Transcription
The following program deals with a controversial subject. The theories expressed are not the only possible interpretation. Viewers are invited to make a judgment based on all available information. Speaking, we are beginning our descent into madness. Open, open your [Laughter]
And we are back to another edition, West of the Rockies. I'm Frank. Thank you guys for sticking around. I know it's late, but we got a really exciting show lined up for everyone tonight. A little bit of uh, quick news: you can subscribe to the West of the Rockies podcast on Amazon Music. You can head on over, look us up, and you'll be able to subscribe and uh, tell Alexa to play us or something. Should be fun.
And as always, we will continue to be available here on uh, YouTube. If you're catching the podcast version of the show, that's youtube.com/wotr radio. Go ahead and click subscribe, click the bell to be notified when our interviews are posted. We're also available on iTunes, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, Stitcher, and everywhere else you get your podcast. Just gotta search West of the Rockies, WLTR Radio, and we should be popping up there.
The topic for tonight's show is something that I've been fascinated with for a long time now, and that's the topic of uh, dimethyltryptamine. Most people know it as DMT, and I'm really excited for the guest that is joining us tonight. He's Dr. Andrew Gallimore. I first came across him and his work a few months ago when interviewing speakers that would be attending the uh, Contact in the Desert conference this past summer, and I was really tempted to uh, get him on the show then. But when I read the title of his book, I knew that I wanted to read the book first to really be able to dive in and discuss this topic.
Now, his book is really fascinating. I almost see it as having two parts. The first part deals with all the science and biology, if you will—how our brain functions, how our brain creates the reality that we experience in our daily lives. And the second half, it's all about how DMT changes the brain; what happens; how our brain processes this substance and takes us to these other worlds where many, many people come in contact with alien entities, if I may use the term. The title of his book is *Alien Information Theory: Psychedelic Drug Technologies and the Cosmic Game*. So with a title like that, I'm sure you can understand why I waited to uh, have him on the show tonight, and I'm really excited that he is here because we're going to talk about his book. We're going to discuss what is DMT, what happens when people take DMT, what are these entities, these worlds, how real are they? Are they just in our mind, or is this a real, actual place that people go to? What effects does it have on our brain? How does our brain process DMT, and what happens? We're going to talk about this and a whole lot more. But first, let me read a little bit of Dr. Gallimore's bio.
Dr. Andrew Gallimore is a computational neurobiologist, pharmacologist, chemist, and writer who has been interested in the neural basis of psychedelic drug action for many years. His current interests focus on DMT as a tool for gaining access to extra-dimensional realities and how this remarkable drug can be used to establish stable communication with alien intelligences beyond this universe. He is a well-known writer and speaker on the powerful psychedelic drug and and dimethyltryptamine, DMT, and the author of the book *Alien Information Theory: Psychedelic Drug Technologies and the Cosmic Game*, which came out in April 2019. He recently collaborated with DMT pioneer Dr. Rick Strassman to develop a target control intravenous infusion protocol for extended journeys in DMT space. Dr. Gallimore is currently based at Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology in Japan, and I am really excited to have him on the show tonight. Please help me welcome Dr. Andrew Gallimore to West of the Rockies.
Andrew: Thank you so much for joining us tonight. I, I really appreciate it. It's uh, it's a real pleasure to have you on. I first heard about you during the promos for the Contact in the Desert conference. I saw that you were a speaker there, and the reason why I didn't interview you then is because I really wanted to read this book. I didn't, you know, just want to like jump into the topic, even though it's something that I'd like to think I'm fairly familiar with, but I definitely wanted to take some time to to go through it and really dive in. So I really appreciate you taking the time to join us and and to go through it tonight.
You're welcome. Good to be here.
Now, if I were to make like a trilogy, right, like a must-read list for people, there are three books that I would suggest. One would be Graham Hancock's *Supernatural*, because to me that was kind of—he kind of gives you like the history of psychedelics and how they've shaped humanity. Rick Strassman's, of course, *DMT and the Spirit Molecule*. Um, number three, now wait for this surprise, but yeah, the uh, Strassman's book, I felt like you kind of got to read like the the practical application of DMT, like what happens and what people experience. And your book is definitely—yeah, get ready for this bump on them—um, *Alien Information Theory*, because I really feel this is almost like the science behind DMT.
When you set out to write this book, what was your goal?
Well, I'd been thinking about and kind of studying DMT for, oh, uh, sort of 20 years before I, I kind of began writing the book. But the book is kind of a combination of all of that thinking over time and trying to work out and writing about thinking about DMT and what's actually going on in the brain. You know, how is it possible that this simple plant alkaloid can kind of instantaneously um, transport you to this bizarre hypertechnological alien, alien reality? And and and my the aim of the book was to kind of um, create what I call a kind of a vision of reality. It's like a—this is how it could be. This is based upon everything I've thought about over the preceding 20, 20 years. This is kind of my vision of what actually is happening with DMT when it enters the brain; how does it actually cause the brain to suddenly be able to perceive and in fact become immersed within this entirely new, completely novel but crystalline clear, complex reality filled with intelligent entities. You know, where did that reality come from? How does it relate to our reality? So I'm trying to create a kind of a coherent narrative, if you like, um, to how this might work. It's not a—it's not a world view. It's not a—it's not a kind of a bible of DMT. I'm not claiming to have discovered the ultimate truth about what DMT is and how it works, but it's just my uh, my take, if you like, on on what DMT is, how it works, where it comes from, it's kind of ultimate meaning.
Where is DMT found, for the people that don't know?
Everywhere. It's the one-word answer to that. It's mainly found in, certainly in high concentrations in plants, in a variety of plants. Now, um, the number of plants that contain DMT is numbers probably in the thousands, tens of thousands. But there are a certain number of plants that contain very high concentrations of DMT. So, for example, *Mimosa hostilis* is the kind of go-to source of of DMT. It's a root bark; contains very high concentrations of DMT. And then there are other kind of related plants as well. In animals, it's also found, but generally it's—it's been detected in really quite very low concentrations. So so mainly it's plants, but but if you look out your window now, you can probably see half a dozen plants that contain at least some concentration of DMT.
In your book, you mentioned the the big four of psychedelics: you know, LSD, psilocybin, also known as the magic mushrooms, mescaline, uh, which I first heard about through Hunter S. Thompson's writing, and uh, and uh, dimethyltryptamine, right, DMT.
Yeah.
What sets DMT apart from the other three?
Uh, a number of things. I mean, DMT is kind of this weird um, molecule, both from a number of perspectives, because first of all it's um, the most efficient and cleanest tool that we have for transportation or switching of the brain's reality channel from what we normally call the kind of what consensus world, the normal waking world, into this other bizarre DMT reality. No other drug does that as cleanly. What I normally say is it's like kind of like um, one of those old radio sets where you have the the dial, and you kind of twist the dial between channels. Normally the dial is set at what we might call channel consensus reality, the normal waking world. That channel—what psychedelics do—LSD at normal doses, psilocybin, mescaline, that kind of regular doses—things start to be a little bit different at high doses, but normal doses that people use, it's kind of like twisting that dial slightly out of tune. You're creating an alternate version of the normal waking world; the world becomes more fluid, less predictable, more dynamic, um, more meaningful—all of these things, all the characteristics of a psychedelic state. Whereas with DMT, it's as if you twisted the tuning dial even further, and you found an entirely new channel basically. So you're not creating an alternate version of this reality; it's like you're switching to a completely different—you've switched—
Yeah.
Terence McKenna used to call it a 100 reality channel switch, and that's kind of what sets DMT apart. So that's kind of in terms of its effects; that's what sets DMT apart. But also it has these bizarre, or not necessarily bizarre, but kind of unique uh, pharmacological peculiarities. And it's very fast-acting; it gets into the brain very, very quickly. It's cleared from the brain in a few minutes, which is why it only lasts for a few minutes. Um, so the brain is very at home and very comfortable with DMT; it knows how to deal with it. And also it doesn't exhibit what's called subjective tolerance. So you can inject someone with DMT, closely spaced dose every 15 minutes or so, and even with the same dose they will have the same intensity of experience. Whereas with the other psychedelics, if you try to repeat dose, you tend to get diminishing returns over time. So it's kind of a curious molecule uh, in that it almost feels like—using this term very, very guardedly—uh, it feels like it's almost like it's designed—it's like a technology that's designed to switch your brain's reality channel.
So you speak about our brain being able to create our reality without psychedelics, you know, our real 3D everyday reality, if you will. And with some psychedelics, we create certain types of realities. But when on DMT, you suggest that our brain becomes an antenna of sorts and it can tune to a reality that's out there, quote unquote. Is that about right?
So basically, if the brain constructs your reality under all circumstances, that's the key point. So if you—even in your normal waking life, when you're presumably in the real world, your brain is still constructing your reality. What happens is that your brain constructs a model of the outside world, and that model is kind of modulated or tested against information that's received from the outside world. So your brain is receiving information by your sensory apparatus, where your eyes, your ears, touch, et cetera, and it uses that to basically test how its models working, kind of make good predictions about, you know, what should happen next, that kind of thing. So when you enter the DMT world—whether the DMT world is a pure hallucination, right, has no relationship to any kind of external world, or if it is in fact allowing you to tune into some other reality—either way, the world must be constructed by the brain. You can't experience a world that isn't being constructed by your brain; that's the kind of the first axiom here. So the question is not is the DMT world built by your brain; it is the question is like the normal waking world. Is the DMT world being modulated by—is it being tested against? In other words, is your brain receiving information from this alternate reality that allows it to construct its model? So so what what I would suggest is that if DMT is really allowing you to access another reality, what's happening is that DMT is changing—putting simply—the kind of the patterns of neural activity in the brain that allows your brain then to receive information, uh, kind of gates the flow of information that the brain normally has no access to. And so that's really the question here is: is how does DMT allow your brain to receive information from that reality directly such that it can actually start to build a model of that DMT space? Does that make sense?
It kind of sounds like DMT is the software and our brain in this reality is the only hardware that is able to fully compute the software. Does that sound about correct?
Yeah, I think you're kind of—you're on the right lines. The the the neural circuitry that we that we possess is really like the hardware; this is the machinery that is going to construct the reality. The DMT itself is just a molecule, but it's a—it's a particular pattern if you lack of information that you that you inject into the brain. So it's exactly like a piece of software, and once it's in the brain, then it expresses itself by manipulating the the hardware, the neural machinery, the the neural circuitry that allows it to construct this, begin constructing, stop constructing the normal waking reality and begin constructing this this alternate reality. So yeah, the software hardware analogy works quite well, I think.
Now, in your book, you talk about human beings being in this game and having to work our way up the levels until we get out or uh, complete the game and enter the reality that we see through DMT. What is the purpose of having this game in the first place?
I frame the idea of a game—it's a little bit playfully—I think the idea of a game, and the idea that kind of the basic premise of the book is that our reality, our kind of universe, if you like, is this slice, a lower dimensional slice of a much larger and more complex higher dimensional structure. In the same way that a two-dimensional chessboard, for example, could be a single slice of a cubic structure. I, I fundamentally see reality as a kind of a game. I, I don't take it seriously, so to speak, and and DMT seems to show you that; it seems to reveal a very—it has a very comical kind of ambiance, as if you're being goaded um, to to push further and and to to explore this space and to explore the meaning of this space, and it feels like you're part of one vast game. Some people have called it a joke, and like a cosmic joke of some sort. So that's really where the idea of it being a game as such came from, is the—well, partly from kind of the ambiance of the DMT space. Now, the question you asked here is is a good one, and it's not one I can really answer. It goes back to kind of basic fundamental questions of why are we here, right now? Why are we here? And is there—is there something else? And it seems to be that we can confront that something else. Since time immemorial, I guess humans have thought about uh, you know, what else is out there? Are there other intelligences elsewhere in the universe? And are there other universes? And what DMT seems to just kind of demonstrate, kind of undeniably, uh, is the presence of this um, extreme levels of of intelligence, old intelligence, in highly complex realities that have no relationship to our reality, uh, ostensibly, so at least. And that seem to be much older, much more complex, much more advanced. And the question is where are we within all of that? I don't see that that the DMT space is being completely disjoint and separate from our reality. I think that we are kind of embedded or trapped, if you like, within this thin slice of reality, and the DMT is is the technology, if you like, that allows one to confront this higher dimensional structure. It doesn't really answer your question, is why. In the book, I suggest that we, we are an emergent conscious intelligence that emerges through layers of complexity from the fundamental uh, ground of reality, which I posit—and many other people have posited—is basically digital information. And so this patterns of digital information um, complexify, self-complexify, and self-organize over many layers of organization, and at these highest levels of complexity, ultimately you get these emergent um, emergent in conscious intelligences, and we are one of those. And the idea is that there is a high-dimensional or hyper-intelligence, if you like, I call it the Other in the book, that basically runs this fundamental code from which—from certain instantiations of this code—ultimately conscious intelligences will emerge, and then the game begins, if you like.
Going along with your theory, if there is something above us, how do we know there is not something above that and goes on to infinity? How do we know they are the ultimate ones, the gods at the end of the tunnel, if you will? [Music]
We don't, uh, and that's—that's—that's kind of the mystery. I mean, we're certainly above other intelligences in our universe, you know, we can see them all around us, um, um, but no, there's nothing to suggest that that is the ultimate reality. But um—well, these are the ultimate higher intelligences that we're gaining access to here, um, but it's—it's the intelligence we have seem to have direct access to. But even within the DMT space, there seem to be layers and levels, if you like, and there are certainly some beings seem to be much more powerful and more intelligent than others, for example. So I said, I make no claims that necessarily that DMT is the ultimate reality, but certainly it seems to be a larger, more complex system than we're currently kind of embedded within.
Now, people see different types of entities, and though they are presumably above us in terms of this type of intelligence, some of them do appear to be malicious. And going by the very broad assumption that being malicious is bad and being honest is good, does that mean they are further down the line?
Well, yeah, I mean, certainly it's not all sweetness and light in there, and I mean, for people thinking about going into the DMT space, it seems to be extremely safe, you know, nobody's kind of got trapped there or, you know, failed to return or had any kind of permanent damage, as far as I'm aware of. There is a lot of—I think malicious—yes, often extremely uh, mischievous, kind of trickster-ish kind of characters who like to play with your emotions um, rather than outright evil. Not saying you won't meet outright evil within the DMT space, um, but it tends to be—you're more likely to get mocking. People often describe being mocked by by beings within the space. But at the same time, you're far more likely to meet benevolent, guide kind of beings who will show you around and are often extremely excited that you're there, and they kind of seem to take great joy and pleasure in kind of showing you around this kind of wacky circus that they inhabit.
Yeah, the words trickster and playing games were words I was fishing for, because to us it may seem a bit mean-spirited in a way, but that does appear to be—as far as it goes—using us and non-human animals as examples, there are plenty of humans that like to tease and poke fun at animals with no real evil intent. I mean, there are some with evil intent, but we're leaving those out—a wrath, fortunately.
Um, yeah, I think it's the same thing. I mean, also there's this—Terence McKenna often uh, um, kind of speculated that often they might not be fully aware of their own power, if you like, or at least it's like, you know, you don't know your own strength when some kind of muscly guy playfully gives you a knock on the jaw, and it knocks you out, and makes you—it's like, oh, sorry, I didn't realize I hit you that hard, you know? And it's like perhaps there is a possibility that often they don't know their limit, so they—they're not quite aware of the effect that it's having on you emotionally. Um, so yeah, you have to be very careful and be aware in that space and don't—don't assume that you're going to be bouncing around with machine learning, having a great time necessarily. Most of the time you will, but there is the possibility of more darker experiences for sure.
So it seems that DMT allows an individual to visit these worlds, so is it possible then that some of these entities can travel from those worlds to ours?
This is a good question. I—this is a really good question. Um, um, possibly. The question is um, how would they manifest? And one can speculate about—are certain UFOs or, you know, uh, unidentified aerial phenomena, I think they prefer to call them these days, but uh, or other kind of visions that people have—are these um, beings that have crossed that threshold and been able to kind of um, reveal themselves, materialize in some way, at least perceptually, within our reality? That's possible. Um, we don't really know. I mean, for the most part, it seems like they're often quite surprised to see us. So I don't think we're a major concern for them, you know, they're—they're part of a much more—as I said—much larger and more complex structure. I don't necessarily see us as being like the goldfish bowl where—that we're constantly being observed by these—I don't get that impression. I feel like most of the time that we're absolutely no concern to them. So whether they would be interested or—haven't—there will be any value or interest for them in revealing themselves in our reality, I don't know, but it's an open question, basically.
In your book, you write that DMT is an intelligence test. Can you explain that a little bit more, and has humanity passed this test?
Yeah. So earlier I, I spoke about these pharmacological peculiarities of DMT and the fact that it's kind of everywhere—everywhere you look. Dennis McKenna, Terence McKenna's brother, likes to say that um, nature is drenched in DMT. Um, so it's like this message that's somehow embedded in our reality um, just waiting for some kind of conscious intelligence to emerge um, that has the requisite cognitive and technological advancement and sophistication to actually identify the technology, i.e., DMT, to isolate it and learn to use it. And that's not something that happens accidentally. DMT is—whilst it is ubiquitous in the natural world, and you can't just munch on some plants and kind of have a DMT trip—you have to actually—you have to isolate it, you have to purify it, you have to administer it or ingest it in a certain way. You can't simply swallow it, either through injection or vaporization or through the use of these monoamine oxidase inhibitors, as in ayahuasca. So it feels like uh, basically—we're the only species on the planet that is capable of using DMT. Um, now, other plants like magic mushrooms, for example, one can imagine a chimpanzee munching on some magic mushrooms and having a trip, or on some mescaline-containing cacti. These are all reasonable, but DMT requires this high level of intelligence that only humans possess. So that's how I see it as an intelligence test, and that there's no other species that could use the the technology on Earth, at least, than humans. Um, so we kind of—we—we're—have we passed the test? I think we are. We are taking the test, because we are—it's not just about identifying DMT and learning to use it as such, but also developing it as a tool for um, for communication, for visitation with this other space. And that's—and again, because of these unusual pharmacological peculiarities of DMT and that it only lasts normally for a few minutes, um, the usual modes of administration—it's simply kind of bolus injection in the veins or vaporization in a glass pipe—they only kind of allow you to kind of brief sojourn within the DMT space. You can poke your head through into that world, and then you're kind of popped out again very, very quickly. And so so part of the technological development of DMT is in—is—is in uh, developing these techniques for administration, which is why I started working with Rick Strassman back in 2016 to develop this target controlled intravenous infusion technology, which will allow you to maintain a stable concentration of DMT in the brain over time. So you can bring someone into the DMT space and then hold them there indefinitely. And again, DMT is kind of set up for this because it is very short-acting; it doesn't have tolerance. So in theory, if you keep the brain concentration uh, of DMT over time in someone's brain, then they—you can hold them within the space without them developing tolerance or without them—
Uh, blacking out or without concentrations, kind of going wild or anything like that. So, so yeah, it feels like it's perf—the DMT molecule is kind of perfectly designed. And again, I'm not saying it's designed, but it feels like that; it feels like it's perfectly made to, to be developed as a technology. I don't think that it's just in the last few years that the infusion idea popped up. Uh, we see it in FDA-approved treatments like ketamine infusion therapy, for example. So this idea must have been bouncing around for a while, right?
Oh, yeah, yeah, for sure. So, so the idea of, um, kind of an intravenous drip is often how it's described, but used to be described—the idea that you can, and people have claimed to have done it back in the way back in the kind of the 70s, I think—the idea of constantly, um, infusing DMT into the veins. But, but what's different about what Rick Strassman and myself developed is the idea of target-controlled intravenous infusions. And this is actually using, um, the technology developed for anesthesiology, where you—the aim is to maintain a stable concentration of an anesthetic drug in the brain over time by having a, a, a mathematical model of the pharmacokinetics and dynamics of the drug within the brain and the body, uh, and applying that to DMT. So it's like, um, it's taking a kind of a vague idea, um, and actually developing it in a much more kind of formal way. So that was really the, the, the progression, if you like, from these, these ideas. But yes, it has been tried back in 2000, and or was it 2005 maybe? There was a team that did both DMT and ketamine infusions over time, but they, they ran into some problems and that the patients were dropping out because of the, the experience was becoming far too intense for them because it wasn't a mathematically, uh, it wasn't informed by this pharmacokinetic model. Um, so we're basically trying to really develop that into something much, much more precise and accurate than what's been tried before.
Yeah, I can imagine it's one of those things where it's not a one-size-fits-all model. How would you be monitoring it? Are you going to be watching brain waves?
So, so this is actually already being done by the team at Imperial College London. So probably the foremost psychedelic research group in the world, in my opinion, um, certainly in human studies, human neuroimaging studies. And yes, they are actually in the early stages; they have a handful of volunteers, I think, who are already undergoing, I think the moment, like 30-minute infusions. Um, so they've used a, uh, this kind of model, this target-controlled intravenous infusion technology, and they're starting, um, conservatively, so to speak. So, um, they're not sending someone into space for hours at a time, which would be my ultimate aim, I think, uh, but no, at the moment it's, it's 30 minutes, I think, um, relatively low dose, just to check that the, the technology actually works as expected, and then you move from there. It's kind of baby steps, I think, um, it's not something that one would advise diving into, and I suggest anyone goes out and buys an infusion device and starts infusing DMT now.
I was introduced to the topic of DMT in late 2009, early 2010, and I remember back then there was one term that seemed to go hand in hand with DMT, and that's the pineal gland. However, as listeners have probably noticed, this term has not come up in this conversation, and it is not mentioned in your book. Can you tell me why the pineal gland was not mentioned? Does it not play a role in the DMT experience after all?
I don't think—I'm not convinced at all that the pineal gland has any role in DMT. There's the pineal has this long and kind of interesting exotic history and mysticism, and it's thought—once thought to be the kind of a seat of consciousness and all this kind of stuff. And we've kind of dragged these rather outdated ideas and, and tried to kind of shoehorn them into the DMT experience. And people still hold on to the idea that you—when you go to bed at night, your brains—the pineal gland floods your brain with DMT, and that causes dreaming; that when you die it increases even more, and you, you're fired off into the DMT space permanently. But, but the, the pineal gland—we know what the pineal gland does; it, it secretes melatonin, uh, it's involved in—it's important to the sleep-wake cycle. There's no evidence that it produces high concentrations of DMT at any time. There's no evidence that it would be even capable. I mean, it produces nanograms of, in very, very small quantities of melatonin. It's a very small gland; it's not set up to be flooding the brain with 20, 30, 40 milligrams of DMT, uh, at any, any point in time. Um, and people who, um, have their pineal gland removed, you know, they're not—they don't become unconscious; they're not ripped from this reality; they, they continue to dream and all this kind of stuff. You know, the pineal gland is, is, um, is a small, interesting, but not—I don't think particularly pertinent gland when it comes to DMT. But I think it's just been one of these myths, um, if you like, that's been propagated via the, by the internet.
Yeah, I think as time has gone on and with people like you doing research, we're learning a lot more, uh, it's becoming less mystical or mysterious as science begins to shine a light on some of the unknown aspects of DMT, which I think is great.
Now, in the final chapter of your book, and I know we mentioned it earlier, you talk about this being a game or the game, and it's made up of six levels. We're not going to go through all these one by one. I actually want to encourage the listeners to get a copy of your book because it's packed full of information, but I will list the six levels: Level 1: Information; Level 2: Emergence; Level 3: Transmission; Level 4: Immersion; Level 5: Realization; and Level 6: Resolution. And I love how you describe Level 6 of Resolution, and if I may quote you, you wrote: "Once resolution is achieved, we will continue to exist as entities inside the hyper-grid, and when voyagers of its lower dimensional slices burst into our marvelous hyperdimensional domain, we will be amongst the thronging elephant crowds cheering and welcoming them home." Reading that obviously makes you wonder. In your book you mentioned people experience this sense of déjà vu when they arrived at the DMT world, like they've been there before. Personally, in my limited experiences, the best way I can describe it is it felt like I was home. So is this where we come from and where we will go? Is this a sort of heaven? And as you mentioned earlier when we were talking about the code, and you call them the "other" when referring to the authors of this code, is this the place where a god-type entity dwells?
Um, that's the impression I get as well—the sense that you are arriving in a place that is unspeakably strange, unspeakably bizarre, uh, and yet there is this profound sense of déjà vu, this unshakeable sense of having been there before. And the entities often will welcome you back with great celebratory uproar—that he's returned, you know, and it's, uh, and that's hard to shake that sense. And that is certainly part of the inspiration for, for the kind of the teleology, if you like, of the book, and that—where, where does it lead to? And that, that is kind of the ultimate end in that—yeah, perhaps we did—we come from the DMT space and then experience our reality temporarily as a kind of game, you know, we—I mean, even in the modern world, we like to escape reality temporarily in virtual reality world, and then we come back. Now imagine escaping into a virtual reality world where you—there for so long and you're so immersed within it that you actually forget that you were once a human. And that happens as well with DMT; you often lose any concept of ever having been a human. So you know, imagine that, you know, it's not so far from where we are technologically to do that with virtual reality. Um, so imagine that, right? You go, you go into one of these virtual reality booths or something, you put on this headset, full-body gear, you, your—you burst into this entirely novel, uh, virtual domain for a while, and then you forget that you are human. You can live out some kind of life within that space, and then you come back, and it's like, oh, um, you're kind of shaken and shocked to be back in the, the real world, your human world, um, but there's a great sense of familiarity there. So perhaps it could be something like that, and that we do—that our life is a very temporary, um, sojourn within, um, this weird little three-dimensional space that we call the real world, and that in fact we are destined to return to the, um, the DMT realms from whence we came, perhaps. Um, that's speculation.
Interesting speculation, but whether it's actually true, I guess we'll find out one day, right?
Absolutely. That seems to be the case. Like I said at the top of the show, in the first half of the book you give us the science and how our brain works and processes information, and in the second half of the book we really take a deep dive into how DMT affects the brain, even the way your book is laid out. I really wanted to get a physical copy because it's very complementary with all the graphics and visuals you include, and I almost have to wonder—were you given quote-unquote "this," uh, information? It's a very interesting way of presenting a very, very complex topic.
Yeah, in the introduction to the book I write that I'm not—I'm not 100% sure where the book came from, um, you know, when I look at the book now it's like, you know, how did I produce that? You know, I don't know. I'm not trying to, uh, big myself up or anything, but yeah, it's a book kind of emerged—I incubated an idea, if you like, over, over a couple of decades and developed, and, and it kind of fell together into this narrative, which I then put together in as clear and coherent and cogent manner as I could. Um, yeah, so, so I, I certainly don't claim that it's divine inspiration; I'm not one of these David, um, Wilcock types who claims to be channeling aliens or something like that. My own vision of reality that I've constructed, um, based—based upon—yes, it's got a foot in in modern neuroscience and physics and, and all of that stuff, pharmacology, uh, but it is a, it is a narrative, you know, I'm trying to create a, a coherent vision of reality. And so there's a lot of speculation in there, and everything is smoothed out to create something that is—does read like—I call it a textbook from the future. Imagine if this was true, uh, 100, you know, what the textbook from the future looked like that was describing the nature of our reality, and I kind of imagined it might look something like the book that I've written.
How are your thoughts and theories received by your peers and colleagues?
Yeah, I mean, I can only go on the feedback that I get. Most people—the vast majority, I would say 90 percent—I get very positive feedback, and I've, you know, I've got very positive feedback from major thinkers in the field. Um, Ralph Abraham wrote a very nice email—Ralph Abraham, of course, the chaos mathematician who, um, did some very interesting—had some very interesting conversations with Terence McKenna and Rupert Sheldrake back in the day—"Trialogs at the Edge of the West," I think they were called. Um, he wrote me a very nice email, said he was—he was—he found it fascinating and very interesting; he had no bad thing to say. I've had messages from mathematicians and scientists and, um, you know, other people in this kind of psychedelic field that find it very interesting. I think, you know, if you—you have to be careful how you see the book. If you think that I am claiming to have found—like I said—the ultimate truth of some kind, then you're going to see me as being a bit of a crackpot, and reasonably so. But I'm not—I, I do say in the introduction—if people actually read the introduction first, please do—you'll get the correct view of actually what the book is. It's not an ideological position that I've developed here; this is just my own personal vision of reality. The idea is to kind of generate questions like—"What really is our reality? You know, where are we? You know, where did we come from? Where are we going? What is our relationship to the larger structure of reality?"—and kind of invite those kind of questions and invite speculation and, by ultimately experiments and research into, into that kind of thing. So, so mainly it's positive because people take it with, with a very large pinch of salt—everything that I'm saying—because I am quite playful about it. I do admit that it is largely—a lot of it is, is very much my own imagination and speculation. Um, one of the reviewers referred to it—says it's not science fiction; it's fictionalized science. It's not sci-fi; it's "ficisci"—I created a new genre there, uh, "ficisci." Uh, it reads like a textbook; it reads like a work of nonfiction, you know, uh, one of these popular science books that someone like Brian Greene or Lawrence Krauss might write. I am filling in a lot of gaps here and making assumptions and using my imagination a lot as well.
That is a great way to describe it, and I'm glad to hear the feedback you received has been so positive. Do you have plans for a follow-up to *Alien Information Theory*?
Yeah, yeah. My next book is actually a little bit different. My next book is *Reality Switch Technologies*, which is, um, looking at psychedelics more, more broadly—not just DMT, but psychedelics as these technologies for altering, um, to basically manipulating our reality—channel—to exploring the what I call the "world space" or the space of all possible realities that our brain can construct and how we might manipulate that and effectively become citizens of not just one reality, but of countless—basically. But that's—become—not published yet. To circle back around to a term we used earlier, so it would be about exploring different softwares in a way.
Precisely.
Yeah, so you can think of different psychedelic—different molecules as being different, different software that you—the DMT is one example, a very good example, and there are others as well, you know, ketamine would fit into that.
A few years ago I had the opportunity to interview Jim Mars, the great author—he wrote some great books, uh, rest in peace—and I remember talking to him at the time, just telling him how it felt like we were in a bit of a repeat of the 60s, if you will, in the sense that we've been involved in these unpopular wars, racial issues are at an all-time high, and psychedelics are becoming, uh, mainstream, similarly like we saw in the 60s and part of the 70s. So with so many people being interested and DMT being talked about so much in various circles, what advice would you give someone who is thinking about trying it for the first time, or they've tried it before and want to go deeper?
Well, I mean, DMT is not difficult to procure. I'd always suggest if someone wants to try it that they, that they produce it themselves, uh, i.e., I mean, you can—I mean, first of all, the caveat that you're, you're probably gonna be breaking the law depending on where you are in the world, so it's—don't do it. However, if you're going to, that would be what I would suggest—to procure the, the root bark. And there are, you know, many forums now on the internet, you know, very, very kind of dedicated and often quite talented underground chemists that have developed very simple techniques that anyone can do in their kitchen for extracting DMT in a relatively pure form, very, very easily in a few hours. And then to, to start slowly. Um, so there are a number of ways you can administer it. Don't be playing around with injecting. Um, the, the most common technique is you use a small glass pipe—basically a crack pipe, basically—that you, you, you weigh out your DMT, and you need a—you can buy scales now that will go down to milligram level; you need one of those, a set of those scales. You can buy those for 20 or something. Um, and yeah, start with 10 milligrams and move up and go slowly. Um, you know, you need a, um, either on your own or with one other person, I would probably suggest—this is not a party drug; this is something you've done in a quiet room, dimly lit room, on a bed probably, so you can lie down. Um, empty your lungs; you heat the DMT gently, um, inhale, hold it in, um, pass the pipe to someone with you so you don't burn the house down because you might well be transported out of your reality very, very—in very short order, right? Um, and, and respect it, you know, don't, don't play around with it; it is, uh, it is—these are extremely bizarre domains to which you're being granted access by this molecule, and don't necessarily expect it's going to be sweetness and light, and benevolent beings that you might encounter difficulties, but you have to, um, trust in your own—trust your own nervous system, so to speak. It's not a dangerous drug; you're not going to die; you're not going to go insane; it might feel like it; it will be astonishing; you will be shaken to the very core of your being by it if you get a good hit, but it is, um, yeah, it's a remarkable experience that I think that everyone should have, um, at some point in their life. And you, you really don't know what you're missing; it's not possible for you to know what you're missing if you've never taken DMT; it's not possible for you to imagine the kind of spaces to which you will be, um, you will reach and that you will be exploring with this molecule. Um, so yeah, there are other modes of administration; people like to, in the very modern era, to dissolve the DMT in this e-liquid and these electronic vape mods that people use for vaping, um, that's very popular now. So you can actually—it's, it's safer; you can control it, uh, much more so—people—you can take a small hit and then take a hit more; you don't worry about open flames and all this kind of stuff, you know, burning it, um, that's not a concern. So I think, yeah, I, you know, I welcome this kind of, uh, this kind of—these kind of advancements that are happening, uh, on the underground, if you like, within, within these internet forums—people sharing ideas of what's the best way to use DMT, uh, and I think, um, yeah, these, these vape mods are a, a really nice advancement, uh, for—be someone who wants to get into using, uh, DMT. But I wouldn't buy ready-made vape pens for the DMT because you don't know what's in them; you don't know it's DMT; you don't know what the liquid is. So yeah, or, you know, avoid the black market, so to speak, as much as you can because you really don't know what you're buying. And do you have DMT in there? Is it 5-MeO-DMT? Is it some other analog that they've purchased from China? You just don't know. So try as much as you can to be kind of self-sufficient, um, it's not difficult in this age to do that, and tread carefully.
And a reminder to people that you're not really actually smoking it; it's more like, uh, freebasing it.
Correct.
Yeah, you're vaporizing it. If you, if you're smoking it, then you've burned it. When you heat it up, you should get a kind of a thick white vapor or yellowish-white vapor. If that's what you're getting, then you're right. If it's kind of—if it's clearly gray, dirty smoke, then you've burned the DMT, and that's not going to have any effect on you, and you're going to cough more, uh, you're much less likely to get a good amount of actual DMT in your bloodstream and in your brain. So, so there is a kind of a knack to it in getting a good, a good hit of DMT; it's not that straightforward. So persevere. So folks, don't go and sprinkle it into your joints, all right?
Yeah, these kind of things. So sprinkling it into a joint is a terrible idea; most of it will be destroyed at the cherry at the end as the, the air is passing through the joint. You might heat some up and actually vaporize it successfully, but it's—no, you want to be getting, uh, as much DMT into your body as quickly as possible—well, not quite as much as possible, but—it's quickly—the amount of DMT that you've chosen to consume—10 milligrams, 20 milligrams, 30 milligrams—for—kind of 40 milligrams for a breakthrough—does—you want to get that into your lungs as efficiently and as cleanly and as quickly as possible. You don't want to be mixing it in a joint or even mixing it with—I mean, some people like to mix it with cannabis; it depends on your own personal, uh, mileage. I don't—I don't think it's a particularly nice mix, but then, you know, me and cannabis aren't, you know, we don't get on that well anyway. So up to the individual, but I would recommend pure freebase DMT, uh, small glass pipe, yeah, and a, a good quality torch lighter. Don't use one of these, um, yellow flame lighters because they tend to—they produce a lot of soot and they, they obscure your vision, basically. They're doing—there—when you tickle the, the glass pipe with one of these blue flame jet flame torch—whatever they call them lighters—then you can, you know, very delicately just tickle it, see it bobble, and see it start to vaporize, and then avoid burning it.
Andrew, the title of the book is *Alien Information Theory: Psychedelic Drug Technologies and the Cosmic Game*. Where can people pick up a copy of this great book, and, uh, where can they follow and keep up with you on social media?
Yeah, so the obvious first choice is, of course, Amazon. If you go to Amazon—*Alien Information* is there—you will find it there; there's the hardback or the softback, or there's a Kindle version as well. Um, it is a—it's a print replica, so it has all the color images as well, so it won't work on your regular Kindle; you have to put it on an iPad or something like that. Alternatively, you can go to my website—buildingalienworlds.com—which has not only a link to my book, and the first chapter is there to download, so you can have a look at, you know, what they're getting into. Um, there's also an audio of me reading the first chapter; there's also links to all of my papers and articles and interviews and presentations, lectures, that kind of thing, that I've done. So yeah, that's basically where I am based on the internet—buildingalienworlds.com. And of course, to keep up to date with me on a more day-to-day basis—"AlienInsect" is my handle on Twitter and Instagram.
Thanks so much, Andrew. This has been an amazing time. I think a lot of people will find this, to say the least, interesting—will be an understatement. I want to encourage people to grab a copy of your book as soon as they can if they're interested in learning more about this. Personally, it helped me understand a lot more about what happens when we ingest DMT and where we go sometimes when we're on DMT. So thank you so much for joining us and being so gracious with your time; I really appreciate it.
Okay, fabulous. Thank you. That was Dr. Andrew Gallimore, author of this amazing book, *Alien Information Theory: Psychedelic Drug Technologies and the Cosmic Game*. Make sure you pick up a copy, whether it's on Amazon or his website, and as you mentioned, uh, make sure you give them a follow on Twitter and, uh, Instagram—"AlienInsect." The topic of DMT is definitely worth exploring. If this is your first time hearing about it, definitely I recommend the, uh, book by Dr. Rick Strassman—*DMT: The Spirit Molecule*. We got a chance to interview Dr. Strassman some years ago, uh, you can find that on our YouTube channel—youtube.com/wltrradio—also on our website—wltradio.com—and there's also a documentary that goes along with that book that I encourage people to check out. And I look forward to Dr. Gallimore's next book; it sounds very interesting. And I think that DMT is one of these next great frontiers that humanity is going to have to explore to understand our place in this universe, in my humble opinion. I want to thank you all for listening. If you caught the podcasted version of this show on YouTube, make sure you leave me a comment; let me know.
What are your thoughts? What have your own experiences been? What do you make of this whole DMT situation? I love hearing other people's experiences.
If you prefer to subscribe on Amazon Music, make sure you do that. We've had a really good response ever since we got on Amazon Music, so I want to thank everyone who's listening to us through there. If you're catching this show on iTunes or one of these other podcast services, thank you very much.
That being said, take care, be safe, God bless. Don't do anything too crazy. We want to see you back next week. Until then, bye bye.
West of the Rockies with Frank the Engineer on the Independent FM, Los Angeles.