Joe Rogan & Dennis McKenna - Telepathy and Ayahuasca

From the animal level to the plant level to the fungal level, you find these things everywhere. You know, and people say, well, there's about 150 species of plants that contain DMT. That's only because we've only looked at 150 species of plants. You know, if you look at these large genera that are, you know, famous, known for having tryptamines, like Acacias and Mimosas and these things, we know of a few species that have DMT, but there's hundreds of species, thousands of species. It's just that nobody's looked. Nobody's going to fund this work. I think you can reasonably say that, you know, there are about 1,400 species of Acacia in the world. Probably 75% of them have DMT. And actually, I would go to the next—I would even claim, without evidence—that's never stopped me before. But I think it's reasonable to suppose that because DMT is so close to mainstream metabolism, probably all plants have DMT to some extent. Most don't have large levels of them. They don't have useful amounts of DMT. But if you took, with sufficient instruments, if you just started randomly sampling plants and analyzing for DMT with a mass spec, I'll bet it would turn up in almost everything. What is—is it fallerus grass that's toxic to sheep because of DMT? Yep. That's the one. So the DMT in it, for whatever reason, the way it interacts with the sheep's digestive system, it becomes poison? Well, no, not entirely. I mean, it's got—fallerus grass has DMT. It has 5-methoxy DMT. Other tryptamines, it also has something called gramine, which is—it's like DMT with only one carbon on the side chain. Gramine is more or less toxic. Gramine shows up in a lot of grass species. That's probably the thing that causes what's called fallerus staggers. So if you just fed DMT synthesized to sheep, it wouldn't be toxic. Hard to say. Did they produce monoamine oxidase? Nobody's done that. Do sheep? Yeah. Well, of course. So do leopards or jaguars. All mammals. So when you see those jaguars eating the leaves and then tripping their balls off, rolling around on their back, what do you think is happening there? I mean, you've seen those videos, I'm sure. Yeah, I've seen those videos. Well, for one thing— Fascinating, right? They're eating banisteriopsis, right, which is the source of the MAO inhibitors. Oh, okay, right. And I don't know what to make of that. It certainly does seem like some kind of a catnip for them, you know, and causes an altered state, for sure. MAO inhibitors in and of themselves, they produce some sort of a psychedelic experience? They can. They can. Not just from the MAO inhibition, but they often have other effects that are psychoactive, like harm-harming. Harm-harming is a good example. You know, we used to think that harming was—basically, it's the MAO inhibitor in ayahuasca, and it doesn't do a whole lot beyond that. Well, it turns out now harming is getting a second look. It's interesting that the tarmine, you know, was discovered in Pagamharmala about maybe 10 years before ayahuasca was ever reported to science. So harming is one of these hoary old alkaloids, I like to call it. You know, it's been known forever, and now we're just finding out it has all sorts of interesting pharmacologies. It's an MAO inhibitor, for sure. More importantly, it appears that it stimulates neurogenesis, and that's relevant to Alzheimer's and brain development and even Down syndrome. It is an inhibitor of this kinase, this regulatory protein called Dyrk1, which has got its fingers in lots of different cellular pies. You could call it many different regulatory functions, and harming is a very potent, very selector inhibitor of this kinase. So that relates to this—it actually stimulates nerve growth in the hippocampus. And we're finding out that there are a number of other receptors that it interacts with, including serotonin, dopamine transporters, even one called the imagiline receptors that are of undefined functions. So like most natural molecules, it's not a one-trick pony. You know, harming has a number of effects, you know, and that's why taking ayahuasca is a different—you know, that's why it's not a pure DMT experience, because you've got a whole mixture of alkaloids that are contributing to that effect. Who were the researchers that when they discovered harming, they didn't know what it was, and they tried to label it telepathy until they realized that it was harming? Right, right. Well, yeah, this is part of the—what you may call the sad and sordid history of ayahuasca in a certain way, because in the early days, in the 20s, when people are looking at it, a number of independent groups were working on it, and they were isolated molecules. They weren't aware of other people's work, and so they misnamed these things, you know. I mean, I can't tell you exactly. I think initially it was Lewis Lewin who discovered harming, and he called it banisterine. Then it turned out, well, another group years before had isolated the same molecule from pugatum harmella, and telepathy was one of these misnomers, you know, that came out. The problem with this was that back in the day, people didn't collect voucher specimens, so a lot of this chemical work was done without the benefit of herbarium specimens, which now everybody that wants to do phytochemical work hopefully has the good sense to collect specimens of the original plant so that people can go back and look at that. A lot of this early work was reported, and there was no voucher specimens to document the collection, so a lot of it had to be dismissed. You know, the beta-carameline chemistry of banisterineopsis didn't really get well defined until some Chinese scientists, or at least they had a Chinese name, worked on them and discovered harmine, tetrahydroharmine, and harmiline as the main alkaloids. They could reference that to botanical voucher specimens, so they really should get the credit for discovering it, and then once that was done, then it was known, and, you know, other scientists had to acknowledge that. Why did they describe it as telepathy? There was supposedly some sort of a story about some group telepathic experience. Yeah, this was just romantic. This was just some story, you know, out of the literature. Yeah, I mean, it was rumored to be able to cause telepathy. But this wasn't ayahuasca. They were only taking harmila? It's not clear. It's not clear. It's not clear. Yeah. I mean, they may have been taking it, but whether they were getting telepathy, I kind of doubt it. When we know we could get telepathy on ayahuasca, it's not so uncommon. It happens all the time. People have group hallucinations, group visions. Has anybody ever bothered to independently, like sequester people, put them into, like, different rooms, have them do ayahuasca, and then have them describe a very similar experience or almost identical experience to prove that these telepathic experiences exist? Or at least to... As far as I know, that hasn't been done. Yeah, because everybody wants to talk afterwards. Like, oh my God, did you see the dragon? Right. I don't think that's been done. That seems like a worthy study. Because I've heard from more than one person. In fact, my friend Kyle Kingsbury and his wife had an ayahuasca experience where they both had a visualization of their child. And then when they got back, she was pregnant, and they wound up having this child from their visualization, from this experience. Obviously, they were very close, and they were together, and they probably communicated quite a bit. I would just think it would be a really interesting experiment. It would be very interesting. And that sort of points out, there is a realm of experience, a realm of knowing that these things give access to that's normally close to us. I mean, that's kind of a trivial statement, of course. But then you get down to questions of how verifiable is that, how real is that, how... And people get... I don't know if the term is hung up, but they can get baffled when you start talking about the reality of, say, the entities you encounter on DMT. I mean, this is some people I know are obsessed with trying to verify the reality of the entities that you find on DMT. And again, it comes down to, if you experience them, they're real. If anything you experience is real, because you've experienced it, does it have a corresponding existence in the external world? Well, you know, what's external? What's internal? We throw around these terms, these epistemological, metaphysical terms, quite carelessly, without really thinking about it. What does it mean when you say, I'm in here and you're out there? And then you take a psychedelic and you realize that's an artificial boundary. We're all one. There is no separation. It's separated in normal consciousness, though. It's separated in normal consciousness. But then what is normal consciousness? If not a reflection of your neurochemical brain state. I mean, everything you experience is an altered state because it's filtered into this brain, processed by the brain. And, you know, the brain is a biochemical engine that, you know, as I say often, we're made out of drugs. But it seems that our normal consciousness is the best state to propagate biological life and to keep our, whatever we've created in terms of our community structures and relationships and friendships and the ability to build structures and houses and things like that. All these things are done best when you're here and present. Whereas when you're in a psychedelic state, I agree with you. The way I've always described it is if you had a meeting with God and you went and God gave you all the answers to the world and you experienced undeniable beauty in the most extreme form possible where you couldn't have imagined it and then you came back, whether you hallucinated it or not, it's the exact same experience. Exactly. You can't scale, you can't weigh it. You can't, like, we've stretched the tape measure around and God is 47 inches across. Like, just because, you know what I'm saying? Just because you can't measure it with what we term our, you know, our metrics for reality. Right. And that is exactly the thing. Don't worry about whether it's real in the way we would define real. Is it good information or is it bad or is it not? That's the thing. It doesn't matter where it comes from. If it's good information, then it has its own internal validity and whether it came from some part of yourself that is normally obscure to you or it came from the plant teacher or the aliens transmitting it through, it doesn't really matter. But we are obsessed with that. We are obsessed with reality. Because we think we're being fooled a lot. Right? Right? And this goes back to Terrence's La Churera psychedelic experience where he had a UFO encounter. You know, the easily dismissing amongst us would go, well, he's tripping his balls off on mushrooms. Of course he saw UFOs. Was there a leprechaun driving the UFO? Like, oh, that's nonsense. Right. Right. Easy to dismiss. Yes. And in fact, that is the nature of these phenomena. That's what's really interesting. Easy to dismiss. That was another aspect of the experiment of La Churera I left out when I was talking about my lecture. But there's almost always an element of absurdity in these experiences and in paranormal experiences and UFO encounters. It's like, little green man? Come on. Are you kidding? Right. But what the fuck? There are little green men, you know, and little blue men. You know, a guy you should have on this show, maybe you have already, is Whitley Streeper. No, I haven't had him on, but he's so out to lunch. I have massive reservations. There's a video of him looking at a fly in that fly, clearly a fly, flies in front of a camera. And he's describing it as just a man in a suit. And it's like, like there's something wrong with him. Well, I missed that. I missed that part. I think what's interesting about Whitley, and I agree. I totally dismissed him, you know, for a long time. I thought, you know, he is really a nutcase. He's from the communion books for people who don't know. Exactly. He wrote a series of books about being abducted and... Yeah. But I sort of had to change my opinion somewhat, because he and Jeffrey Kreipel, who I do know, is...Jeffrey Kreipel is a professor of comparative religion and mythology at Rice University. And his focus initially is sort of on the superhero as in contemporary mythology as a mythical figure and that sort of thing. He and...I was invited to a workshop that Whitley was going to be at. This was a couple of years ago in Hawaii. Well, I'm always interested in a free trip to Hawaii, right? So I said, you know, I'd like to come to this thing, but this guy is a nutcase. I'm not sure I want to appear on the same stage with this guy. And if it's me saying that, you know he's a nutcase. And, you know, and the guy I was hosting it said, well, you know, did you know that he and Jeffrey Kreipel wrote a book together? And I said, oh, I don't. I said, I know Jeffrey Kreipel. I know that he's not a nutcase, and that's interesting. And then I found out about the book, and I said, I told the guy, if you invite Jeffrey and Whitley, then I'll come and we'll participate. The name of the book is supernatural, two words, supernatural, a new vision of the unexplained. And it's really very interesting. The book is basically, you know, alternating chapters. Whitley tells his stories about what happened to him, what has happened to him, what continues to happen to him. He lives in some kind of alternate reality. I get that. I mean, I don't know if I accept it, but I get it. And then in alternating chapters, Jeffrey comes along and kind of unpacks this and explains where does this fit into sort of the, you know, phenomenology of mythology and, you know, reasonable explanations. And it's a fascinating book. If you just suspend disbelief for a minute and think about, assume that Whitley is sincere. I don't think he's lying. I think that these things really happen to him, or he thinks they do. And some of the most craziest things, these are not, you know, the media has made, like everything, they dumb it down, you know, and they put it into the box of alien encounters, guys in a nut bowl, you know, and they dismiss it. But if you take a closer look, one thing to Whitley's credit is he doesn't claim to understand what's happening. He doesn't call it an alien encounter. He doesn't claim anything. He just says, this is happening. I have no friggin' idea what this is. So that's honest, you know, that's an honest scientific stance. I do not understand this phenomenon. So I give him credit for that. And then he and Jeffrey wrote this book. There was a very interesting, you know, later on, so I read all this, later on in the book, there's a chapter where they get to what is the possible physical explanation of what's going on here, if there is a physical explanation. And one of the headings, I think the chapter, one of the headings in the chapter was labeled, The Soul as a UFO. And that kind of blew my mind. That got my attention, because, you know, when I did this workshop with them, I was kind of bringing the flag of psychedelics, right? I was saying, if you don't address psychedelics, you've only got part of the picture here. And they were talking about how the soul, how this could be some sort of a physical plasmoid type of thing. They were invoking, you know, scientific terminology. I don't know if it was legitimate or not, but just the idea, the soul of a UFO. And I was able to respond to that and say, well, you know, the experiment at Lottieraro is essentially the blueprints of how to build one of these things that you're talking about, you know, which it was really this transformation. And so that impressed me. I don't know what to make of it, but I think there is, and they don't really know, nobody knows what to make of it. But I think there are just odd things going on. But that some people experience, you know? And whether they are actual encounters or dreams or somewhere in between, I'm not sure. But it would be good. I mean, yeah, I don't know. I mean, when you meet Whitley, have you ever met him? No. He is like the most drab person you can imagine. I mean, he's like an accountant or something. He's probably worn out from telling all these stories. Probably worn out. Yeah, could be. Could be. But he was a fiction writer. He was a fiction writer. Yeah. And then he comes out with this incredible real world story that reads like fiction. And there's obviously something off when you talk to him or you hear him. And I've never talked to him personally. But when you see him in interviews and conversations, there's something off. Now, what is that something off? Is it a psychotic break? Is it something that drifts in and out? Is he having problems with normal consciousness? I mean, I don't know what it is, but I thought I'm really not sure. See if you can find that video of him talking about the fly. Did you find it? He thinks it flies a man in a fucking spacesuit. He's like, is that a man in a suit? What is that? And I'm like, oh, Jesus, to lunch. Call the men with maps. There's quite a few of those. There's quite a few really bizarre videos of him where you like he's having a hard time with normal reality. So which would make sense during the dream state because all these things are happening at night. Right. This is the big thing that I've always the big problem I've always had about these UFO abduction experiences. First of all, they all take place when someone is either at night. It's either they're on a dark road where there's no one around and they're sleepy or they're at home in their bed. Like the vast majority of them take place at night or while someone's lying in bed, which is exactly when you're dreaming. Now we don't totally understand the dream state, but there's a connection, at least an implied connection between psychedelic chemicals that your brain produces endogenously that could be released during the dream state and in different levels with different humans. I mean, obviously some people have problems with producing serotonin and dopamine and then other people have no problems with it. And this, the biology of the human brain varies, right? So it's not without consideration or it's not without possibility that there's someone who has a real issue with these chemicals just busting through and flooding their system. But we know there are. We know there are people. But then does this contradict what we've already said about psychedelic experiences. Like why would we diminish his endogenous psychedelic experience if that's what he's having? I mean, it is entirely possible that you're dealing with someone who maybe perhaps does have some sort of psychotic breaks, but also is experiencing psychedelic experiences due to some endogenous DMT dump or dump of whatever. And all these things are taking place at the same time in the dream state during heavy REM sleep. And he's coming back with these uniform stories of alien abduction. Yeah. No, I agree. I mean, it's hard to parse it out. And I'm not saying I accept it all, but I... It's easy to dismiss, but maybe you shouldn't, right? Well, there maybe is something there. We should approach it in the spirit of, here's a phenomenon. We don't understand it. We shouldn't dismiss it. There's something to be understood here. Not necessarily his understanding of it, but something to be looked at there. And I thought this book was interesting for its balance. I would not have Whitley Strebber on your show without Jeffrey Kreipel on your show. That would be fun. Because it would be fun. And maybe it's a bridge too far. I'm not sure. Maybe not. Yeah, maybe not. Maybe we get to the bottom of this thing. Yeah. Well, is there something to be got to the bottom? Right. Is there a bottom at all? Is it just one man's delusion or is there really something at the base of it?