Joe Rogan and Duncan Trussell Go Deep on Art and Psychedelics

We talked about this before. We need to find a cul-de-sac. We don't buy houses there. You mean the cult? Yes. I know. You think a ranch would do the trick? It's tough to get people to live on a ranch. No, I think... The way... You're talking about... I know what you're talking about. Yeah, it's not that hard. But, you know, I think the way you do it is in phases, right? So, like, the first thing would be just get the land, right? Right. And then... Hire an architect. Yeah, hire an architect. And then, like, you know... Bring in Alex Grey. Yeah. I'm trying to get to that. That thing that you did in Upstate New York. It's beautiful. Have you been there personally? I've been there in the... I haven't... Unfortunately, I haven't been there since... It's complete. I don't even know if it's completed, but I've been there in the early phases. And yeah, that for sure is a temple. Like, it's no joke. It's not like they're just saying it's a temple. That's a real... And the way he printed those weird faces, those multi-feature faces, and used them in the corners of the building. What is he called again? I can't remember. I'm sorry. Cosm. Cosm. I thought you meant what he called those faces. He has a name for the faces, too. Is that the Chapel of Sacred Mirrors? Is that what it sounds for? But isn't that Cosm was used to be what he called the place in New York City, right? He had the place in Manhattan. Yeah, they had this... I think they still... Well, they still do have a beautiful place in New York. Actually... Or like an artist loft there, I believe. But they ended up realizing it was time to... Spread their wings. Build a temple. Yeah, and then really go somewhere in nature. Yeah. They're in a small New York town, right? Yeah, that's right. New York State town. Yeah, it's a beautiful place. And they're a legit religion. Entheon, that's right. And they're an actual religion, which they are. They are an actual religion. Yeah, it is a religion. And by the way, a religion doesn't want anything from you. Like, they're not trying to get 10% of your money. They're not giving you a bunch of rules to follow. Nope. They want you to worship love and creativity. It's a really interesting place. Is that... That's just an image of what it's going to look like. I don't think it's really quite there yet, but holy shit. Yeah, man. Imagine coming up to that, like walking up to that front door and you're like, oh my God, what the hell am I looking at? Dude, when I was on tour, they let me park my tour bus there because we needed a place to sleep for the night. So I had to sleep in front of that thing in my tour bus. And I hadn't even gotten to that phase, but I had crazy dreams just sleeping there. Yeah, it was wild, man. That's probably like one of those, if you build it, they will come things. Like, do you imagine how hard you would trip inside that place? Do you know what I'm saying? Yeah, no. Like, I don't think it's... I don't think it's a... You could do DMT in a shitty apartment and still have some crazy mind blowing trip, but you can't tell me that coming to this place and going through this Enthion portal, that this isn't gonna have some fucking crazy effect on the way you trip. Yeah. Oh my God. But that was the idea of a temple. I mean, the idea is, I'm not just saying to trip or whatever, but the concept is like, let's acknowledge the fact that maybe our ideas aren't necessarily coming from inside our brains. Let's just as a fantasy imagine that there is a divine intelligence as one of the many beautiful things it pushes into this particular realm as art. And that if we can figure out a way to purify the connection with that thing, then we become receivers for that. And by doing that, we allow that thing to begin to exist in this world. And a temple was a place that allowed that connection to be refined, purified, intentionalized. And in that, there's a solidification called inspiration or art or whatever the name is you wanna give it. But it's really, it's like output from a place that maybe is a few floors up from the one we're at. It's having a pretty wonderful party right now. And like part of what we do is like, allow it to drip into this realm, which is potentially a denser realm. We're in the realm of matter. It's dense, you know? And like ideas, if you look at your ideas, they're light. They're like, they don't have, at least my ideas, like they're not like heavy. Inspiration feels like barely anything. In fact, it's so barely anything. Think how easy it is to miss a good idea. How easy it is to think something cool that maybe you wanna write down for a joke and you're just, I'll write that down later and then it's gone. It's light, it's light. And so in part of what they're, I think are all about, or I mean, again, that's me putting it on them. They have a wonderful description on their website about what they're all about. But to me, part of what creation is is taking those things, allowing them to come through you and then allowing this realm to do what it does, which is to crystallize them in a denser form that other people can enjoy. And that enjoyment, that's enough. Doesn't have to be some lofty ass shit. It's just like people get a little, like this tiny little smell of heaven, like a better place, a lighter place, a place that isn't encumbered by so much bullshit is this particular realm. That can completely take someone out of a depression, man. That can completely give somebody the juice they need to get back out there and open up themselves to the world and not be shut down. Just one little tiny, tiny minuscule reminder of like, don't worry, this isn't the only place. There's simultaneously amazing things happening which you're a part of. You just don't realize it yet and don't worry. McKinney, in one of his essays, that's what he'd say on mushrooms is he would get this message, don't worry, we're coming. Don't worry, we're coming. And you know what I mean? But I think that's what art does is it gives you this sense of like, don't worry. Right now we're just building the runway. Don't worry, it's coming. I know this place seems fucked up. It's a little dense right now. We're gonna lighten it up. And then that- How much of that is your own imagination though? Like how much of your own imagination stimulates your trips? You know, I mean, we wanna assume that we're really interacting with something, right? On the other side. But why do we assume that that's something? Obviously it's not static. One of the things about tryptamine experiences is that things twist and change and morph and shift. They never stay any one thing for any length of time. They're always becoming other things and moving in and out of things. Like maybe that's just what happens over there. Maybe these things are constantly shifting and changing. You know, maybe what we're doing is we're trying to apply, when we think of how we are here in this life, we're trying to apply those laws to whatever we experience when we do that. But it seems so alien. When you have those experiences, it seems so alien. You're not gonna be able to bring any of that back. You're gonna give someone like little glimpses. And what Alex has done the best is capture like, oh, I know what he's doing. Like those faces, those almost Egyptian looking golden faces are moving apart from each other. You go, oh yeah, I've seen something. Yeah, something sort of. Yeah, there's a tryptamine part to that. But whatever that would be in that dimension, it would change and become something else instantaneously and then become something else. And a lot of it has to do with how you're thinking, which is weird. It's like, is the way you're thinking actually affecting those things? Or is the way you're thinking affecting your perception of whatever this energy is and how it manifests itself visually? Well, I mean, this is that, right? Even in what you're saying, there's this assumption that your thinking is separate from the thing. Right, right, right. And so we have a thought and we're thinking to ourselves, oh, I just got a good idea. We don't know that if we had a different way of quantifying time and space, we might have just seen some ethereal mist drift through us that produced a thing we call the thought that we thought must be us. So you look at a thing in that realm and it's shifting and converting. And you notice that that conversion seems to be happening in relation to how you're feeling. And now you're in a chicken or the egg conversation, which is like, who's reflecting who here? Like, which of us is real and which of us isn't? Or are we just kind of there? Am I just seeing who I actually am? But because I live in a world of individuality and I live in a world where there's a separate quality to things, I have to see you as separate. Because if I don't, I can't see you. And all I can do, I'm seeing myself in you, which is, I think, what is happening in this realm anyway. It's like when anything you're looking at right now is some phenomena being painted instantaneously by your imagination. That's what the imagination is doing. It's painting colors onto the universe of infinite phenomena that your brain is doing out of habit. So that's that. Anything that anyone you're around, you make an instantaneous assessment of that person or you begin to realize, wait, I got a bad vibe about that person. I bet something's off of them. And then you go into like, you're a TV psychic bullshit. Like, oh yeah, really? Oh really, is that the instincts you learned? Where'd you learn that World War craft? The streets. Yeah, you don't know. But I've done that. By the way, I'm talking about myself. Where I'm like, yeah, I just can tell if a person is honest or, it's like, no I can't. You can definitely tell if a person's really fucking weird though. That's for sure. You can tell if a person's off. They're not really connecting with you or they're pretending to connect with you. And you're like, whoa, I got a weird vibe from this. Meanwhile, if you looked at what he said on paper and what you said on paper, would be totally normal. That's true. There's sometimes certain things, a violation of space. There's a weirdness to the way they look at you, a cadence. They're like, oh, you're off. I hate that feeling, man. That's a deeper thing when the alarm bells go off like that. Your hair starts standing up. You're like, oops, gotta go. I fucking hate that. That's scary. I'm just saying, sometimes you're not right. And this is why you need empiricism in science because sometimes you're not right. Just because you think that's how shit is from some instinct inside of you doesn't mean that's how things is. You're biased. And so that's the projection. That's the part of you that you're, you're still dealing with some trauma from when you were a kid. And you're seeing that trauma in all the things around you. And so you're like in an argument with someone who hurt you 20 years ago when you're talking to somebody who vaguely reminds you of that person. And if you're not aware, you're still having the argument. And if you're not aware that you're still having that argument, then you can start saying shit like, why do I always end up with the same person? It's like, I always draw this kind of person to me. And it's like, well, maybe you're drawing the exact same kind of person to you, or maybe you're running the same movie on a different screen. And being like, I've seen this before. I keep seeing this movie. It's like, that's the same movie. It's like, you're seeing the same thing you're projecting. It's just, it looks like now it's not Tom, it's Alex. Or now it's not Lisa, you're looking at Samantha, but you're still seeing this thing. And that's the projection. So anyway, that's the imagination. And the question is how powerful is that projection? Because sometimes you start projecting onto someone how you think they are. And if that person's weak or insecure, they'll start acting the way you think they are. Now your projection has sprung to life in front of you because the person, you've essentially animated a person with your expectation of them. And then, because that person is acting the way you thought they would act, because they don't know the fuck they are, you're making monsters with your imagination. Well, that's what cult leaders do, right? That's how you start a sex cult. Same way, you gotta take these people and put it in their head that this is what they do. You put it in their head. Right, yeah, that's right. You say you see it. I see it in you.