Joe Rogan - Is DMT a Portal to Another Dimension?

When you look at the DMT experience and you look at its effect on the human mind, how much of you subscribe to the idea that we're looking at some sort of a chemical gateway? Chemical gateway to what? Whatever it is. To whatever that DMT experience is. That this is something that your brain has the ability to travel to. But I mean, since we know that the body does produce this and we know that it's possible for people to... I mean, I've never done it, but I know that people who do Kundalini Yoga have apparently reported trip-like experiences that are very similar to a real DMT flash. So the mind has this ability to do this on its own. Do you think that that... Is that something worth considering? That this is this is some sort of a pathway to a nearby dimension or to something that's around us all the time but we just don't have access to with normal neurochemistry? There's too many what-ifs or who knows? There's so much in what you said where you have to go back and unpack all of these things. When we got excited about DMT, Terrence and me in the late sixties, what led us to go to Latura was that it seemed like a completely different order of magnitude than any of the other psychedelics and we came to it really from a childhood that was steeped in science fiction. So we carried with it the with us the idea this really is another dimension and it may be a portal to another dimension and as science fiction nuts, we were totally okay with that and we thought maybe DMT was and maybe it is but or it's somehow pulls the curtain back on something that's around us all the time that we don't see. But again in thinking about these things is it something that is entirely within the brain that it originates or is it something that is it like a lens that you know or our eyes are covered with filters and DMT temporarily removes those filters. I think it's hard to know. I mean I think maybe experimentally we could we could begin to approach this. Have you you know and I think we really know. I think that's another thing about natural philosophy that's important that science is overlooking and natural philosophy always remembers the limits of what is known. You know and science is a bit arrogant about what they think is known. Science only understands a small fraction of all there is to know and Ayahuasca, another psychedelic always remind me of this. You know when I take it remember the limitations of your knowledge or sometimes more or less kindly says it. You don't know shit. And it's true. We don't know shit. And scientists can forget that. But as far as this DMT thing. You know this is actually there's controversy about this because you know a lot of people who have worked in this area say it's pretty well established that endogenous DMT can produce these states that the pineal can secrete DMT under certain circumstances or under stress the lungs can produce large amounts of DMT that are translocated to the brain. But it's not so clear that that goes on. I mean it's clear that it can be produced but David Nichols you know who knows a thing or two about pharmacology founder of the Hefter Institute. World's you know most authoritative highest authority when it comes to the chemistry and pharmacology of psychedelics. He's the reduc- he's taken a reductionist argument on this that's kind of hard to to knock down which is that DMT is produced endogenously but it's chopped up so quickly that it never reaches the side of action and it never reaches the levels at the neuron that it would take to activate the neuron. Even when consumed or are you saying it endogenously produce DMT? Endogenously. So that it does when you consume it obviously you flood the system and you get much higher levels than is ever produced endogenously and I but we don't really measure the levels produced endogenously during especially these extreme states and that's part of the problem that's part of the problem how do you do that? Have you done it? How do you do that? Have you done Kundalini and tried to recreate? No, I haven't done it. Me neither. You know Terence had that fantastic joke it was a talk about that this monk had practiced the city of levitation. Do you remember this one? And that the Buddha came to town and he said for the last 20 years I practiced the city of levitation and I can now walk on water and the Buddha said yeah but the fairy's only a nickel. So it's like do you want to practice Kundalini for 10 years and bang your head towards the east or just smoke DMT 30 seconds later in the center of the universe. But I think the last time I was on your show we talked about this this other thing this Ajna light we discussed yes and I don't know if you've interviewed yeah we have to buy you one. I said we totally dropped the ball on that you don't have to buy. No we do have to buy you one. I'm gonna buy yourself one I'm gonna buy myself one and you and this time we're gonna do it. We said we're gonna I do too many podcasts I forget everything. I know I've never but the Ajna light is interesting because you know I mean he claims and that was the conversation we had he claims yes this stimulates endogenous synthesis of I'm writing this down right now. Ajna light and his website is just AjnaLight.com and there's some good PDFs on there that'll explain what this is about. Get on that Jamie yeah and now my hero right now holds me big time because I just mentioned this on your show. But anyway so this light can produce some sort of psychedelic experience he claims it stimulates DMT synthesis in the pineal when you lie underneath it it's just a bunch of it's it looks like a floor lamp you know with a rectangular mount bunch of LEDs underneath it which he programs with an iPad in different patterns you lie under it and you it stimulates hypnagogic hallucinations. Look at him. That guy looks like an old-school freak look at him. He's a zed monk. I bet he is. Yeah amongst other things. He used to be an Apple engineer. He was Steve Jobs' right hand man when next he went the right way. He went the right way. So he's got this thing is that cord going down to her head? I'm having a hard time seeing what's happening. If something's wrapped around her head that better not be a crystal. I think that's I think it's no I think it's a deceptive thing. He didn't attach anything to me when I was on it. I think it's the cord going behind her head. So you lie under this thing and the first time I lied under it I got all these colors. I got all these hypnagogic effects you know and nice patterns and all that like a sub-threshold DMT experience and I said well you know the LEDs are all changing color right? That's how I see it. He says no they're white. The colors are coming from you. You're supplying the colors. So okay so it was interesting and then we got into the conversation how do you know this is stimulating DMT? How do you know that's the effect? Turns out it's not so easy to nail that down. You know because DMT is so ephemeral in the system you can't take urine samples or cerebral spinal fluid or anything. It would be gone by the time you you did it. So the only way, well maybe not the only way, but one way you could do it is you could do something called essentially you couldn't do this to a human because you couldn't you couldn't get a FDA approval for it but you could put a micro capillary tube right next to the pineal that will absorb things as they are released and then you could recover that and say you know levels of DMT are higher. Why couldn't you do that to a voluntary participant? Voluntary or not you'd be screwing their brain up. Well no not necessarily but you'd have a hard time getting permission. There might be, you could do it to a rat though. Oh you could do it to a rat. Well that's what Cottonwood Research Foundation's done right? They've done that that's how they discovered DMT in the pineal. Did they do that to a live rat? Yeah yeah that's how they discovered it. That was the first proof right? That was the first proof. Nick Cozy who's a pharmacologist at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, he was really the first one to show that DMT is you know endogenously produced. Now it's a sigma 1 agonist as well as a serotonin agonist which is another receptor. You know that's definitely that but it's not clear what the function is. It's a complicated issue you know to figure this out I'll send you a paper that Nichols wrote or I'll link you to a video where he discusses this. And it's like you know he gave that at the Breaking Convention conference last summer that I was at. It was like you know he was like the big downer of the conference right because everybody has this romantic idea and he comes along and just squashes it you know it's like man you know you've disappointed a lot of people but on the other hand reality is good you know facts are good. Guy did do that sort of made me think maybe there is something to it. He's tried pre-dosing with an MAO inhibitor just take band of stereopsis T without the admixture about 30 minutes before going under the light and then it's much more intense and it's much more prolonged. You've done this? I haven't done it. But he claims that and other people say that it definitely enhances this. So that would indicate that the breakdown of DMT is being inhibited. Is he claiming that you could reach actual DMT states with this device upon practice? Yeah.