Erich von Daniken:
Interview transcript
Erich von Daniken
Interlaken, Switzerland, May 2009
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[Ed
note:
Normally
the transcripts that had any parts in them that had
been difficult for the transcribers to hear were put in “audibles”
in square brackets in red for Bill Ryan to attend to, fix, then he’d
post the transcript; however, due to unexpected interruptions in the
normal working process in Project Camelot, this normal process was
not able to proceed forward, so the audibles were left in the square
brackets.]
BILL
RYAN (BR): I want to thank you on behalf of everybody who's learned
such a lot from all your work all your life. You've done a fantastic
job and I really wanted to tell you this.
ERICH
von DANIKEN (EvD): Yes, and, in the meantime, I am 74 years old, but
the Gods still love me, okay? [laughter]
BR: The Gods are
taking good care of you. [laughter]
EvD: The Gods still love
me, and I continue writing books. So, in total, I have, at the
moment, 32 books on the market, and I'm just writing one. In the
United States, my newest one is called History
is Wrong. This one will
be on the market in about four months.
BR: That's great. History is Wrong
is a great title.
EvD: It's a great book, too.
BR:
Yes.
EvD: What is your topic?
BR: My topic is exactly
the same as yours.
EvD: Great. Okay. I should have
that.
BR: It is presenting the truth to the people who have
not been told the truth by the politicians, by the scientists...
EvD: They lie anyhow.
BR: ...by the teachers, or even by their parents because they don't
know
any better.
EvD: I know.
BR: And what we're trying to put in place is an alternative education
to... as you said, the title of your new book is called…?
EvD: History Is Wrong.
BR: History Is Wrong.
And history is
wrong.
EvD: I know it. At least quite a lot of it is
wrong.
BR: Quite a lot of it is wrong.
EvD: Some
scientists are lying to us. Of course, the majority are nice and
integer personalities, but some of them are lying.
BR: Yes
and the guys who really know what's going on are all working for the
governments.
EvD: Of course. [laughter]
BR: Could you remind me, which year did you publish Chariots
of the Gods?
EvD:
1968.
BR: 1968.
EvD: That was in German language.
BR: In German.
EvD: It came in the United States in 1969.
BR: Okay. I bought it in England...
EvD: Oh, okay.
BR: ...when I was a little kid. That was the book that got me started
on
a journey that’s now helped me, and my friends, help a lot of
other people.
EvD: In the meantime both of us have become not only older, but also
wiser.
BR: Exactly! [laughter]
[Erich
and female voices converse in German]
BR: Someone now has to translate for me.
EvD: Yeah, I’m sorry. [laughter] I just asked them if they saw all
the shows.
BR: Oh, no, we haven’t seen them all yet.
EvD: She said that she saw Nazca.
That’s important.
BR: Nazca?
That’s...
EvD: You saw Megastones?
VOICE:
Yes
EvD: Okay. Vimana, here?
India?
VOICE:
Yes. [background chatter]
BR: I have some questions to ask you.
EvD: Yes, please.
BR: And all of this is being recorded – with your assumed
permission – because we'd love to put this out on the Internet.
It would be our pleasure to give you some publicity here.
EvD: Thank you. We need publicity for this project now.
BR: But is this now open -- just for the summer, or is it reopening
permanently? What’s the plan here that you have?
EvD: No. In the past it was wrong to shut the park down. We should
never
have closed it, because such a project is like a big restaurant –
you need time. You need at least 4 or 5 years, so the public outside
of Switzerland knows that such a park exists.
BR: Yes.
[Bystanders
converse in German, distract EvD and BR]
BR: Ah, maybe we could just step outside.
[EvD
and BR walk to a cafe]
BR: Here’s a table. That's wonderful. This is great.
EvD: So the park is now open in summer for the moment, because in
winter
it was absolutely not a good business.
BR: Right.
EvD: For the moment we just do it for summer, but then in November we
have to decide what to do, re-open it for the whole year or not. We
need new innovation, we need new stuff, new material, which means a
lot more money. It’s always a question of money.
BR: Oh yeah. Sure.
EvD: Most people love money. [laughs]
BR: Well, that’s right. Are you trying to reach the children? Or
are you trying to reach the people like us, who’ve asked
questions all our lives?
EvD: Okay, yes, we reach the children for the children’s part of
the park. But for the shows, I rather want the adults; the people who
think. You know, we have a motto here, and the motto is in German on
the expression of “Das
Stounden wieder lernen.” [Ed
note: This is a rough translation; a better one is needed]
Mystery
Park is not a place where someone dictates and says: I’m
having right. This is the true answer.
Mystery Park is the place which ends always with question marks.
BR: Okay.
EvD: When you be careful on the earphones, whatever you see – you
see side attractions or main attractions – it always ends with
question marks.
BR: So, that’s why it’s called the Mystery
Park and not the park
that has all the answers.
EvD: If you would give the answers, it’s no more mystery.
BR: I understand. Yes, exactly. But, for yourself, personally, do you
feel after all these years that you’ve got answers; that you’ve
been...
EvD: Of course. I know very, very clearly what happened.
BR: Tell us.
EvD: A thousand… [Ed
note: unclear] [Bill
laughs] Thousands of years ago the ETs were here, evidently, and
there was an artificial mutation, changing our genes. So we are
partly terrestrials because we are like evolution, and partly we are
extraterrestrial.
BR: And what’s happening now, Erich? Because there is a big change
in consciousness happening on the planet right now. Everyone is aware
of it. You must be aware of it. What’s going on now?
EvD: Well, these ETs, when they left us, they promised to return and
they
will return. Now we have one possible date – that’s this
Maya date, you know – 2012.
BR: How important do you feel that is?
EvD: Not very.
BR: Mm-hm.
EvD: I’m absolutely sure they will return, but you cannot fix the
date, not even with the Maya calendar because the Maya calendar --
you have first to calculate into our calendar, and this calculation
is wrong.
BR: Yes.
EvD: If the starting point is wrong, then the end result is wrong, too.
Finally, we are not even sure if our own calendar is correct.
BR: Yes.
EvD: We count 2009. That means 2009 since the birth of Christ. But if
this is wrong, the figure 2009 is wrong, too. Maybe they started 30
years later with counting. It’s all a mess.
But
one thing is definitely sure: They will return. They promised it. We
have written reference to that. They will definitely return to Earth,
and every culture in the past had this expectation of the re-coming
of someone – be it the Maya, the Inca, the Egyptians –
they all were expecting somebody.
BR: Or even The Second
Coming, which is a kind
of metaphor.
EvD: Yes. Exactly. And today we have the same thing. I mean, the
Christians, they wait for the re-coming of Jesus Christ. The Muslim
community waits the return of the Mahadi. The Jewish society awaits
the return of the Messiah.
So
now, obviously not every religion can be right. Some of them must be
wrong, and I say they’re all wrong.
BR: Now, when you say that they’re going to return, you mean
they’re going to return openly.
EvD: Yes.
BR: Because, of course, they’re here now. I’m sure we agree
on that.
EvD: This will be a shock. We call it The
Shock of the Gods.
[laughs]
BR: The shock of the Gods… that would be another great title for
a book.
EvD: So many people... I have in
German a book: Der
Götter Schock.
which is not exactly but... [Ed note:A rough translation]
BR: Oh! Okay.
EvD: [to surrounding group] But now listen, it’s much more
important you go to see every show! [laughter] Now it’s 14
hours and what?
BR: It’s about 14:30.
EvD: Well, at 3 o'clock there’s Orient.
At 3:15, Nazca.
15:30: Maya.
Have you seen Maya?
BR: Yes, we’ve seen Maya.
EvD: [reading show schedule] Astonishing! Challenge.
You have not seen Challenge.
Okay.
FEMALE
VOICE IN GROUP: Are you satisfied about everything that you’ve
done in your life? Because it’s a wonderful park.
EvD: No, not everything. I’m satisfied about my books. We have a
total edition of about 62 million copies.
BR: In many different languages, eh?
EvD: Yeah, in 30 languages, which is not bad. So, that really means you
bring people to think, you are... I’m moving something. But of course,
most
of the people on this planet, they don’t want to know what we
declare, what we say.
BR: Yes.
EvD: And some parts of the scientific community are not interested at
all. They call it all: it’s all shit, it’s all garbage.
BR: Yeah. But it’s easier now than it was when you started 30, 40
years ago.
EvD: It is. Forty years ago, even 20 years ago, I was just ridiculed
all
over.
BR: Yes.
EvD: In the meantime, the situation has changed. Maybe it’s a
respect of my work or my age, and some of the clever people -- they
start to realize that I’m probably not so wrong. [laughs]
BR: Well, I think Graham Hancock has probably learned a great deal from
you.
EvD: I know him very well.
BR: You know him well. Because he’s taken your work further,
hasn’t he?
EvD: Ya, ya, of course. Zecharia Sitchin, too... others. Many others.
We know each other. We
all know each other’s work.
BR: Yes.
EvD: Ya, it takes some generations before you change the mind of the
people.
BR: It’s a big team effort, I think.
EvD: Exactly. There’s another man here. Okay. Three men among all
this...
[laughter;
crosstalk]
BR: It’s always the women who are more aware. [laughter] You
understand that.
EvD: Yes. I understand that.
BR: But things are
changing, Erich, and it’s a team effort. One of the reasons why
I wanted to meet you was to thank you, as I said, because you were
one of the people who really got this ball rolling…
EvD: That is true.
BR: …back in the 1960s.
EvD: 1968, yes…
BR: And because you had a tough time when you started your book, it’s
made it much easier for other people to follow. It’s like the
guys who go into the jungle first of all, you know?
EvD: Of course. But, you know, I had the manuscript of the Chariots
of the Gods... [speaks
in German] The
manuscript was finished in 1966 already, and I sent it to 20 German
publishers and Swiss publishers. They all rejected it. They all sent
the manuscript back with the usual blah, blah, blah: It’s
not scientific; it’s not the way we can publish it; it’s
not belonging to our program, and
so on.
Finally,
I was lucky. I was a manager of a hotel at that time, a first class
hotel, and in my hotel I had an editor of the big German newspaper,
and he said: Hey, I know
one of the publishers. We could phone him.
And he phoned, so finally I was lucky to get Chariots
of the Gods published in
Germany.
The
book was already published here... after three weeks it was number
one on every bestseller list. Then came the United States, England,
and so on.
BR: Yes. It was like the right thing at the right time, wasn't it, in
some ways?
EvD: I was never calculating the right time. I have been accused lately
that I did it just on purpose at that time to make money. That’s
all garbage! The manuscript was finished two years earlier. I just
could not find a publisher.
BR: Sure, sure. But it’s nice to be right because you must have
sold millions of copies of that.
EvD: Yes, we have sold millions of copies, but I made not millions of
money. [Bill laughs] Sometimes you have a year and you earn 600,000
Swiss francs, which is brilliant,
but at the same year
you just spent 600,000 Swiss francs for some expeditions and
helicopters and jungle stuff and measurements. So the money comes in
and the money goes out.
BR: Yes. Yes.
EvD: But we are working scientifically. In the kiosk there, you know,
in
the shop, there is a leaflet only in German language [says
something in German]. Something is wrong in
Nazca. It’s only in
German language. [Says something in German to one of his staff
off-camera.] So we have given order
to the Technical University in Dresden to make certain measurements
in Nazca and the result is absolutely crazy.
BR: What do you mean? Can you explain that?
EvD: For example, under the lines we found very strong magnetic fields.
You can measure them, you know exactly – it’s
two-and-a-half meters deep in the ground, but you have no possibility
to dig there. It is all under terrible control. If you just take a
little stone away, you are under arrest.
We
find a change of the electric fields. If I put 220 volts in here and
I had a measurement instrument and I measure it here, so how is the
current flowing?
[says
something in German]
And we have made fifty points in the desert, and in the desert, of
course, there is no electric flow because sand is an isolator, like
ceramic,
for example.
BR: Sure.
EvD: But on
the lines the flow of the electric currency was 8,000 times higher
than just next to it in the desert. You find all this in this booklet
with the pictures; with the measuring that it takes.
BR: What’s your own theory about the Nazca lines, Erich? Because
it’s a real mystery. I mean, that is a real mystery.
EvD: Yes. I’m sure they were
extraterrestrials, not in the sense that they needed an airstrip.
They don’t need
an airstrip.
BR: Sure.
EvD: There was some sort of machine coming down, like a shuttle, and
they
were looking for raw material. I don’t know what sort of raw
material, uranium, copper, or whatever.
They
were looking for raw material and they were digging away the raw
material, and the natives could not understand what was going on. The
natives were afraid. They were thinking these gods were coming down.
And
only after the extraterrestrials left again – so to say, when
their tank was full – they had some lines on the ground and
they see there the gods made these lines. And other natives, they
started to produce lines themselves.
BR: So they were imitating the gods.
EvD: Imitating the gods. And finally a priest had a good idea. They
always have good ideas. They said: We
have to show them signs up there. We have to show them that we are
here.
So
in the lines they start with gigantic figures of fishes and monkeys
and spiders and birds. Anyhow, but the main thing is they will
return. I’m sure about this. That’s the changing.
People
like you, people like me, maybe people like them, we have a sense for
this. We have a feeling.
BR: Oh, yeah.
EvD: We know that something is coming.
BR: That’s true.
EvD: This is not just imagination.
BR: It’s why I’m here this lifetime.
EvD: It has to do with our genetic code, with the information which we
have in us.
BR: Sure. Are you optimistic for the future of the human race? There’s
a big question for you.
EvD: That’s a big question. Nobody knows. Of course we will
survive. All humanity will never be destroyed, even if we have some
catastrophes and so forth. Some will survive and then we continue,
the next generation.
[laughter]
EvD: [glances at his watch] Listen, I have to be on my
way.
BR: So, the game is not over yet.
EvD: The game is never over. The game continues all the time.
[laughs and they shake hands]
BR: Exactly. Thank you so much.
EvD: Just read my book! She read it here, and go to the Nazca.
[overlapping
voices] [applause]
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