Graham Hancock

Graham Hancock speaking at the Sunrise Festival 2006

‘Researcher and author Graham Hancock presents his thesis that “supernatural” entities such as aliens and fairies are actually transdimensional beings that humans encounter during altered states of consciousness. The ability to shape-shift has been ascribed to both modern aliens as well as elves and other entities reported centuries ago, he detailed.
Around 35,000 to 40,000 years ago humans underwent a sudden change, and the emergence of cave and rock paintings are evidence of this, said Hancock, who noted that some of their depictions were of part human/part animal beings. He believes these represent the supernatural entities, and through altered states (probably due to ingesting psilocybin mushrooms) humans learned advanced skills from their encounters with these beings.
Nowadays, shamans commonly have such altered state communications. They feel humanity is at a crossroads– the West has lost contact with the spirit world, and many of the world’s woes are due to this, Hancock reported. As part of his experiential research, he traveled to South America and took the psychedelic plant mixture ayahuasca. During one such episode, he described a confrontation with an alien being, but rather than being an extraterrestrial, he suggested it inhabits another dimension that can only be accessed during an altered state.’

From the work presented in ‘Left in the Dark’   comes an alternative explanation of humanity’s apparent awakening 35,000 to 40,000 years ago.  It is possible that the use of shamanic plants partially reconnected humans to a level of consciousness that humans had experienced millenia  before and had largely lost owing to  increasing dominance of the left hemisphre of the brain.  The abilities that manifested were impressive but still a step down from the experience of living in ecstatic connection with eachother and the environment that our more distant ancestors may have experienced.

It is possible  that images and visions seen in states of altered consiousness appear because they are closely linked in the brain to certain feelings that are evoked in these states.  They are thus representations or symbols of something we detect or experience at a deeper level.