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 a hundred and fifty species of plants that contain DMT that's only because we've only looked at a hundred and fifty species of plants you know if you look at these large general that are that are you know famous known for having tryptamines like a Katia's 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 look nobody's gonna fund this work I think you can reasonably say that you know there are about fourteen hundred species of acacia in the world probably 75% of them have DMT and actually I would go to the next I would 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 large levels of that they don't have useful amounts of DMT but if you took with sufficient instruments if you just started random randomly sampling plants and analyzing for DMT with a mass spec I'll bet it would turn up in almost everything what is uh which is it phalaris grass that's toxic to sheep because I'm DMT yep that's the one so the DMT in it for whatever reason way it interacts with the sheep's digestive system it becomes poison well no not entirely I mean it's got phalaris grass has DMT it has five methoxy DMT other tryptamines it also has something called Grameen which is it's like DMT with only one carbon on the sidechain gramming is more or less toxic Grameen shows up in a lot of grass species that's probably the thing that causes what's called phalaris staggers so if you just fed DMT synthesized - sheep it wouldn't be toxic hard to say did they produce monoamine oxidase nobody's fella do sheep yeah 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 have you seen those videos yeah i've seen i've seen those videos well for one thing they are eating banisteriopsis right which is the source of the mao inhibitors 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 mao inhibitors in in and of themselves they produce some sort of a psychedelic experience they can not just from the mao inhibition but they often have other effects that are psychoactive like harm harming harming is a good example you know we used to think that harmine was basically it's the MAO inhibitor in ayahuasca and doesn't do a whole lot beyond that well it turns out now harming this getting a second look it's interesting that at our mean you know was discovered in pagana Harlow 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 pharmacology zits 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 dyr k1 which has got its fingers in lots of different cellular PI's you could pilot many different regulatory functions and harming is a very potent very selector inhibitor of this kinase so that's relates to this it actually stimulates nerve growth in the hippocampus so you know we're at it and we're finding out that it there are a number of other receptors that it interacts with including serotonin dopamine transporters even one called the Imagi lean receptors that are you know of undefined functions so like most natural molecules it's not a one-trick pony you know harmine has a number of effects you know and that's why taking ayahuasca is a different you know it 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 are the researchers that when they discovered harmine they didn't know what it was and they'd try to label it telepathy till they realized that it was harming right right well yeah this is part of the what you may call the the the the sad and sordid history of ayahuasca in a certain way because in the early days in there in the 20s when people are looking at it a number of independent groups were working on it and they were identified they were isolated molecules they weren't aware of other people's work and so they miss named these things you know I mean I can't tell you exactly I think initially it was Lewis Lewin who discovered harmine and he called it beneath Doreen and then it turned out well another group years before had isolated the same molecule from began I'm harmala and telepathy n-- was one of these misnomers you know that came out the problem with 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 every 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 and 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-carboline chemistry of mapstory OPS's didn't really get well-defined until some Chinese scientists or at least they had Chinese name worked on them and discovered harmine tetrahydroharmine and harmaline 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 and 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 I mean it was rumored to be able to cause telepathy but this wasn't ayahuasca they were only taking harmala it's not clear it's not clear it's not clear yeah I mean they may have been taken but 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 see yeah because everybody wants to talk afterwards right see the dragon right I don't think that's been done that seems like a worthy study because if if I've heard from more than one person in fact my friend Kyle Kingsbury and his wife had an ayahuasca experience with a 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 round from from this experience obviously they're very close and they were together and they probably communicated quite a bit and you know I would just think would be a really interesting experiment it would be very interesting I mean and that sort of points out there is you know 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 you know and and people get I don't know if the term is hung up but they can get baffled when you start talking about you know the reality of say the entities you encounter on DMT I mean this is 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 yeah 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 you know we we throw around these terms these these epistemological metaphysical terms quite carelessly you know without really thinking about it what does it mean when you say I'm in here and you're out there you know and then you take a psychedelic and you realize that's the artificial boundary you know we're all one there is no separation it's separate 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 were made out of drugs but it seems that our normal consciousness is the best state to propagate biological life and to keep our Tsar 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 these all these things are done best when you're here and present whereas on a psychedelic state I agree with you well 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 you experienced undeniable beauty in the most extreme form possible where you couldn't have imagined it and then you came back whether you hallucinate at it or not it's the exact same experience exactly I can't put it on a scale run away it like we've stretched the tape measure around and God is 47 inches across like just because you know I'm saying just because you can't measure it with what we term our you know our men tricks for reality right and that is exactly the 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 air is it not that's the thing it doesn't matter where it comes right it's such a 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 we are obsessed with that we obsess with reality yeah I think we're being fooled a lot right like the and this goes back to Terrance's latter era psychedelic experience where he had a UFO encounter you know the the easily dismissing amongst us would go well he's tripping balls off on mushrooms of course I saw UFOs there a leprechaun driving the UFO like all that's nonsense right right easy to dismiss yes and in fact that is the nature of these phenomena that's one's really interesting easy to dismiss you know and that that was another aspect of the experiment of Laura I left out when I was talking about my lecture but there's almost always an element of absurdity yeah in these experiences and in paranormal experiences and UFO encounters it's like little green man come on are you kidding but right [ __ ] there are little gray man and little blue man you know a guy you should have on the show maybe you have already is Whitley Streep 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 the eyes in front of a camera and he's describing it is this a man and a suit and he'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 real nutcase he's from the communion books or people don't know exactly what a series of books about being abducted and you know but I sort of had to change my opinion somewhat because he and and Jeffrey [ __ ] who I do know is Jeffrey [ __ ] is a professor of comparative religion and mythology at Rice University and his focus initially is sort of on the the superhero as as in contemporary you know mythology as a mythical figure and that sort of thing he and I was invited to simple you know a workshop that Whitley was going to be at this was a couple years ago in Hawaii well I'm always interested in a free trip to Hawaii right so I said I 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 if it's me saying that you know and you know and the guy who was hosting it said well you know did you know that he and Jeffrey [ __ ] wrote a book together and I said oh I don't I said I know Jeffrey crumpled I know that he's not in that case and that's interesting and then I found out about the book and I said I I told the guy if you invite Jeffrey and Whitley then I'll come and will participate the name of the book is supernatural to word supernatural a new vision of the unexplained and it's really very interesting the book is basically you know alternating chapters Whitley tells us 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 Itay I get that I mean I don't know if I accept it but I get it and then in alternating chapters Jeffery comes along and kind of unpacks this and and explains where does this fit in to sort of the the you know phenomenology of mythology and you know reasonable explanations and and it's a fascinating book if you just suspend disbelief for a minute and think about assume that Whitley's is sincere I don't think he's lying I think that these things really happened 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 they put it into the box of alien encounters guys a nut ball 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 is 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 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 this workshop with them I was kind of bringing the flag of psychedelics right I was saying if you don't aggress psychedelics you've only got part of the picture here and and they 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 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 in Lohr era was essentially the blueprints of how to build one of these things that you're talking about you know which it was really this this transformation and so that was that impressed me I don't know what to make of it but I think 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 yes and and whether they are actual encounters or dreams or somewhere in between I'm not sure then it would be cure it would be good I mean you know I don't know I mean when you when you when you meet Whitley have you ever met him no he is like the most drab person you could imagine I mean he's like an accountant or some probably worn out from yeah could be but he was but he was a fiction writer he was a fiction writer yes and then he comes out with this incredible real world story right reads like fiction right and there's obviously something off when you talk to him or you hear him and I've never talked to him personally when you see them in interviews and conversations there's something off you know 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 I don't know what it is but I've not I really find that video of him talking about the fly did you find it why is a man in the [ __ ] spacesuit he's like it's not a man in a suit what is that I'm like oh Jesus to lunch call the bed was quite a few of those there's quite a few really bizarre videos of him 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 right right this was the this is the big thing that I've always a 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 there on a dark road where there's no one around mm-hm and they're sleepy or they're at home and 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 yeah now we don't totally understand the dream state but we there's 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 video biology of the human brain varies right right so it's not without consider eight or it's not without possibility that there's someone who has a real issue with these chemicals just busting through right flooding there's no there are well we know there are people then yeah 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 it's it's so I mean it's hard to parse it out no I'm not saying I accept it all but I it's easy to dismiss but you shouldn't write well there may be is something there we should approach it in the spirit of here's a phenomenon right we don't understand that 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 you know I would not have whitley strieber on your show without Jeffrey cry pause so that was the fun because he it would be fun and maybe it's you know maybe it's a bridge too far I'm not maybe not yeah maybe maybe we get to the bottom of this thing yeah well is there something to be got to the bottom right that's that's the bottom and it's just one man's delusion or is there really something at the base of it

Channel: JRE Clips

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Keywords: Joe Rogan, JRE, Joe Rogan Experience, JRE Clips, PowerfulJRE, Joe Rogan Fan Page, Joe Rogan Podcast, podcast, MMA, Joe Rogan MMA Show, UFC, comedy, comedian, stand up, funny, clip, favorite, best of, Dennis McKenna, ayahuasca

Id: kpU7Get8Ir0

Length: 24min 4sec (1444 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 20 2018