Exploring the DMT Realm and the Nature of Reality

[00:00:13] [Intro]: Welcome to Brainforest Café with Dennis McKenna. [00:00:19] Dennis McKenna: Dr. Andrew Gallimore is a computational neurobiologist, chemical pharmacologist and writer living and working in Tokyo. He has a Master's degree in chemical pharmacology and a PhD in biological chemistry from the University of Cambridge and has held postdoctoral research fellowships in computational neuroscience at the Universities of York, Oxford and Okinawa. He has been fascinated by the neuropharmacology of psychedelics for more than two decades and is the author of three books, Alien Information Theory, Psychedelic Drug Technologies and the Cosmic Game. The second one, Reality Switch, Psychedelics as Tools for the Discovery and Exploration of New Worlds and the fourth, Coming Death by Confronting the Mystery of the World's Strangest Drug, which focuses on the history of DMT and science's continuing structural to understand how such a simple naturally occurring molecule can have such astonishing effects on the human mind. His current interests lie in the implications of DMT in understanding the nature of reality and how it might be developed as a tool for extended communication with non-human intelligences inaccessible to normal waking consciousness. It's my pleasure to welcome Andrew Gallimore. Welcome to the Brainforest Café, Andrew. [00:02:02] Andrew Gallimore: Thank you for having me. Dennis, good to see you and speak to you again. [00:02:06] Dennis McKenna: Yes, it's good to see you. So you're many, many time zones, if not dimensions. You're many time zones away from me. It's about 9 or 10 in the morning there in Tokyo, right? [00:02:20] Andrew Gallimore: Yes. [00:02:22] Dennis McKenna: For a dimension hopping guy like you, this amount too much. So I've read this book, it's wonderful. [00:02:34] Andrew Gallimore: Thank you. [00:02:35] Dennis McKenna: And it's amazing in so many different ways. I mean it seems that dmt, which is a committing, sort of a continuing carrot for both of us and also for my brother for many years. I believe the title is taken from something he said. When somebody asked if you could die from dmt, he said as far as I know, unless you can't, unless you die from astonishment. And hopefully that hasn't taken place in too many people. But how did you get into this and what do you make of your discoveries? Because you have looked far enough into DMT that it's clear that it's not just another psychedelic. There's something very special about dmt. Tell me what you've learned. Tell me a fraction of what you've learned. Give me the thumbnail sketch. What is the takeaway? Because you've been puzzling over this for decades and people have. There have been symposia, books written and all sorts of things about the DMT entities that you encounter and that some encounter the self transforming elf machines, all these bizarre entities that one encounters. And of course the first question becomes, are these real? You know, but then you go down that rabbit hole because, because you have to say, well, what do you mean by real? Right. And we just go from there. So give me your perspective that you've gleaned from all of this, all of this experimentation. And not only that, but thinking about what it all means. [00:04:37] Andrew Gallimore: Yeah, I mean, I first learned about DMT from your brother. Well, from an article, an interview that he gave in him some magazine that a friend gave me when I was about 16 years old. He said, look at this, you might be interested. It was an interview with Terence and he was asked about his favorite drug, which was this, this molecule called dmt, which I'd never heard of. I had no idea what it stood for. So I had to go to the library because this was pre Internet. Go to the library and look up this acronym initialism, dmt and find out what it meant. It gave me the complete wrong answer. Dimethyl Terephthalate, which is a type of plastic. So for a while I thought that's not it, that's not it. But yeah, then the Internet was emerging during that period and I spent all of my time on the single, the sole computer that was kind of hooked up to the world Wide web in my school. Nobody else was using it, but I. So I spent all my spare time kind of just trying to find out about this molecule because it sounded absurd, you know, I don't think I really believed what I was hearing about this molecule. I thought that people were just kind of exaggerating. But of course all of that changed when I actually got to experience it for the first time. And I was, yeah, astonished would be the word, I think the first time in my life that I've ever been truly astonished. And your brother also used to say true astonishment is perhaps the rarest of emotions. It often functions as a synonym for, you know, very surprised or a little bit shocked. But actually true astonishment. [00:06:35] Dennis McKenna: Right. [00:06:36] Andrew Gallimore: I think it is very rare. And, and, and I was, I was confronted with that emotion for the first time, of shock, horror. I was, I was appalled. It just was undeniable to me. I was. Something took over me and it was obvious at that moment, it was undeniably apparent to me that this was some kind of immense, unbelievably immense. Alien is the only word I can use. Alien intelligence. And I guess my life since that moment has been trying to understand that try to get to grips with what that experience means and how it's possible that this simple plant alkaloid can, can effect such changes. And I think one, the kind of the thread that runs through my work, I would say is, is not so much trying to tell people what DMT is, what, you know, what these, these beings, whether they're real or not, which is a, a knotty issue. But really what I'm trying to do is trying to really convince people that there's something very, very difficult to explain about this. This is not. Science doesn't have it all wrapped up right. It's not easy to explain why when you smoke this or inject this simple plant alkaloid, your brain suddenly becomes capable of fabricating with lissom virtuosity these indescribably complex, highly coherent alien narrative structures with these incredibly strange non human, non animal beings that have no reference in the normal waking world. That's not easy to explain. So I spend a lot of my time explaining why these are not just normal kinds of hallucinations. These are not dreams, this is not dream imagery. I also give Jungian, you know, that's become kind of de rigueur in, in psychedelic circles now is just to say, oh don't worry, this is just archetypal imagery that's bubbling up from the collective unconscious. [00:09:02] Dennis McKenna: I like, I like the way that you, that you unpack this in your analysis of it because there's something qualitatively quite different in DMT than from any other psychedelic. And so you go through your book is tremendously entertaining, I have to say, and very well written and I really like the first part of it, Azmeth botanist and somebody who's been obsessed with, with plants and with DMT for many years. I like the history that you give of the discovery of DMT and how it took so long for people to even understand the importance of these admixture plants in Ayahuasca. So that's a very interesting cultural perspective on dmt. It's kind of surprising that it took so long to figure out, you know, the active ingredient in Ayahuasca, you know, was this mysterious admixture plant, whatever it was, that contained dmt. So that was, that was useful and that's useful reading for anybody that hasn't, you know, hasn't really looked into the history of what you might call psychedelic ethnopharmacology with respect, with, with respect to dmt. But the other thing that I like about Your work is you examine all the other possibilities. I mean, you have this phenomenon and you present these other possibilities, trying to basically wiggle out of the ultimate admission. It's like, well, are they dreams? And, no, they're not dreams, because dreams have a certain neurophysiological characteristic and phenomenological character to them. That's not what this is. Are they archetypes? No, they're not archetypes. I mean, archetypes, you could put them in different ways, but archetypes are basically kind of a generic reflection of what you might call our paleo conscious history. They come out of ancestral roots, they may have a genetic substrate, but these things that you see on DMT that some people see at some times, not all the time, but these places that you go that seem unique to dmt, it's like a place, and it's very hard to explain that away. I mean, it's like, as Terence often said, and as you say in your book, it's like you're in this place, you don't even feel intoxicated. It's not like you're on a drug. It's like you're actually in a different place. And how can you explain that away? I mean, you're on drugs, right? But the effects at these higher doses of dmt, and pretty much uniquely dmt, are not anything like other psychedelics. Other psychedelics, you could say, like LSD, many of the others you could say, well, they are like dreams somewhat, they are hallucinations, and they are what DMT puts in front of you once you've gone beyond the chrysanthemum, as we say you, is you clearly seem to be in a place where there are other. It's very hard to explain, in a way, as anything other than another place. I mean, it has that impression. But then the question is, how can that possibly be? ANDREW. [00:13:05] Andrew Gallimore: Well, that is the big question, because we know a lot now about how, you know, why the world appears to us as it does. The world that I always say, my kind of axiom has always been the world that we experience is this model constructed by our brain. We're always living, you know, ANIL Seth, this, you know, it's always a hallucination. I don't like to call it always a hallucination, but we live in this world that's constructed by our brain, that it's evolved, our brain is evolved to construct this single model of the world as a model of the environment. It's constantly being tested against sensory information from the environment. And this is the world your brain learned to construct. It's the only world your brain learned to construct is this model of the environment. And when you go into the dream state, your brain is disconnected from sensory inputs, but it still has all of that stuff, all of those object models and concepts. Everything it learned while interacting with the environment, it uses to construct the dream world. Which is why the dream world tends to be largely continuous with the waking world, except it's more kind of fluid and dynamic and shift from scene to scene, etc. [00:14:29] Dennis McKenna: You don't have these checks against the reality thing. You don't get that feedback mechanism. But. But what you see in dreams is similarly similar to what you see when you're awake in the sense that it may not make as much sense, it doesn't have. But you see animals, you see other people, the things that you see, not these alien self transforming elf machines singing five dimensional objects. No, you don't get that. And I think for a long time you struggled kind of with the idea of trying to fit it into some of these other boxes, which were clearly inappropriate because you didn't want to, I don't know, you didn't want to come off as a complete crackpot maybe. But you finally reached a place where you have to say, no, this is qualitatively not like any other psychedelic. It's unique in that sense and it delivers this very, very peculiar experience which it's like really being ushered into a different reality, different reality channels call it that. But then to even say that calls into question everything we think we know about what is real and what. And it really calls everything we think we know about how the mind interfaces with reality and constructs this like, I call it the reality hallucination, that ordinary consciousness. But call it a brain created simulation. There's all this talk about, do we live in a simulation? Well, yes, we do. Our brains create one, that's what we inhabit. But the DMT at these higher doses, at these transcendent doses, they don't really conform to that. It's something completely other. And I think other is the term that describes it. What do you think's going on here? Have you got this figured out? [00:16:55] Andrew Gallimore: Well, I mean, I'm not sure I've got it figured out, but I think what I've really been trying to do, as you say, is to eliminate other possibilities and then we're left with, I think it was Sherlock Holmes who said that when you've eliminated all other options, what remains is the truth. Right. Or something to that effect. And I think that's why, you know, I'm kind of forced in. My hand is kind of forced by dmt, because I can't say it's dreams, I can't say it's similar to psychotic hallucinations, I can't say it's archetypal imagery. So we're left with this, this gaping hole in our understanding where the brain is doing something it shouldn't be able to do. By all of our reckoning, the brain shouldn't know. It's like, as I say in the book, it's like the brain is speaking a language it never learned to speak. Constructing world that bear no relationship whatsoever to the normal waking world. That shouldn't happen. And there's no simple explanation for that to happen unless there is some sort of, you know, I've never claimed that DMT allows you to go somewhere as in travel, in the same way that our normal waking world is always constructed by our brain, but modulated by information from sensory information from the environment, acting as like a testing signal. I think in the same way, you know, when you use psychedelics, they change that model, they, they perturb the brain, they perturb your world building machinery. [00:18:37] Dennis McKenna: Right? [00:18:37] Andrew Gallimore: And, and that's what DMT is doing. And for some reason I think we can, we can kind of explain what DMT is doing if we, if we invoke some kind of alternate source of information that is modulating the brain's construction of this extremely altered, extremely strange reality model. So rather than you enter using your normal waking world model to interface with the environment, your brain is using an entirely different model to interface with some other place or some other intelligence or some other. Other. Other we don't really know. [00:19:18] Dennis McKenna: Other something. [00:19:19] Andrew Gallimore: Some other other something. [00:19:21] Dennis McKenna: Some other. Right. I mean, exactly. The brain is in normal reality, in normal everyday experience, and even in normal psychedelic experiences, whatever that might be. There's clearly, however twisted and modified your perceptions might be, there is always sort of an understanding that, you know, this is an internal experience, that you know there is a normal reality out there. You can open your eyes and you can more or less see this dmt. If you get into this hyperdimensional or extra dimensional channel, it just wipes all of that out. I mean, it's literally like putting on VR goggles or something and going into a completely different world, a world that seems impossible to experience and even understand. And so the immediate impulse is to invoke aliens, extraterrestrials, whatever. And it certainly is alien, if alien means something completely Sort of incomprehensible to our ordinary scope of knowledge, of understanding. Then it's definitely alien in that sense. But I like in the latter part of the book when you speculate, okay, let's grant for the sake of argument that this is another place. So where is it? Where is it coming from? And I think I was reviewing your book recently and it was something in the book that I thought was profoundly insightful was you said most people think of taking psychedelics, they think of going somewhere, you know, it's like going somewhere dmt, you don't go into the DMT state, the DMT state breaks into your state, you know, takes over your state and suddenly you switch the channel and you're in this completely different realm which you speculates. You bring forth many potential explanations. But finally, I don't know if you've settled on it, but you suggest that you talk about these different civilizations, the Kardashev rating, type 1, type 2, type 4, et cetera, civilizations related to the amount of energy that civilization can control. But then you talk about the opposite of that where instead of expanding it goes in. You talk about postulating a civilization that is omega minus or close to it that if I understand it basically inhabits the quantum realm that somehow is able to totally manipulate space time, you know, on a quantum level. And can you talk a little bit more about that? And does that seem like the most likely explanation, however unlikely on the surface itself? [00:23:12] Andrew Gallimore: Well, I mean, yeah, so as you said, the usual way of thinking about the progress of intelligent civilizations is this expansionist trajectory to larger and larger scales. People talk about climbing the Kardashev scale and that we're going to take over the solar system and then you know, larger and larger structures. But actually if we look at human progress at least whilst we do spend no small sum of money kind of slinging objects into outer space, actually we spend most of our efforts directed at smaller and smaller scales. You know, you think of the Large Hadron Collider and we're interested in, you know, nano, nanotechnology and thinking more in the kind of what's called the, often called the anti Kardashev scale, which is developed by John Barrow, this British cosmologist. And he said actually civilizations tend to go inwards. And so if you take that to its the kind of the culmination of that scale, you end up with civilizations that are able to manipulate the basic fundamental structure of space time, wherever that is, whether it's quantum or sub quantum, we don't really know and if a being is going to transcend in some way, it's unlikely that they're going to be kind of shedding their bodies and setting off for the stars. But actually it's more likely that they're going to be instantiating themselves in the fundamental computational substrate of the ground of reality. And they would effectively disappear for all intents and purposes. They would become everywhere, nowhere. They would become effectively godlike beings. And none of this transcends or none of this kind of strays too far from modern scientific discourse on the matter. So what I'm saying here isn't crazy stuff. This is the stuff that quite serious button down cosmologists and astrobiologists have been talking about for decades now. And so my, I'm not trying to say that I definitely think that DMT is allowing you access or allowing you to interface with these intelligences. But to say such a thing isn't crazy. To say that perhaps this universe is teeming with intelligences far, far beyond anything that we can imagine isn't a non-scientific thing to say. And if they wanted to communicate with us, they wanted to kind of show themselves for whatever reason, the most obvious route that they would take would be to directly interface with our brains. That would be the obvious thing to do. They would cut out the middleman. They wouldn't need to materialize in some kind of physical form so that we could see them, or they, they might well do that, but in fact they would simply interface directly with our neural machinery, manipulate our world building machinery. And they would likely appear to be extremely powerful and extremely incomprehensibly intelligent beings. And this just happens to be the type of being that you meet when you smoke. DMT is these incomprehensibly powerful and intelligent beings that seem far older and far more advanced than us. So it, so that's all I'm saying really, is that actually it's not crazy. It's not woo. It's not kind of leaving my rationality behind and heading off into kind of the spiritual or mystical realms. But actually I'm remaining perfectly scientific in saying that maybe there are intelligences that are extremely multitudinous and that are far more advanced than us and that exist everywhere and nowhere, embedded in the basic structure, basic foundational structure of reality. And if they wanted to communicate with us, then maybe they, DMT would be the conduit by which they're able to do that. [00:27:30] Dennis McKenna: And, and this, this to me makes more sense than to postulate that it has some extraterrestrial Origin because of the separations and the distances and everything. I mean, it's interesting that we expend so much. Our orientation towards space is so much toward out there. We send out these probes, we send out manned expeditions that are pretty modest affairs. I mean, going to the moon, it took tremendous effort to get to the moon. Now we haven't gone back for over 50 years because it's damn hard to get humans out into space and they are not physiologically able to adapt to it anyway. So we have this orientation then you've got toward externals and this preoccupation with the cosmos. We're never. I used to be like Terrence. It was like, our destiny is in the stars. I don't think so. I don't think we're ever going to the stars. And I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. But the dimension that we maybe want to explore is this inner dimension or this much, much smaller dimension. And if the nature of these civilizations is that they're everywhere all at once, then the normal structures of space, time and distance and so on don't even apply. It's really true what the alchemist said. What is here is everywhere. What is not here is nowhere. And so if we really want to connect with these entities, they exist in some sort of quantum realm or something like that, but something that is definitely accessible and that may even manipulate. There's lots of speculation about the importance of quantum phenomena in consciousness. And maybe these entities working at that level are able to tap into that and just basically, okay, you were watching that channel, now watch this channel and it completely takes over what you're experiencing. [00:30:04] Andrew Gallimore: Yeah, I think that's it. I mean, what's interesting about the neuroimaging data that's coming. In fact, there was a paper just published, unfortunately a little bit too late for my book, which described. If you look back to the papers going back more than a decade now with the Imperial College research Group, then led by Robin Carhartt Harris, they started to notice that under the influence of psychedelics, there's this loosening up. It's kind of like if you heat up a piece of glass and it becomes more malleable and kind of soft and you can manipulate it into any kind of shape that you want. In my mind, that's precisely the kind of neural state that you want or that these intelligences would want. If they want to manipulate your world building machinery, manipulate your cortex to effectively allow them to communicate with you or allow them to take control and show you something and paper came out literally just a couple of weeks ago again from the Imperial College team, this time led by Chris Timmerman, which showed that under the influence of dmt, the brain becomes much more sensitive to external perturbations. So you, you input information into the brain in the DMT state and you get a much stronger reaction, as if the brain is just, it's primed. I think what DMT is doing, it's, it's not, it's not taking you anywhere as such. It's, it's in, it's inducing the, the brain into this highly primed, highly sensitive, highly fluid state, which is just perfect, you know, it's perfect for one of these intelligences to kind of access whether it could be at this sub quantum level where it's accessing the brain kind of from below rather than the normal sensory conduits and, and taking control. Which is why I call the DMT world direct. It's not, it's not a sensed world in the normal sense. There's just information coming in, but the information is actually being directed and that's why they have complete control. And there's that feeling, as you're well aware, Dennis, that when you smoke dmt, it's not like you're just going somewhere, it's like something is taking control. [00:32:27] Dennis McKenna: Something that's overwhelming you. [00:32:29] Andrew Gallimore: Yeah, overwhelming you. You know, and this flood of the download of data and the fact that a phenomena, a phenomenon that, that kind of is now quite common and that you read a lot about a lot on Reddit forums and stuff, people complaining that their DMT doesn't work anymore and that they're suddenly, you know, they're smoking it regularly and it's have, you know, 100% efficacy every time. And then suddenly they get a wagging finger or a big, big red flashing X will appear and say not today. And they will kind of cut off access. [00:33:06] Dennis McKenna: I mean, what do you make of that? That's just crazy, right? [00:33:11] Andrew Gallimore: Because that shouldn't happen because, you know, as you. [00:33:15] Dennis McKenna: But then none of it should be happening. But, but, you know, I mean, so it's like the director of the show has just said, you know, it's, it's, this needs to be blocked for you for a while. You've been hitting the pipe a little bit too hard. [00:33:33] Andrew Gallimore: Hitting the pipe a little bit too. [00:33:34] Dennis McKenna: Hard, you need to ease off. And so that's imposed on you. That's really strange. [00:33:40] Andrew Gallimore: I mean, exactly, because people will say, oh, it's tolerance, but we both know that Tolerance, it builds gradually. It's not an off switch, so you can't have 20 or 30 perfectly efficacious full breakthrough trips. And then suddenly an entity says, no, no, no, not anymore, and gives you that message, we're not letting you in, right? And then you try it again the next day and it still doesn't work. And sometimes people go for several months and they're still not allowed any access. That's not easy to explain. [00:34:17] Dennis McKenna: That is not easy to explain. And it's also further evidence, in a sense that, you know, we're not running this show at all. You know, our brain is not running this show. The show is being presented to us, you know, and we are perceiving it, like it or not. I have to ask you, it's a bit of a tangent, but I was wondering. I want to ask you because I probably won't get the chance again, but what do you think about this guy, Danny Goler's work with the lasers? And where does this fit in? And is he onto something or is he just nuts? [00:35:04] Andrew Gallimore: Well, the problem I have is that. So for those that don't know, his claim is that you shine a red laser on a surface, right? You stare into the lake, you smoke a little bit of dmt, not too much, and you stare at the laser and you can see what looks like code running. And lots of people see this, and it seems to occupy the space behind, through into the. Into the wall. And he is convinced, like 100% that this is some. He's seeing the Matrix. He's seeing the fundamental reality code. Now, as you would expect, I don't simply take those such ideas at face value, and I think you need to think carefully about this. People have been seeing code under the influence of DMT for a long time, but this offers perhaps a highly replicable way of seeing this kind of imagery, which is great. You can kind of isolate one particular slice or fragment of the broader DMT visual phenomenology using this technique. I think it's a huge leap to go from that to you're seeing code. And the reason is, is that. Well, there's a number of reasons. Firstly, the code is said to look like Japanese katakana, which as many people will know, is precisely what they used in the Matrix movie, which seems a bit of an inconvenient coincidence. But also, you know, we know that lasers, particularly red lasers, which is what he prescribes for this experiment, has a very prominent speckle type effect. So as the laser comes back off the wall, it interferes with itself and creates a pattern on the retina which in my opinion acts as kind of like this sensory scaffold, highly replicable sensory scaffold around which the imagery emerges. And so people seeing code like, you know, highly regular patterns of highly complex structures, wouldn't surprise me. I mean, that's what DMT does, it tends to generate highly complex imagery. So when you have this pattern on the retina, my working hypothesis, which, you know, I welcome people to dispute, is that this sensory scaffolding effect leads to the emergence of these, these types of digital or code like imagery. [00:37:42] Dennis McKenna: Have you tried to replicate this? [00:37:45] Andrew Gallimore: No, I mean, it's not something, I mean, I haven't had the opportunity. I mean, I'm in Tokyo, but I know I'm obviously connected with people like, you know, Dave, Luke has done it, Anton has done it, and several others, kind of insiders, so to speak, that we both know. [00:38:05] Dennis McKenna: What do they make of it? Do they get this experience? [00:38:09] Andrew Gallimore: No, they don't. Yeah, no, but, but many, many do seem to. I mean, Danny claims that there's, you know, a thousand people who have seen this, this code, but whether they're seeing exactly the same thing or a variation, a variant on the same thing, I've seen no evidence that they're seeing exactly the same code, but they seem to be seeing some sort of code. So I think it's an interesting phenomenon, but I just, I always reel and kind of repelled a little bit by someone telling me this is an interesting phenomenon. But this is exactly what it is. This is, you're seeing an actual reality code running through reality. And, and I know this to be true and I just need to prove it. [00:38:57] Dennis McKenna: That that's a bit of a stretch. I mean, that's a huge conclusion to leak to based on this. But I mean, it's interesting. I don't think it proves that we're living in a simulation. I mean, I'm not sure how he makes that leap. Do you think that this code originates from this place that you go to, this subject, quantum, all and everywhere world, or this is something, this is something different, this is a different thing? [00:39:33] Andrew Gallimore: Well, you know, if, if we are interfacing with. My reaction to this would have been, and I've told this to Danny many several times, is that, you know, if we are interfacing with some kind of intelligence, then this would be an aspect of that interaction, this would be an aspect of that directed world. So maybe they are trying to say something. Maybe this is a means by which they are Communicating, which would be very, very interesting and certainly worth studying. But, but, but Danny has very specific concrete beliefs about what it is. I mean, he thinks it's literally an object in the environment that he's seeing, that the red light is reflecting off this code. You know, why? If reality was simulated, we'd be able to see the code running through it. That doesn't make any sense to me. The code runs elsewhere and the world would be its output. You don't see code by zooming in on the computer screen when you're playing a video game. You know, the code is somewhere else, so to speak. So the idea that it's running through reality in this way, in this matrix way, doesn't make any sense. I can't make his model make sense in my mind. But it could be, you know, it could be that there is, this is one aspect of this show, this, this directed world that, where the, the Blazer is allowing us to kind of focus in on one aspect of that which is in itself very interesting. I just wish that he'd kind of let go or loosen his grip a little bit on this firm belief that this is the fundamental code of reality that he's seeing directly. [00:41:15] Dennis McKenna: I think it's gone over from scientific inquiry to basically it's now become a belief system and so its value is diminished because there's no real way to test this or to look at alternative explanations. But I don't want to spend too much time talking about that. I was just interested in terms of the worlds that open up in this DMT place. Whatever their origin is, these entities are very much interested in transmitting information. They seem to have things that they want you to learn. But it's very hard to bring anything back and it's hard to know what exactly you're supposed to learn. I mean, I'm wondering, what do you think? I mean, what is the message you could spend with these new extended state technologies? With xdmt extended states, you can spend more time in that place. And some people in these studies have done so. Do you know how much the duration has been pushed using these protocols? I mean, what's the current record for being in the DMT extended state? Does anybody know? [00:42:55] Andrew Gallimore: Yeah. So the Imperial. Well, the original, as you're aware. So myself and Rick, Rick Strassman, we originally proposed this model for extended state dmt. DMT X, it's, it came to be known as. It's come to me now with, you know, understanding that DMT doesn't exhibit this subjective Tolerance, or of all very minimal subjective tolerance. And it has all of these pharmacological peculiarities that mean that it's perfectly set up to be used in this way to this constant infusion which allows you to maintain this stable level of DMT in the brain and induce somebody into the DMT state for as long as you like really. Because as you said, there is going back to Timothy Leary's first experiments in the, in the 19, the early 1960s with DMT. And he describes seeing these beings with these jewel encrusted pads which in my mind look like exotic iPads, you know, trying to show him something. And Anton Bilton also, I did an interview with him for the book and he was describing basically he'd never heard Timothy Leary's experience, but he was describing the same experience. He was describing this being showing him this jewel encrusted pad that, but that he couldn't make sense of. Like, look at this, you know, use this, this will tell you something. And also Spyros, who was DMT 40 in Rick Strassman's study in the 90s, during one of his experiences he instead of kind of breaking through or you know, entering this alternate reality space, his entire field of vision was blocked by this machine with dials and things. You know, this highly advanced heath. In his mind this thing was a reality synthesizer, which I can't imagine how he knew that, but in his head he knew it was a reality synthesizer. And they were kind of pushing it. He couldn't look past it, they were pushing it in his face as if to say, come on idiot, you know, just use this. And you get the feeling that perhaps they, despite their immensity of their intelligence, it's very difficult for them to quite understand how stupid we are. You get that synthesis. [00:45:27] Dennis McKenna: I encountered the reality synthesizer one really when I did Pharmahuasca, interestingly enough I did Farm A. And it was so, I mean it was so strange. It was very much like going to a movie. I mean it was like I was on a balcony, I felt like I was on a balcony and down below me I could see this three dimensional object that was twisting and transforming in all sorts of hyperdimensional ways. And I could just look at it. And when I first did it, when I first did this, I took the Farmer Waska, not much happened. There was sort of a bit of visuals and then it was kind of typical pre threshold DMT type stuff and then it sort of faded away. And then I thought, well, is that all there is to it? And so then I Got up, I got out of my tent where I was camped, I smoked my pipe for a few minutes and then I realized, wait a minute, that was the opening scene, that was the screensaver. Now the real show begins. And it was very much like watching this thing. And I could watch this self transforming object seemingly below me for about an hour, just going through its transformations. And of course you're just completely baffled. And then it's like, show's over, curtain closes, get in the elevator, walk out of the theater. I mean, it was very much that. [00:47:16] Andrew Gallimore: So that kind of thing coming behind. [00:47:19] Dennis McKenna: My left shoulder was saying, this is the reality synthesizer. [00:47:23] Andrew Gallimore: Ah, you got a literal message to that effect. This is a reality. [00:47:29] Dennis McKenna: This is a reality synthesizer. That was what. And so I wonder, you know, the other thing that's baffling to me in some ways, you can spend a lot of time now that we have the extended state technology. One could stay in that place for hours, maybe days, maybe weeks. Would we want to? Probably not. I mean, it could turn out to be like trapped on an airplane, watching a really cheesy cartoon with no option to turn it off. I mean, I guess the question is, it seems to get to a certain level and you're presented with all of this incomprehensible, extremely beautiful, fascinating, but impossible. And it's like, what's the take home? Where do you reach the point where you say, oh, I get it now. This is what they're trying to convey. [00:48:41] Andrew Gallimore: Yeah, you know, so in answer to Your first question, 90 minutes is the, is the current record, I think, by Matthias Leakete in Basel, I think, of all places. So, so I've, I've, I've often wondered, this is like, why can't they be more clear? But perhaps this is, this is a message that is incomprehensible. Maybe they're kind of leading us on and showing us that, hey, there is something here that you little apes simply cannot comprehend. How are we going to convince you of that fact? And most people are convinced of that fact, that there is something there, there is some kind of intelligence there that's real, that is extant, that is external to us, that is more advanced than us, that exists from its own side. I think that in itself is a message, even if you, you don't get. It's something that we can understand as such, you know, a coherent set of sentences that we can write down. The message in itself is, hey, we're here and we're real and you're not the, you're not the, the big dogs in town that actually there are beings and intelligences that are far beyond you. You know, how do we want to respond to that? How do we want to progress? Is this our future? Are they showing us a vision of the progression of an intelligent civilization not to the stars, but towards this deeper level, this deeper level of omniscience or of omnipotence or at least super or hyper intelligence that these beings already seem to have, have reached. And, and I think, but I think in terms of the, the dmtx, one thing that I always hoped was that by extending it and stabilizing the level of DMT in the brain, which you can do to an extent with ayahuasca and we should never, should always appreciate the incredible sophistication of that technology which it is, you know, a pharmacognostical, the greatest pharmacognostical discovery in the archaic world I think is what Jonathan Ott described it as. But still you're at the mercy of pharmacokinetics. It rises and then it stabilizes plateaus, then it comes down. With DMT it's you're up there and then it remains fairly stable. And, and what the early studies at Imperial and, and now in Matthias Sleepta's group show is that the experience itself tends to stabilize as well. It's like the brain is kind of settling into, constructing or being induced to construct this alternate reality space, this alternate interface and then you get to spend more time in a more stabilized state. A normal DMT experience is like you're there, you're kind of wide eyed, shocked, horrified, disorientated and bewildered and baffled and breathless and awestruck and all of these things and then you're kind of dragged back. And by inducing you and stabilizing the DMT in your brain, you're also stabilizing that experience and allowing you to spend time. So instead, instead of spending a few baffled minutes looking at this contraption, you can spend, you know, imagine sending a mathematician, you know, an algebraic topologist or a linguist or you know, specialists into the realm who are experienced with the DMT state but also have their own specific speciality. [00:52:48] Dennis McKenna: And possibly, possibly that's part of the solution or part of, I mean what keeps bothering me is you go into this incomprehensible place, you see all these incomprehensible things and then what, you know, I mean, perhaps so perhaps if you, if you introduce topologists to it or linguists or people with a certain set of skills and understanding, it would make more sense. I Mean we're sort of, at least I am not any of those things. So I can experience it and I can say, oh wow, gee whiz, this is amazing. But I can't really bring much more out of it than that. Perhaps someone, perhaps a mathematician, somebody like that could have this experience and say, well, of course, this is the, you know, eigenfunction in visual real space or something like that. I mean, I guess what I'm reaching out for in some ways what I'm wondering if there's this parallel universe with. And I think we can kind of get past the idea that this comes, that this is something created by the brain. It's something that we experience because we experience everything through the brain. But this is a show that is, we're not orchestrating it, it's out there. It's a parallel realm of existence which we are privileged to peek into using dmt. But then, so then I have the experience and then I come down and I have to. So what do I do with this? The next day I have to go to work, I've got things going on. You've got the, you know, regular trivia of day to day life. I mean, is it going to influence our culture, our evolution? Is it is or is it, is it just a distraction? Well, just a distraction. I mean, I guess part of its value is you're forced to admit that there's a realm, a parallel realm of super intelligent entities that we can interface with under some circumstances, but we can't do it all the time. And what do we do with the lessons that we've learned other than be humble? [00:55:32] Andrew Gallimore: Yeah, I mean a lot of people kind of ask me, you know, if these beings really are super intelligent, why haven't they given, given us, you know, map or why haven't they given us blueprints to construct, you know, these kind of, you know, complex machines or, or this kind of thing. And I can't help but feel, you know, that doesn't seem to be their purpose. There's never been any indication to me at least that they're, they're trying to, that the message is so obvious in that way and they're trying to make us more technologically sophisticated or what we would expect, you know, the kind of, the sci fi idea of learning, getting, you know, blueprints and other technology from these being. It doesn't seem to be that kind of thing. Often it is literally a show. Often there's very much a jovial, it's like, look at this, look, look how Incredible. This is, you know, look at what we can do. You can do it too, but none of it. It's always, you know, when they say you can do it too, it's always some weird kind of, you know, singing some nine dimensional object or something completely so far beyond anything we could do here in this reality that it seems completely non applicable. You know, it's not like transferable knowledge, so to speak. [00:57:00] Dennis McKenna: Right. [00:57:01] Andrew Gallimore: Which suggests that's not their. [00:57:05] Dennis McKenna: Yeah, that's not their aim. And the idea that they might give us the blueprint for the time machine or all of this technology, innovation, that's really an expectation that we put on it. We don't know if it fits into their agenda. We don't even know if they have an agenda. They just are what they are. But it's frustrating in some ways to not really. And you'd think that if you could spend more time in this extended state that the story would begin to unfold somehow, but it doesn't seem to. It just seems to be the same each time, even though it's astonishing. It's like, what do I try to say? There's no plot, it's just a state of being. And you experience it and you come back and you're astonished and baffled and not particularly wiser or anything else. [00:58:18] Andrew Gallimore: You know, I mean, if you look back at, I mean, one thing I do in the book is I place great emphasis on the indigenous kind of traditional use of it. And it's clear that these kind of shamanistic cultures going back a long time, these beings, they are described as members of their own tribe and they interact with them as they interact with members of other humans. To them it's just living their life. And instead of being visible, they also have this, this menagerie of, of, of other beings that populate and they sometimes communicate with them that to them it's perfectly normal and natural for them to spend their lives in these, these relationships which alter as they mature and this kind of thing, you know, these hekura and other kind of being, the Shapiri I also describe in the book and you know, these multitudinous little people as they're often described. Fair enough. Whereas us as Westerners, we've really just dipped our toes into the water. I mean, DMT was discovered by Steven Zahra in its pure form at least in 1956. So we've had a century and it's only just now, in the last few decades, largely thanks to yourself and your brother and that people are starting to actually take this seriously. But we're still far from that point where large numbers of people are making great efforts to try to understand this molecule. Most are just happy to say it's a hallucination. You know the guy on Twitter, a neuroscientist who said that entity encounters are illusory social events. Which to me was just the most absurd way of describing entity encounters in dmt. You know, he clearly never took dmt. [01:00:18] Dennis McKenna: Well, it's one of these things that it's easy to dismiss to say it's a hallucination or it's like a dream. This is the explanation that is not an explanation because it doesn't really fit the data. Do you think that when indigenous people take DMT in this state, do they encounter this hyper technological machine like science fictionist realm or is it different for them? [01:00:53] Andrew Gallimore: That is a very good question. I mean, I think you probably know more about that than I would. I mean you probably spent much more time with indigenous peoples who've used these kind of preparations. I mean there are certain commonalities. Obviously they use entirely different words and different language and the way that they interpret their experiences. They're not going to talk about computers for example, if they've never had access to, even if they were to see one as such. But certainly the types of beings that they describe, you know, these multitudinous singing, dancing beings they call the hekura, well they sound very much to me like machine elves. [01:01:35] Dennis McKenna: Like what do you mean the machine elves? Right, right, right. [01:01:39] Andrew Gallimore: And you know, Mark Plotkin, who was one of Richard Schultes proteges, he took a pena or a pena pena, you know, the, the snuff. The first, you know, he. It was the kind of the two man procedure where it was blown into his nasal passages. This was the first time he'd ever done it. And suddenly in his visual field were all of these little tiny little dancing beings kind of bounding around. And he asked the shaman, you know, what is, what are these? And he said those are the hekura, these are the spirits of the forest. So he was having what in modern parlance would have been described as, you know, a machine elf or elf like experience. And to them, the indigenous peoples, he was having a gooder experience. But it seems to be the same. [01:02:36] Dennis McKenna: So it is similar. It is similar but not so much emphasis on the machine or the technological part. It also seems that for these people this is much more a daily reality. I mean they don't necessarily take ebina daily, but the Hekora are a constant sort of element of their, of Their worldview of their experience, not necessarily being seen all the time, certainly being felt. I mean, they internalize these beings. They enter into these. And that's the basis of their shamanic power. How many of these entities you have dwelling inside you, wherever that is in your chest or in your head or whatever. So I always have said, and I think it's still true. I think that indigenous people, they've been at this for a long time, so we would do well to listen to them, and we do to the degree that we can. But they're models for what? Well, they don't really think the way we do, and we think in a scientific way. We're trying to construct a model for what this is. They probably don't bother with that. It's just experience, you know, it's just, it's. [01:04:04] Andrew Gallimore: For them, it's. It's perfectly normal and natural that they would interact with these beings. However, there is in. I was reading Peter Gao, so he's a Scottish anthropologist. I describe it later in the book, but he was. He spent a long time with the Piro people. I don't know whether it's Brazil or Venezuela, but anyway, somewhere down there in South America, and, and they use ayahuasca to interact with these beings, which they call kaiglu, which literally translates as those who cause visions to be seen. So they had the insight, as I see it, these Piro shamans, that they're not seeing the beings in their true form, but the beings are causing their visions to be seen, which is precisely what the kind of conclusion that I came to through a completely different route, the kind of the neuroscientific route, the idea that these beings are interfacing and directing the imagery using our world building machinery. These guys have known it, you know, these Piro shamans in Amazonia have known this long time that these, you're not seeing actual, you know, panthers or anacondas, these discarnate entities don't really have the form of earthly creatures, but they take on that form or they appear to us in that form or we're shown these forms because these are the things that we can understand that makes sense. So I think there is a lot of really profound insight there. But of course, it's couch in entirely different language because it comes from an entirely different worldview to what kind of the Western worldview. But often they, they, they reach the same kind of the same conclusions just through the experience, through their interactions with these beings, they come to realize that they're the beings who are the ones showing them things. So I think that's really cool that there's this meeting of these different ideas from entirely different worldviews and entirely different perspectives. [01:06:21] Dennis McKenna: Yeah, yeah, very interesting. I want to also ask you one thing. I think it's interesting to compare dmt, which has this prop, the property of psychedelics, and this unique property in itself, and then 5 methoxy DMT, which is sort of another character. But in 5 methoxy DMT you don't get these effects, you don't even get visual effects. [01:06:54] Andrew Gallimore: Yeah. [01:06:56] Dennis McKenna: And I've never heard reports of anyone. Maybe people haven't looked into it, but phibothoxy DMT doesn't access this place apparently. It seems to access a place of more or less void or the clear light or something like that. As a neurophysiologist and as a chemist, what do you think is going on there? Do you have any insights as to why 5 Meo and DMT are so different? [01:07:29] Andrew Gallimore: Well, I mean, it is remarkable that they are so different. I mean, the fact that you're talking about an extra methoxy group or not makes a world of very much, literally a world of difference. The subject, subject 0, the DMTX studies in Imperial College. Professor Carl Smith, who you would have met. I think you would have met him at Tyringham a couple of times. Yeah. So he described, I remember quite a few years ago now, he said to me, DMT is like the fifth dimension and 5 Meo DMT is like the 12th dimension you go through. I think what 5 Meo does is it pushes you past form. DMT is all about form and content and structure. That's what characterizes it in a very obvious and quite dramatic way. It's all about the structure and the form that you're seeing. Whereas five MEO pushes you past that into the formless. And you seem to be accessing a state of pure conscious awareness where there is no form. Form is of no relevance and no consequence. And I think it's kind of leading us to that realization that it's all an illusion. I mean, this is the message as old as humanity, that whether it's this normal waking world we're looking at or whether we're looking at this incredible DMT world, it's all part of the same kind of illusion. It's all form, it's none of it's really real. Ultimately, it's all pure consciousness taking on all these forms. And five MEO pushes you past, through. [01:09:14] Dennis McKenna: All that brings you to the ultimate formless. State. [01:09:18] Andrew Gallimore: Exactly. [01:09:19] Dennis McKenna: My first reaction is how boring. There's like no content, you know, I mean, it's like, it's like, you know, I mean, at least DMT in this state presents content. You can watch it, the cartoon runs. I mean, 5 Mao. I mean, I can't imagine doing an extended state experiment with 5 Meo, can you? [01:09:45] Andrew Gallimore: They are thinking about it. [01:09:47] Dennis McKenna: You have been thinking about it. [01:09:49] Andrew Gallimore: I haven't, but I know that Imperial College certainly are thinking about and Carl wants to do it. What Carl? Interestingly, during one of the extended state DMT trips that he had for 30 minutes at one point when he was deep in the DMT state, he says at the end of the bed he saw like a fisher in the DMT space and he could see the 5 Meo DMT space there, as if he wasn't, as if he was being held within this kind of middle space, the DMT space, and that actually he could have pushed through perhaps into the five meo, suggesting there is some deeper relationship between the DMT space, which is all form and content, and the 5 Meo DMT's face. But I'm like you, Dennis, I'm DMT. I can get my teeth into it. I can't get my teeth into a formless pure consciousness void. So I think that's why it's less interesting for me from a scientific perspective. It's harder for me to kind of get my teeth into it. But in DMT is the king in that, in that respect. [01:11:02] Dennis McKenna: I think this is absolutely fascinating. There's much left to be learned, I guess. I mean, that's the take home lesson. And the fact that this DMT realm is out there and it's so unlike anything that is a normal part of human experience, whatever that is. I mean, it's a good reason for humility if nothing else. It's one of those things where we tend to think that we know a lot about the way reality is structured and scientists can be a bit arrogant and kind of think we have this whole thing figured out. Then DMT comes along or something like that, and then it says no, you just think you have things figured out. Look at this and then reassess and remember you don't owe shit. Basically, there is nothing that we think we know that is not open to question. So it's good that people are continuing to work with this. Maybe 20, 30 years down the line we'll figure out, or maybe we'll have, maybe we'll set up embassies in this hyperspace and be in communication with these creatures. But the relationship has to evolve somehow, I think, for that to happen. [01:12:36] Andrew Gallimore: Yeah, I think we're too immature intellectually, cognitively, to really make sense. So I certainly never would make the claim that I understand the DMT space or. All I kind of tried to say is I can tell you what it's not, what I don't think it can be. That's all I can do. And then we have what's left, which is this. I just call it some kind of intelligent agent. I don't know what it is. I don't know where it's from. I don't know how long it's been there or anything like that. [01:13:16] Dennis McKenna: That's okay, Andrew. I mean, that's okay. Contribution. You can basically say we've looked at all the alternatives and we've rejected all what we think it might be. Now there is this other thing which is what it probably is, and that's progress. If we sort of are agreed that it is this sort of sub quantum intelligence that sort of inhabits the quantum interstices of reality, well, then we can focus on that and not waste time with all the other models which are dead ends. That's progress of a sort. Yeah. It's been fascinating conversation. [01:14:07] Andrew Gallimore: Thank you. Lemest. [01:14:08] Dennis McKenna: Is there anything we didn't say that you wanted to be sure we did, or have we kind of covered it for now? Lots more to say always, obviously. Yeah. [01:14:20] Andrew Gallimore: I mean, we could talk for hours, but yeah, I cover everything in Death by Astonishment, as you describe death by astonishment. [01:14:28] Dennis McKenna: And that will be out in July, right? [01:14:33] Andrew Gallimore: First of July, yeah, first of July. [01:14:35] Dennis McKenna: I have been blessed with an advanced copy and I just have to tell everybody it's a fantastic book. Andrew is a really engaging writer and a serious thinker and you've looked into this perhaps more deeply than anybody else. So, yes, buy the book. Buy his other books. But this is the one. This is your magnum opus and it just blew my mind, frankly. And it was a delightful read. So everybody that hears this, please go out and buy his book. You will not be disappointed. So I look forward to having you again on the podcast, Andrew, one of these days. [01:15:20] Andrew Gallimore: Thank you, Dennis. It's been a pleasure and an honor. Of course. [Outro]: Join our mission to harmonize with the natural world. Support the Makena Academy by donating today. Thank you for listening to Brainforest Café with Dennis McKenna. Find us online at McKenna Academy.