now where it's like this window of mystery
is a lot smaller. There's still stuff to be found.
There's still mysteries. There's still stuff like we're
talking about right now where I've even had my own experience
and I don't know what to think about it.
But then we have a lot of woo stuff out there too.
Like where do you stand on all that?
Do you have an opinion on it? Do you know where do you think
it's going? Yeah, I have a lot of opinions
on it. So, you know, I started doing
archaeology at University of London in 1996 or whatever, at a
college there called Birkbeck, which was like an adult college
kind of thing, Community College type, the British equivalent.
But their lectures were all from University College London, from
Cambridge, from Oxford. And then I went to University
College London Institute of Archaeology, one of the most
prominent archaeological institutes in the world.
I studied Egyptology there with some of the most, you know, well
known Egyptologists in the world.
These were by and large, some of the most open minded,
intellectually honest, interesting, progressive people
that I've ever known in my life. There was never ever any hint of
them like hiding the truth or not being willing to go on, on
wherever the evidence might lead them.
So, and I'm actually evidence of that because I was allowed, you
know, I was supported in studying First I, I from my
undergraduate thesis, I did a comparison of dreams in ancient
Egyptian and Greek archives. And then I did this near death
experience project. So they understood that I'm not,
you can kind of study anything as long as you could do it from
a theoretically, methodologically rigorous kind
of standpoint. So the problem I have with, I
don't call them alternative archaeologists.
They think pseudo archaeologist is a better word.
There is only one type of archaeologist.
There's not mainstream or alternative.
There's pseudo and there's real. So someone like Graham Hancock,
I don't have anything against him personally.
A lot of these people, you know, obviously don't even know them.
So I don't think any more than I think actual archaeologists are
hiding the truth. I don't think these people are
having a nefarious. The hiding the true thing is odd
to me in the sense that why wouldn't that person want to
take credit for it? Like if you found, let's say
Plato didn't use Atlantis as almost like an out the allegory
of The Cave but for a civilization.
Let's say he didn't do that. Let's say there was a real
Atlantis. Somebody found it like how they
found Troy. Wouldn't that person want to
take credit for that? Like that's what I'm saying.
Like it doesn't make that that argument doesn't make any sense
to me. I never really understood that.
I do think that when you get into any sort of field, whatever
it is, some people do like to think they're the expert on it
regardless. So I think online, from what
I've seen, you do have some scholars kind of getting maybe
not the best attitude with the general public.
And I think that leads to problems.
Now I'm not saying that they're not antagonized or anything like
that. I'm just making the point that
like, it's a complex subject. That's why I brought it up to
you. And I agree with you there is
you've spent your life on this, you've gone to school for it and
everything. Somebody watching 2 YouTube
videos that's pretending to know more about it than you do is
kind of laughable, right? So which which?
Happens. It does happen and it's
cognitive bias. And that's something we talk a
lot about on the show, you know, you know, through philosophy and
psychology and you know, let's, let's, let's take it back to
epistemology. How do we know what we know?
What's the theory of knowledge behind this?
You know, if somebody doesn't have an answer, then what are we
even talking about? So.
Yeah. And you know, archaeology is an
evidence based field. You know, people don't theorize
without evidence. Well, they might have in the old
days, you know, and, and even in the old days when they would
come up with these like, you know, grand diffusion kind of
theories, like, you know, all civilization came from Egypt or
from Druids or whatever it was his 19th century ideas.
Even then they tried to use physical evidence to try to
piece it together. And I, and I think, you know,
they were maybe trying thought they were being innovative and,
and we're, we're doing some genuine work, even if if they
were later proved to. Be wrong.
I don't even think there's that many people trying to do the
physical evidence thing in this. What do you want to call it?
Pseudo alternative, whatever it is.
What I've noticed is human beings, we love a good pattern,
a good mystery, a good conspiracy, whatever it is.
We love putting things together and being the person to figure
it out. So I think there's just a lot of
people out there that, you know, religions kind of fall on the
wayside. You have a lot of people that
may be a little lost spiritually out there that are looking for
something, whatever it is. And I think that it's easy to
get caught in this mind trap of, again, cognitive bias,
pareidolia, trying to connect dots that aren't there, trying
to fit things. And then you have people trying
to make content, trying to make money, trying to get a name for
themselves, trying to do that whole thing.
So I think it's a a little bit of everything.
But yeah, yeah, I don't see much substance from this.
Whatever, again, whatever you want to call it, alternative.
And and that's how I got into all this stuff.
So I just want to keep pointing that out that like, you know,
eight years ago or nine years ago or whatever, I was very
romanticized by some of these ideas.
And then you start looking into you're like, oh, OK, this is,
there's really nothing, not much to this.
But yeah, I still find it interesting.
I'll still watch some of the crazier stuff and just see what
they're saying. Sometimes there's a little
nugget in there, you know, something cool.
But for the most part, a lot of it's just, again, it's just
these mind people making these connections through their mind
or making assumptions about things that they don't know
about and things like that. Yeah, and I think it is a lot of
it is profit motivated. It's people just seeing a way to
to make money on these books and videos and and things.
But I think the people who are consuming it and believing it
are also. I don't want to generalize, but
I think there's an element of paranoia in it.
There's such a mistrust of the government and of, you know,
COVID vaccines and any kind of knowledge that that people have
been, you know, fed, they're suspicious of these days, in
some cases rightly so, because the government has lied to
people on many occasions. But we're at a point where like
nothing is trusted. And and so the the value of
actual experts in fields is no longer.
Well, that's the other thing. It's again, you, you spent a lot
of your life dedicated to this. Like, imagine for anybody out
there that's skeptical of this, imagine putting yourself in your
shoes, whether you're, you know, a mechanic or an engineer or
whatever. You spent your whole life doing
this thing. You know, to have somebody come
in to watch like a couple videos on something or read a handful
of books or whatever the case may be from, you know, different
authors or whatever. And to think that you know, more
than somebody that's dedicated their life to something is kind
of crazy, right? Like I, I, you know, we all play
Dunning Kruger and Oh, I, I probably could figure that out
or whatever. But at the end of the day, I
think it comes down to being honest with yourself.
How much of something do you know?
Just because you want something to be true or it sounds better
or more romantic or whatever, doesn't necessarily make it
true. And again, to these people that
are studying this stuff like you and others or whatever, going
through the scientific rigor and scientific method, to think that
somebody wouldn't would pass up on publicizing a huge find or
discovery or something like that doesn't make any sense.
And yeah, I mean, it's just that think about how many people
actually do archaeology and all of them come to similar conclude
like that doesn't make any sense.
It's. Just these accusations that, you
know, they're not excavating here where they should.
And again, I don't like dogma on any sides.
There are dogmatic scientists for sure, There's no doubt about
that. But it's just it comes down to,
again, being able to be intelligent enough to look at
the epistemology, the ontology, the teleology of these topics
and, and really parse out what's what and be honest with
yourself, be honest with your own bias.
Be honest with, you know, there's shows where I'm like,
what is it? Cave of Bones with Lee Berger,
whatever I so badly want that pre hominid being to be able to
make those symbols 'cause that would mean that they understood
death and death burial before current modern day humans, which
would take the metaphysics of an afterlife way back further.
You know, like, but there's skepticism surrounding that and
questions surrounding that and you know, so it's things like
that, like I, I fall into those same categories too.
So I have to catch myself and but yeah, I just wanted to get
your take on it. We can get back to your book
stuff. I just thought that we were kind
of in that realm of things. I thought I would ask your
opinion on it. Yeah, I'll just say one more
thing. And that's like, I think people
don't understand, first of all, what the field methods and
techniques and analytical methods of archaeology are like
how they reach their conclusions.
And they also don't understand academia in general, like how
academia works. An archaeologist can't just say,
I'm going to go, you know, excavate this particular spot in
Egypt. I'm going to go find the, you
know, the secret lost library in the Sphinx or whatever.
You can't just do that. It's hugely expensive.
You need all kinds of permits. You know, you can.
I, I went on an excavation in, in Egypt.
We're actually in the country and the Supreme Council of
Antiquities canceled it with no explanation, no reason, just,
you know, left this excavation hanging.
So this kind of stuff can happen all the time, and that's
obviously not the fault of archaeologists, but again, also
just knowing what archaeology is, that as a discipline, I
think that should be the first thing people learn before they
start criticizing archaeologists for what they think that they're
doing or or not doing. And I, and I think a good rule
of thumb is too is just can we all agree that we don't know
everything? And then we're constantly
learning, you know, like I think if we can all achieve that,
there's together that we, we come together.
Oh, this pictures not finished yet.
We need to keep, you know, chipping away at it.
And then the next generation will chip away at it and then
there'll never be an end. But who knows?
But yeah, so I, I just wanted to again, bring that up.
I, you know, I've done episodes on all the stuff we just talked
about and everything. And again, it's coming from the
complete, you know, alternative view on all this stuff, all
these topics and all the woo. You know, we've had all the
people like we're talking about near death stuff.
I'm trying to think we had, I don't know if you're familiar
with Evan Alexander, who was a neuroscientist who had his own
near death experience. We've had him on.
I've had who else? Lots of people.
He wrote an endorsement for the new book.
Actually he's, I think he's a pretty open minded, Yeah,
serious, genuine. Guy Rob Genteel.
I don't know if you're familiar with Rob Genteel.
He had two traditional near death experiences and he didn't
have a heart for a while. Actually, he was waiting for a
heart transplant and stuff. And then when he actually got
the transplant, the the girl that he got the transplant from,
he started having all these weird cravings and he found out
like through talking with her family later on, like those were
her favorite like snacks and things like that, which is kind
of weird. Like does the.
Do the organs have, do our organs carry some sort of
consciousness or memory? You know, it's, it's something
to think about for sure. Yeah, yeah, I've heard stories
like that so. All right, well, let's move on.
Let's move on back to the book then.
I don't want to go too far down. Like I said, that's that could
be a whole different separate episode.
Maybe we'll have you back on and just, you know, get into the
weeds with that whole topic because I think that there's so
many different things you could talk about too.
But OK, I do want to talk about 'cause I mentioned we talked
about Soma, we've done episodes on Soma, What was Soma, the
different theories, the translations.
When you're looking at Vedic traditions and everything,
obviously reincarnation seems pretty central to their, their
way of life and their beliefs and everything.
Do do the end. Does the NDE stuff align
challenge or like how does that work with this idea of of near
death experiences in in ancient civilizations?
Yeah, that's a great question. So in the earliest Indian texts
like the Rig Veda, there is almost no hint of reincarnation.
It just, it's not part of the, you know, doctrine of Vedic
religion yet. But from the earliest times we
have, there's like this stream of of accounts that are very
much like near death experiences.
There's only a couple of brief ones in the Rig Veda, but then
in the Upanishads and some of these later texts, they're very
clear indications. There's one about a little boy
named Nachikitas who goes to the other world.
Well, first his his father, he's annoying his father.
His father's like giving away all of his worldly possessions.
And he says to his father, who are you going to give me to?
And, and his father doesn't answer him and he keeps
pestering and, and so the father finally says, I'll give you to
death, meaning basically that that he kills him.
So this little boy goes to the other world and he's waiting for
Yama, the God of death, but he's nowhere to be seen.
He's basically left there alone for three days.
And then Yama finally appears and he's all embarrassed at his
lapse in hospitality. So, so he grants 3 wishes to
this little boy. And basically it's this whole
kind of discourse about the secrets of life and death and
the mysteries of life and death at that point.
And then the boy eventually will go back to his come back to
life. But I think as reincarnation
becomes more of a, an established doctrine in Indian
religion, the fewer of these near death experience type
accounts we have. So I think that's an interesting
parallel. It kind of like as reincarnation
becomes the dominant ideology, then the near death experiences
is less relevant. So I mean, we do have some later
accounts of like intermission memories where children who
remember past lives will remember also their the death of
their previous life. And that's described very much
like like a near death experience.
So we've got some of those from, you know, contemporary or 1940s
onwards India. But as far as the ancient texts
goes, the others, it's kind of a a gap in NDE accounts for for a
lot of at least Hindu history. We've got a lot in Buddhism, but
but from Hinduism there really aren't that many after a certain
point. Yeah, the soma thing, a lot of
it points to communing with the gods, attaining light,
immortality. It's less about dying.
I mean, and there's some people that'll make the argument too,
that, you know, that book the immortality key was based on is
dying before dying or experiencing, you know, the
psychedelic experience and the Hallucinian mysteries, dying
before you actually die and understanding the importance of
of this and everything like that.
But when you look at that, like, as I mentioned, it seemed to be
more about life, like what you're saying, like the Rig
beta. I haven't read the whole thing,
but just the parts that I read for the Soma stuff seem to be
more about life and living and that kind of thing as opposed to
like what you're saying, like ND death.
And I mean, obviously Egypt's heavy in, in, in death, like,
you know, all the from the mastabas to the pyramids to the
sarcophagus to everything, you know, the, the mummies, all that
stuff. So they have like a culture of
death where it seems like the ancient, whoever they were, Indo
Iranians, Vedic culture, whatever seem to be very into
life and and that whole thing so.
Yeah, yeah. And I think where we do have
near death type experiences in the in the rig Vader or whatever
it's the emphasis is, is less on the death aspect and what we can
learn about death and dying and returning.
It's more about, you know, the kind of glories of the other
world and, and this mystical consciousness.
There's even a near death experience of a horse in one of
them, which I think is really interesting because it's
described in similar terms of as a a human's near death
experience. Interesting, yeah, What was pre
Buddhist ancient China in like in regards to these thoughts and
metaphysics and religious stuff pertaining to the Indies?
We actually have quite a few ND ES from from ancient China going
back to like the 8th century something 800 something BCE.
I don't remember the exact date, but they're presented and, you
know, in contrast to a lot of the other cultures, they're not
presented in, at least not overtly a kind of religious
texts. They're not like descriptions of
of, you know, how to navigate the afterlife.
There are some examples we have that are actually official
documents, like a government official filed this report about
so and so who had an NDE in this village On this date.
It was witnessed by these people and here's the outcome.
So it was very much like possibly the first overt
documentary type ND ES that we have.
And the earliest is is pretty interesting because it involves
a man who has an NDE. And while he's in the other
world, he meets the Emperor of heaven.
He calls him. And at the emperor's side, he
sees a little boy. And then when he comes back to
life decades later, they're not really clear about about when it
happens, but it's it's some years later and he's walking
down the street and he sees a man blocking his path.
And the guy won't get out of his way.
And he starts to recognize them and they kind of make eye
contact. And he says, you know what's
going on? Where do I know you from?
And the little boy proceeds to describe the man's near death
experience or the man, sorry, I gave it away.
The man proceeds to describe the other man's near death
experience. And it turns out that he was
that little boy standing at the side of the emperor and that he
happened to be having a near death experience at the same
time as this other guy. So that was a validation of near
death experiences and basically that these experiences really
happened and that that proved to the Chinese authorities that
these were actual genuine experiences.
Interesting interesting. We had a a live stream comment.
I love Greg, he's so well researched.
I'm currently getting my doctorate in psychology and I
make, let's see Greg's research to my professors.
Oh, they're they make a point to point out your research to their
classmates and professors and they said thank you.
Oh, thanks, thank you. The real deal.
Let's see here. Where else was I going to go
with that? So yeah, I find that interesting
that the ancient China, I don't that's one culture I don't know
a ton about from super antiquity.
So I would like to look into maybe that a little bit more as
well. Do you think that there's
similarities in these afterlife beliefs across cultures?
Do they, you know, suggest a shared human experience of
death? Or could it be evidence of some
sort of cultural diffusion? What do you think about that?
Yeah. Again, as I kind of outlined
earlier, I think the, the cultural diffusion argument can
be dismissed, at least in this case with these five ancient
world areas. And, and yeah, the as far as the
similarities go of the, yeah, the conclusion I reach basically
was that there was this set of similarities that were kind of,
you know, each set was, was found or this set was found in
each of these civilizations. So it's almost like they were,
you know, transported in the set.
And that was, you know, the these main elements of the NDE
which were leaving the body, entering darkness, the disease
relatives, the being of light, etcetera, etcetera.
They were practically universal. I think there were a couple of
cases where one or two might have been missing in in one of
the societies, for example, like the panoramic life review that
that we're familiar with from Ndes.
That's a little iffy. They all have some kind of
review of, of what your life was like.
But this like panoramic thing seemed to be yeah, pretty much
missing in most cases. So, yeah, and, and again, I
think because of that consistent set of similarities, I think
that shows that the NDE had to pre had to have preceded what
was going on in all these cultures.
That's the only way that I can think of to explain them other
than like some nebulous amorphous idea of like, oh, the
human brain constructs myths in similar ways.
To me, that's not really an explanation because we don't
construct creation myths similar ways and we don't have, you
know, there's no like correspondence of each myth to
each culture. These are elements within
afterlife myths that that are that are occurring in the in
these sets. So based on your research,
obviously you know there's nobody knows the answer to this,
but do you think that the do you think there is a metaphysical
reality beyond this life? And do you think that these
ancient religions were suggesting it or like what do
you think's happening here? And then also give me your
personal take on it after. Yeah, they they were, they were
presenting this as knowledge. It wasn't like, you know, here's
an idea of what, you know, we're speculating philosophically to
these ancient civilizations. And I think I guess to religious
people in general, this is knowledge.
This is like something that, you know, me personally, I I don't
understand belief and I don't have that knowledge.
So, so I kind of, I haven't decided one way or another.
I don't really to me, I, I either know something or I
don't, I guess is the easiest way to put it.
And because I don't have direct knowledge of, of this, this
phenomena, if maybe if I had an NDI would feel like I had that
knowledge. I know people who do have them
talk about them in, in those terms.
A lot of people who have them are no longer they, they don't
doubt at all that there's an afterlife or that they survived
the, the death of their body. I haven't had that experience.
So for me, it's just like speculation and, and I'm really
not sure which, you know, what's going to happen to me there.
There is some, some of the evidence to me is pretty
compelling, like like for example, the ancient Chinese one
I mentioned that recalls these accounts in, in modern times
where people will go, we'll have an NDE and go to the other world
and they'll meet their Uncle Bill or whatever and they'll
think, well, well, Uncle Bill's alive.
And then they come back to life. They come back to their body and
they're told, well, we're glad you came back.
But by the way, Uncle Bill died yesterday.
That kind of thing is like inexplicable to me, unless
there's something really going on with this person soul leaving
their body and going to another realm.
But then again, you know, you people could say the Super side
hypothesis or whatever. I mean, it's anecdotal.
Can we just be real? Here from like a teleological
standpoint like this is weird, right?
Like what's the point of what? All right, like why are we here?
Like this is even if this was some sort of cosmic accident,
you could make the argument that on the most base level, like
almost like a Richard Dawkins argument of like us, our genes
just want to replicate or we just want to survive, like
everything else that's living or whatever.
But from the standpoint that we do have these faculties, these
this consciousness that allows us to appraise the world around
us in a way that other things don't.
That's the thing that always gives me pause.
And you could say, well, we're so much more evolved or were you
evolved with these faculties or whatever?
I don't know. I just like I said, it's just
this is too weird, right? Like the fact that we're even
having this conversation right now, like this whole thing's
just super bizarre, right? Yeah, I agree.
And and I I do think though that it's very conceptually feasible
that there could be an afterlife that's atheistic.
I don't think there has to be a God in an afterlife.
So like you know, there could be a Dawkins type type model that.
What if you get to choose like what are what are the atheists?
If they get there and they're oh, there is an afterlife, what
do you think they Oh no, I'm going home, I'm going nowhere.
I'm nothing anymore, you know, like what do cause I don't know.
Again, it's just one of those it's just so bizarre to I've
thought about this again. I've had my own near death
experience. Well, let me just point out you
can go back anybody listening and list.
I did a two or three-part thing on my near death experience.
My heart did not stop, but I did lose consciousness for a while.
It was lost so much blood that I needed a blood transfusion.
So I needed medical intervention now.
I saw a white light. I felt like a warmth, but both
my wife and my mom were there saying things and I was like in
and out. And it just seemed not maybe
not. Maybe I didn't cross that
threshold. You know, they always talk about
when you, when you, when you listen to these people that had
these real like vivid near death experiences, It seems like a
most of them are people that have their heart stopped or
they, they're had cardiac arrest, right?
I don't know if you're, I'm sure you're familiar with that aspect
of this phenomena, but anything related to the heart, whether
it's a heart attack or heart stops, whatever.
Those are the people that generally have the most vivid,
most intense near death experiences.
Yeah, and there's also some evidence that seems the longer
somebody's dead than the deeper experience they have.
So people who were only, you know, dead for a couple of
minutes might leave their body and see their body and see a
light and then Wham, but they're back in the body.
Or somebody who's who's dead for, you know, 20 minutes or an
hour, they might go further and meet their relatives and see
these, you know, supernatural landscapes and whatever else.
And actually, that's something else I should mention, which
also relates to your comment about how weird it all is.
And that's how different Ndes are not only between cultures,
but even between individuals. You know, even Raymond Moody in
1975 in the the first modern book about ND ES pointed that
out. You know, he had this list of 15
elements or whatever and he said, but not one account that
he's found has all 15 of them. Check that out too, people
listen. It's called life afterlife.
I highly If you're interested in this topic, that's probably
where you should start. Or.
Maybe start with your your work, but then you know, obviously
more modern stuff that's like the beginning of the more
modern. Yeah.
And in a lot of ways, it hasn't been superseded.
A lot of ND e-books are are repeating the same stuff that's
been repeated for 50 years. So which is not to disparage
them because, you know, everyone has their own, their own take on
them. But yeah, so.
So anyway, yeah, sorry, go ahead.
So who do you think out of all the ancient civilizations you
studied had the most data or knowledge on the topic?
I'm going to guess the Egyptians, but that's just a
guess. Yeah, that's, that's pretty.
That's a tough one. I guess they were the most
focused on it, but I don't know if they were as experientially
focused as say, India was, for example.
I think it's impossible to tell because we don't have the text
that that, you know, overtly talk about experience it.
It's, you know, again, kind of speculative, but, you know, they
were ritually super, super focused on death in the
afterlife, you know, almost obsessively.
So there's lots of also ritual stuff in the Rig Veda and and
other civilizations. China was probably a little less
ritually focused, at least in the texts, and same with
Mesoamerica. So I think it just kind of, I
think that's an impossible question to answer.
Yeah, yeah. Because there's lots of
experiential stuff in the ancient Chinese texts.
There's quite a bit in Mesoamerica.
So I think it's all kind of parsing the degrees to which
they're interested in life after death, death philosophically and
metaphysically or experientially or ritually, but, but
everybody's interested in it. Do you think now with the AI
we'll be able to go back and kind of maybe use that as a tool
to go parse some of these ancient texts and symbols and
things out, trying to figure out, you know, maybe a little
bit more definitively what's going on?
Or do you think that that's more still since we're designing the
AI that'll be flawed in that, you know, I know it's kind of a
chicken. Yeah, yeah.
I think it's, it's more that to be honest, I think AIAIS may be
good in yeah, helping to analyze things that already exist and
maybe, well, things like reading scrolls that have been charred
and they're rolled up and and archaeologists can't undo them,
you know, to, to kind of use to scan them and then and then feed
them through AI to try to get different kinds of of data
information. It's not a technology that I'm
that I know that much about other than seeing how bad it is
when I use like ChatGPT for some research question or, or, you
know, ask it, the question about myself, it's gives out just tons
and tons of wrong information. The videos that people make of
like you see on social media where there's like, you know, a
gorilla cuddling a kitten or whatever, these weird things, to
me, they look really creepy. They're instantly recognizable
as AI. The music it puts out is it's
it's got a vibe to it that I just don't click with.
So, and I think it's the uncanny valley, that thing where if
something looks a little bit too human or or too much replicates
something that a human does, it gives us the creeps.
I don't think it's AI has come out of that yet and I don't know
if it ever will. Interesting In terms of would
you ever consider looking at look going back further than you
have? Like I know Echobecli tape, they
just have like symbols and stuff on their T pillars and things
like that, but would you ever consider trying to find evidence
and older sites like that, maybe that transitional period of
hunter gatherer into Mesopotamia or something along those lines?
Yeah, I mean, I that would be great.
But the text that I talk about in this book are the world's
earliest discussions of an afterlife period.
Like there are no earlier texts in each of these areas.
So I mean, obviously the Egyptian texts are earlier than
the Aztec texts or whatever, but as far as that area is
concerned, it's the first text that originated.
What about Indus Valley? Because I know that they haven't
really translated everything from there yet.
Yeah, I don't think they have any substantial texts though.
They they don't have any, you know, body of work, a corpus.
So and see that's the problem with with archaeology.
There's a great article written I think in the 60s by Peter
Peter Unko, which is still totally relevant and I I think,
or at least I hope, it's still taught in undergraduate
archaeology classes, but basically explains the dangers
of trying to extrapolate from archaeological sites and
especially burial sites, beliefs in an afterlife.
So for example, there was a lot of speculation that if the
corpse position was facing West, then that meant they were facing
the land of the dead. If they were buried with their
sword, that meant that they would be equipped with their
sword in the afterlife in spirit form.
You know, the spirit of their their sword would go with them.
Or if they had offerings of food, that means they would be
able to eat in the afterlife. But Peter Echo found these
ethnographic analogies, they're called basically similar types
of burials in anthropological and indigenous societies through
anthropology that had completely different meanings.
So for example, a sword was broken and buried to in order to
destroy the power of that sword. It had nothing to do with with
the burial and gifts were thrown in the grave not to go accompany
the other world, but as as as like the people having finished
their feast, dropping it as as like the final tribute.
So so I don't think it's possible to like understand any
prehistoric, you know, pretextual society's beliefs
just based on their archaeological remains.
So I think we can speculate all we want, but.
No, no, that, that makes total sense.
I mean, without that, that library or that corpus of
knowledge, it would be kind of, you know, you'd again, like you
just said, you'd be kind of making assumptions, grasping at
straws, you know, which is kind of what, you know, earlier what
we were discussing with all the pseudo and alternative stuff and
everything. That's what a lot of that stuff
is, is just taking like one point, kind of running with it.
But, and I, I found it funny when we were doing that part of
the conversation, we got our, we got a thumbs down.
It's like, I don't really see too many thumbs downs.
I mean, I'm sure we've got them, but it just.
Again, people. People want the.
They want the mystery, they want that, they want the mystique,
they want the like I said, they, they, there's a whole bunch of
people that want to believe in something right now.
And I think that, you know, saying civilizations older than
it, they're, they're telling us, or we've got all the dates
wrong. We got all the knowledge wrong.
It's just romantic because it's like, oh, we got to figure this
out, you know, we, there could be something special here, you
know, and they fail to realize we are special.
But like I said, the fact we're having this conversation is
amazing and nuts and crazy and we are dust from stars
basically. You know, like there are things
to us that are magic that people overlook looking for this, you
know, the pyramids being 10,000 years old as opposed to, you
know, 4500 years old or whatever, you know.
Yeah, yeah. There's plenty of mystery out
there without, you know, going down without creating false
mysteries out of, out of things that that don't exist.
Yeah. And I, I think, you know, unless
somebody is willing to engage with archaeology on the level,
on its own level and on its own terms, nobody's ever going to be
convinced of, of any pseudo archaeological claim.
And you mentioned earlier that, you know, people spend their
whole lives researching these topics and then somebody comes
along after watching a video. But it's not even just person
that's spend their lives doing it.
You know, Egyptology has been a discipline for a couple of 100
years since Napoleon or, or whatever.
And this has been, it's not just one person spending his, his or
her life researching this stuff. It's a standing on the shoulders
of giants. Once again, it's, it's this
accumulation of knowledge which is constantly being approved
upon. Texts are being retranslated all
the time. You know, there's, there's 3 or
4 editions of the Pyramid Texts, for example, which is totally
obscure text, let alone how many there are of the Book of the
Dead. So knowledge within these
disciplines is constantly being re evaluated and rewritten.
Let me ask you a question too. And this is just like a dream of
my, this is something I considered early on at the
podcast. What if archaeologists compiled
lists of mysteries or things that are mysteries within their
field, so we know what the real mysteries are based on the
people that are actually doing the digging.
That way if somebody does want to really investigate something
or maybe they can help in that way.
I always thought that there could be like a, you know, we,
there could be a team up or, you know, obviously somebody that
hasn't gone to school for archaeology is not going to be
able to go dig in the dirt and like you said, get permits and
do all the thing. But maybe they can look, maybe
they're an expert in linguistics or maybe they're an expert at
deciphering texts or maybe they can help in some way.
So I always thought like, instead of being like, oh,
that's not a mystery or that's not a mystery.
We know that, we know that, we know that.
What are the real mysteries? What are the things we can't
agree on? Like what are these Gray area
topics that we can then look to be like?
These are the real mysteries. Let's figure these out first.
I don't think there are any massive secret type life
changing history change or. Yeah, no, I don't even mean
that. I mean, like things like where's
Genghis Khan buried or where's, you know, whoever, you know,
Cleopatra, like what? Whatever these things like,
where are these things like that that are maybe not, like you
said, like finding the Ark of the Covenant so we can all
connect to the aliens or whatever.
You know what I'm saying? Like something that's a little
bit more legitimate. Yeah, I think, I think it's part
of what makes people go down these romanticized archaeology
paths is because a lot of it is actually boring.
So. So the answer that to that is
probably just that there's more stuff to be discovered and
there's more stuff to be interpreted and restored and
cataloged. It's, I mean, I would go when I
went on excavations, you excavate tons and tons of shards
of poetry, of poetry, of pottery, and then you put it in
different piles depending on whether it's a rim or a base or
a handle or, or a central piece. And once you count them up and
some of them go in a certain pile, some go in another pile.
Most of it you throw back into a pit and rebury.
So it really feels like this futile exercise.
But it's all about information gathering and largely for the
next people who are going to be on the site.
And eventually these things will kind of combine to form some
foundation for knowledge or theorizing.
So, so I can't even think of like some like great
archaeological mystery that still needs to be solved.
It's, it's more of a question of like, how can we better
understand what's out there? And that's really the the goal
and the point of of the whole discipline.
Interesting. Yeah, I mean, I'm sure obviously
we know that there's other mounds similar to Gobekli tape
in that area that just have not been excavated yet.
So we know there's, yeah, we know there's other sites and
stuff like. Yeah, I was going to say, and I
was just in Belize and I was at a site called Caracal, which
took maybe 4 hours to to really explore.
And then after we explored it, the archaeologist guide who was
there said, you've just seen 1% of this site.
So the rest of it is still covered by the jungle canopy
basically. So if 1% of that site takes 4
hours to see, imagine how vast, how massive that site is going
to be. But you know, it's going to take
forever. We're we're none of us are going
to be around by the time that is is finished being exited.
I mean, that was a major, LIDAR was a major.
I mean, if you look at what Lidar's done for archaeology in
the Amazon, it's insane. Yeah, it is.
And and that's how they're able to tell, you know, what
percentage is, is left unexcavated.
And so then the question is like, why should they excavate
it? You know, what is the point?
Is it only for tourists? Are they really, really going to
learn more of what they need to know by doing so?
And, you know, again, it's limited resources to to be able
to put into this that the government doesn't.
You know, Belizean government doesn't have a lot of money to
put into archaeology. So it's got to come from
universities and private funding.
So a lot of obstacles really in the field.
Interesting. So where do you go from here?
What's next? Is there something you're
looking into? What are your takeaways?
Is this some? Was this a passion project?
And now this is kind of a culmination, like what's going
on here? No, I've, yeah, after this
ancient civilization book, I I wrote a book on near death
experience and indigenous religions.
And that's that's been out for a few years with Oxford University
Press. I'm now working on A and so both
of those were comparative projects, The ancient
civilizations ones one was a kind of wide grand comparison
with these five civilizations. The indigenous religions 1 was
looking more at we have a lot of accounts of near death
experiences from from these traditions.
I'm talking about like Native Americans and Africa and the
Pacific is small scale tribal societies.
So we actually have accounts of near death experiences and they
talk about how they influence their beliefs and you know, how
they base their beliefs on them. So it kind of zeroed in a little
bit more from from the ancient civilizations book.
And now I'm doing one on your death experience in classical
antiquities. So looking at Greece and Rome.
And again, we have quite a few examples of ND ES from the.
Say, that one's going to be interesting too.
You'll be the Lucidian mysteries.
You have exactly the Pythagoreans with the
transmigration of the soul. You have a lot of different
things happen in there in ancient Greece.
And everybody knows about the myth of UR, which is, you know,
people say it's the earliest near death experience, which I
don't think it was. But not everybody knows about
Pythagoras's near death experience or his intermission
memories that he had between personalities when he was reborn
from one personality to another. He also remembered the the inter
life state. So I'm kind of bringing all
this, this stuff together and talking largely about how these
experiences influenced afterlife beliefs, but also the diversity
of of attitudes towards them. So they were ridiculed by, by
some people, they were believed by some people and others just
kind of we're trying to understand what the Hell's going
on like we're doing. Yeah, I mean, Pythagoras, aside
from the number magic stuff seem to be influenced heavily by
either Vedic or Eastern philosophy kind of in a, in a,
you know, it seems to be compared to traditional Greeks
and and you know that whole thing.
Yeah, you read that a lot and and that's one of the things I
was just working on that today actually.
Everybody who writes about where did Pythagoras get his ideas
about reincarnation, they always look for pre-existing models.
So they think, OK, maybe this other philosopher was talking
about it. Maybe he got it from shamans on
the Black Sea, or maybe he got it from India or some other
culture that believes in reincarnation.
Nobody looks back and thinks, well, people who have
reincarnation memories, that's an actual phenomena that happens
cross culturally. He claimed to have had this
experience. He claimed to have remembered
this state between lives and all this other stuff, so why
couldn't he've gotten the idea of reincarnation from his own
experiences? Well, that's what I so that's
what I was going to ask you next is we don't know how much of
Pythagoras writings were attributed to him specifically
or his cult members. I think that that's what I
'cause if anybody's listening, I do a series called Masters of
Rhetoric where it's kind of like basic philosophy course slash
going into, you know, all of Plato's dialogues, breaking them
down, the sophists and all that kind of stuff.
And we did touch on Pythagoras because we talked about the pre
Socratics and everything. And yeah, to your point, I
didn't actually know that he had his own intermissions or past
life. You know, obviously we, you
know, things we talked about like these acetate cults and
being a vegetarian and transmigration of the soul and
things like that. But yeah, that's interesting.
I'll have to look into that. Yeah, and to a certain extent
within classical studies, things like that.
And even the myth of her or kind of seem like seen as an
embarrassment. Like, you know, class
classicists are pretty, you know, stage type people.
They don't like all this, you know, paranormal stuff.
And they don't want to see the Greeks as being irrational and
woo woo. You know, the Greeks are the,
the philosophers are the foundations of Western
civilization, but they're actually, you know, tons of
metaphysical thinking and supernatural stuff and, you
know, magic, I mean. Even Plato had this idea of the
theory of forms. There's this other realm where
everything in our realm is based off of these more perfect
objects in this other realm, you know?
Like, if that's not metaphysical, I don't know what
is, you know? When you look at at some of the
classical scholarship about the myth of her, they literally say
this is a shock to come to at the end of the Republic because
it's, it's an embarrassment. And how can we take this
seriously? It's like they're trying to sell
it. Reminded me of creationists
trying to still be Christians in light of the existence of
dinosaurs, you know? It's like, I mean, I, I think
the Republic's probably one of the greatest pieces of variety
of all time, but that's just me. And you can you make the
argument like, we get our soul from Plato and we get our logic
from Aristotle, right, 'cause when Plato would drive a point
home, he would use mathematics or logic.
And then you get Aristotle and he's looking at biology and
these biological factors contributing to the answers for
things. So, yeah, kind of a mix of it's
kind of a mix of what we are, right.
Yeah. And it's because of that
rationality that ending the Republic with a near death
experience upsets so many classicists.
You know, it's like, how can he be rational and still be, you
know, recounting a near death experience is something that
really happened. Awesome.
Well, let's wrap it up here. I'd love to have you back on.
Like I said, there's a, a ton of stuff that we probably could
have discussed, but I, I really wanted to focus mostly on the
near death stuff, obviously, because that's what your book's
about and the topic and everything.
And again, everybody go check out Gregory's book.
I have the link down below at the bottom.
I have his website if you're interested in all of his links.
And then I have the inner tradition links to his book as
well as the Amazon links. If you purchase your books off
Amazon. Is there an audio version too?
Do you have an Audible yet for that?
Not yet. I think there will be, but I
don't think. You should do it so.
Yeah, you should read. It too I, I like that I, I, I'm,
I'm a fan of I mean, I, I read a lot of books, but I also like
listening to books too, like while I do stuff so.
Yeah, I volunteered to to read it, so hopefully they'll take me
up on it. Cool, sounds good.
We'll check that out. As I mentioned before, we were
on a hiatus for a few months. I'll do a solo episode coming up
where we I go over everything. Let's former Co host Maurice got
married. So congratulations to Maurice
and we'll have him back on soon to discuss some stuff.
He had some weird experience he wants to talk about.
Let's see here. Oh, I did move a bunch of older
episodes to our Patreon just to keep things clean and division
of what the show used to be what it is now.
I think people get confused sometimes if you listen to
episode 1 versus episode 323, you know, there's been a long
path and everything. And so yeah, some of those older
episodes are on our Patreon now for $2.00 a month.
You'll also get exclusive content, which, you know,
there's a good chance if we've had a big guest in the past,
there's probably some exclusive content on there as well.
You can check out our documentary As Within So without
From UFOs to DMT, which is again, looking at these
different phenomenon through the lens of the mind.
Oh, check out Masters of Rhetoric, my other series, which
is available on YouTube, Spotify, and all podcast
outlets. Episode #5 I will be firing up
soon. I don't know how soon, but I'm
going to try and start, you know, working on that.
I do want to break down Plato's dialogues and the, the dialogue
specifically with the Sophists. So look for that.
And if you just want to support Mindscape in general, just click
on the link tree link down below.
And we appreciate all your support.
So, but listen, Greg, this was a fantastic conversation.
I learned a lot. And like I said, I'd love to
have you back on again sometime in the future, even if you don't
have a new book coming out, just to have a conversation.
Sure, anytime. Thanks.
All right, well, there you have it folks.
Again, check out Greg's books. Links down below, support, mind
escape, click the link tree and I'll see everybody soon.
We love you. Stay safe out there and
everybody have a good night. Night.