"Yeah, and they measured them and they made calculations. And when the Greeks went to Babylon, they thought, “Hey man, this is really cool.” And they wrote it all down and went home. Yeah, definitely, definitely. Well, I think it’s a hard question to answer. But one of the things is that they were spared things which have cluttered up the essence of humanity. Because I think that the modern adherence to the electronic universe is disastrous for humans, and because it reduces the vitality of the human component. I think it’s restrictive in a way that people don’t realize until it’s too late. Like drugs, if you take drugs now and again, you think, “Oh, it’s fine, it’s fine.” Then suddenly you realize you’re addicted to heroin. It’s a bit like that."

"I think that’s true, but I think in Mesopotamia it was different in terms of its potency and immediacy because there are no skyscrapers in Iraq. You know, if you live in Southern Iraq and you sleep on the roof, there are no lights at night. You know, you’re under the stars, you can see everything because of no smog and everything like that. And the idea that the gods are there watching, it’s not like a big artifice like it is here. It just doesn’t ring true here. You can’t come to it and really believe in it, whereas these people didn’t have to really believe in it because it was it."

"Yeah. But they didn’t believe in ghosts, they took them for granted. And they didn’t believe in the gods, they took them for granted. This is a different mechanism, because nobody here in the world today takes those things for granted, just the opposite. But I think that’s how it worked. So you didn’t have people wrestling with the idea of whether the gods really exist or whether they really care about me. They gave them a nudge when it was necessary, and they might offer this, they might offer that, but it was the system, it was the prevailing system. And I think it’s an important difference."