4 Geniuses Decode the UFO and Consciousness Mystery | Hoffman, Kripal, Kastrup & Gallimore

Certainly the intelligence community is using the UFO and using the phenomena to hide whatever it's hiding. That's part of the literature that this flying saucer and the soul are related. We see that over and over again in the history of religions. And for some reason, our cultural mythos wants them to be threats. It's actually much more complicated than that. I have been very disappointed with what's going on in the UAP world. And if I have to give you a word, I would give you the word misinformation. So right now as far as the nuts and

bolts part of the thing is concerned I don't know what to think but the the high stranges part that is real right >> and he assumed at first as you were saying that it was this nuts and bolts phenomenon that beings that were landing on the in the garden or whatever and sneaking into the bedroom and plucking Them from their beds. Um actually it started to looks like something very very different. these experiences, as he called them, seemed to be entering some kind of alternate state of consciousness. >> Well, I I hadn't paid much attention

to the UAP thing until there there was the congressional hearing >> in which people under oath said, I have been part of this. I've seen the technology. It's very very clear from The work that I've been doing independently that this kind of technology is easily possible from from this framework. Switch frameworks. Spacetime is just a VR headset. You know, consciousness is the creator of this headset. So, and we can start to describe a layer of software outside the headset. What is going on, my friends? And I mean that not just as a mundane turn of

phrase but in the most uh Philosophically gargantuan sense possible with respect particularly to the UFO topic the phenomenon and I would say its relationship to consciousness. And at this point I have had many a mind meld on these topics. I've explored many nooks and crannies sometimes uh crannies where I'm just like how did I get here? Uh, and that's part of the point. I don't often stop and check in and give nuance, give my own opinion, and worry not. I'm not going to sit here and talk At you and do that today. But what I

do want to do is share some conversations that I really do deeply value on these topics. Conversations with luminaries that are at the absolute bleeding edge of their respective fields. Cognitive scientist and idealist philosopher Dr. Donald Hoffman, scholar of high strangeness and spirituality Dr. Jeff Kriel, idealist philosopher and author Bernardo Castro, and neuroscientist and altered state afficionado Dr. Andrew Gallamore. Links to the full transmissions with each of these geniuses are down in the comments. Much love to all of you and let us commence. I mean, how I I have I absolutely have to bring up

the UFO UAP phenomenon to you because you just have such interesting unique things to say about it. And one of the interesting unique things that you said, I think this was in another podcast, I don't recall for sure, is you were actually drawing Comparisons between the subtle body or out-of body experiences or soulflight experiences and the UFO phenomenon. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> Yeah. Go ahead. Yeah, please. Well, it's that's just that's part of the literature that this flying saucer and the soul are related. I mean, we see that over and over again in the history

of religions. And that's something that gets ellighted or or or not talked about today because we for some reason our Cultural mythos wants them to be threats and wants it to be about national security. But it's actually much more complicated than that. And it definitely involves the world of the dead and and the soul. If you get if you scratch the surface and kind of get into it in a broader cultural or historical way, >> let let's scratch the surface. Let let's let's perhaps go even deeper than than scratching. I don't know for sure what

it is that captures people's curiosity So much about that phenomenon. But but I think that it's well I I think it's a few different things. I think there's the sort of dark appeal that look, we really have evidence of this malevolent, threatening other. It's not just made up there. It It's really out there. But then it's also a path to just the opposite, like a pro-noic kind of, oh, they're here to save us. It's it's angels. It's it's higher life forms. It's uh I don't know, Pleadians or whatever. But whatever it is, it's it's something

like I think we're past the point where you can I think we can just dispose with the idea that these things can be easily dismissed as uh you know, things that crazy people think they saw or whatever. You know, we're we're far beyond that at this point. But that but still there are so many questions you know and I wonder how you parse all of that because I'm very Interested and open to what you just said yet you also have the Lou Alzandos of the world who just p published a new book who is going

down this road of it is a national security threat there are hard things out there flying around crashing that we've recovered like how do you how do you balance all of that personally? So I don't um first of all Lou's book is complex. If you read the first page he talks about the title imminent >> and how you know that can be followed by the word threat but it also can be followed by some kind of escaton or some kind of theological meaning or kind of >> transformation of our worldview. So I don't I don't

read Lou as just saying one thing. Um I think I think he himself questions that that physicalist or or national security paradigm. I think um the UFO is so popular and so in the news because it's so empirical. I Mean you can get the thing on radar, you can study landing tracks, you can you know um it it has a very physical um presence. And I think because we live in an age of science and technology, we equate physical with real. >> Okay. But it also has this these paranormal aspects and and people who dig

very far into the research realize this very quickly. Um but that doesn't make it into the media, Michael, because it just messes up the threat, the Security and science paradigm. It just throws it into disarray immediately. But I I want it to be thrown into disarray. I think it should be thrown into disarray. I think it's really confusing and it's the way I put it is a human being is essentially a splitter of reality. We perceive the external world as a set of objects and we perceive ourselves as some kind of interior subject. So we

have a Subjective and an objective um dimension by our very nature. And that is fundamentally wrong. That is not what reality is. And the UFO is fundamentally objective, but it's also fundamentally subjective. So it violates this cognitive and sensory system that we are in ways I find very familiar >> um but also very helpful and useful. Um so I h I happen to love the topic. Um, and the way I balance those two paradigms is I say, well, that's us. That's the human being who's splitting this into uh an empirical, physical, objective reality and a

subjective uh interior um um unreal reality. That's that's the human being. That's not what's actually going on. So, that's that's what I do with it. And somebody like Lou Alzando, um I love Lu Alzando. I love these are good people. these these retired military professionals and these science they're good people they're they're using their skill set To understand what they can understand and I'm trying to use my skill set to understand what I can understand and it's not theirs you know and it's not that I think they're wrong and it's it's that I think that

they're what they're saying is inadequate that's part of the puzzle >> how much space do you reserve for the scop hypothes Is this >> Well, certainly the intelligence community Is using the UFO and using the phenomena to hide whatever it's hiding. I can't speak to that because I don't have any classified knowledge, Michael. Um, and and if that's what you mean by scops, I just don't know. And so I again, I try to stay in my lane and I try to say what I can say historically and comparatively. As you probably know, there are two

models of the UFO. One is that it all begins post World War II, you know, late 1940s. But the other model is it's been around as far as we can see back. I'm definitely of the latter camp. >> And so when people tell me it's all about the CIA or the intelligence, I'm like, well, what do you do with all these where there was no CIA or there was no I mean, what do what do you do with that? And and of course, they don't do anything with it. they they don't they deny it or

they whatever they do. I don't know what they do. So, I just Think it's obvious that it goes back in human history and is a global phenomena. And it's not that I I again it's not that I think that the religious interpretations are correct. Um but there's certainly different ways of engaging with the phenomena. >> For sure. For sure. Yeah. And and by scop I I mean some kind of concerted effort to misdirect or obfuscate or like like to to what you were saying like use the phenomenon as a Cover for something that they're actually

doing or that they actually know or that in a way where they're pretending because there there's still this really weird push and pull like with Lou Alzando for instance there was I just saw on YouTube I didn't watch it But apparently the Pentagon has made has made a counter statement saying like some of these claims that he's making are not true. So it's like what like it's like on one hand he seems to have Because I I've seen him say I have permission to say this, I don't have permission to say that. Yet there's also

the Pentagon who he apparently had permission from saying no, it's not true. So is that you know it's like who who's being who who's not being forthright here? Who who's the one that's throwing mud on the lens? You know >> what I know from my own institutional experience is there's no they there. You Know, there there are multiple people involved in I mean as in thousands if not 10 thousand. >> Yeah. >> And they're going to and different agencies and different individuals are going to have different motivations and different claims. >> And so again, I

don't try to I don't try to parse those out. Michael, because I do not have access to that material. What I have access to is the Historical religious material. So, I can speak to that. Um, and it it far transcends and predates any of this stuff. >> Yeah. >> I'm like, and you know, one of the things I often say is that the paranormal has always been weaponized. This is not unique to the US. Uh, if you look at the history of of what we might call magic or or clairvoyance, it's always been used to

Hunt and kill animals or to go to war or to, you know, seduce someone else. It's it's always been used. It's always been weaponized. >> I think this is behind the fear of sigh, frankly. You know if this is a Steven Browy argument if sigh can be used for positive ends and it can be it can also be used for negative ends. >> Yeah. >> And so there's this natural human fear of it that I think is well grounded Um but also kind of naive because people have these abilities. Sorry, they just do. You can

you can moralize it all you want, but it's still the case, you know. So, that's that's kind of my response to it. Was there a moment or series of moments where you felt like the preponderance of evidence really suggests that these things are real? Because I love that you're just blunt about it. Like, sorry, this is real. I've seen you say, "Sorry, levitation's Real." Like, you know, these other things. That's what I love about it, too. I I mean, it's like, sorry, it's the case. And I even like I mean, Lou says this a bit,

but somebody like Colum Keller or James Latsky says it more. Not only is it real, it's entirely physical and it's entirely paranormal. And if you take either of those things off the table, you are not talking about the phenomenon, you're talking about whatever you want to talk about, but you Are not dealing with the reality of the situation. >> Yeah. Yeah. So when I hear that, I'm like, you go you go get them, you know. >> Yeah, >> that's right. >> But but in your own case, was there was there something that made you that

flipped you, so to speak? >> Oh, that's Well, I've talked to tons of people um Who who work on this, and I don't know. I don't I I can't locate one place, Michael. >> Yeah. I first dealt with the UFO phenomena with the Eslin book by the way because believe it or not the counterculture is filled with this stuff and there are novels and conferences and I mean it's just everywhere. You cannot talk about the 1970s and 80s without talking about this if you're talking about religious undercurrents. Um so I first dealt with it then

and it was obvious to me that people were having these experiences. I guess I didn't think about the empirical reality of it, you know, to the same extent I do now. >> Yeah. What are some of your favorite stories from, you know, you said you're in the you're in that latter camp of really believing that this phenomenon we're seeing today, or at least a subset of This phenomenon we're seeing today, goes back way into history. What are some of your favorite well attested historical instances of of high weirdness? Well, the ones that are most developed

in the literature is the the Fatima apparitions of 1917 >> in Portugal >> and Ezekiel, you know, which is what fifth sixth century BCE. I mean I mean and these show up again and again and if you read if you read Ezekiel chapter 1 And two I mean it's it's so clear this is a UFO event you know in ancient ancient uh Israel and I mean he's even abducted I mean it it's all there you know and it's really weird and but you see the same kinds of motifs the wheels within wheels and the abduction

and the visionary and the the cosmic human being. You see all this again in the modern accounts. And so there it's 2500 years. >> Yeah. >> You know, um the Fatima uh apparitions, if you if you're not familiar with them, were six apparitions that happened on a single on the same day every month for six months, starting in May and ending in October. And if you look at that those events carefully, the children, there's three children, very small young children who had these apparitions or these visions. They didn't even say it was the blessed Virgin

early on. You know, it was a woman in a ball of light landing on a tree and and it was weird. It was super weird. And as the months go on, it gets disciplined or shaped into a Marian apparition because that's what Catholics did. Um, but even as a Marian apparition, it's it's an extremely strange set of events that don't really fit in to the Marian Catholic worldview. Um, and so that's what I mean. That's what I love about This stuff. it it kind of fits, but it really doesn't. And and when you look at

that that tension, to me, that makes it more real and and more legitimate. And um I would never say that the Marian apparition is a UFO event, but I also wouldn't say that the modern UFO events are, you know, ancient aliens or or ancient astron, you know, because they're all these are all interpretations and they really don't work at the end of the day. Yeah. >> The the extraterrestrial hypothesis works for some things but not other things, >> right? Yeah. >> And um so I I want to, as I I keep saying, I want to

keep it all on the table and understand these different mythologies that that wrap around it, but I also again I don't believe the particular mythologies or the particular belief systems. >> Yeah, for sure. Yeah. The thing that is Just so I don't know ve vexing to me is that you know you read something like Yung's take on it that that that it's sort of this emerging >> well he he didn't know what it was. >> Right. Right. >> Completely puzzled. Right. >> Right. Yeah. He like an emerging mythology. And in a lot of ways he

was saying exactly what we're saying. Right. It is something. I'm not saying it's a Projection. Ontologically speaking it's something. But we're projecting an an emerging mythology. Yeah. >> Onto this thing collectively. >> And when I read that, I'm like, that that is it. >> But you but at the same time, you hear the Lazando stories about stuff in hangers or whatever version of that. And it's it just it it complicates things in a way that Yeah. >> Yeah. So, if they hauled the bodies out And the craft, I think I'll change my tune. >> Right.

Right. >> Yeah. I mean, come on. But the point is is that they have not. And we always hear about people who heard or people that saw something have told someone else this. And I know as a historical researcher, the number one rule is I have to site my sources, >> right? >> And you, Michael, have to be able to go To the same sources that I'm citing. And if you can't, I can't why would you believe me, >> right? you know, and so I so I think again I think what someone like Louis Alzando

is doing or these these retired military people are doing is entirely legitimate and they're just telling us the truth that they can't site their sources for various classified reasons. Um, but as a historian of religions, I'm very familiar with that. I'm very Familiar with that that that need of secrecy or or or esotericism. And um I'm very suspicious of it, but so are I think so are they at the end of the day is what I'm trying to say. I don't again I've sat with these people. I've talked to them. They're good people. I'm I'm

not questioning their integrity or their honesty in the least. Um I just think it's more complicated. >> Yeah, >> it's way more complicated than that. Le last question on this on this bit, but I'm I'm always curious to to see how people who have thought deeply about this topic think about this question. What is your sense on why now? Why why now after so much demonization have all of these people who are extensions of the the government though they have severed their direct ties or whatever. You know wh why why are they being Allowed to

say this? I think again I I belong to I belong to big institutions. You can't keep a secret long. You you you can keep it for a while. You can keep it for a few decades, but you can't >> you can't permanently >> keep secrets like this. >> And and my my other thing, you know, why now? I get asked this a lot, by the way. I actually don't think the phenomena has Increased or or decreased. I think the cultural uptake has increased or decreased. So I I think these experiences happen as much in the

Amazonian basin as they do in New Mexico. Um but what gets reported and what gets picked up in in the culture is is very different than what actually happens. And I I'll give you I'll give you an example. Take the near-death experience. Uh and by the way, the other answer to Your question is technology. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> Okay. And the near-death experience is a really good example. So I think people, human beings have been having near-death experiences for as far as we can see back. But guess what? They died, you know, and they and

they didn't come back and tell their story. After after the development of biomedical technology got to a certain point, say in about 1960 or 70, people could Go pretty far into the death process and we could pull them back. And guess what they did? They told stories of what they were seeing and experiencing. And enough of those stories collected and it became the near-death experience in 1975 because of a book, by the way. Um, and so I think it's publication, it's tech, it's it's bio, it's technology, it's the culture is ready for this, but the

culture is not ready for it. You know what most people don't know about the Near-death literature is that it was heavily uh rejected by fundamentalist Christians. And the reason is nobody goes to hell. >> Yeah. >> Okay. That's a problem. That's a big problem. And this this flying saucer or UFO thing is also a big problem theologically you know and so the question I get asked a lot is or I I actually invoke it. I Don't even get asked is do you baptize an alien? And my answer is no. And there's two reasons. One is

first of all it won't let you sec the sec but the second reason is do not reduce the phenomena to your own worldview do not do that and baptism is a great way of just saying oh you're a creature of God you know Jesus died for you let's baptize you into my worldview let's make you a Good whatever you know I'm like no that is actually not what's going on here that this phenomena is here to challenge your worldview, not to have you return to it. That that sounds like the beginning of a good satirical

piece of sci-fi where there's like two aliens that get baptized into competing religions that hate one another and then now it's just as bad as it was before except we have super powerful aliens who both equally believe that they're that They're saved under the umbrella of some Yeah, that that's that's a funny idea. Friends, I have been cooking up the goods over in the members section on YouTube and at patreon.comeyrops. What are said goods? And was cooking really the best verb you could summon on this occasion? Uh, well, to the former question, said goods are

weekly, at least roughly exclusive content that you are never going to see here on the main feed, uh, with some of your favorite Guests. By the way, case in point, I am slowly working on a doc that I shot at contact in the desert this year with a number of your favorite beings on the topic of UFOs and consciousness. And I will be releasing the full unedited conversations with all of those people only on the members channel and on Patreon. If you do join up over at patreon.com/thirdeyrops, you will get access to all of those

exclusive videos, plus a patronon Discord and occasional live hangs and more. And yes, of course, the doc will be coming out on the main feed if I didn't make that clear. So much love for watching, my friends, while I have you tickle that algorithm, like, subscribe, uh, review if you are listening on Spotify. And one of the things I think you call this out pretty specifically in a way that was a a little bit of an epiphany for me personally that I'd never quite thought about it is that it It almost seems like whatever is

responsible for putting the image in front of the experiencer is like a thing in and of itself. like that there's this almost this this unseen symbolic software that places familiar images in front of the experiencers I don't know what you call it mind's eye and and that is such a fascinating idea that that that there could be this almost like dmonic Symbol keeper or something that's that's showing just the thing to make sense to the experiencer as they're experiencing it. And and that's an idea that's like I don't know. It's like the software underneath the

software but above the heart but above the hardware um or something. I I don't know what how do you how do you think about that idea with more sophisticated language than what I just used? >> Fine. You you invoke neoplatinism. I Mean come on. >> Oh yeah. Let's let's go there. >> Yeah. I mean, so I was just a kid who grew up in Nebraska. I grew up in a small town and I got to the seminary and I started to learn about what they were calling the unconscious. And that blew my mind. It just

blew up everything because what it implied was that that human beings are driven by forces of which they are not aware. And um that was obviously the case with sexual male sexual orientation and religious vocation and ecstatic religious experience. And that's why I pursued that for so many years. Um when you get to what what they call the phenomenon today, it's obviously deceptive. It's it's not what is there. But people hear the word deceptive and they immediately go to sinister. And I'm like, no, that's not true. Actually deception is a sign of intelligence. It's not

a sign of of ill intent. It can be can have ill intent but deception is used in biology to reproduce to hide from predators to prey on other things. I mean deception is used for all kinds of reasons in the in the natural world and I suspect it's being used here as well. And I also, you know, I work I work with religious phenomena and I don't believe these things, Michael. I don't believe that what's appearing is what's really there, but I believe that That's what's appearing. >> Yeah. >> You know, and so there's there's

just kind of this paradox where you're taking the appearances seriously, but you're not essentially buying into the the the appearances. And I think that's what's going on. And I think if you look at paranormal phenomena or or or the UFO today, you're just going to run into this deception all the time. And the knee-jerk reaction is to think that it's All human-based. It's just people, you know, screwing with other people and and creating fraud or disinformation or whatever they're doing. And that of course happens. But there's something deeper going on that the phenomena itself is

and it may not be deceiving us in the in in the in the way in the intentional way, but I think it's speaking to us in the only way it can. >> I don't think it can speak rationally or or cognitively. Uh because that's not what it is. It's it's it's something some form of consciousness or awareness that is so beyond any kind of cognition or sensory capacity that how is this how is it going to talk how is the fisherman going to talk to the fish >> right yes yeah >> um how is the

phenomena going to talk to us and and of course it speaks in symbols and speaks in myths and narratives and so I I just think that's How it that's how it works that's what it is and so let's do that Let's let's use methods and theories that acknowledge this narrative kind of approach to things and aren't always looking for, you know, material mechanisms. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. And and I think it's I just want to clarify and correct me if I'm wrong on this, but this is my understanding of Your position. Um you

were saying that you don't believe in these experiences, but from from my understanding of your your stance, it's that you don't believe the images. you believe the onlogical. >> Yeah. The content is what I'm not signing my name to. It's like I'll give you a really simple example that talked about before. So, near-death experiencers will often talk to me and they'll tell me what they saw in the afterlife and what heaven's like and all This. And I can't believe any one of those stories because if I believe that story, I can't believe all these other

stories. I have to dismiss all these other human beings. So for me the the the argument from compassion and from a kind of capaciousness is is to acknowledge what this person saw or believes but not myself believe those beliefs. >> Yeah. >> I I believe the experience but I don't Believe the beliefs if I can put it that way. And um so I'm not I'm not dismissive. I'm not the skeptic. That's not what I'm saying. But I'm also not the believer. >> Yeah, that that totally makes sense. And you know, one of the things I

can't help but think of when when we're talking about this invisible piece of software or or to use my term, don serves you up just the right image so that you can interact with it and understand it is The Hermes archetype. Like um I know there's a passage and at some point I I captured the whole thing because it was just one of the most mind-blowing passages that you even amongst Jung's other mind-blowing passages. He talks about the Hermes archetype or I think he calls it the you know the Mercurious or whatever um in psychology

and alchemy and he talks about the multiplicity of ways that this archetype presents itself like this like Multifaced you know you use the word deceptive and that that's another word that you could ascribe to this archetype right and and I mean he goes down this list of it's God it's the devil it's the redeeming psychop it's the wise old man senx archetype type. It's, you know, and and he but he does it in a way where it doesn't just seem like it's arbitrary and he's using a convenient uh mythopoetic hermeneutical device there And just lumping

it all under Hermes. Like it just it makes so much sense. And then if you just think about throughout the the ages the way that that god or archetype was talked about is like the closest to man. He he's the friendliest to man. He he's the guide. He's the keeper of boundaries. It sounds exactly like whatever this nebulous thing that would serve you up just the right piece of imagery is um and speak and let I would Love to talk more about near-death experiences because that's something you're so um you have so much experience with

and that that like this underlying the difference of the particular images yet the consistency of the underlying grammar. It it seems to be just a really good example of this thing that we're talking about in general. How there there is this, you know, this outof body thing that happens and then this sort of ascent motif that happens and then uh Meetings with various figures that happen and then you seem to hit this point where you almost go into this non-dual unitive type of place, but then you're told, "Nope, you're not allowed to go here yet."

and then back in you go. Um I I think that that might be one of the best examples of this of this whole thing. >> I was at Harvard in May for a conference on platonism and there were all these Platonists there and um they were talking about the daimone, you know, the don this and the don that. And it was so refreshing to me because the don's not the demon, >> right? And as a historian of religions, um, someone who compares religious systems, I'm just so aware of that. And frankly, the daimon in a

neoplatonic sense is way more helpful to to explain what's going on in the UFO phenomena than the Christian. >> Oh, yeah. >> I mean, the Christian demon is frankly silly and not helpful at all. And and it's exactly what gets invoked over and over again. And there's a part of me that that acknowledges that these are demonic in the sense that they question the relevancy of the worldview that's that's at stake, but they're not demonic in the sinister or or evil sense. And um that's where I just have a huge problem with This. Um so

I think I think the Don is is but but it's not that I want to sign my name to the Don either. It's not that the neoplatanist had it all right and now all we have to do is become neoplatanists and we'll be fine. That is not what I'm trying to say. I'm trying to say look there are different moments in in human history and they have their different interpretations of this and we need to take it all in but we need to come up with our own reading of it. And I think this is

what Jung was doing by the way. >> Yes. >> He was definitely not a neoplatonist but he definitely wasn't a good Lutheran either. He was trying to lift off the off the game the game board as it were and figure out what the whole game is. He was trying to figure out that that software or hardware behind the the display. And um I like Yung. I mean I've I've spent my Whole life lecturing at Yung centers and talking to Yians and I I've read tons and tons of Yung. I think he was great for for

the time. I think we just know a lot more now and we have to think different thoughts and say different things and it's not that we're better, it's just that we're at a different place. I I do the the third thing and we've gotten kind of far away from it now, but there were more questions I had and plus this is fertile territory for Uh another subject that you and I are fascinated by. Um, returning to that subject of what are we capable of with our consciousness in terms of reaching out and what is it

possible to reach out to and communicate with via that latent capability that we seem to have. Um so you know wrapped up in this is still there's still questions about like what is within that disassociated boundary and what is outside of it or you know What is a product of your own personal psyche versus the collective but how do you view things like for instance like a a DMT entity or something that appears to be autonomous whole ecosystems that appear to be like freestanding hyperdimensional very very unlike our everyday reality. Do you take seriously the

idea that these really could be freestanding predominantly like mental ecosystems or do you think this is probably within the dissociated Boundary the individual psyche? >> I think it is conceivable that that there are freestanding mental realms that we don't pick out under no ordin ordinary circumstances because they don't have a bearing on our ability to survive and reproduce. So we didn't evolve cognitively to pick out those realms in mental space. So to say it's useless for us. It would only cognitively overload us. Um so it is conceivable that there are mental Ecosystems beyond our dissociative

boundaries where there are semiautonomous or maybe autonomous complexes mental complexes also partly dissociated themselves and uh where they live out their experience that is conceivable. Um I would be very cautious though of any psychonaut coming back and saying >> right >> making that affirmation as uh a fact. Um I think for us to be able to say that we Would need to have you know a a study under controlled conditions and many volunteers um a lot of prior training um which would be required for anybody to even have a hope to steer their psychedelic experience

in a given direction which for me was impossible. I never managed to do that when I when I used psychedelics until several years ago. did that for a period of two years as a kind of research exercise. I never could Steer it. It it it chose >> what I would experience never the other way around. So if if it is to be possible at all to make a evidence-based inference that there are such realms uh we would have to find ways to steer psychedelic trips which right now we haven't. >> So I I would be

very cautious against these claims for the time being even though I think it is conceivable. There is nothing appriori impossible about it Under analytic idealism. >> Yeah. Yeah. Talk about stretching your metacognitive horizon. That's a big stretch. That's like some advanced yoga for sure. Trying to bring bring back anything approaching coherent that is so alien to the way that you typically view reality and associate with reality. Yet you're just left with this indelible, you know, just lifelong imprint that the the mystery is real. It's out there. You Can experience it. It absolutely can overwhelm you.

And beyond that, I agree. You have to use a lot of caution as to what it is, what it isn't, what it wants, what what it really consists of, how it presents itself even. And to to to put more resolution in what I was saying that I was talking about with Jeff Krile is, you know, he, as you know, is deeply obsessed with all of the frontiers of consciousness and takes them very Seriously. But he also, like you and like me, is very cautious about placing too much weight on the image as it's presented or

remembered by the experiencer because that that image like we don't even understand. what it is. We understand it can be colored by psychology, by culture, by uh whatever bias and predispositions that we have. And that leads to all kinds of really other really interesting questions as to like why that image? What what is presenting the image? Why does it show up in that way? Could it is that an artifact of some part of your own dissociative boundary? Is that a mask it consciously chose to present in? Like there's so many interesting questions again when you

get to these frontiers of consciousness that >> Yeah. I think psychedelic nosis when it's brought back as literal is very suspicious. Yeah. The mind manifests itself psychedelic in the mind Manifesting. >> Yeah. >> It manifests itself symbolically. Um I at the same time I mean mo I think most of the figures that appear in our rearies are part of our own collective our own mind talking to itself and we have internal dissociations as well. We are not a unity. Any >> any therapist with a lot of clinical experience would tell you that that we Are

collectives and there's still a child in us. There's still a teenager in us. There are still those Bernardos who have been repressed and not heard, not listened to. They're still there. They all still have their feelings. They all still have their emotions. Um so maybe some of that appears as entities. uh but they are not really objective entities outside us. But um there are realms in psychedelic space where the Agencies that seem to appear are so alien. >> Yeah. >> And um and and yet so aential they they seem really have their own agency. >>

Yeah. Um, and they seem to find us just as strange as we find them. >> And >> totally. >> So I I wouldn't poo poo that entirely. >> No, >> sometimes you come back with an experience that you think, wow, it's like you just happened into a place where you were not expected and everybody who was there looks at you funny like, what the hell? Who the hell are you? What are you doing here? >> And and the alieness is so profound. Um, it's not only at the seemingly physical level, but also at the level

the level of logic and emotion. The alieness is so profound that I can understand that some People find it hard to think that um, it is a part of themselves because it's profoundly nonhuman, profoundly non anything that we can speak of in language. Um then I've been maybe once or twice very few times um to to space in the psychedelic realm in which I had this this feeling that wow this is really something now >> and it was very different from all my personal because usually you confront your personal shift in a Psychedelic trip everything

you repressed all of your you know your dark side that you don't want to acknowledge your hidden desires you know your depravity and your guilt and your anxiety and all that stuff. Um, but so you get used to that. You get used to identifying your own after a while. >> But then occasionally, very occasionally, occasionally, very rarely, you happen upon a space that is totally different and then you go like, whoa, What is this now? This this is something. >> Yeah. So I assume you're aware of the extended state DMT experiments that have been that

are being done at Imperial College London now. And I have one of my friends actually Alexander Biner was a participant in that pilot study. And I mean this is a guy with a lot of experience in altered states but um you know very considerable philosophical grounding. Um were you ever on the Channel um Rebel Wisdom? Yes, I talked to him once or twice. Twice I think. >> So, you know him? Yeah. And I mean, he is pretty convinced after being you I don't want to put words in his mouth, but after a few um many

conversations with him and a few of them recorded, it's pretty difficult for him to swallow that it's not like that you're not entering a freestanding ecosystem. I Mean, just just like you said, you know, it's almost like and the way he talks about it, it's like going into a rainforest or something. You know, some stuff is interested in you and wants to run around you and be like, "Hey, look at this. Some stuff doesn't give a Some stuff is uh not particularly friendly, but it's feels incredibly vast and teeming with life." and he told me

that they've now either done a study or are going to do a study That's aimed at what we're talking about. Trying to put multiple people in the state at the same time and see if there's if there's agreeance or replicability on what's being seen when. And I'm just so eager to hear the results of that because there's just so many anecdotal cases of people being in psychedelic states together having what seems like some kind of boundary breaking mental connection. Um >> yeah, for me this happened really maybe Maybe twice, probably only once. Um most of

my psychedelic journeys were either about the hidden parts of me. >> Mhm. >> Uh or about the whole. So not any particular ecosystem but the whole the cosmic itch that drives the endogenous excitations of mind at large. Um the the unasked questions that drive the universe forward. Um there is only one consistent entity if you will or agency I prefer The word agency that I have encountered many times and I can't tell you whether it's me or not um but it was always an agency that um I'll describe it symbolically now that always was very

interested in giving me a gift >> and that gift was not a thing was a way of seeing was a realization and it's very difficult to get a human to >> wow >> achieve that realization because of how Our cognitive system is wired and what it's optimized for what it has evolved to do. So you sort of have to unwind all that stuff. You have to undo all of those clampings, you know, all of those foldings that we have evolved to have in order to be able to see the gift. Um, and I succeed and

and and this thing, this agency was always trying to help me do that. And it and to do that, you have to undergo a benign form of deception because what prevents you from seeing it Is yourself. >> Your patterns of thinking and feeling prevent you from seeing that. So, you have to be unwound. And this thing is trying to deceive you into unwinding yourself. It's a benign form of deception. And uh once that happens then you see the thing and it starts as a cir a spherical object with glowing lights. But um if you can

actually see it then it's not an object. It's thought it's emotion. It's you and other itself and World. It's the panacea. It's the template the pattern underlying everything. It it is it is everything. This sounds very >> this sounds very Hermes like like the thing >> this is a it is a beyond orgasmic experience. Um so the throughout most of my trips I I always sensed the present presence of this agency. Um and in a few I I I could see it. I I could see the thing. >> Wow. >> And it is mindblowing. It's

a it's a level of delight and and clarity that uh is unfathomable. You cannot bring that back. It's it's an experience of the moment and it and it belongs in that realm and in that realm alone. You don't get to bring it back. The only thing you bring it back is a profound gratitude um that such a thing exists in nature. Now even if you say it's a form of illusion fine under idealism everything is mental. So there is a sense in which you could say everything is an illusion. But if it is so it's

as real as an illusion as as real an illusion as this right now because it's experienced as real and at the end of the day that's that's all that's all we have right there's no reality outside mind. Um so it it to me it has been comforting many times to come back and know that such a Thing whatever it is exists in nature. Uh it's very reassuring and and it's delightful. It's a it's a form of art beyond anything conceivable. >> That's incredible. And I mean you know from like a Yung would have a field

day with this. I mean a vision of a this like spherical agency that feels like this boundary transcending completion. You know, it sounds very soul like or donlike or like I said, Hermes like this thing that sort of Transcends boundaries that are normally not able to be transcended. But it, you know, it's like beyond whatever that personal dissociative boundary is, but it's also within it at the same time. And you normally do not have the ability to wrap your mind around that in any way or even witness it in any way. But under the right

circumstances, it's possible to have a sort of like absolutely mercurial encounter with this thing. Um >> yeah, it is um it is not a product of me. Um is not a product of Bernardo Castro. Now whether it's outside my dissociative boundary or imminent in it >> Mhm. >> I I would tend to say it exists in a form in which this distinction does not hold. We cannot think of reality in this spatial terms anymore. Um at the level of that that gift that thing. Uh it's a Kind of um it's a singularity. It's a self-recursive

singularity. It's like a key to existence. The key to all complexity. It is that out of which everything unfolds. It's the folded form of all of existence. Um the folded form with the inherent templates, the inherent dispositions uh of existence that generate everything if you allow it to unfold. So it's a self self recursive singularity that creates everything out of itself. And At that level because it's a singularity you know it makes no sense to say is it inside my dissociative body or is it outside is it imminent in everything or is it geographically located

in mental space all of this stuff collapses. So that's why I never wrote about it. It's impossible to write about it. >> Yeah. Uh it's like it's like an encounter with noose or logos or anything that is just so beyond language that any language you try to Forced onto it is actually sort of damaging the the purity of of whatever you experienced. Yeah. Those experiences are just so valuable that it is >> it's not something to bring back from a psychedelic trip. I mean, if you did psychedelics like I did as a research enterprise, I

find it preposterous to do psychedelics for fun. They're not fun. They're very hard. >> Yeah. >> Uh so you do it as a kind of, you know, study. Um >> um so there is a lot in my trips that um I had this sense, you know, this is fish I can bring back to the tribe like McKenna used to say, >> you know, stuff that you can bring back. But the gift >> was never that. It doesn't have that ethos of part being part of your curriculum. It's grace. Every now and then you're granted grace

for the sake Of it. It doesn't have the higher purpose of you writing about it or how it's going to change your life. No, it's just grace. >> That's all. >> There's nothing more to it. >> It's a numinous gift. >> A numinous gift. Yeah, I love that. Um, since we talked last, we we did riff on this topic in our last conversation, but it was just before you released your article on the UFO UAP topic, so I Didn't get to ask you this, but and you, from my memory, you do bring up high weirdness

as a unavoidable part of this conversation, but and you kind of distinguish it from the nuts and bolts phenomena, but I don't recall if you brought up this sort of idea of mental agencies as potentially being the source of some of this phenomena. >> I did. >> Did you? Okay. >> In in an older book called Meaning in Absurdity, >> I explicitly did just that. So, look, I I have been very disappointed with what's going on in the UAP world this year. um disappointed to the point of disgust of just closing certain accounts that were

well I don't want to talk about it. I'll leave it at that. Uh I'm disappointed to the point of disgust. So um if I were to maintain anything about my views on high Strangeness phenomenon I would say it's the high strangeness part that I think holds water that I think is um doubtless you cannot just ignore the reports of tens of thousands hundreds of thousands um of people and those reports carry the hallmarks of truth. And I'm not going to share publicly what I consider those hallmarks to be. Otherwise, next week everybody, every report will

will have that uh those hallmarks, but I have my private understanding of what the Hallmarks are. Um and and I apply them. For instance, Alexander has the hallmarks. Anita Mojani has the hallmarks. >> Yeah. Um certain people in the UA UAP and alien abduction so-called layer alien abduction discourse have the hallmarks. A bunch of others don't. Um so I take high strangeness seriously. Now the recent nuts and bolts hoopla I did take seriously until last year >> until some point this year I take less seriously now. There are some in my vi in my mind

very concerning um developments, very concerning material, very concerning actions and uh man it frankly disgusts me. So I I I checked out from that. Like are you are you >> sorry just to clarify are you leaning to more toward that feeling >> like for lack of a better term a scop or Something that's being co-opted for propaganda purposes or uh an agenda beyond the truth or what is disgusting you >> well I wouldn't go religious about it I don't think it it's appropriate but um I question Now the motivations behind a lot of what's happening

and if I have to give you a word I would give you the word misinformation. >> Mhm. >> So right now as far as the nuts and bolts part of the thing is concerned I don't know what to think. >> Yeah. >> And um and I realized that um I cannot know what to think. >> Right. >> And uh so I I dropped that ball. I don't want to be part of that. Um, you know, I I literally closed very special high security accounts that that I had and and Shows you to the the extent

of my concern. >> Yeah. >> Um, but the the high strangeness part >> that is real, right? >> Yeah. And it's interesting that you brought up, you know, with the hallmarks, you brought up people who are famous for being near-death experiencers, people who they didn't have a, you know, ET experience per se. They had a dying experience. It via which they went through all kinds of archetypal um encounters with with other and or or with the the extra beyond the physical. And I also I mean I know of cases that are more aligned with a

UAP UFO community where people's experiences are closer to that for sure. Um and I don't know if you want to get into specific examples of people that you think have gotten A similar message, but it's interesting to me in and of itself that you equated it with near-death experiences. I think that that says a lot. And one thing I'm I'm not personally sure about, I obviously haven't had a near-death experience, but one thing that I'm not sure about is what I think about the overlap between my kind of like heroic dose experiences with potentially other

agencies or consciousness systems or whatever you want to call it. And what I Think that says about this phenomenon, like I would love to have some sort of overarching cohesive narrative that it is all a product of the same which ultimately I guess in in idealism it is a product of the same thing. But the foundation of analytic idealism is that everything is one. There is one consciousness. We are disassociations of that one consciousness. But beyond that, between our disassociation and the fundamental reality, You must entertain the idea that there are many other dissociations or

or like hierarchies or something, right? Like and and maybe that maybe we're just peering into an absolute ocean of disassociations or what you could call beings and they're just going to present in all kinds of ways. And that's what the tr the truth beyond our boundary is is that there's just this paniply of other ways that consciousness presents itself and That we're beginning to scratch the surface of whatever that is. >> I I am with the spirit of of what you said. I I would only not agree with one specific part which you said which

was between us and this world there must be other levels hierarchy of dissociations. I don't know that because we have a physical appearance. So the rest of this universe. So if there is anything in between, I would expect it too to have a physical appearance and we don't find It. It's it's not, you know, at hand. Um but um it is entirely conceivable that this universe is just one segment of mind at large. And um it's the segment in which we exist. And and then there are parallel universes, not ever parallel universes. I think that's

because the motivation to postulate that is nonsensical. It lacks all empirical grounding. It's a theoretical fantasy. Now the even though multiveres I think Is ungrounded and therefore should be discarded. Um that doesn't mean that all the the entire notion of parallel universes in general, not parallel universes that arise because both possibilities of a measurement are actually true in a different parallel universe. No, I'm not talking about exploding cazillions of parallel universes that pop into existence out of nothing every time two quantum systems interact. That's not what I'm talking About. I'm not talking about mushrooming parallel

physical universes. I'm talking about parallel universes that may exist at all times. We don't have the power to create or destroy them by an observation and they will not look physical to us because other rules uh apply maybe even other rules of logic because logic is axiomatic, right? Um so it is conceivable that there are parallel universes of this latter kind um which we have no access to because there is Some kind of universal level of dissociation splitting this bubble universes from each other >> and it is conceivable that during a very high dose psychedelic

trip it is conceivable I'm not saying that I have reasons to believe that but it is conceivable that in a highdose psychedelic trip in which most of the dynamic structure of mind is just dissolved because that's what psychedelics do that um that one could Catch a glimpse of what's happening happening in the next room in the palace of the universal mind so to say because what confines us here are certain cognitive structures that that's the only way you can create structure in a mind is structures of cognition structures of association dissociation representation and re-representation and

so forth so if you dismantle those structures that create this universe uh in which we are rooted. Uh it stands to Reason that you go to a a level of mentation which is so raw in which you can get a catch a glimpse of whatever else is going on in the palace of mind. >> Yeah. >> So that is conceivable. Yes. And the the the telltale sign of that would be that not only is the physics different but the logic is different that um >> Aristotleian axioms don't apply. I think Aristotleian at least four of

them apply to this universe. So if I'm having a Discussion on analytic philosophy I will be largely an Arisotellian. I'm actually an intuitionist. Intuitionism accepts four of Arisotalian of the Arisotellian axioms and rejects one which is the law of the excluded middle which says that things are either true or false not both and not neither. Well, I reject that. I I think I see truth as a as a construct. You have to have an example of it to prove that it exists as opposed to proving that it cannot be false. That's Just abstraction. You see?

So I'm an intuitionist in this universe but I'm keenly aware that if we are not talking about this universe we are not having an analytic discussion or you're having a loser you know frontiers uh discussion >> right >> um then I would say the telltale sign of these other realms in the overall palace of mind would be that also logic does not apply that the the expectations about what makes sense and what doesn't Would be very different. In other words, absurd. >> Yeah. >> My strangess. >> Yeah. Or at the very least not linear and

not subject to the way that things work in everyday consensus reality. And eventually you get you get to to this metaphysical notion of there being something very similar to what you're describing in a more technical way which is that you have These like gradations of uh a agency and ontological power. And that's like kind of what this word hypoxis means is you higher things on the chain have more hypoxis and then there's other things underneath those things that have less and less as it goes down. >> Yes. >> So so it puts us in this

>> constraint that you've been describing as the headset, right? Or that we again we could think about as being within a Game as within Grand Theft Auto. But then there's like limitations. there's there's still these limitations as to what we can do. But then the interesting question is is are these insights that you're talking about are these potential ways to increase the scope of what the headset can do? Like are are these ways to expand what a human maybe even can do? Or are we always going to be limited? I mean, we're going to be

limited to some degree, of course. It's Like I don't think it's possible for us to dissolve back into the one as a human being and like continue to exist. But um but do do you see that as a real possibility that we're going to unlock new faculties, new modes of perception, you know, things we can't even imagine right now? >> Absolutely. And so I'll first start off with a statement that's you know to put some modesty on the whole thing. that is this is just the first layer outside of Soft of of software outside of

spacetime. So it's >> so so I'm not claiming anywhere close to a theory of everything or anything like that but but I think with that proviso I think that there's magic here that you know this think about it this way if you are a wizard inside Grand Theft Auto you can do all sorts of amazing things and people are impressed but if you're the geek that wrote the software uh you can do things that the wizard doesn't Understand you can make their car disappear you can take the tires off their car you you can just

do magic, right? >> Mhm. >> Basically, if what we're saying is correct, um we're going to be unlocking incredible magic. And so, I I'll just give you one example of the kind of magic that goes on. This time dilation stuff. Suppose I'm I'm Able to use this big matrix. That's that's me. I'm able I'm I've got this big matrix. My time counter is going for every one of those experiences. Suppose that your matrix um is only you know onetenth of mine, right? So you only see >> probably is Don to be honest. >> Well, I

should have turned it the other way. So I'll turn it around. So you got a big matrix and and Hoffman only sees onetenth of Michael's. Who who knows what it is? But so so so I'll I'll do it I'll do it that way. So Hoffman has only 10% of Michael's experiences. And um what happens then is for every click of time that I see, Michael has could do 10 times many many other things. He could do lots of other things where I think nothing's happened. For for Michael, it could be a thousand years or a

million years depending on how how much bigger your matrix is. You you could you could have a thousand years to do whatever you want. And for Me, it's instantaneous. That that means effectively that I'm a sitting duck, >> right? >> Compared to you. I'm a sitting duck. I mean, you can do whatever you want while I'm just sitting there inert unable to to do anything. >> Well, where this gets really trippy is if you ask yourself what kind of a being would that be? like like like you know obviously this is a fun example you

and me but if we really try like this really Gives you some insight as to what it might be to be a higher being like a an alien an angel what whatever like whatever word you want to put on it might be something like this and maybe that's why when people have you know altered states experiences or numinous experiences they see these things that just completely stretch their ability to conceive you know like in in like going back to biblical examples angels always be not afraid. Like I know Whatever I'm looking like to you, it's

looking real crazy, but like try not to freak out, you know? And and that's been my experience too with altered states is is it is absolutely that um belvelt I was talking about where I can easily make sense of reality. It is shaking, man. It is it is like, you know, trying as hard as it can to maintain homeostasis and it can't happen. So maybe that's what it's like for for for us >> in our trace gaining a very low pixel resolution of like what what that adding another integer adding another possibility to that space

might be like it might be this overwhelming numinous uh mysterium tremendum kind of experience absolutely and and I've only talked about the time there's also the space as you were saying >> like So when you you have much more dimensions of space. If you have the big if you're the bigger trace than mine, I'm just a small trace than you. Then my distances are different from yours. I I've I've got a limited set of time. I've got a limited set. You're working in a much bigger space than me as well as you got more time.

So you can do stuff outside where I can't see. I You could do something inside my trace. I see. So I see an object inside the trace. you've let me see it and then um you then do something So that all of a sudden it looks like the thing that I see in my trace moved at Mach 40, >> right? >> Accelerated at impossible or or faster than the speed of light. And but inside your big matrix, you're you're all within your own laws quote unquote laws of physics in your in your matrix. But because

I'm at a much smaller matrix, it looks like magic to me and it looks like it's impossible to Me. So, literally, you could be doing all sorts of stuff and I'm a sitting duck. Um, you can So, there's going to be uh the technologies that would come out of this are you you can't think big enough. >> Yeah. >> And Yeah. Right. Well, what you just described, I don't know if you want to go here, but what you just described really sounds like most people's UFO experiences when they When they see one or they try

to sense one is these things are doing things that from our vantage point seem like it shouldn't be possible. It shouldn't be possible to go from sea level to 40,000 ft and then back to sea level again all within a second or two. But these are supposedly things that uh fighter pilots have captured on, you know, things that that work well enough that we're using them to like protect our our country and our interests and fight wars. And those Instruments work well for those purposes. So, it seems to be telling us something about something as

impossible as it sounds, right? >> Um, so maybe that's one of the only explanations. I well, you know, I I hadn't paid much attention to the UAP thing until there there was the um congressional hearing >> in which >> people under oath >> said, "I have been part of this. I've Seen the technology. I've seen nonhuman biologics." And so at that point then I gave myself permission to think about okay. Um there is now some credible testimony here that these things may actually exist. And it's very very clear from the work that I've been doing

independently that this kind of technology is easily possible from from this Framework. If you're if you're if you take spaceime as fundamental, then it's hard to explain this technology. It's just sort of like the laws of physics simply don't allow this stuff. And it's there's no way that we can see in a space-time framework. Of course, we still haven't united, you know, really united things that that in a deep way. We don't have a theory of everything in certain time inside spaceime. the standard model goes so so Far but you know there are things that

we might try to to do inside but still it's hard to imagine this kind of magic happening but if you switch frameworks space time is just a VR headset >> and consciousness is the creator of this headset so and we can start to describe a layer of software outside the headset then it's a no-brainer that if you are the VR designer you Oh, how it's how it's Designed, then you can do magic inside the headset as I was describing the the so so I I'm actually it's almost scary the technologies that can come out of

this. So the the trace logic is um also quite dangerous. So I think understanding the the trace logic and and and perhaps this notion of agency um is opening up a Pandora's box because if you think about it, this is a way of thinking about technologies that we simply have never Had before, >> right? >> We we have all of our military systems are designed with physics inside spaceime. We've only used what we know about the inside of the headset. So we our our best military equipment is because um you know we are like the

the really the the great player of Grand Theft Auto. We know how to do stuff inside the headset. >> But as soon as you get outside the Headset and start playing with the software itself, uh the first you know the first country to do that is is the winner in terms of of technology. there's there's no nothing that you could do to stop it. So, this is a it's it's a it's actually a Pandora's box um that that's happening here. So, one can only hope that one of the big lessons here is where did the

trace logic come from? Where did the consciousness come from? It comes from the idea that there is that consciousness is fundamental and each one of us is simply an avatar expression of of a deep unified consciousness. And and so what what comes out of the trace logic is what spiritual traditions have been saying for a long time. And Jesus said it very very clearly. You'll love your neighbor as yourself. >> Yeah. The implication being your Neighbor is yourself. Basically, we're and and that's really the point the trace logic does say all of us are in

fact the one consciousness looking at itself through different headsets. So someone who is smart enough to begin to use the trace logic outside of spaceime to build technologies hopefully also is smart enough to understand what this is saying. that is that the person that you're going to use this technology on Is you. That person is you. >> Yeah. >> And so be careful how you use this technology because what you're doing it the any harm that you choose to do is harm that you're doing to um an avatar of yourself. Ultimately, >> you aren't your

avatar. You you transcend. But to the extent that you don't want something to happen to your avatar, you should not want something to happen to the avatar of of another Person. >> So I'm hoping that the the the that at the same time that we get a technological boost that we also get in some sense a moral boost from from the same place. >> Yeah. I I suspect Don and and it seems like that this is the only way I can square the circle I'm about to describe is within a lot of that same conversation

one of the direct things you seem to be Hearing more and more is that consciousness seems to be core to whatever the UAP technology is and of course that's very speculative and handwavy but maybe it's something along the lines of if we do add another possibility to our, you know, Markov matrix. Maybe it's not just going to be some new advanced physics technology. Maybe it's going to be something that makes that statement make sense. That there is Something about consciousness and physics or about reality that's intertwined in a way that right now doesn't make sense

to us. But maybe just by unlocking one more gradation of reality or one new possibility or understanding suddenly there will be some new noises. There will be some new understanding of oh this is how these pieces fit together. We we thought that applied technology like this and my qualia, my conscious experience are two Completely categorically different things. But maybe this is the thing that closes the gap or closes the circle or something like that. And along with that would come all kinds of epiphies and all kinds of new um hugely ontologically reorienting understandings in terms

of what we are. And it wouldn't just be like a a conversation. It would be I'm I'm talking about like a knowing like a new sense or a new thing that um of course I can't describe because it's Like it's like how do you describe what you don't know? But but it's but it's I don't know. I that's the nebulous sense that I get. >> Right. Well, first I completely agree and in the following sense that what this approach is saying is that what is beyond spaceime is entirely consciousness. It is entirely in some sense

psychological in the way that you were talking about. So, so yeah to the extent that the UAPs have been Associated with all sorts of psychological phenomena that that also follows immediately from this the ontology of this whole approach of the trace logic it's consciousness all the way down. And so in in fact all the technologies that look physical everything that looks to us physical is ultimately from from this point of view psychological. The the very spaceime itself is entirely a psychological construct. Everything inside spacetime Is a psychological construct. Once you understand that then that opens

up the technologies um that that would seem impossible in a physicist physicalist ontology. Um, and I again I don't think that we can think big enough out outside of the the box, but I see no reason why we will be limited to to um the the technologies that we have right now are going to seem um pre-industrial uh compared to to to what we're going to have. And it will be by the way also you Know other experiences like people on various drug experiences like DMT and so forth. They there are some some cases they

seem to be um having >> experiences that are >> perhaps in higher dimensional spaces you know not just three dimensions right they >> they might be seeing hyperdimensional objects and and and so forth. And if Einstein's spacetime, his curved spacetime is the fundamental nature of Reality, then clearly seeing in into a you know a 30-dimensional space is is only a psychological hallucination. It's not the truth. If if our ontology is that maybe a string theory there's 11dimensional thing or something like that, but but yeah, right now string theory is not it seems to be on

the ropes um among the physicists themselves. that it doesn't seem to be working in um it's giving us a lot of beautiful insights mathematically and And beautiful insights physically but as a fundamental theory of everything I I I don't see physicists rallying around it like they used to. So, so when you have experiences in really high dimensional spaces under now it's quite possible of course that those any particular experience is just hallucination. you're just screwing up the brain and you know if you hit me on the head yeah I'm going to see all sorts of

stuff but it's also possible in in the framework I'm working On that that could be a genuine insight that maybe >> if we take some drug um I mean so I I'm perfectly open to saying some drugs just screw your brain up and it's hallucination and there's no insight into a deeper reality period. Yeah, >> but but I think that there it's certainly possible and I'm not going to claim claim right now any specific drug is doing this, but I'd say it is at least in principle possible in the Framework I'm working on to have

a drug molecule that is already in the brain for example and we're tweaking it >> right >> and that then that's tweaking a dimension parameter right now the dimension parameter for space is d equals 3. So D the the parameter D has a value three in our headset >> and we tweak this chemical now it goes to five or 10 >> and all of a sudden um we have the same Kind of architecture but this one parameter in how we build the headset gets gets manipulated. So it could be that some simple chemical manipulation in

the brain could switch from three to 10 because in when I'm actually looking at the you know how how am I going to actually build space time from marov matrices so when we do these theorems so we're trying to prove this theorem right of how do we get Minowski space from the theory of conscious agents What are we doing it's not just a theorem this is the first step in building the headset. That's just a headset projection of the software outside of space time, which is far more complicated. >> So, so the big problem of

neuroscience hasn't even been started yet. And it's crazy because it seems like every dimension, no matter how deep we look or how wide we look within this headset, it's like hinting at that structure over And over again. Like I'm sure you've seen these how, you know, cliche images at this point of how these big galactic superclusters look very brain-like. And to my understanding, they've done some some deeper even like peer-reviewed analysis of the similarities in architecture between, you know, galactic filaments and um galaxies and how similar they look to the brain structure in in not

like a handwavy Yeah, that looks similar way, but a very precise Way. And and it's the same thing when you look down into the dirt, right? the the the the mycelial mat at the at the very root level of the planet looks the same. >> So it seems like every level of intelligence >> at least within the the headset within spaceime is showing us this fractal layered intelligent structure at at every level. And the question is is what Does that tell us about well there's many questions but one of the questions is what does that

tell us about the level of intelligence above this one? Yeah, my um my understanding from the trace logic now is um our headset is one of the cheaper ones, one of the more trivial ones. We we we have and and this is a really important point and it's it's one that's hard to come to grips with emotionally. It's it's very easy for us to think that We're sort of at the top of the intelligence chain. Um, I look down and I see, you know, an ant crawling around on the ground and the ant can't see

what I'm doing. It doesn't know much about me. I I live in a whole world that the ant could never conceive, I would think. And so, it probably knows very, very little about my world. And my world is far, I would guess, far superior and far richer than that of the ant. But now, if you think about that, how much do I Know about the ant? But I don't know too that that much about the I can do some studies on it. But um it's quite possible that my headset put put it this way. I'm

I know that I I'm very much rich very rich in my experience and my complexity and my guess is that the ant's headset isn't telling it very much about me. Right? I'm guessing that the ant's headset just um doesn't grock Hoffman at all. But Given that logic, there's a chance that my headset isn't grocking what I'm interacting with when I see all I see is an ant. Maybe all the ant sees of Hoffman is an ant. And it's not because Hoffman is just an ant. It's just because the ant headset can't see Hoffman very well.

Well, turnabout is fair play. Maybe I all when I see something and I call it just and I think it's it's trivial. I could be interacting with an Intelligence that if I actually understood it, I would fall before it in in in terror or or amazement or whatever because this thing completely transcends me. But all I can see is an ant. >> So it's is it's very easy for us to mistake the limits of our headset for an insight into reality. Totally. >> That's the key point. What you see inside your spacetime is entirely a

function of the limits of your headset. It is not an insight into The ultimate nature of reality. When I'm seeing a ladybug, that's it's that's the limit of my headset. What am I interacting with? If I actually knew what I was interacting with, I might fall down and worship it. >> But all I can see is a ladybug. So, so, so, so we have to be very, very careful to think of ourselves. The very fact that we think of ourselves as at the top of the food chain shows how benited we are. >> To the

extent that I feel that I am really smarter than everything I see, that is the key evidence that I know next to nothing. >> So, what what this mathematics is telling me is our headset is one of the cheapest headsets that I could imagine in the theory. >> It's only got a d parameter of three. There's no reason why the d parameter could go couldn't go to a billion. Why shouldn't one thing I I I am frustrated. I'm sure many mathematicians are frustrated. I can imagine a three-dimensional cube. And it's very helpful to imagine things

when I'm trying to solve problems. Try to imagine a four-dimensional cube, a tesseract. >> I can't do it. >> Yeah. And I I you know and nobody can even a brilliant mathematician has to work around this limitation of our Imagination. They have to use mathematics and and tricks to you and proof theorem and proof to get to the properties of these higher dimensional objects. >> Wouldn't it be nice if someone in the comments is going to say yes I can I can No. Yeah. I'm joking. I'm joking. Well, someone probably will. >> Yeah. Probably probably

so. And I I hope that someone can and maybe you know on the right psychedelic perhaps someone Can actually go to a fourdimensional space and really see a test. I would love to get data >> that you know for some you like a real mathematician saying you so we get someone who's a credible mathematician that says yeah I saw a tesseract and now we're talking about something really interesting. So if if you know some psychedelic can do that if you know psilocybin can do that or whatever that would be very very Interesting. >> There there

was just a sorry to interrupt but I just wanted to share this and I'll I'll try to find the graphic for it. There is a someone made an animation where there's hidden information that you cannot see unless you're on I think it might be psilocybin or it's definitely some tryptoine where there's like they're basically like these tracers moving and you can just see the Color of the tracers or something. But if you but if you're on whatever particular um you know what whatever the alkaloid is you can actually see that there's like hidden information that

reveals itself under under that influence. So it could it I I do suspect and to your point earlier that that may be exactly what we're doing with with a certain class of substances that we are actually tweaking and expanding the headset to some Degree. And I would love to say that I think it's just a pure flow of more real information, but I also think there's probably interference from your own mind and your own preconceived notions about reality and your own programming and your own fears and thoughts and blah blah blah that's getting all mixed

in there. So, you are getting more, but you're also turning up the volume on your own psyche and and every all at the same time. And that That's sort of been my experience is it's just like more of everything. More of everything, >> right? And and and again, you know, I'm a hard no scientist, so I'll I'll say this. Of course, we have to be open >> all the time to the possibility that the psychedelic drug is simply addling your brain and there's nothing deep to see here. On the other hand, we should be open

with rigorous experiments, no hand waves, with with credible subjects where We try to explore is there something be beyond just adultling the brain. I think the the mathematics I'm working on says there's a good possibility that that's that we might be able to find that kind of thing and and if so we should we we should study it. But it's not enough to have informal descriptions of psychonauts. We we have to have more systematic hard-nose rigorous experiments. Um and you know if there are claims of interacting with entities Beyond space time >> y >> then

we need to substantiate those claims with hardnose experiments where information is exchanged from one person to the entities to some other person in a way that could not possibly have happened any other way. So so I'm very very hardnosed about all this stuff. You have to be both there's a balance. You have to be completely open to all these possibilities that might seem bizarre And then you have to be completely hard-nosed about testing them. So, so it's it's a balance, completely open, but but no BS at all in in the experiments and and and you

have to be your own harshest critics. And so that's one reason why I'm I'm going after this with mathematicians and and it's a matter of theorem proof theorem proof thing about the big bang getting quantum um probabilities out of this just going Down systematically the positive showing how the positive geometries come exactly out of this. So this is all and if at any point we can't do it, it's game over, right? This if if I if we can't get general relativity from the trace logic and this theory of agency that I talked about, if if

it's not possible, if we can prove we can't do it, then um I will have to say that um nice try, but this wasn't it. Um back back to the drawing board. So So this this is all Fun. I'm excited about it, but uh you know, we've been disappointed many times before. So, so we will see. It's got to be theorem proof. Theorem proof. Not >> Yeah. >> But you have to you do have to be willing to think out of the think big, think out of the box. It's hard to think out of spaceime.

Um and to be rigorous at the same time. And so that's that's the the tight rope that you have to walk. >> Yeah. I I love it, Don. And I I love everything you're doing. And I deeply deeply appreciate that you are rigorous when it comes to all of this stuff and all the nuance that you put on all of your thoughts, yet at the same time you always display this epistemic humility. And I yeah, I I just I'm just so glad you're out there. I'm so glad you're doing what you're doing. And someone who

seemed to agree with you that I would not have thought of to put in this Context that you do put in this context in the book is John Mack. And this is another person is you know just hyper aware of you know what a hallucination is uh what various uh neurosis are and what the you know the way that they portray themselves uh in the psyche are. And this is a person who was completely unable to accept that people's paranormal experiences in in his case UFO experiences were anything but genuine in most cases. And then

what's really interesting about him that I actually didn't know admittedly is that I didn't know he eventually kind of flips away completely from the nuts and bolts explanation of the UFO phenomenon and gets very interested in psychedelics and shamanism and and sigh and consciousness. Um, and of course there's just just this giant overlap in the phenomenology of those experiences, UFO abduction experiences and DMT as you explore in The book. >> Yeah, I mean M was very uh, you know, a very important figure not just in the alien abduction phenomenon uh, but also in how we

we we think about it. Um, he was a huge problem for those who were kind of wanted to dismiss the abduction experience as as a hallucination because Mac knows all about hallucinations. Mack was the >> the head of the Harvard school of psychiatry. I mean, this guy was no Wasn't just some little league psychiatrist working in some small village or something. This guy was the top dog basically. I remember I saw an interview with um with Mac before he died obviously stupid thing to say um with yeah >> more impressive than it was after >>

it wasn't like a channeling I saw an interview with Mac um and some the interviewer said to him um he was quoting Carl Sean because everyone likes To bring in Carl Sean of course because he's the epitome of rationality and whatever he says is the absolute truth. Um, and this guy said to to John Mack, um, well, Carl Sean says that these abductees, they're just hallucinating. And Mac simply replied, what the does he know about hallucinations? U, which is >> right. U, because that's that's true. It's easy for people to just, oh, I'll just pluck

this word. Hallucinations. I've heard that. Kind of understand basically what they are. Well, Mac really understood what hallucinations were and what they looked like. um he'd seen countless patients having hallucinations. He knew what was a hallucination and what was seemed to be not a hallucination when people were lying or when people um were dreaming or whatever. Uh and this clearly didn't look like that to him. Um so he slowly and very gradually and very cautiously Began to take their ideas seriously. They weren't insane. um they didn't exhibit the symptoms of any serious psychological abnormality. They

were perfectly rational, just very very traumatized people who were having these inexplicable experiences. Um and he assumed at first, as you were saying, that it was this nuts and bolts phenomenon that these were beings that were flying into the landing on the in the garden or whatever and sneaking into The bedroom and plucking them from their beds. Um but then he realized that actually it started to looks like something very very different. These experiences as he called them seemed to be entering some kind of alternate state of consciousness or being induced into some alternate state

of consciousness. And many of his uh subjects described entering some other kind of world that was kind of parallel to or just behind or somehow within or Or just outside our world that had more dimensions um than the normal waking world and that was somehow subsumed. Our normal waking world was in some way subsumed by this other world which was always there but we couldn't see. Um and then you know being taken on tours of strange crafts by strange beings some of which one of his subjects which I also quote in the book uh which

is in his first book abduction describes these small beings That bound lit bound around. Now that phrase, if anyone's familiar with Terrence McKenna will know about these beings that bound, you know, from the walls or whatever, right? They come bounding in, right? >> That's so McKenna. Um, and these people were, this is long before I'm presum presumably these people, this was in the 80s and stuff. Um, so the the experience clearly had many parallels with the kind of experience People have when they smoke DMT in that that they enter this highly technological environment uh and

are greeted by um or experimented upon by these incredibly intelligent nonhuman um beings uh and then they're brought safely back at the end of it. Um, so, so M started to see and I think it was, you know, started to see that this was what he began to see as more like a a spiritual phenomenon in some way or certainly a metaphysical phenomenon and That couldn't be explained in its entirety in purely materialist terms. >> And I think this was kind of cemented when he met this guy >> um called uh Bernardo. I think his

name is Pesoto. Uh, I've just done the audio book, so I I should have that pronunciation right. But anyway, he was this shaman guy um in in the Amazon. Um, I completely forget which country, but anyway. Um, >> yeah, I just I just earlier read the Name of the tribe and I >> Yeah, I I'll leave that one to you. >> That's Yeah, that's a difficult one. What was it called? What were they called? Who are who are Oh, Pesoto. Yeah, that was in the intelligence chapter, right? There we go. Uruu ew people. There we

go. Bernardo Pesoto. Yes. Of the uh in northern Brazil. So, yeah, I'm not going to read from the book, but yeah, this Uru Iwaw people literally Means people from the stars. Um >> Yeah. Right. Um and and they believe that a long time ago beings arrived in spaceships and taught their people how to plant corn and you know do these kind of things you know very practical things. Um and Pesoto's view of these beings was decidedly non-physical. Um he himself had an experience of seeing one of these beings think across a lake or something at

night staring at Him and he was scared obviously as you would be. Um and he asked them, you know, where are you from? Um where did you come from? Uh and they simply replied, we came from nowhere. Uh which to him meant they must be everywhere. So, these beings that are both nowhere and everywhere uh at the same time. And to me, that sounds like some kind of intelligence that doesn't exist physically in a normal way. Um and and so Max started to think that maybe this Alien abduction phenomenon was um indeed some inter an

interaction with some kind of non-physical uh intelligence that was both everywhere and nowhere. Um and he he he spoke to McKenna. He he was interviewed by David J. Brown um who who asked him specifically about this about the connections between the DMT state and he definitely saw the parallels um between the kind of alter state of consciousness that takes you to another world um under The influence of DMT and this apparent alter state of consciousness that takes you what he what he behind what he called the the theater screen of reality and into this alternate

world occupied by these beings. Um, so yeah, I think there's there's a lot we can learn from the abduction phenomenon without having to um assume that we're talking about these physical wet-bodied beings, but rather something else. >> Yeah, man. the the phenomenology Harmonizes just so troublingly well that for me, you know, as someone who's, you know, taken large amounts of tryptoines and is interested in the UFO topic, I've never had an encounter with a with an alien being, but in reading so many different experiences, you know, reading books by Valet, reading even your chapter, it's

like, man, how how do you dismiss the fact that even the entities that are encountered by people in these states, both psychedelic and abducted, Are a lot of times described very similarly, bounding small creatures. Um, you know, of course, the mantids, the reptilians. Uh Rick Straman told me the first time he broke through on DMT when Terrence McKenna gave it to him, he had a vision of grays like like it was like reality ripped open and there were gray aliens on the other side of like this rip in reality just kind of looking at him

and and I think he was saying like >> now do you see >> now? He said that's that's what they were saying to him and they're just looking at him with these like glistening cosmic eyes and he's just like I see something. I I don't know what I'm supposed to see. But yeah, this like and then, you know, digging deeper into aside from like the surface level imagery in these experiences, the fact that it immediately snaps into this kind of sigh communication that doesn't require words. It's just like Transmission of thoughts and you just know

how to do it and you know how to receive it and you seem to know how to give it back and interact. It's it's almost as if some something is just like a veil is taking off taken off of a faculty that we already have. And um I I'll kick it over to you before I ramble further because um but but I will just add this in is uh the most recent piece of content I'm working on right now is from uh Robert Monroe's book Journeys Out of the Body. >> And there's this chapter in

the book that like turns very speculative and very um existential. And he posits that in this chapter that there's something unique about the way sentient life evolved on planet earth. Like we have this side capacity just like all these other intelligent entities, but we it's like vestigial in us or something or it's like we don't know that we have it and we just we we Somehow evolved away from it or something like that. And and I think that that is a a plausible argument because it does seem like it can just suddenly be snapped back

on with the right molecular massaging or or meditation or who knows what other methods. So, so in terms of the first of all in terms of the the kind of entities that are encountered Um and the the the similarity that so many people experience the same types of beings you said the the small giggling mischievous elflike beings that aren't really elves um in the classical sense as we would see them on a Christmas card or something but have that jovial quality um but clearly non nonhuman, clearly nonan animal. Um, two, these insectlike beings, i.e. insecttoid,

uh, which generally are highly technological advanced and intelligent And generally seem more senior, uh, through to >> reptilians and then beings that simply defy description. Um, the >> the most common explanation that you hear now, uh, is that these are archetypes. Um, and in one of the chapters of the book, um, the anatomy of a machine elf, I I break down this idea, um, the idea that archetypes are quintessentially human structures. These are embedded inherited Patterns um that come from our evolutionary past that allow us to respond to and interact with living creatures in the

environment uh in an instinctive way. Um so they provide us with these very stereotype patterns of uh ways of kind of detecting certain types of humans in the environment and certain types of animals such as snakes uh but also all the different types of humans as well. So the way you respond to your mother is Different to to the way you respond to a stranger or to a baby or to an elder within the group with a lot of experience and knowledge. What you might call a wise old man. Um these are these are not

difficult to explain um neurologically. Assuming we try and keep our foundation within neuroscience uh and evolutionary neurobiology then the archetypes kind of fall out of the evolution of humans. But they're not um they're nothing more than these Inherited instinctive ways of responding to certain types of humans and other animals in the environment. They don't provide imagery. Um, it's one of the great misconceptions that the archetypes are images. They're not images. The archetype, even Young never said that the archetypes were images and he often denied that they were images as did many of his contemporary commentators.

Um, the archetypes can give rise to imageries generated by the cortex. But These are only images that your brain knows how to construct or has learned how to construct. So if my mother archetype is activated for example which is my inherited way of responding to my mother wanting to be close to my mother um um being distressed in the absence of my mother and the uh these are the inherited patterns my way of responding to my mother. uh if that archetype is activated, these subcortical inherited neural patterns of connectivity are Activated, then I will I

might see an image of my mother. Um because it's it becomes intimately connected to the kind of the world that my brain has learned to construct. Uh but the the archetypes, they're not an explanation for machine elves. They're not even an explanation for insecttoid beings, although we probably do carry insect archetypes that allow us to detect and respond to insects in the environment. Um, they don't provide the imagery. So the so the The Youngian model now that we can connect it because Young of course was operating long before we had this detailed understanding of the

neurobiology. Um, we can we can under we can kind of explain um you um youngian archetypes with a with a completely neurological foundation without having to um kind of give it cart blanch give the collective unconscious and the archetypes cart blanch to explain anything. It's like It's like it's the in the book I describe the the collective unconscious like a magician's hat from which you can you can you can pull any and any any type of otherwise inexplicable experiential or psychological phenomena you can say oh that's that's the collective unconscious that those are the archetypes.

Um but when you actually dig down and analyze it and deconstruct exactly what the archetypes are you find that they are very limited in what they Can explain. They can explain some types of phenomena uh but they can't explain in my opinion these highly super intelligent high technologically advanced nonhuman nonan animal um beings that have no relationship to humanity at all either now or any time in our history. So the archetypes really can't help us here. Um so so so it remains in my opinion very much an open question of why when you perturb your

brain with this simple molecule. Um you might be Able to explain certain types of imagery you might even be able to explain um the induction of a dreamlike state and even the the the appearance of other humans or other animals because that's what the brain naturally tries to do is it it likes to construct models of humans. It likes to construct models of animals as it does in the dream state. People dream about dogs and cats. If they live in the west, uh if they live in the Amazon, they dream about snakes. U they dream

About jaguars and they dream about fish and piranhas and things, right? Your dreams, they the beings you meet in your dreams, the the beings your brain wants to construct tend to be the kind of beings your brain interacts with during normal waking life. So why when you perturb it with DMT does it suddenly con start you know almost you know just suddenly start constructing these entirely nonhuman nonan animal beings that don't communicate um with the Normal mode of communication that humans have had for a long time which is speech. Why does it suddenly start constructing

beings that um only communicate via telepathy? As you said this is an entirely nonhuman apparently way of communication. So why would it default to that rather than defaulting to simply speaking as you do in dreams? You you speak to people um in dreams generally. Um so so yeah, I do think there's there's there's certainly Something extremely strange going on. Something that's not easy uh to explain um going on. Uh I was speaking to um what's his name? Uh Andre Emielen. You know him? the Qualia Research Institute >> Andreas. So, >> yeah. So, he's he's he

he did a a kind of very popular video called the hyperbolic geometry of the DMT space a few years ago. He's very interested in the mathematics Um of of the DMT space and the kind of the geometric structure and the topological structure and whether we might try to understand what that means um about the nature of the experience. But anyway, he was showing me this this cool animation that he'd done which which visualizes on a 2D screen uh the rotation of a fourdimensional object. So it contains all the points of a fourdimensional object but projected

onto a 2D screen. So when you look at it It's completely inexplicable, you know, or or it's it doesn't make any sense. It just looks like dots moving around. You can your brain can't make sense. This is a 4D object. But apparently when you smoke DMT and you you look at this object, um your brain suddenly recognizes that this is a 4D object and you start seeing it in 4D. I don't know what that experience would be like. I've not tried that experiment, but I'd like to. Um but he said that it feels like uh

When you when it snaps into this 4D object, it feels like um do you remember that Ram Das quote where he says that dying is like taking off a tight shoe. Um it's like you're you're kind of relaxing into the 4D space. It's like ah um I'm back and it feels he said uh it feels very perfectly natural uh as if our in normal waking life we're kind of folded compressed into this three-dimensional form this threedimensional structure our World is compressed into this three-dimensional form with DMT it kind of relaxes out and and there is

a sense certainly of familiarity and of of returning home as if DMT feels like a homecoming. Even though it's bizarre um beyond description, it's still there's this sense of ah I'm back. Uh and and they often welcome you back. There's often a party and there's bells ringing and lights flashing and stuff. Um but yeah, I think going back to your telepathy point there, it is does feel overall like the DMT space is intimately connected to us in a way that we simply don't understand. So what do you think in the if you think that there's

something fundamentally different about dreaming some and that's more explainable more reducible to the brain what are your thoughts on whatever is going on with abductees who are on the natch do you think that it could be An indogenous DMT thing do you think it could still be uh some external agency interacting with the brain in a way that makes it feel as though Um, I mean, just that makes it feel alien, I guess. And, and I, you know, when you were talking about archetypes, too, I have so many thoughts because I think Jung >> cloaked

his true feelings to a degree to seem more academically square for a lot of his career. And then when you read The red book and you get into his later writings, it's clear he was like extremely esoteric, very gnostic, adjacent. Um, you know, somewhere in his collected works, he says the archetypes are the Platonic idols. Like they are the Platonic forms. like they're they're not just reducible to uh like he would often say in other writings, you know, like like um instincts and evolutionary images and whatever that are uh that have like stained the psyche

from time Immemorial or or whatever. like he I think on some level he was transposing that idea into a realm that he could feel okay about in the daylight, but deeper down he was more of like an idealist gnostic platonic alchemical hermetic uh thinker and and I think that that sort of comes out later. But but um but anyway, I I bring that up because I would imagine that you've considered this idea that part of the reason the Appearance of the phenomenon is so mercurial a lot of the time and can appear in these ways

is because it kind of uses archetypes as masks and it sort you know in the way that you know it presents itself can change. I mean this is what people like Valet think obviously um obvious to you and I maybe not obvious to everyone but but yeah before I continue >> the the first question about people on the Nash who experience abduction-like Experiences do you think there could be a role DMT has there? Yeah, I think I mean it's possible that they are using I mean who knows, right? I mean I'm obviously I'm speculating wildly

here, but I have speculated before that perhaps they they they might be using potentially DMT wheing with our neural machinery. And I think that's what's happening here uh both with DMT and with the abduction Phenomena is that they're they're accessing our neural machinery in some way uh and inducing our brain um to construct these models because I think when you enter the DMT state, the world you're experiencing is still one that's being represented in the brain, I think, but I just don't think it's being generated spontaneously. Um and in the book I describe this as

as like a directed world. So it's not like you're sense it's not like a sensed World in that you're steing in in the same way that you you sense the environment and that you're you're kind of receiving information through the sensory organs and using that to inform and modulate and constrain and test this model being constructed by your brain. uh nor is it a dreamt world that's that's completely disconnected from sensory inputs from external sensory inputs uh but more of a directed world uh in that the inputs the information is Being directed into the brain

some intelligent agent um the nature and origin of which I don't know um is has is somehow gaining access and DMT is somehow allowing that intelligence to gain access to your neural machinery and basically to to to seize control to commandeer your brain's worldbuilding apparatus to construct uh these visions. You know, that's how they communicate with us. I don't think that >> that when you see a an insecttoid alien, It actually has an insecttoid form. Um because it doesn't really make any sense to me that a discarnate being of some sort, assuming that's what it

is. I don't think that these insecttoids are on another planet and it's simply a communication technology in that way. I don't think you're kind of like a portal uh to another planet or something. I think what's happening uh is that they are taking on a form or as you say a mask. They are giving themselves a form So that you can recognize them as a being. Um and and sometimes they're quite explicit about this. Um, in one of I was one of the trip reports I actually quote in the book I think um these beings

this girl or guy I forget which but anyway was smoke DMT and there were these mantis like beings over him uh and he said you know are you really mantises u and they said no no we're not actually mantises but we appear like this right This is just a form we use and going back to Bernardo Pesoto uh he also said I mean he's coming from a very different worldview um that the these these beings use form um because they that's what we understand. We are a creature of visual form. Um that's how we make

sense of the world. Um so we have for us to understand their presence and note their presence that these intelligences are there they use these uh use these forms And even John Lily uh when he was taking large doses of ketamine um and entering this what he called the extraterrestrial reality um they these intelligence within within that space also made it clear to him in no uncertain terms that his he was constructing the space uh and he was con constructing their form um so that they could interact with each other. Um, so yeah, that's that's

what I think links all of these things together. Uh, is is you've got this Thing this machine in our heads, this worldbuing machine. Uh, and sometimes it can be hacked under certain circumstances. Whether that I don't think that always requires DMT at all. Uh but I think DMT is the most efficient that tool that we that we have to instantaneously generate this very fluid and malleable um and perturbable um neural states um that allows these intelligences to gain access and take control and use our Brain to construct their world. And just before I finish, I

will just mention um there was a paper published by the Imperial College research team just in the just the last few weeks that actually demonstrated this um neurological state in DMT. M >> so you you have I forget what the title of the paper was but it basically showed that in the presence of DMT the brain enters this state where it becomes uh Much more sensitive to external perturbations. Um so you stimulate the brain in some way whether it's through visual sensory information or other means or electrically or whatever and it reacts it responds much

more strongly. the neural activity is can be manipulated much more easily in the DMT state. Um, and so this is precisely the kind of state that I was proposing existed in the presence of DMT which is in the book but unfortunately the paper Wasn't in the book because it came out a couple of months too late. But it's nice to see that these, you know, what to many would seem like wild speculations on my part seem to be borne out to some extent at least by the neuroscience which is showing uh this kind of highly

sensitive malleable state of the brain that these beings can access whether using DMT or through other means maybe even during the dream state uh when the brain isn't being Polluted so to speak by sensory inputs. or in the deep ketamine state in a sensory sensory isolation chamber or many other states potentially um can allow these intelligences these intelligent agents to gain access. It's fascinating. It's fascinating that this is about the time in the podcast that all the uh evangelical Christians start writing demons in the in the in the uh comments. two two things I I

want to linger on Lily because there's a There's an interesting connection to him and Valet I never thought about until just now but two before we go away from the neuroscience one of the things that I've struggled to understand as a lay person that I should ask you is that there seems to be like from from the articles I've read the brain under the influence of tryptoamines seems to go into this more uh entropic state where a lot of the usual network clusters are not firing like they Normally do. And that's led a lot of

people to, you know, >> um, make the assumption that, look, >> maybe, you know, it's it's clearly if the brain was hallucinating, you'd be seeing the brain going crazy with all kinds of activity. That's not what we see. Um so so first is DMT the same in that respect as other tryptoines or is is what happens in the brain on a DMT trip different? >> Um it's similar in some ways um but then Other ways it's very different. I mean experientially clearly it's very different. Uh so how do we reconcile the differences? So yeah, so

when kind of in in broad terms when a psychedelic when a tryptoine psychedelic or other types of psychedelics enter the brain, they stimulate certain populations of neurons by binding to these particular receptors. They make the neurons more um more sensitive, more excitable. They Allow information to start flowing between um certain areas of the brain um much more easily. So overall the brain enters this as I said this more fluid and dynamic state. When you you observe that on a in an MRI machine for example you will see this highly structured and highly ordered patterns of

neural activity start to break down uh and the whole the neural activity becomes more fluid and dynamic and effectively more apparently random. And this is where the Whole entropic brain Robin Kart Harris's entropic brain hypothesis came from. Um um and that kind of makes sense and it's in uh to some extent explains many of the effects of psychedelics. This loosening up of the world. The world itself that you experience often becomes more fluid and dynamic, less stable, less predictable. uh objects seem to lose their identity or morph, you know, the brain is basically losing control

over its world model. Um and so you go From this state of order to this state of disorder. The brain is nudged towards um the chaotic realm. Um so Kart Harris describes it as a nudge towards criticality. So you have this the brain is always trying to strike this balance between order and disorder what we call the edge of chaos which is where complexity arises um and too ordered um and information just simply can't be processed right the the world becomes perfectly stable and sort of Crystallized and that's not useful if you if you want

a world that's kind of keeping up with all of the dynamic processes unfolding in the environment you want a world that is can respond um to and rapidly change in response to uh sensory inputs. So it can't be too stable. At the same time, if it's too unstable, then the world just becomes completely fluid and dynamic and doesn't function as a model of the environment anymore. So you need to strike that Balance. Uh and the brain does that very well by tuning the strength of the connections between its neurons as well as tuning the excitability

of individual neurons. What psychedelics do is they nudge the brain uh towards the chaotic realm but not into the chaotic realm towards this point of criticality as it's called uh where you lose order and be and and kind of are tossed into the the chaotic realm. Uh and so you go from order to disorder. Now that explains That shift towards disorder explains many of the effects of psychedelics. Um, as I said, you know, this this more disordered world, it seems to match the experience of people under the influence of psychedelics. But with DMT, something stranger

seems to happen. It seems to transcend that. You go from order to disorder, but then you collapse into a an entirely new order. Um, which is this alternate world model. The DMT world is not disordered. It's not entropic. Uh it Is highly ordered. Uh it is highly coherent. It has it's ma has massive structural dynamic and narrative complexity that is you know bewildering and and baffling and confounding all at the same time and all inspiring. Um so that that I think is something that is very difficult to explain. Um it's like the brain has found

a new channel. Other psychedelics at normal doses tend to kind of nudge the dial out of tune perhaps. But with DMT, it's like finding a new channel on the TV set, but then discovering that the the antenna has been disconnected. You're like, where did this channel come from? Why why does the brain know how to construct these entirely nonhuman alien realities filled with these intelligent beings that have no relationship to the normal waking world that you've left behind. Um, so I think but there are going back to the neuroscience, the neuro neuro imaging, there are

some very Tantalizing um results, you know, not just this most recent study that I just described, uh, but in a study a few years ago, they actually measured the the flow of um electrical activity through the brain. um the flow of these these waves. You have these when sensory information through the eyes enters the brain, it enters the brain through the back uh and you have these uh what are called forward flowing waves uh which represent In predictive processing terms we don't have to go into they represent um these error signals flowing up the cortex

from the lowest levels at the back of the brain towards the higher levels and then you you experience you can also measure waves flowing in the opposite direction. Um so there's this balance of waves when you have your eyes open you it um the signal is dominated by waves flowing from the back to the front. So this this this flow of sensory information into The brain basically. Um and way back in I say way back but well kind of way back now in the 90s um um Jordi Reeba um and yeah Jordi Reeber who sadly

passed away but he was one of the most prominent IASA researchers um and he noticed that when he um put a an EEG headset on his um subjects and gave them Iawaska uh even when their eyes were closed uh He noticed there was a stronger influence on on of the electrodes of the back of the brain over those at the front. Again, suggesting that information was flowing even though they had their eyes closed, information was flowing from the lower sensory cortices, you know, in the normal way as if they were viewing some other world. uh

and the Imperial College team quite a few years later did much more sophisticated EG experiments and actually showed that the closed eye DMT state was effectively indistinguishable from the normal open eyes waking state. um >> wow >> suggesting you know they could see the information flowing uh from the back of the brain right and the question is >> what why first of all why why is the brain process apparently processing sensory information even though the eyes are closed um uh of course >> in Reeba's paper and others they say oh this is >> noise you

know this is spontaneous activity emerging from the lower sensory Cortices uh My response to that is wait a minute you know the this isn't this clearly isn't spontaneous activity of the lower sensory cortices we can use that to explain you know form constants going back to Hinrich Clover you know cobwebs or geometric patterns you know that that that kind of thing can be explained by spontaneous activity of the lower sensory cortices but not complex alien realities filled with with Strange beings. So where's So that doesn't make any sense. Cortical noise just seemed like a silly

explanation, but of course that's the best they had. >> They couldn't say or maybe this is this is sensory information from some some intelligent alien intelligence, you know, something like that. So but that to me that that seems again like more evidence that we're not seeing dreams, we're not seeing hallucinations, we're Not seeing memories. you know that sometimes happens when the brain um when the brain the cortex becomes more fluid and dynamic. It actually starts to lose control over information flowing from the temporal loes. Um and so you get the flood of memories. you get

these p these um kind of reliving of of of uh of past experiences that people often have been describing for decades under high doses of LSD for example by people who relive past experiences Going back to their childhood for example you know that can be explained it's simply the the brain is losing control of the flow of information from these um hippocample temporal lobe memory systems but that doesn't explain it either that certainly doesn't explain the DMT state. So again, the question is where is this information coming from to construct these entirely alien worlds? Yeah.

Well, I mean it's it's impossible for me as someone who's, you know, uh Deeply fascinated with Platonism and really mystical traditions the world over. Nearly all of them talk about a kind of like soul sense or eye of the soul. And you know, I I don't even want to say one of the few times I'll say third eye in a non- tongue-in-cheek way. Anybody who's >> the name of your podcast, >> I know, man. I I have a love I have a major hate with it. Um you know you know I had never really had

any kind of Majorly impactful literal third eye experience until I I went to Peru and did Iaska. And on my most impactful night of that of those five sessions, I kept literally for the only the only time in my life this has ever happened. I mean, I was having insanely vivid minds visuals. And this was the only night that I wasn't in some kind of like lower astral hell realm of just, you know, deep uh torment. It like every night was really really Challenging. But then the third night I broke through to this much more

luminous intelligent um and presence of some something that felt like it was giving me like the teaching, you know, kind of guru presence. And during that period of time, Andrew, the only time in my life this has ever happened, I kept feeling like there was something on my head, like right in the center of my head. And I kept brushing it away like what is on my head? >> And then I started laughing to myself. I'm like, is this the third eye? like is this what this is? And you in you saying that you know

that this study this neuroiming study on Iawaska has very sightelike behaviors in the brain like that that's very interesting and I mean I would assume that this is the same with a significant dose of any tryptoine or do we not know that or would you assume that based on the similarities because I mean when you're Having these vivid mind's eye inner eye other eye experiences is it is kind of like you're seeing stuff but it's also different. It's it's the phenomenology is like the closest thing you can say is I saw it but it's also

not exactly like seeing it with your physical eyes. >> Yeah. I think firstly I think with other tryptoines I don't think we know um I don't think experiments have been done that this particular looking at these traveling waves that's Been done with DMT. I'd like to see it being done with other dippines. I'd expect you would I'd hope that you don't see it. That would be really cool. >> Oh, really? >> Did Well, it would I mean because that that would like there would be like incontrovertible evidence that DMT was doing something very different um

if you didn't see this flow of activity from the lower sensory cortices under you know psilocybin for example at a normal Dose or LSD. uh but I expect you might um because I do expect that you do get spontaneous activity in in the lower sensory cortices and we know as I said mentioned Hinrich Clover who developed these form constants back in the the middle of the well the early 20th century now um this was all done with measculine um we know that when you stimulate the cortex or when you release the lower sensory cortices that

you do get these spontaneous patterns emerging And So, I expect you'd see some kind of flow of information from the back. Uh, but whether it's much stronger with DMT. Um, I don't know. Um, but clearly that these this isn't just um form constants. Um, but yes, I it clearly is um like seeing with your eyes shut. You you're observing. You know, it's often described with DMT that it's it's it's not like a drug. It's more like an observation. It feels more like a technology. >> Um that you've simply the your reality channel has been switched

to another channel. Um and you're observing this world that's been going on before you arrived and will continue to do so long after you've left and may well have been going on for trillions of years before our universe popped into existence. Right.