Andrew Gallimore on Death by Astonishment | Ayahuasca, DMT, & Building Alien Worlds Episode #330 - Mind Escape

Episode Transcript
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(00:16):
Welcome to Mind Escape. Are you ready?
Are you ready to escape your mind?

(00:48):
Hello Mind Escapees, if you havenot already, please go check out
my other channel Masters of Rhetoric.
I will have the link down below.It's also part of the Mind
escape link tree link. It's something I'm very
passionate about where I dissectthe origins of Western thought
through the pre Socratic thinkers all the way to

(01:09):
Aristotle. And I'm probably going to go
beyond that as well at some point.
But right now I'm focused on theIonian physicist all the way to
Aristotle. So please support Masters of
Rhetoric. Go check out our YouTube channel
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(01:30):
it. And if you're on TikTok,
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go check out our page on there as well.
I'd really appreciate it. Thank you.
Tonight we have a special episode.
This is somebody who's been on the show a handful of times in
the past and has even been featured in our documentary As
Within So Without From UFOs to DMT.

(01:52):
He's a really, really interesting guy, super
intelligent, and he has a new book out called Death by
Astonishment, which I really, really enjoyed.
Of course, I'm speaking about Doctor Andrew Gallimore.
Doctor Andrew Gallimore is a computational neurobiologist,
pharmacologist, chemist and writer who has been interested
in the neural basis of psychedelic drug action for many

(02:16):
years and is the author of a number of research papers on the
powerful psychedelic drug NN Dimethyltrypt, or DMT and its
effects on the brain and consciousness.
In 2015, he collaborated with DMT pioneer Doctor Rick
Strassman, author of DMT The Spear Molecule, to develop a
pharmacokinetic model of DMT as the basis of a target controlled

(02:41):
intravenous infusion protocol for extended journeys in the
bizarre worlds to which DMT gates access.
His current interests focus on DMT and other psychedelic
molecules as tools for gatheringaccess to otherwise inaccessible
subjective worlds, their neuroscientific underpinning,
and their possible ontological and metaphysical implications.

(03:04):
He currently lives and works in Tokyo.
We've had both. Andrew Gallimore and Doctor Rick
Stressman on the show many timesand both always bring the fire
and the knowledge and I love talking to both of them and
picking their brains on these topics.
So please hit that like and subscribe button.
And if you enjoy this episode, we have many more available on

(03:26):
our YouTube channel, Spotify andall audio platforms, as well as
a Patreon page with many archived episodes on there as
well. So please click the link tree
link down below. Here we go.
Welcome back on Mind Escape. Andrew, it's been a few years.
I really enjoyed your new book Death by Astonishment, and I

(03:47):
have a couple of old favourites here as well.
I actually did the audio book orAudible for Death by
Astonishment so I don't have thephysical copy, but I really
enjoyed it and I appreciate you reading your own book as well.
Yeah, I was. I insisted upon that.

(04:08):
They, the publisher, wanted to bring in an, an actor first with
a British accent. I said no, no, no, no, I'll do
it because I live in Tokyo. It's a bit of a, a bit tricky
to, to, to navigate. So they wanted to do it in the
studio in New York. But I said no, no, we'll do it
by remote, whatever it takes. So they sent all the equipment

(04:32):
to me and covered my room with foam and stuff like that just to
be able to do it myself. So I think it turned out well in
the end. Awesome.
Yeah, no, I, I really enjoyed it.
And you know, they're obviously reading something like the
physical copy. There's something to that, but I

(04:52):
also think there's something to listening to it as well.
And like I said, I really enjoyed it and got a lot out of
it. But yeah, it's been, so it's
been a few years since we've hadyou on.
We've had you on a handful of times in the past.
We even included you in the documentary we made, which I'll
put a link there too if anybody wants to check that out.
But I just want to kind of jump right in if that's OK.

(05:16):
So the early explorers like Richard Spruce search for the
plants such as the the copy vine.
And you know, he documented harmene and harmolene, but it
took a lot longer to connect thebrew, or I should say the DMT
containing elements and alkaloids to the brew because it

(05:40):
was just kind of, I guess peoplewere looking at it from the
perspective of the MAOI. Yeah, I mean, well, spruce,
Richard Spruce, he discovered. Well he discovered, well at
least discovers a strong word, Imean he discovered from the

(06:02):
Western scientists scientific perspective at least the Karpi
vine, he named it Banisteriopsiskarpi.
And as far as he was concerned, when he first drank the brew and
was shown where this vine was growing, this key vegetal

(06:23):
component of this ayahuasca Brewer, carpi, as it was known
in that area of the Amazon, it was assumed for the next 100
years that there was going to besome alkaloid in the carpi vine

(06:43):
that gave it its visionary powers.
It was, it was assumed that it would be as simple as that, that
if they were able to extract an alkaloid from the carpi vine,
inject this alkaloid into people, then they would have
experienced the same effects as ayahuasca.
But it didn't work out. And we know in hindsight, we
know exactly why it didn't work out.

(07:04):
But you have to imagine this was, you know, Spruce discovered
the carpy vine and named it in 1852.
It wasn't until the beginning ofthe 20th century, so over 50
years later, that the alkaloid which was, which went by many
names, telepathy was the first name given to it, banasterine,

(07:29):
etcetera, etcetera. And various groups, you know,
attempted to recreate the effects of ayahuasca by giving
people this alkaloid, which we now know, which was then
discovered a few years later to be identical to an already well
known set of alkaloids that the the Harmala alkaloids, which

(07:51):
came from Paganum harmala, this medicinal shrub which was
perfectly well known. So it was kind of like this.
This doesn't really make any sense because these alkaloids,
when you isolate them, they makepeople a bit dizzy, kind of
drunken appearing, they feel a bit drowsy, they fall asleep.

(08:14):
They might have some colorful but fairly unremarkable dreams,
and that's about it. And so it didn't seem to match
these fantastical reports that Spruce had heard.
I mean, he'd heard about people travelling to other worlds and
seeing, you know, beautiful cities and savage beasts
preparing to seize them from onereport.

(08:36):
I mean, this was, it was wild stuff.
And you'd never seen anything like it or heard about anything
like it. And say it was kind of like, you
know, scientists hit a dead end when they couldn't work out why
they couldn't recreate these extraordinary visionary effects
by injecting people with the alkaloids isolated from this
very vine that spruce had first identified and named.

(08:59):
And that dragged on until reallythe middle of the 20th century.
Richard Schultz or Schulte's, the world's most famous and
important ethnobotanist. He was very interested in the
world's leading expert on ayahuasca.
But he was struggling as as muchas anyone, partly because when

(09:26):
he, you know, he spoke to indigenous groups that were
making ayahuasca, which went by dozens of different names
depending on who you spoke to. And there are dozens of
different recipes. So they've all contained the
carpi vine, Banasteriopsis carpi, the ayahuasca vine.
But then they also contained often dozens.

(09:47):
You know, there was like, I think there's more than 100
different plants have been documented used in ayahuasca.
So it was, it was a Herculean task trying to work out what the
hell was going on. And it wasn't really until
William Burroughs, you know, thenovelist, trekked into the

(10:08):
Colombian rainforests with the aim of finding out about this
drug that he'd read about in this magazine, Yahe, which was
described as the world's most, you know, powerful psychedelic.
And he went into the jungle to find it.
And he found it. And he had several kind of
fairly unimpressive experiences,probably just as infusions of

(10:30):
the copy vine alone. And then finally he was led into
this trade secret by this shamancalled Saboya, who told him that
we use the carpi vine. But there is this other secret
ingredient, another leaf, sorry,a leaf rather than the vine.

(10:51):
There was this leaf from this other plant which was essential,
an essential catalysing component is how Burroughs
described it. And he sent these leaves to
Richard Schultz and said, I think this could be important.
I think this could be the key. This is why the experiments have
failed before is because you're,you're concentrating only on the

(11:16):
harmala alkaloids, whereas thereneeds to be this other plant.
You know, maybe this other plantcontains some other chemical
that's really important here. Richard Schultz ignored his
letter and he never replied to William Burroughs, but he did
keep the letter and the leaves. And then it was, I think, more
than a decade later, when Richard Schultz is one of his

(11:39):
graduate students, a guy called Homer Pinkley was in the
rainforest, I think, in Ecuador,but my memory might fail me
here. And he was invited to an
ayahuasca ceremony. He observed the brew being made.
And the following morning, he kind of rooted around in the the
cauldron that was used to make the brew.

(11:59):
And he found a few leaves that were that escaped the boiling
intact and some seeds. And he was able to make a formal
identification of this plant, which they call oprito, which
means little heavenly men, whichis kind of a clue in there
perhaps knowing what we know about DMT now.
And he identified it as psychiatry of the Ridis, also

(12:23):
known as chakruna. The leaves were sent for
chemical analysis and they were found to contain DMT and
basically nothing else, so this was the first clue.
Richard Schultz then went back to Burroughs letter that he'd
written more than a decade earlier and found that actually
Burroughs had indeed collected the same leaf that his graduate

(12:47):
student would later identify. So really William Burroughs
should be given the credit for discovering the the important
DMT containing component of ayahuasca.
But even that was only that wasn't the end of the story, of
course, is because just a, you know, a couple of years before
that discovery or a few years before that discovery, Stephen

(13:09):
Zara, who discovered the psychedelic, the psychedelic
properties of DMT, the Hungarianphysician he had realised worked
out by swallowing large amounts of pure DMT that it's not
already active. So it didn't make any sense.
Still, the story didn't make anysense because why would you have
this visionary drink containing ADMT containing plant which is

(13:31):
completely inactive orally and what the hell is this Karpivine
doing in there anyway? You know, why is that there?
And so it took again, more research the pharmacological
properties of the harmalo alkaloids because the harmalo
alkaloids being studied as a treatment for Parkinson's
disease. And it was noted, discovered,

(13:53):
observed that the Harmala alkaloids are very powerful
inhibitors of this enzyme that'sfound in the gut, but also
throughout the body, monoamine oxidase and this family of
enzymes. And so it was kind of the, the
hypothesis that developed from this was that, oh, maybe the

(14:13):
Harmala alkaloids in the vine are inhibiting the monoamine
oxidase enzymes, which we knew are important for metabolising
amines, which includes tryptamines, which of course
includes DMT. So that was the first, that was,
that was the kind of the, the Eureka moment that that's maybe
how it worked. And then it took more work.

(14:34):
And eventually Dennis McKenna, Terence's brother, acquired a
sample of pure raw ayahuasca brew made for him by a an
indigenous group in the Amazon and was able to isolate harmene
and harmoline and demonstrate that the ayahuasca brew was an

(14:55):
inhibitor of monoamine oxidase. And from then there were kind of
human studies where people were swallowing harmala alkaloids and
DMT, you know, on their own and together and demonstrating
finally that this so-called ayahuasca effect was, was
responsible for the, the visionary effects of ayahuasca.

(15:16):
So there we go. There's the history of
ayahuasca. That was a good summary there.
You know, reading the first few chapters, it is kind of
frustrating. It's like you're not how you're
not figuring this out, but you're, you're not really taking
into the context, the time, how hard it is to get to some of
these locations and probably theunwillingness of the Indigenous

(15:38):
people to really open up on thatend of things.
My question is though, so you mentioned William Burroughs, you
mentioned Homer Pinkley and Richard Schulte's.
It seemed like they were doing these MAOI brews but never
getting the DMT with were they doing it on their own?

(16:01):
Because I know the William Burroughs, you describe an
anecdote where he gets mad at the shaman or whoever was
brewing it for him and thought that he was kind of like messing
with them or something like that.
Drunken fuck of a witch. Yeah.
So like, were they doing this ontheir own or were they getting
it from some indigenous people and just not getting the full

(16:23):
the full picture, like what was going on there?
Because I know that there's different varieties of
concoctions and stuff like that.Yeah.
I mean, there are some groups that still use, I say still use
the assumption being that the original ayahuasca brew would
have been the carpy vine and thecarpy vine alone.

(16:43):
And Burroughs was searching for the vine and he was basically he
was, he acquired the vine and then he was looking for people
to make the brew with the vine. Basically, he assumed as, as
everyone else did, that the vinewas the key component here and
that he just needed someone to prepare the brew, you know, to,
to, to prepare the infusion, thedecoction.

(17:05):
And that's what he did. Whether these were reputable
ayahuascaros or shamans is, is an open question here.
We don't really know. All we know is that his first
few attempts were kind of nauseating.
You know, he vomited and he passed out and he, he, he, he

(17:27):
was extremely paranoid and he was extremely suspicious, even
contemptuous, one would say, of these, these shamans.
He didn't believe that they had,they didn't believe that they
had secrets or special techniques or anything.
He just thought that they were mixing up boiling up this vine
in, in water and charging him a fee, which was normally like a

(17:51):
bottle of extremely strong spirits.
I mean, these are so, you know, I don't know the kind of shamans
that he was dealing with. And he tried to make it himself
as well using the vine and he failed.
So yeah, that's that's and it wasn't until he found this this
this other shaman that did have the secret who was using the, IT
turns out was was using the Shakruna as well as the Karpi

(18:15):
vine. What about Schultes, who's an
ethnobotanist? He probably would have had more,
I guess, of a history to get in with these indigenous tribes.
How was he not able to kind of have luck with it, if you will?
Well, I think the issue was thatnobody knew what what the

(18:37):
function of the harmala alkaloids was.
Nobody knew what the Harmala alkaloids did pharmacologically.
So the carpi vine was just one component of a mixture.
It was just a drug mixture as far as anyone could making the
pharmacological the pharmacological connection,

(18:58):
right, that this is a pharmacological synergy and how
it works that requires an understanding of the of the
underlying chemical pharmacology, which no one
understood. So Schulte's was doing lots of
important work in documenting the different types of plants
that were being put into this brew.
But the but the the idea of thisminimal binary decoction, this

(19:21):
essential 2 components, the Karpivine and the DMT containing
plant which might be crooner, itmight be Chakrapanga was another
one from Banisteriopsis ruz Bianna, although that's
disputed. But anyway, but another DMT
containing plant. So there was no indication that
there was something special going on, so to speak.

(19:43):
It was just a visionary drink that was made from one plant and
plus often many other different types of plants, you know,
tobacco and, and, and other plants containing tropane
alkaloids. So it's not surprising that some
of these decoctions were very, very visionary.
But yeah, the the underlying pharmacology.

(20:04):
Apology that we now everyone knows now everyone who knows
about ayahuasca will tell you happily and knowingly about Mao
inhibitors and stuff. But at the time this was, this
was new, this was, this wasn't known.
It wasn't known. I think, I think it was the
1950s when monoamine oxidase wasfirst discovered as, as the,

(20:25):
this enzyme, this, this group ofenzymes that are important in,
in amine metabolism, particularly tryptamine
metabolism. So.
So nobody had any possibility. Doesn't matter how smart you
were, it would have been impossible for you or I or
anyone else working in the 1940sand early 50s to have worked out
what was going on. Yeah, I guess hindsight's always

(20:49):
easier to think, figure these things out.
But I just, I was just saying from like a curiosity
standpoint, if Schulte's was studying these tribes and stuff,
I would have thought that maybe he'd either sit in or watch kind
of what was going on and just, you know, observe from that
standpoint, you know, I just, it's.
Absolutely. Yeah, so.
I don't know, did you know? And there is there are accounts,

(21:11):
particularly in Wade Davies has a wonderful book, 1 River, where
he is basically a biography really of Richard Schultz and he
describes his experiences. You know that people used to say
that if there's a psychedelic drug that Richard Schultz hasn't
taken, it's because it hasn't yet been discovered.

(21:32):
So I mean, he, he wasn't just documenting.
He wasn't just like a botanist who was documenting and naming
or whatever these plants, but hewas taking them.
He was taking these drugs. He always tried the drugs that
he discovered, but, and that included ayahuasca.
And he, he had actually come across Chakrapunga several years

(21:54):
before, like I think almost 16 years before Homer Pinkley
discovered Chakruna. Again, the analysis, the
chemical analysis wasn't done. But even if it had of been done
and they found DMT in there at the time, this would have been
prior to people knowing what DMTdid.
I mean, DMT's psychedelic effects weren't discovered until

(22:16):
1956. So all of these things are kind
of happening at the same time. Discovery of the psychedelic
effects of DMT, the discovery ofmonoamine oxidase inhibitors,
the discovery of Chakruna, all is all.
Within like a decade, all these things came together like a
confluence of of these differentresearch outcomes, which then

(22:42):
led to within a decade, kind of the first ayahuasca effect
hypothesis. I was.
Really happy that you talked about Virola in there as well,
because I remember reading true hallucinations and listening to
Dennis McKenna talk about how they were looking for this

(23:03):
Virola paste, this like orally active paste.
And on the way they end up finding mushrooms and you know
there, that's where the the story goes with that.
But can you describe where Virola paste is used?
And is it still used? Because you don't really hear

(23:25):
much about it. It's kind of one of those like
I. Don't know.
Like I said, I'm. I'm glad you mentioned it
because I don't really hear too many people talking about it.
Yes, so. So the Virola Virola is is
simply a particular genus of tree that occurs widely
throughout the Amazon and there are a number of groups that with

(23:46):
Toto is a good example. So when Richard Schultz, Richard
Schultz is credited, I think rightly so with discovering
these Virola snuffs. A Pena is the one that you will
most hear about, but there are many different Virola snuffs

(24:08):
that are made with the bark of these Virola trees or
specifically the resin. So you you peel the bark off the
virola tree and then you get this resin that beads and then
you basically not dissimilar to ayahuasca, you boil this bark up
and all of the resin is extracted into the water and

(24:31):
then you boil it off until it forms a paste.
And then you dry it in the sun until it's completely dry.
And then you can break it up andform a fine powder.
And it looks kind of similar to cinnamon or paprika or something
like this. Then it's used as a snuff.
And Virola contains high concentrations of so these penis

(24:52):
snuffs contain high concentrations of tryptamines
including DMT, but also sometimes 5 meo DMT, 5 hydroxy
DMT, i.e. Bufotenine.
And interestingly, there are also kind of a mysterious form
of the roller, not a snuff, but a pellet.

(25:15):
This is something again, that Richard Schultes discovered was
that some groups were making. Rather than drying out the the
resin and forming a powder, they're actually forming little
pellets they swallowed. Now as soon.
As I tell you that you should bethinking, wait a minute, if
they're swallowing this, there must be, there has to be some

(25:36):
kind of monoamine oxidase inhibitor and that isn't known.
So it's kind of, that's kind of a mystery actually.
I don't talk about in the book because it could lead, it would
lead me down the garden path a little bit into thinking about
the next book, right? Yes, the.
Next book. But yeah, there are pellets.
So there's oral forms in these oral hallucinogens as Schulte's

(26:00):
described them, which are these pellets made from Virola resin?
But the question is obvious there is that why?
Why are these? Why are these active?
Is there some monoamine oxidase inhibitor within the bark?
If so, I've not seen analysis that would suggest that.

(26:21):
Are there add mixtures? We know that the other major
snuff variety principally from the yopo tree Anadenon Thera
peregrina. So this produces the Yopo snuff.
This is from the seeds and theseseeds are ground up again to

(26:42):
form a snuff and these are inhaled or normally you would
have a partner, one with a you'dput the snuff into a long tube,
you know, up to a teaspoon of this snuff, quite a lot of it
would go into one end of the tube and then your part would

(27:02):
blow it forcefully into your nostrils and it kind of explodes
into your head and it's very unpleasant.
It's not surprising and it's notparticularly popular in the
West, but analysis of of these snuffs again find DMT sometimes
5 MEODMT befotonine, but also harmal alkaloids in some, in

(27:24):
some analysis. Again, analysis vary.
You've got a tree that grows over broad areas of, of the, of
Amazonia and the Orinoco plains.And different, you get different
subspecies or variants that contain alkaloid concentration
and changes over time and throughout the season and
growing stage and all this kind of stuff.

(27:46):
But also admixture plants that could be added as well that we
know there are certain admixtureplants that are added to these
yopo snuffs. It's not just the seeds, but the
the presence of these Hamala alkaloids within this Yoppo
snuff suggests again that these indigenous peoples are perhaps
employing pharmacological synergy to enhance the effects

(28:07):
of the snuff. Richard Spruce way back in 18
you know 525354 he found he was wandering the Orinoco Plains and
he came across this man from a tribe called the Guaibo who was
who had a pouch of this yopo snuff.
But he also had a piece of carpivine hanging around his neck,

(28:30):
which he used to chew. And he told Spruce that when you
combine the the yopo snuff and the vine together, you chew a
bit in the vine, take a bit of yopo snuff that this is that it
kind of enhances the visions. And there are there are groups
that will drink a ayahuasca so-called or khaki brew with a

(28:51):
vine alone and then take the snuff.
So that rather than having the DMT and the harmala alkaloids
within the drink, they have justthe harmala alkaloids in the
drink which they drink 1st and then they take the snuff and
this as they understand it, thenthey experience it.
They this enhances the vision. So this, this pharmacological

(29:15):
synergy is, is, is not isolated and, and doesn't seem to even be
isolated to the same to, you know, to ayahuasca, but also is,
is used to enhance Ophena possibly and certainly OPO as
well. So these are sophisticated, you
know, I describe them in the book, you know, these aren't
just plant based drug preparations.

(29:36):
These are true pharmacological technologies that were developed
without an underlying, you know,an understanding of the
underlying pharmacology for sure.
But there were, you know, highlysophisticated technologies,
pharmacological technologies that were developed perhaps over
hundreds of years for the sole purpose of allowing these people
to communicate and interact withand form relationships with

(30:01):
these normally hidden beings that they can only see by using
these various plant based drug technologies.
Yeah, that was a. Interesting part too.
I mean I've heard of the oppo, but when you're describing it
that like shotgun method and theone guy you know that gets the
hit all the sudden he's bleedingout of his nose, he's barfing.

(30:22):
It's not just sounds terrible right, like it does not sound
like a fun time. I mean, maybe afterwards, maybe
the maybe the the DMT once it hits, you know, takes you and
you don't really think about it.I don't know, But I want to talk
about the quote little people now, the little people motif or

(30:43):
machine elf like beans or, you know, they show up in multiple
traditions. Do you think these consistent
motifs reflect like, you know, and I know that's kind of like
the the whole background behind your theories on this, but do

(31:04):
you think that that shared vision and experience and realms
and everything, Do you think that that speaks to the
tradition and the culture? Like if if the little people
that they were seeing on ayahuasca and before Western
ethnobotanist and people came over, do you think that those
are similar to ones that we're seeing now?

(31:25):
Or do you think they're completely different?
The short answer is I don't know.
We can only go from their descriptions.
Now, there are some good, the most detailed descriptions of

(31:45):
these beings. So first of all, these beings,
as you said, they are they. There are many groups that.
Describe encounters with so-called little people that go
by specific names. They wouldn't necessarily call
them little people, but they are.
They're described as small, sometimes humanoid, sometimes

(32:06):
not. Beings that are that.
Operate in. Great numbers that are colourful
and bright and dance and sing, you know, they're very lively
and very jovial and to me that is that's the.
The DMT elf. Motif, you know when people

(32:28):
describe now you know what, what, what are the unifying
characteristics? I always say the machine elves
or DMT elves or whatever you want to call them.
They're, they come in a variety of forms, but they're unified by
their character. So we can't say everyone's
seeing exactly the same form of beings, but they, they all seem
to have the same kind of character.
They're, they're jovial, they'recheeky.

(32:49):
There's lots of them. They like to dance around.
So, So to me, when when I read of Yanomami, Yanomami shamans
describing seeing these multitudinous beings with
collared headdresses dancing andsinging and operating in such
great numbers that you can neverget to the end of them.
To me, they're describing the same thing, right?

(33:10):
That's the same, but just by a different name.
They, they, they call them the, the Hekkuda.
But to me that's just another name for what, you know, we
would describe as a machine out for what other people might
describe as Pixies or fairies oror whatever.
I think, I think you're talking about the same kind of is, is it

(33:32):
the same? Ultimately, we don't know, but I
it's certainly a it's a Rick. It's a recurring motif that is
not modern. It's not a Terence McKenna Rism.
Yes, he popularised it, but thisthing goes back, you know much
you know far, far before McKenna.

(33:53):
It goes back to the first DMT studies in the 1950s and as you
say all the way through back various types of indigenous
peoples that use tryptamine based drugs.
Mark Mark Plotkin who was one ofshorties is another one of I
think he was one of his students.

(34:15):
He took the opinion snuff. So this Virola Snuff for the
first time with a shaman, and hesuddenly started seeing in the
corner of his vision, he startedseeing these beings, these
lively dancing beings that became more and more lively and
more and more of them. And he asked the shaman and

(34:35):
said, you know, what are these small men that I'm seeing?
And the shaman responded instantaneously and said, well,
these are the hecker, the spirits of the forest, of
course, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.
So. So yeah, I do find that
intriguing to say the least, that you have these these groups
going back, you know, in entirely different parts of the

(34:57):
world and from entirely different backgrounds, entirely
different cultures, entirely different world views, religious
and mystical traditions. And yet they're all describing
multitudinous, giggling lightly beings that we would we would
call elves, but they would they have other names for.
Yeah, the reason why I ask. Too is I've talked with a few

(35:19):
people, one guy never really looked into anything from you
know, ancient Mexico or Central America and he said that he the
first time he did DMT, he was seen all sorts of like Mayan
symbolism and stuff like that. And I've heard another person
similar experience but with likeEgyptian stuff.

(35:39):
And I was just curious if you thought that maybe when our
consciousness evolves, whatever that archetype or culture
currently is, is what's reflective in that experience in
that moment? Or maybe that's where some of
that culture comes from, is these altered states that then

(36:00):
they bring into their culture and integrate it kind of a
thing. Yeah, I mean for.
Sure. I mean, if you look at the
imagery of, you know, Southern American POT POT traditions, I
mean a lot of their. You know their clothing.

(36:21):
And their art, I mean, this is clearly comes from POT vision.
So that that clearly happens. And I think the DMT experience
to me doesn't it seems to transcend culture in many ways.
It seems to seems to operate orthogonally to the current

(36:43):
culture. Some would disagree on that, but
I think it it feels more likely.And again, I'm, I'm just
speculating that this is something that would be brought
into a culture and would influence the culture and the
kind of imagery that's left behind by certain cultures,
rather than them producing the imagery and then seeing the same

(37:04):
things in their, their vision. It makes sense in the opposite
direction that if they're havingvisionary experiences and seeing
certain types of imagery, that that would, that would form the
basis, you know, perhaps of their, their religious
traditions. I mean, certainly, you know, in
in amongst the indigenous peoples of Amazonia, that is the

(37:25):
entire basis of their religious mystical traditions and the the
stories of the spirits comes largely from ingesting these
powerful psychedelic drugs. You know, which came first?
Were they somehow aware of thesebeings prior to when they

(37:45):
developed the technologies in order to see them more clearly
and gain access to them more readily?
Or, you know, I, I imagine actually it's more of kind of
these things operating in tandemin some way.
I don't think it's as simple as,oh, they, they took a drug
accidentally or something and saw visions and then decided,

(38:06):
oh, these must be gods. I think it's, it's more like
something deeper and stranger isgoing on.
The perhaps as a as a modern Westerner, it's it's it's beyond
my ability to comprehend. Interesting.
Yeah. And you can look at even what
you're doing, you know, with thebuilding alien worlds.
And, you know, from your standpoint, you have all this

(38:27):
knowledge now. You're a neuroscientist, You
understand how these compounds work and how they interact with
your body and receptors and everything.
And we're talking about aliens and future and technology.
So it's kind of a different thing altogether.
Now is where I don't could couldyou think somebody in the
ancient world do you know, usingthese comments, I don't even

(38:48):
think they could comprehend something like that.
So I do think that culture does inform our idea of what's going
on to some degree, yes. Yes.
I mean, certainly our interpretation and then the
implications of what this means,it absolutely has to be
influenced by culture. I mean, you're right.

(39:08):
They could never have imagined, you know, for example, you know,
people will smoke DMT and say, oh, this is, this is clear
evidence that we're living in some kind of simulation.
That's, you know, some kind of computer program that's been
encoded by some alien intelligence.
And this is an idea actually that I, I develop in great

(39:31):
detail in, in alien information theory in my first book.
It's not a belief system I'd I'dadhere to in any way at all.
By the way, as I've said 1000 times, but no one listens.
But but of course, you know, Amazonian people's in 1000 years
ago, whatever couldn't even imagine such a thing.

(39:52):
Does that mean that we're approaching truth in some way or
are we merely reaching for what appears to be the most
appropriate cultural tool to explain this?
You know, I think in the end. You know, I always say in the
end the. The Amazonian.

(40:15):
World view, I say Amazonian, South American, indigenous
peoples world view here that we're they're interacting with
the spirit world. And perhaps my interpretation
that we're interacting with somekind of intelligent agent, some
kind of discounted intelligence,the nature and origin of which I
don't know anything about. I think ultimately, if you, if

(40:35):
you, if you look, these things are basically the same.
I'm describing the same thing from two different perspectives.
Whereas if someone talks about aspirit, you know, what's a
spirit, It's a discounted being.It's an intelligent being of
some sort that occupy that doesn't occupy A carnate form.
It's not embodied. It's a disembodied being of some

(40:57):
sort, you know, a modern, my modern, less loaded, more
neutral term for this and a discount intelligent agent.
I'm, I'm describing the same thing really.
I don't think I'm describing, I don't think I'm saying anything
different. I'm simply using my modern kind
of neuroscientific perspective to try and.

(41:22):
To try and. Understand the nature, I guess
of of these intelligences and and to try and convince people
that it's worthwhile to actuallytake them seriously and that we
we shouldn't be simply dismissing these beliefs of the
so-called savage and uncivilisedas being superstitions and
nonsense or just hallucinations.And I think that's.

(41:46):
That's really the aim of the. Book, I guess is, is not to tell
people what DMT is or what DMT represents, but to convince
people that that there is something extremely, extremely
strange and and extremely difficult to explain with with
with with DMT. I'm not sure if he answered the
question no, no, that no. That was good.
No, you're good. Rambling's also good sometimes

(42:09):
too. It's, you know, you got to riff
a little bit to get something out there.
Riff a little bit. That's the word, not ramble.
Ramble. So a common idea or like a way
people try and parse out what's going on in these states, is
this idea of a like a filter or some sort of perceptional filter
when you're under, you know, anysort of psychedelic really, but

(42:33):
more of the five HT 2A, you know, or tryptamines.
But when you look at that model,can that is that useful or do
you think it hinders progress? Like where do you currently
stand on that idea of this this idea of a filter?
I think it's. Useful.

(42:54):
I mean, the idea of filter really can be traced, really
should be credited to Aldous Huxley.
I mean, he described this idea that that well, you know,
psychedelics open the doors of perception, his most famous
phrase, right? And he described this idea that
that you have this reduced. So you call it a reducing valve

(43:16):
that effectively filters out allbut a measly trickle of
information. That's important and useful
survival. It's a it's broadly valid, I
think. But Aldous Huxley was working in
a time we didn't understand the newer mechanisms.
We now kind of understand how that filter works and how it

(43:37):
doesn't work. It's one thing to say, oh, the
brain is a filter, but then you have to say, well, how does this
filtering work and why? Why would psychedelics disrupt
this filter? We kind of understand how they
do now because we know that the,the, the world that your brain
is constructing is this model and, and this model is

(43:59):
constantly attempting to predictand filter out to extinguish
sensory inputs. Sensory stimulation is
constantly entering the brain. And that, and the role of this
model of the brain does is basically try to predict what
this sensory, these sensory inputs are going to be.
And if the model is correct, thepredictions are correct, then it
it extinguishes, it cancels out.There's literally, you know,

(44:23):
neural information coming down this cortical hierarchy towards
the visual cortex, and it's literally cancelling out the
information that's coming into the brain.
If it gets it right, if it misses, it does make the wrong
prediction, then that that information goes into the brain
and must be processed. It's unpredicted.
It's a prediction error. So the brain is constantly

(44:44):
trying to make these predictionsabout sensory inputs.
And that's how the filter works.It's like process, you can
imagine trying to work out, you know, where's this information
coming from and then cancelling it out because that's cheaper to
do that rather than than to thanto kind of process all sensory
inputs, even sensory inputs thatyou already kind of know about.

(45:06):
If your model is working, then you don't kind of need to know
really. You don't need much sensory
inputs. If your model of the world and
what's going on in the world seems to be functioning, then
you don't need much sensory input.
And so that's the idea, that's the filter.
Now when you bind, when psychedelics bind to the five HT

(45:26):
2A receptor, they stimulate neurons.
These are excitatory receptors. They stimulate neurons, they
make them more excitable, they make them more likely to fire.
And so you get this highly excitable cortex where
information is flowing much morerapidly and more readily.
So the model, this world model that's constructed by the cortex

(45:46):
is disrupted. It becomes far less stable.
It's nudged towards the chaotic realm, becomes much more
complex. It becomes much more unstable,
fluid, dynamic, a little bit more random, sort of entropic as
Robin Harris would call it. And it becomes much worse making

(46:06):
predictions, so the model stops functioning as a valid kind of
predictor and which means more information makes it past these
kind of inhibitory predictions that are coming down the
cortical hierarchy. And so more information gets
through. And that's so that is a, you've
lost the filter. You know, the filter is this is

(46:28):
this prediction system. So you, when you disrupt that
prediction system, more information comes in.
So it so yes, the the filter model works, but now we kind of
understand at least to a certainextent, at least we have a good
working model of how that filterworks and indeed how
psychedelics disrupt that filter.
Yeah, I think. Maybe it was two or three times

(46:48):
ago when you were on, we went indepth about kind of the
hierarchy of the idea of the filter between like tryptamines
versus tropanes and even like alcohol.
People can hallucinate on alcohol, doesn't mean you're
actually seeing anything important, right?
So, and I think you pointed out too, 'cause I think we were also
talking about salvia and the GABA opioid receptors and

(47:11):
different things like that and how even those are different
too, and they use different parts of the brain and stuff
like that. So there's definitely a lot of
weirdness there. I think if anybody's interested
in that, we, like I said, we wouldn't, We riffed on that for
a while, one episode a few timesback.
But if DMT experiences involve genuinely informative perception

(47:35):
beyond personal symbolism, whichkind of what we were just
talking about, what kinds of experiments or cross checks
could you or like? What would convince you in that
regard? Or like, is there like an
experiment or something that youcould feel validated on?
On that end of things, I think. So there are a number of

(47:58):
experiments one can devise here.The classic one, which you might
have spoken about before comes from a paper by a guy called
Rodriguez back in 2005, maybe a long time ago.
Whereas he suggested, you know, he said, look, if these if these
are intelligent beings, what they're we're interacting with.

(48:19):
I mean, that's really what we want to know.
If you want to know, are we interacting with some kind of
intelligence here? Is this, is this not just a
projection, projection of my ownmind, whatever that might mean?
Or are we dealing with some kindof external intelligence that is
non human? And if so, you know, how, how do
we demonstrate that fact, that possibility?

(48:43):
And he suggested this Rodriguez that, well, we give these beings
mathematical problems to solve, right?
We give them a large number and say, give me the unique prime
factors of this large number. All numbers have a set of unique
prime factors, but they're, they're very difficult,

(49:05):
certainly with large numbers to calculate in your head.
Well, they're impossible basically for a human to
calculate, work out what these numbers are, this set of prime
factors in your head of a large number.
So you, you send someone into the DMT space with this large
number, which is very easy to remember, you know, maybe a four
digit number or something. And then you ask the entities,
hey, there's this 4 digit number, what are the unique

(49:26):
prime factors? And then the idea being that
assuming they're cooperative, that they will go, ah, it's,
it's, it's, it's this, you know,7-7 and 13 and whatever.
The issue with that of. Course is that there's this
assumption that they're going tobe cooperative.

(49:47):
There's there's there's something a little bit there's a
shade of arrogance implicit in the whole thing that we're going
in there and saying, Hey, prove your prove your ontological
status. We don't believe that you're
real. Prove that you're real.
And that and if, if and if they are some kind of intelligence

(50:09):
that is orders of magnitude beyond the human, so far beyond
the human that it's incomprehensible to the human,
you know, they're going to think, oh, fuck off.
You know, I mean, who are you exactly?
And they're more likely to to kind of fuck with those, I would
say. So I'm I'm a little bit and and

(50:29):
there are other experiments thatone one can one can imagine, you
know, sending two different people into the DMT space at the
same time and asking, you know, trying to look for at least
correlations or parallels. David Dr. David Luke, do that.
I think actually something maybethe Dreaming Jaguars.

(50:50):
I remember them talking about something along those lines a
while back about trying to connect in that space or getting
data. I thought David Luke was doing
something like that. He might.
Be I'm not sure it's actually being done.
I mean, we've, we've been talking about this kind of thing
for a long time. It wouldn't be a necessary

(51:12):
difficult thing to do. The experiment needs to be well
designed. And the problem is, as David
Luke will always tell you, is that that that if you send two
people into the DMT space at thesame time and get some kind of
information share between them, that's basically it's, it's a
test of telepathy with extra steps.

(51:32):
So are they 2 extended? Stays at the same time.
Is that something that could be done?
Absolutely. Yeah.
And again, that's also being being considered as well.
But the problem is, is that how do you rule out simple
telepathy? You know, I can, it's like if we
did like a remote viewing test or something like that, you

(51:52):
know, we both remote viewed or whatever, some location and some
got some information back. You know, are we really going to
the same place or is informationis one person being successful
and the other person is reading the other's mind?
Do you know what I mean? So we how to how how do you rule
out this just a simple direct connection between two people's

(52:15):
minds? And there's much more evidence,
you know, statistical evidence for telepathy.
Now, you know, that's been accumulated over over 100 years
or so. So that would be the first thing
you would go to and say, OK, this is a type of telepathy.
So how do we rule that out is the question here.
How do we eliminate the possibility of simple telepathy?
And there might be ways to do that, but again, it would

(52:36):
require careful thought about the type of experiment and how
that would work. My current thinking, having
spoken, and I've spoken about this in other interviews, but
spoken to people like Andres Gomez Emilsson, who you might
know, he's a mathematician, he'svery interested in DMT,

(52:58):
probably. I think I've seen the world
active. On Acts or Twitter, whatever,
Oh, he's very active. On Acts, yeah.
And he is, I would say, the world's leading kind of DMT
phenomenologist. I think he understands the
mathematical structure and the topological structure, the
geometry of the DMT space betterthan almost anyone on the
planet, I would guess, includingmyself.

(53:21):
And and he describes. Entities.
Performing not giving him information specifically, but
performing mathematical feats, mathematical operations that a
human brain can't perform. The simplest example, there are
several that he gave me, but thesimplest one to explain is the

(53:43):
four colour theorem, which is a tiling theorem.
So the if you have a A2 dimensional surface with lots
of, you know, tessellating shapes, you can always colour
every shape. With the different colours so.
That No2 shapes of the same colour, but together with four

(54:06):
colours. So it's like if you want to draw
a world map, you don't want 2 colours, 2 countries with the
same colour and you only need 4 colours to do that.
Doesn't matter how complicated the pattern is, you can always
colour it with four colours and no two sides will touch with the
same colour. But it's a very difficult thing
to do. It's a simple idea to
understand, but with a very complex map, it's very difficult

(54:30):
to colour it. Whereas he was described beings
that were generating these maps like within a fraction of a
second, like repeatedly they'd create this incredibly complex
map, perfect for colours, deleteit or what, whatever, and then
paint it again with a different one.
And again, it's like they. It's like they can't.

(54:54):
Help but betray their intelligence.
So I think I kind of like the idea that we don't go in there
kind of probing them, you know, or asking them directly.
We don't we don't require their cooperation.
We simply go in there and observe them.
People go in there who who are mathematically sophisticated.

(55:18):
I mean, if I went in there and Isaw them doing that, I would go,
wow, that's amazing. And that would be it.
And I would come out and say they were doing things that were
incredible boring. But he can come out and say they
were doing things that were exquisitely mathematically
sophisticated. And I can tell you exactly what

(55:39):
they were doing. They were solving the four
colour theorem. They were solving this theorem.
They were performing this minimization problem, you know,
all this mathematical stuff thatmost people would would, they
might recognise it as being fascinating and beautiful or
weird. But being able to send someone
in there that can actually tell you exactly why this, this is

(56:01):
impossible. These human brain cannot do
this. And if the human brain cannot do
this, then how is it possible that I'm seeing it?
Because we know the world is being constructed by the brain.
That suggests that we're dealingwith something external to the
brain that is generating that imagery.
That is, in my opinion, that is directing the imagery, that is

(56:23):
directing the world model being constructed by your brain.
But it is some kind of intelligence that is very far
beyond the human. So my light shining through, you
got this interesting effect. Oh, you're fine, You're trying.
To avoid it, but I. Can't.
No, no, you're fine. It's because your.
Your explanations are so illuminating, but no, but so

(56:46):
that I find that interesting in two parts.
So like you could say it, you could go either way on this.
I always think of that, that, you know, that little circle
where they show all the psilocybin connections of the,
you know, they show the connections happening in the
brain on psilocybin versus not on psilocybin.
Let's say that this does something, you know, DMT does

(57:07):
something similar. Or going into those states,
you're talking about this guy discovering or analyzing these
mathematical feats. You know, maybe it's a tool.
And if, if, if nothing else, let's say we are communicating
with our own subconscious or something deep within ourselves,
on one end, you could say, well,then that could be used as a
tool maybe to discover, you know, deeper mathematical

(57:32):
properties of the universe or whatever.
And on the other end of things, maybe it's not, maybe these are
external. You know, I think on both fronts
it it opens up doors to discovery, which I think is
exciting. Yeah, yeah, I agree.
I mean, in some respects and for, for some people, they don't
care whether it's real or what real even means.

(57:56):
I mean, that's even that question is, is, is not a simple
1. You know, what do we mean by
real? You know, the, all experiences
are real in some ways. They're all, they're all built
from the same stuff. They're all built from these
patterns of neural activity generated by the brain.
So all experiences to some extent real, they all occur in
consciousness. So, you know, does it matter,

(58:19):
one might ask, whether we're dealing with something that's
outside the brain or inside the brain.
And ultimately we might find that it's kind of a meaningless
question, you know, inside and outside.
Ultimately you might find that, you know, if you look at a high
enough perspective that actuallywe're talking about the same
thing. So I'm, I'm very sympathetic for

(58:41):
that position. In which case, sure, we just, we
just say, OK, this seems to be potentially, as you say, a tool
that could allow us to explore certainly highly unusual states
of consciousness, but also highly unusual mathematical
structures. I mean people who you know, you
can imagine a topologist or something, or a geometer on

(59:05):
algebraic. Topologist or whatever.
Going into the DMT space and actually being able to
experience structures that before he only understood as in
the, in the purely abstract, it's impossible even doesn't
matter how good you are as a mathematician to imagine a, you

(59:26):
know, a nine dimensional manifold or whatever.
I'm just making stuff up here. But you get the point, right?
You have these high dimensional structures that are impossible
to imagine or comprehend and being you go into the DMT state
and you're confronted with them.And, and I think that's that in
itself is is incredible and and certainly needs to be to be

(59:48):
explored, even if even if. We decide that you.
Know what? Certain people aren't
particularly interested in this so-called the ontology of this
thing. I mean that's a whole different
area of exploration which is farmore difficult I think to get
our teeth into. My question is.
Is there benefits other than like the old adage, like, oh,

(01:00:09):
there's no such thing as kind oflike a bad trip, you know,
because you can learn something from it.
But is there something going on you know, from the standpoint of
something more to these nightmare like scenarios or
positive scenarios? Yeah, I mean.
This is a question for a therapist, really, or a

(01:00:31):
psychologist. You know, I, I think I don't, I
don't subscribe the idea that there's no such thing as a bad
trick. I think there are.
I mean, try and tell people, youknow, in the book I described
this, this guy, this Korean guy who was over 3 ayahuasca trips
in the proven Amazon, you know, perfect setting, everything was,

(01:00:53):
was absolutely perfect. And he was expecting to see
mother ayahuasca and he was confronted with these vicious
insectoid alien beings who tortured him and, and captured
his soul. And you know, try telling him
that it that wasn't a bad trip. You know there may be.
Some. I'm not saying there isn't
wasn't some deeper message here and that it wasn't pure purely

(01:01:17):
malicious. You know, maybe they were trying
to teach him something, but he certainly didn't come out of the
experience with that. You know, it wasn't like a
journey where he was, it wasn't like a the kind of the hero's
journey where he, you know, descended to the underworld and
had this horrible experiences. And then he reached a moment of

(01:01:39):
enlightenment when he realised it's all illusion or whatever.
And he came out and he came out,you know, a bigger man than when
he went in. You know, for him, it was pure
torture. I mean, he came out of it.
He was horrified. And that's why he contacted me,
because he was, he was terrifiedthat they captured his soul and
that when he died, he was going to be taken to back to that

(01:02:01):
place, you know, eternally perhaps.
I mean, this was a horrifying thought.
I mean, many event people have entertained the idea of, you
know, what happens after you die.
What if you go to hell? You know, and but but having
been there, and it must be a horrifying thought, the idea

(01:02:23):
that he, you know, he might be headed back there.
So, I mean, I did my best to assuage him and to convince him
that this wasn't the case and that there probably was some
deeper message and some lesson there that he hadn't found yet.
But at the same time, I wasn't going to say, oh, you need to
get back on the horse, my friend, and go back to the
Amazon and drink more Alaska because I might be setting him

(01:02:45):
up for, you know, even worse. So one has to tread carefully
with offering advice to people and saying there's no such thing
as bad trips because for some people, there really are such
things as bad trips. And people have, you know, it's
rare, but people do have sometimes long lasting negative
experiences. So I'm not averse to the idea

(01:03:09):
of, I don't think anyone in their right mind is averse to
the idea of eliminating, not eliminating necessarily, but
minimizing the possibility of bad trips and getting the set
and the setting right. I'm also not adverse to the idea
of, you know, taking MDMA prior to, you know, psilocybin for
certain people. You know, candy flipping.
Is it candy flipping or is that LSD and MDMA always hippie

(01:03:32):
flipping? That's hippie flipping.
OK, Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah.
Anyway, great combo by the. Way fabulous.
Great. Combo, right.
And, you know, that's been, I remember reading a paper just
few years ago where they, they, they tried this technique they,
they study it in a research setting and, and found that it,
you know, as we kind of understood anyway, but you know,

(01:03:54):
found that, yes, it reduces the,the occurrence of negative
experiences. And I'm not averse to this.
I, I, I kind of don't have much time for people who are always
going on about, oh, you need to face your shadow and stuff.
And that's fine if you want to face your shadow, my friend.
But some people just want to have a beautiful, mind

(01:04:17):
expanding, pleasant experience and that they shouldn't be
denied them. They shouldn't.
This idea that you have to go through bad trips.
I don't think it's it's, but they are.
Obviously it's unpredictable. You can never eliminate the
possibility entirely and one should know how to deal with
them, but. But yeah, is it?
A bad trip? Is it a learning trip?

(01:04:40):
I think you can frame it in bothways.
But yeah, that's as much as I can say I think about to that
anecdote. What I find interesting is I
wonder if that guy was scared ofinsects because so that's
actually not that. I've heard trip reports.
I know actually the late great Jerry Garcia and actually the
Grateful Dead got their name from ADMT experience.

(01:05:04):
But there's a anecdote where Jerry Garcia is doing this
interview and he's talking aboutsmoking DMT and he talks about
our insectoid overlords and these mantis like beans.
And he, you know, go. It's, it's, it's actually kind
of a crazy interview. I recommend people go try and
find that on the Internet, if you can.

(01:05:24):
I'll try and find the link if I can, too.
It's I think it's all typed out.It's not like recorded or
anything. But yeah, I just wonder how much
fear of certain things also playinto it too.
It's like somebody that's scaredof an insect that maybe another
person isn't. They might have different
experiences. Yeah, I think.
You know, you know, if we are dealing with some kind of

(01:05:47):
intelligence, it wouldn't surprise me if they they take
some pleasure in, in in in for want of a better term, kind of
fucking with us a little bit. You know, it does perhaps
suggest that if you, if you do have deep seated issues with
certain things, whether it is insects or spiders or they might

(01:06:11):
take advantage of that or whether it's, you know, whether
it's your subconscious kind of trying to.
Yeah, I've heard. That too, I've heard people that
have like insecurities of some sort being that kind of like the
entities throwing that back at in their face kind of a thing or
like you said, kind of just messing with them or whatever,

(01:06:32):
which is, you know, kind of crazy, which I that that's
definitely part of the tricksterelement though, too, right?
You know, this idea that it's. I was just going to say yeah.
Yeah, EMT is Trixie. It's a Trixie molecule that you
should be very careful about what what you take from what

(01:06:55):
they, what they say, what they do or you know, the messages
that they give you. I think you, that you can be LED
down down the garden path again by these these beings.
And, and, and you know, I won't talk about specific examples
recently, but I think there are certain cases that have become

(01:07:15):
quite well known where people, Iget the feeling that people
might be being LED down the garden path by, by entities.
Yeah, I'll say no more than that.
People might know what I'm referring to, others might not.
You don't. Maybe well.
Yeah, we'll, we'll get to some other stuff here in a minute.

(01:07:37):
I want to just finish. I have a few more questions that
I thought out before we get to this new segment I've been
doing. But so in the later chapters,
you suggest DMT isn't just, you know, generating hallucinations,
but it also might be tuning their consciousness into an
actual, you know, ontological domain.

(01:07:59):
From your perspective, both the neuroscientist and a theorist,
what would you count as a convincing evidence that these
realms are real and that the brain is in there, not just
brain generated illusions? I think we kind of touched on
this a little bit. But like, what is the best
evidence that you think you havefor these realms being real, if

(01:08:21):
you will? Well.
I mean, you know, the, the, the kind of the second third of the
book is devoted to that questionreally is, is how do we, why
can't we just say their hallucinations?
Why can't we just say this is exotic dream imagery or
whatever? And I, and that's, that's really

(01:08:43):
been my approach is to, is to say, OK, these DMT visions, just
like all subjective experiences are constructed in some way by
the brain. This is your kind of your, your
foundational starting point. Then the question is, well, is

(01:09:04):
the brain constructing these entirely without any kind of
help with any kind of external sensory inputs?
Now, to answer that question, you need to distinguish between
the kinds of world models that your brain can construct and
those that it can't. And that requires an analysis of

(01:09:26):
how the world is built by the brain and its limitations.
What are the limitations and what evidence do we have from
subjective experience, from dream states, from
hallucinations? We know that the brain is, you
know, the brain evolved to construct a model of the world
as a model of the environment, and it has its limits.

(01:09:50):
You know, in the dream state, for example, the dream state
tends to be, for the most part, indistinguishable.
You know, studies have been showing this for 100 years, that
the dream state is generally continuous with waking.
The brain is using what it's learned about constructing the
world in the waking state to construct the world in the in

(01:10:11):
the dream states, people dream about dogs and cats.
They drink, dream about cows andhorses.
If they work on a farm, if they like fishing, they might dream
about fishes. If they live in the Amazon
rainforest, they might dream of piranha and Anaconda and
Panther. So the the dream, the dream

(01:10:33):
state is a model. You know, this is the only world
your brain knows how to build. This is how I normally put it,
which is the, the world as a model of the environment.
It doesn't know, or shouldn't know in my opinion, how to
construct exquisitely complex, you know, staggering,
staggeringly complex alternate worlds that have no relationship
whatsoever to the normal waking world.
And that is what the DMT world represents.

(01:10:56):
It's a world that is, it's disjoint, I would say from the
normal waking world. It is not just random neural
firing. It is a world that is, you know,
exceedingly coherent, staggeringnarrative complexity.

(01:11:16):
It is a world that that doesn't bear any relationship to the
normal waking world. And to me that is a great
mystery. And I think that suggests in my
opinion that there is some directing of this world.
I don't think that you're seeingyou're going to another space.
I don't think you're seeing another world as such or going

(01:11:38):
to another world. I think there is some kind of
intelligent agent that is directing what you see.
I don't know what that whether that intelligent agent is
singular or, or there's a multiplicity or you know what,
whether it could be faithfully represented or any kind of
visual form, I don't know. But I think it's directing the

(01:11:59):
visions. And there's, there's evidence
from that from a quite widespread effect which I
discussed in the book called often called lockout, which is
when the beings not only are able to direct the visions, but
are actually able to kind of direct entry into the space and
control entry into the space. So people who will use DMT often

(01:12:21):
for long periods have full breakthrough experiences every
time, you know, using it, you know, weekly or sometimes daily.
And then suddenly they get a message, you know, they get, you
know, a big flashing X that blasts into their brain and they
get some kind of entity wagging it's finger at them.

(01:12:43):
One person described getting punched by some gesture like
being and being instantaneously brought back to normal waking
consciousness. So this is to me a
pharmacological mystery. It's not tolerance.
Tolerance developed slowly and gradually over time.
It's not an off switch. It's so it it seems to be that

(01:13:07):
these. That the DMT.
State is being directed by a flow of information into the
brain when the brain is in this much more fluid and dynamic
state induced by DMT and these this intelligence, of course, if
they can control the flow of information into the brain, they

(01:13:29):
can also cut off that flow of information.
And that is what this lockout represents in my opinion.
Often it's people who use it toomuch, abuse it, one would say,
or aren't using it with good intention, but that doesn't,
that's not a tolerance effect, even though it's often described
as such. You know, the same batch of DMT,
the same vaporisation method, everything's the same.

(01:13:52):
Except one day they get a message that's saying no entry.
And sometimes this lasts for months.
You know, they, they, they, theytry again a few, you know, a few
weeks later they're still lockedout.
And then they have to kind of dosome, some work and eventually
maybe they get, they get allowedback in the, the effects return.

(01:14:14):
But this to me is, is, you know,aside from this mathematical
operations that I was describingthat Emil Andres, Emil Gomez
Emilsen was describing to me, this lockout effect is, is truly
fascinating because it, it, it really kind of backs up this

(01:14:34):
idea that that the DMT state is being directed.
The DMT state is like, I call ita directed world.
You don't breakthrough into the DMT world.
The DMT world breaks in through into you.
It's just this flow of information coming into the
brain, this directing the visions.
And, and if that is cut off, then you are denied entry, no
matter how much DMT you smoke. So that I think those.

(01:14:57):
Those things to. Me, you know, aside from the
broader properties of the DMT space, which I discuss at length
and you know, the, the, the, youknow, the, the unlikely, you
know, how unlikely it is that the brain can construct these
worlds in the absence of some data, external data inputs.
I think these specific cases, I think really are good targets

(01:15:22):
for us to study. And I'd like to see a study of
lockout. I mean, very difficult to study
it, you know, in a lab because you can't, it's kind of
unpredictable unless you have someone who is currently locked
out and then bring them into the, into the research
laboratory and inject them with DMT and ask them about their
experiences. And if and if they have no

(01:15:42):
experience, then, well, this is,you know, with pure, you know,
IVDMT, if they, they're not getting any effects from the
drug. I think that would be very cool
to demonstrate to someone who had used DMT in the past, who'd
had many experiences in the pastthat were documented in some
ways. We knew that these people were
normally perfectly responsive toDMT.
We get an idea of, you know, their usage over time.

(01:16:05):
And then we bring them into the,into the research, the
institution or laboratory or whatever, inject them with, with
DMT. And then if they have no
response, you can even look at their neural activity.
I mean, that would be cool to, you know, put them in an MRI
machine and actually see, you know, what's going on in the
brain when someone is locked out.

(01:16:25):
What's different about the way that the information flows
through the brain? These kind of that would be a
really cool study to do if anyone.
Wants to do it, maybe we'll. Do it?
I don't know. Come on.
Guys get on it, guys and gals get out there.
I think it's chapter 15, the intelligence.

(01:16:46):
In the intelligence you flirt with the idea of a mind like
principle underlying reality. Do you think DMT is revealing
that consciousness is primary and matter emerges from it?
Or do you think that we'll stillsee a path for these experiences
from a bottom up materialist framework kind of a thing?

(01:17:08):
Well, I don't think we're. Going to get an answer, you
know, a solution. I don't think we're ever going
to derive consciousness in a bottom, bottom up fashion from
matter. I think consciousness is
fundamental. That doesn't mean that that
studying the brain and how psychedelics work in the brain
isn't useful because the brain clearly is.
You know, if consciousness is fundamental, the brain is, this

(01:17:28):
is a highly complex pattern of consciousness fundamental.
I mean, that's how really I, I, I see it.
I see the brain as a complex emergence pattern within
consciousness. I think consciousness is
absolutely fundamental. So what's the.
Yeah, Well, what do you what? So, so do you think what what do

(01:17:49):
you think's fundamental in the you?
So do you think that consciousness is primary or do
you think that matter is primary?
OK, I think that conscious. Is primary.
And I think the problem we've had over the last several 100
years is, is, is assuming matterto be primary and then basically
struggling for the next 400 years or whatever, since they
can't really probably earlier to, to try and derive

(01:18:13):
consciousness from matter. You know, with the taking that
as an axiom, the kind of the fundamental axiom that we've
been working on is that matter is fundamental, whatever matter
is. And then consciousness emerges
at certain high levels of organization of matter, certain
levels of complexity or reason, you get consciousness and it's

(01:18:34):
not worked so far. And I would my guess is that
it's not work because it doesn't, it's not going to work.
I think even in principle, the idea of deriving subjective
experience from from from matter, I think is is doomed to
fail. And more and more scientists now
it's not just kind of woo woo mystical types, but you know,

(01:18:58):
serious scientists, you know, Tanoni is, is kind of 1
Christoph Koch and others. Tegmark to an extent consider
consciousness to be fundamental and that yes, we need to work in
the opposite direction basicallyand work out, you know, how does
consciousness behave and how does consciousness complexify

(01:19:19):
and self organise to form these structures.
But fundamentally, it's all about, you know, everything's
subjective ultimately, I think, I think subjectivity,
consciousness, which means that's what we mean by
consciousness, right? It's subjective.
That subjective experience is consciousness.
And it can be, it can be very, you know, pure consciousness,

(01:19:42):
you know, the pure bright what, what light of pure awareness,
you know, that would be conscious.
Or it could be this extremely complex world that we exist in
now in a normal waking subjective world.
Or it could be the DMT, well, which is inordinately more
complex, but it's still an experience within consciousness.
So yes, that my answer is yes, Ithink consciousness is

(01:20:03):
fundamental. Awesome, I have.
One more question and then we'llget to Mike's mind.
Melters. You describe DMT as a future
technology of astonishment if humanity develops the extended
state or a reproducible DMT technology.
Do you see primarily as a scientific tool for mapping

(01:20:26):
hidden dimensions? We talked about like topography
and things like that, but do youthink that it it will be more of
a scientific application or somesort of spiritual initiation
device? Like what do you think the
future holds for that? Well, both, I don't think.

(01:20:46):
I think that comes a point when the spiritual and the the
scientific start to merge. I don't think they are as as as
distant and disconnected as we once assumed.
You know if if if. Consciousness is absolutely
fundamental then. Then you know.
DMT is a tool for exploring consciousness and is a tool for

(01:21:09):
exploring. Other types of.
Consciousness and other types ofconsciousness is or other
perspectives or other beings that also exist within
consciousness. And that sounds very spiritual
to me. The idea of, of communicating
with normally invisible discountintelligent being, that feels
like a very spiritual thing. Whereas at the same time, you

(01:21:32):
know, I talk in very scientific terms and I, you know, I talk
about DMT and fusion, extended state and fusion technologies
and, you know, and, and, and neural activity and, you know,
pharmacological tool. This is all very scientific, and
yet it feels like the aim is ultimately.
Spiritual in some way. So I think the word spiritual

(01:21:56):
starts to lose its meaning in a way.
I guess I, I struggle to to giveyou a precise definition, you
know of what, what, what what, What do you mean by spiritual?
It doesn't seem to mean I guess something's.
Beyond, I mean, because like, I think a lot of people perceive

(01:22:17):
stuff that's spiritual. I mean, you could look at it as
just metaphysics, right? Just stuff that we haven't
really figured out yet. But there's some element that
feels spiritual or feels beyond,you know, reality, if you will.
Yeah, I mean, I guess you. Might say something that exists
beyond the physical. Which is.

(01:22:43):
You know, basically my fundamental perspective is that
the the, the physical emerges from ultimately from
consciousness. So, so yeah, it's it's kind of
tricky, but I think the idea of interacting with beings that are
non physical or that are normally hidden, you know, I
could, you know, 100 years ago Iwould be calling them spirits, I

(01:23:04):
guess. And that's obviously would be a
spiritual perspective. So yeah, I think both scientific
and spiritual. All right.
Are you ready to enter Mike's mind melters?
I'm. Not sure, but let's let's give
it a. Whirl.

(01:23:38):
All right, Andrew. I'm going to ask you 5
philosophical questions. Just please answer them the best
you can and we'll go from there.Number one, what is something
you believe in that you know is probably wrong or illogical, but
you are just not being honest with yourself?

(01:24:13):
Oh, I don't know. I don't know what is something I
believe in. That I think is probably.
Wrong. Well, I'm going to.
I'm going to give you the boringanswer in that.
I would hope. That if.
If I believed in something. Which I thought was probably

(01:24:34):
wrong. I would stop believing in it,
but we both. Know that that's not I don't
know, I think. Generally I'm I'm very open to
beliefs, I'm very open to possibilities, so.

(01:25:02):
Yeah, I, yeah. I can't answer that question.
I can't think of anything. I can't think of anything that
I. I believe in that.
I think is probably. Wrong.
An example would be. Somebody that's maybe they're
like Christian, but they're likeyeah, maybe this God thing, you
know, not not, you know, something along those lines,
right if. You were asking me about what
other people believe in that they know is probably wrong.

(01:25:23):
I can give. I'm not.
I can give you some really politically incorrect answers,
but I'm not going to because there are better hills to die
on. But.
Yeah, I try to. Avoid.
I try to avoid getting myself into those kind of belief
systems, but I'm there. I know there are a lot of people
in the world that certainly. Kind of believe.

(01:25:45):
Things the root of the question.Is actually just to be honest
with yourself about some sort oflike hidden cognitive bias that
you have that maybe you aren't aware of, but we can move on.
That would mean you kind of gaveme the your thoughts on it,
which is good enough for me #2 do you think there is an
objective purpose for humanity, and if So, what?

(01:26:08):
Yes and no. I think I subscribe to the idea.
I mean, really, this really comes from someone like Alan
Watts, you know, the idea that that reality is, is ultimately
play and, and that's the kind ofthe point of it rather than a,

(01:26:31):
some kind of grand aim. I, I, I don't kind of like that
idea necessarily that there is some ultimate purpose That's big
and important because I think, Ithink the idea that ultimately
it's all about, it's all one bigdrama.
Reality is, is a grand drama. And of course, what's got all of

(01:26:52):
this from from Hinduism really, you know, ancient Hindu ideas,
you know, Vedanta and Advaita and stuff.
And so I think, yeah, that that resonates with me.
I don't think, I don't think reality is serious.
And I think you get that messagea lot on DMT.

(01:27:13):
If you take it too seriously, then you will often pay the
price and you will get mocked for it.
So yeah, that's my feeling. It's life.
Reality itself is 1 big cosmic drama, cosmic game, perhaps even
cosmic joke. Yeah, I think.

(01:27:34):
Yeah, that's a, that's a good answer.
I think the common out is usually we create our own
purpose or, or telos or whatever.
But yeah, to your point, I thinkthat I like Alan Watts.
I I listen to Alan Watts a lot too.
I think that he offers a lot there.
So that's a good answer #3 do you think humans are special or

(01:27:54):
separate from the rest of nature?
If your answer is yes, please give your best example of why.
I mean, again, I think we're clearly, yes, we are clearly
special in some ways. I mean, this is, you know,
cognitively, technologically, wehave, we have in many ways, we

(01:28:19):
are clearly different from otheranimals.
But at the same time, there are also animals that seem to be
much happier than us, Dolphins, for example, who are also very
intelligent, who also possess language and, and, and seem to,
to have a great time more so than we do.

(01:28:40):
I think our problem in many wayswe're our specialness or
uniqueness comes with many problems, which again goes back
to the last question of taking ourselves too seriously and
taking life too seriously and treating it like some journey
with some really important goal at the end.
And that leads to all of the a lot of the suffering and the

(01:29:01):
grasping and the accumulation and all of that stuff.
So yes, in some ways we're special.
Is that the right word? I'm not sure.
But then other, I think other animals are also special in
their own way that, you know, they're not, it's a, it's a
rabbit. Hole, you'd be very hard
pressed. It's a rabbit hole.
You'd be very hard pressed to find something that there's no
proto version of what we're capable of.

(01:29:24):
I, I think for me, I tossed thisis something, because this is
something I ask myself a lot. And I think that maybe recursion
or recursive tool making, you know, we make things that make
things where I mean, you might be able to make the argument
that maybe primates are making tools, you know, but then we're
so far removed from that initialphase that it's, it's very

(01:29:47):
different. Yes, I guess.
It it hinges on what you mean byspecial.
I mean unique, more advanced, more sophisticated, more
intelligent, all of these stuff definitely apply.
Special is an interesting word which you chose deliberately, I
know, but. These are that's.
Why these are the mind melters bro #4 What do you think happens

(01:30:12):
when we die? Oh, So what?
I don't think. I don't think that.
Necessarily. I don't know is the answer but
obviously but. I don't think we're going.

(01:30:35):
Necessarily, I don't describe tothe idea that we're going to
take everything with us and takeour identity, you know, who we
are, our name and our occupationand our interests and our
personality with us. The idea perhaps, that the
consciousness is in some way continuous, that nobody's ever
born, nobody ever dies. Again, this goes back to the
idea of consciousness being fundamental, is that there is no

(01:31:02):
such thing as birth and there isno such thing as death.
Ultimately. There's a great Zen, actually.
A great. Quote that I used in reality

(01:31:24):
switch. There we go.
Chance to plug where I said herewe go.
When I took my first breath, my world was born with me.
When I die, my world dies with me.
In other words, I wasn't born into a world that was already
here before me. I bring my own world into
existence, live it out and take it with me when I die.

(01:31:48):
So suggest this, this idea of ofof that you are, you have your
own world now when you die, you know, from your perspective, you
kind of. Have another world.
I don't know, you know, that this is a kind of a continuous
process. You're not born, you don't come
into the world. You kind of bring your world

(01:32:08):
with you. It's kind of pretty deep stuff.
But but yeah, that's that's kindof what I I don't think that
it's a, you know, when you die, you die, you know, that's it.
I don't think that's the case from other people's perspective.
Last question. For Mike's mind mounters, what

(01:32:29):
do you think is the greatest mystery of all time and why the.
Greatest mystery. Of all time.
Again, not a particularly imaginative example, but I guess
again, going back to Alan Watts,he had this, he often used to
talk about the idea of the existence is weird.

(01:32:53):
Just the fact that things exist is really odd.
It would have been much simpler if there was literally nothing.
Not just nothing as in, you know, quantum foam or, you know,
not Lawrence Krauss's idea of nothing.
But like, does anybody like that?

(01:33:13):
Idea. I've never met anybody that like
Lawrence's Krauss's idea of nothing, no.
No, but I mean, what? It's the best that he could do,
right? It's to go.
He called it nothing because, you know, a universe from
nothing is a great title for a book.
But I think anyone that was thatwas intellectually honest would
know that he's not talking aboutnothing here.

(01:33:35):
So yeah. So the idea of absolute, you
know, why? Why isn't that absolute?
And I've often wondered about this.
And when you, when you're when you're conscious and your brain
kind of locks into the idea, it sends a little shiver.
Like what? Absolute Nothing.
There's never been anything. Never will be in existence
itself. Is does not exist.
I mean that that is the simplest, purest state, but

(01:33:58):
that's not the state, clearly. So, yeah, the great mystery, you
know, why are what's this all about?
Why? Why?
What is this thing? What is reality?
I don't think we're even close to grasping that.
And I guess this is what the theZen Buddhists do, you know, in
the mountains here in Japan, andthey sit and face a wall and try

(01:34:20):
and kind of observe that directly.
Because I don't think you're going to reach an answer to that
question intellectually. You kind of have to sit for 20
years and hope that. It hits you.
It strikes you, you know, some personal, personal revelation, I
guess. Awesome.

(01:34:41):
Thank you for. Answering that, I know, I know
they're tough. I put you on the spot.
Nobody knows what the questions are going in.
It's not like I gave you the list and said we're going to
talk about this. But that's what makes them
tough. And I, you know, look, I, I
think part of those, why I created these questions is
number 1, to put somebody on thespot and #2 I think that it
confronts you with questions that we all kind of avoid

(01:35:04):
regularly, but that I think are essential to being a human
being. So.
But I appreciate you answering those.
Is there an ancient psychedelic tradition there in Japan of any
sort with like mushrooms or anything or?
Well, there's a modern. Psychedelic tradition for sure.

(01:35:24):
It's a good question. I mean, it's something I'd like
to actually study more seriously.
There are many species of psychedelic mushroom in Japan.
Whether there's a history of useis a good question.
The answer is I don't. Know, I'd like to know, yeah.
But certainly in the modern era,in this ayahuasca circles and

(01:35:46):
things like that, and there's certainly a psychedelic
subculture in Japan, is there? Naturally growing, I mean,
there's mushrooms that grow everywhere, but are there, what
species do you know, is there any species that grow around
there? I'm, I'm, I couldn't give you
the species by name, but but yeah, there are, there are,
well, I say many, I say a handful of mushrooms that grow,

(01:36:09):
you know, in, throughout, you know, from mainland Japan,
Honshu and, you know, down to Okinawa.
There's a species of mushroom that grows only in in Okinawa.
So yeah, I mean. There's, there's certainly lots
of psychedelics around in, you know, Acacia Confusa grows in
Okinawa, lots of it, and in neighboring Taiwan, actually.

(01:36:34):
But there's certainly plenty of it around.
But how, how much, how far back,I don't know, but that's
something I want, I'd like to research.
Yeah. And Asian and.
Theogenic traditions are kind ofa mystery to me.
I don't really know. There's not really anybody
talking about them, at least to,you know, a popular standpoint.

(01:36:56):
Maybe it's esoteric or maybe you'll find some like you said,
some old monk or Buddhist or something that might have some
knowledge. But right that.
Would have to brush up on my kind of old old Japanese, which
is, I mean, modern Japanese is, is is tough enough.
But going back to the old books,certainly handwritten.

(01:37:17):
I mean, it's like. Have you heard about this new,
Not new, but I think the studentfound the psychedelic component
of Morning Glory. Are you familiar with this?
It's kind of going around. I can pull up the name.
Yeah, so I. Mean what he found was the

(01:37:40):
symbiotic fungus. Yeah, the that's right.
The fungus, yeah, yeah, but within the.
Seeds. Yeah, I mean this, this was.
The reason? It was kind.
Of a big result was because it was the same species that
Hoffman originally isolated LSA from.

(01:38:00):
But there are a number of morning glory species that with
symbiotic fungi that had been isolated before that produced
tryptamines. Sorry, produced these lysergic
acids. Hawaiian baby.
Woodrows, that kind of stuff. You're right.
Exactly. So it's not an entirely new, I
think we all we we knew for a long time or suspected that

(01:38:21):
there was some, that it wasn't the morning glory plant the
actual seeds themselves that were producing these LSA because
they're very, you know, they're complex molecular structures.
It is probably fungus as it's always the fungus.
It's always the fucking. Fungi, right?
Yeah. All right.
Last question, I promise we'll, we'll get you out of here.
I've been kind of following a little bit this I was during my

(01:38:44):
hiatus, I started a different channel, a philosophy channel,
but I've been following your interactions with it.
Was it Danny Goler and this ideaof, you know, he smokes DMT and
then, you know, looks in the laser and sees some sort of code
and, you know, things that we'rein a simulation or that's the
hypothesis that he's put forth. And you've had a little bit of a

(01:39:08):
back and forth with them. Where do you stand on all that?
Yeah, yeah. Where do I stand?
I stand there. It's minimally a very
interesting phenomenon in that it allows you to fairly reliably
isolate a particular aspect of the broader DMT phenomenology.

(01:39:30):
Minimally, it's, it's worth of study that that, but the this is
therefore this is a simulation and this is the fundamental
source code I don't buy again for reasons that I've discussed
at length, You know, in many places.
I've got an article in my sub stack why I, I don't subscribe

(01:39:51):
to that. And of course, why would I, I
mean, there's it's, it's you need to, there's a lot of work,
scientific work that needs to toto occur before you to the kind
of to bring this. Out of the realm of private
revelation. You see the code and you're
convinced this is the source code.
OK, great. Now you need to bring this

(01:40:12):
outside of private revelation and into actual scientific
observations and analysis. And is anybody looking to do
that? Well, I think Danny is.
Having a go. You know, when I was out in LA
just a couple of months ago, we had a long, a few long

(01:40:32):
conversations about this. There's a movie coming out,
documentary called The Discovery, I think next year,
which has got my conversations, my interviews and stuff, as well
as, you know, the whole thing. I think it's fascinating, but
I'm not certainly not ready to. Accept that he's stumbled.
Upon the source code. I mean, that's.

(01:40:54):
That's a huge thing to say and there are a number of issues
with that hypothesis in my opinion.
You know, in terms of the what the code looks like and you know
why there would be a code that was human readable as code if it
was a fundamental source code, why it would be running through
reality like the matrix. The unfortunate coincidence that

(01:41:17):
a laser light, when reflected off a surface, tends to produce
this this pattern of speckles, this interference pattern on the
retina, it's points of sensory inputs which around which
imagery can certainly be seeded,which could give the, you know,
the could act as like a sensory scaffold for complex imagery

(01:41:38):
generated by DMT. The fact that this this this
speckled pattern has a number ofoptical properties that make it
appear as if it occupies space behind the wall.
This is all without DMT. So all these things are kind of,
they make you think that maybe there's some interaction between
the optical properties of the laser and the DMT that's

(01:42:00):
generating this effect rather than you're seeing the source
code of reality and distinguishing between those is
no easy task, but that's what you need to do.
You know, I'm not, I'm accused of being a hater or dismissing
it or, you know, ruling it out. I'm not, I'm just, I'm just
saying, you know, as I do with everything, you, you, you go for
more mundane explanations first and then you try to rule them

(01:42:21):
out. And, and how you, once you've
ruled them out, then you start reaching for more exotic
explanations. And the idea that we've
discovered the source code of reality is, is about as exotic
an explanation as you get, and it doesn't get any grander than
that. So I can understand why people
are kind of latching onto this and going, Oh my God, this is

(01:42:42):
like most important discovery inthe history of mankind.
And if it was true, then it would be.
But there's a long way to go from an observation under the
influence of DMT with this, withthis laser, knowing what we know
about the optical effects and properties of lasers and other
things and, and, and reaching that grandest of conclusions.

(01:43:03):
So that's all I'm saying is just, and of course we know we
were earlier we were talking about the ideas of these
intelligences fucking with you. So what better way to fuck with
someone than to convince them that they're they're being shown
the ultimate source code of reality?
Yeah, I don't think people have.To be very careful.
People and I've talked to. People about this, but like even

(01:43:25):
the you know, you see something let's say you're having an
experience and you're watching TV.
If you then close your eyes, you're going to see that TV
there for a while and so forth with a lot of things, right.
So like I'm not saying that you were he was, but just the idea
of that's the way our brain works.
So it could be holding on to symbols or letters or whatever,

(01:43:49):
and then our brain could be kindof, you know, in that state,
putting things together that maybe are not actually there.
I don't know, you know. The brain is very.
Good at, it's great, good at constructing symbols.
I mean, that's we are very, we are a literary species, a
lexical species and our brain isvery good.
You know, reading requires your brain to construct, you know,

(01:44:12):
high rate, a series of of, of very small, finely detailed
symbol. This is what reading is.
So your brain is very, very goodat that, which is why lexical
hallucinations of text, of code,of mathematical symbols, of
musical notation, they occur in about, you know, I think it's
about 40% of cases of visual hallucinations in people with

(01:44:38):
various neuropsychological, you know, hallucinatory disorders.
In lots of people, seeing code and letters, it's one of the
most common forms of hallucination.
And seeing code under the influence of DM T is also
common. That goes back decades.
So how do we distinguish betweenthat?
How do we say that? How do we?
Confirm this is not. Just a type of lexical

(01:44:58):
hallucination, you know, highly complex, fascinating form.
But you know, DMT does generate very complex and interesting
imagery. How do we distinguish between
that and? The code of.
Reality. Yeah, I mean, it sounds like.
There's a show called DEVS that was on for a while where they

(01:45:18):
figured out the algorithm for prediction of, of everything of
life. You know, it kind of reminds me
of that a little bit. But yeah, I mean, look, we're
human beings. We've got apophenia and
pareidolia and our mind likes toput things together and patterns
and pattern recognition, that's what we do, right?
So I'm interested in it. I'll see you know, what happens.

(01:45:39):
I'm looking forward to checking this documentary when it comes
out. And you know, I did read your
sub stack when you were having that back and forth and there's
a lot of interesting stuff there.
If nothing else, it's it's a cool thought experiment, right?
Or just a a way to look at this phenomenon?
Yeah, I think so. You.
Know minimally, it's fascinating, you know, that you

(01:46:00):
can, you can reliably, as I say,isolate this particular aspect
of, of DMT. That's cool.
And you know, that could be a very cool tool.
You know, if you can, you can imagine expanding this laser to
kind of replicate the optical pattern generated by the laser,
but on a screen or something that would be cool.
So you could, someone could viewthe screen with this very

(01:46:22):
specific pattern of of light that would allow them to see
code like imagery, you know, andexplore the nature of that code.
I can see lots of cool things coming from it, but I'm
certainly not ready to to go to the the far most far out
conclusions just yet. Well, Andrew?

(01:46:42):
It's been a pleasure as always. Thank you so much.
Thank you for being interested in these topics and sharing your
knowledge and death by astonishment.
It's a great book. I highly recommend it.
If anybody's interested in the history or I should say the non
indigenous history of ayahuasca and DMT, please check it out

(01:47:02):
because there's a lot of great information and I consider
myself somebody that knows a lotabout this topic and even I
learned a lot, especially the William Burrow stuff I thought
was super fascinating. I was unaware of all of that
pretty much. I mean, I had heard of Schultes
and you know, all that stuff. But yeah, there's there's a lot
of great information in there. I learned a lot and it's going

(01:47:25):
to be interesting to see where we go from here.
Is there anything you've got coming up or is it just back to
the grindstone writing another book?
What's your next move here? I've got something very big.
Coming up, but I'll say no more.And then it's back to the.
Grindstone for a new book All right, all right well, I.

(01:47:45):
Love both of those things. I'll I'll have to have you back
back on when one of those thingspops.
I'll be paying attention as always.
But I really appreciate it for real.
And you're very generous with your time and you're an open
book, as they say. And I appreciate you being a
good sport about the Mike's MindMelters.
And yeah, man, that's it. That's all I got.

(01:48:09):
All right, well. Thank you as always, and the way
we will end this is the way we end all of our mind escape
episodes, which is we love everybody.
Stay safe out there, and we'll catch you next time.
Peace. If you would like to support.
Mind escape. There's many ways you can do it,
but the best way to do it is to click the link tree link down

(01:48:31):
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There is still some available onour YouTube channel and our
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(01:48:52):
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(01:49:14):
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Andrew Gallimore on Death by Astonishment | Ayahuasca, DMT, & Building Alien Worlds Episode #330

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Andrew Gallimore on Death by Astonishment | Ayahuasca, DMT, & Building Alien Worlds Episode #330