DMT and Alien Information Theory with Andrew Gallimore

In this episode, I'm joined by Andrew Gallamore, who is a computational neurobiologist, pharmacologist, and chemist interested in psychedelic drugs, especially DMT. In this episode, we talk about his book, *Alien Information Theory*. I'd like to thank all my paid subscribers and patrons for making all of this possible, and if you'd like to support Hemetics or become part of the community, please find links in the description below. Enjoy.

Andrew Gallamore: Thanks very much for joining us on the Hemetics podcast.

You're welcome. Uh, so we're going to be discussing your very recently published book, *Alien Information Theory: Psychedelic Drug Technologies and the Cosmic Game*.

Um, yeah. Now, before we even sort of venture into trying to explain this book, because usually I can think, yeah, I'll be able to explain this—not not so much for this one. So, but before we jump in, uh, yeah, just tell us a little bit about yourself and um your work, what it is you do.

Yeah, so well, I'm I'm, I guess, the the short answer is I'm a neurobiologist, I'm a chemist, and I'm a pharmacologist, and a writer, and I'm interested in psychedelic drugs. I've been interested in psychedelic drugs since I was a teenager, and um, kind of that's followed me through through my academic career really, you know, from from kind of the earliest days of kind of university thinking about, you know, studying chemistry and pharmacology and being interested in how these drugs work, and then later in my academic career becoming more interested in the brain specifically and thinking about how is it possible that these drugs can have such kind of astonishing effects on on the brain and on the structure of your world and really just, yeah, I just kind of want to know what what's going on with these drugs because DMT specifically, um, you know, it's such a remarkable kind of compound, and ever since I learned about DMT, um, from kind of very early Terence McKenna interviews and things, he knew he would talk about these this astonishing drug, you know, this most amazing, bizarre thing, and uh, and and you know, you just kind of hear that and you think, wow, you know, what what is this? What is this thing? What is this technology that's uh that he's talking about here? And um, and yeah, that's really where it all started, and um, you know, the book that you mentioned at the start there is kind of the combination of 20, 25 years of thinking about uh DMT. So I'm getting a little bit ahead of myself here, but um, you get the point is that I'm I'm interested in psychedelics; I'm interested in what they're doing and and bringing to bear or a number of different kind of academic disciplines um to try and come up with some kind of explanation for what what these drugs are and what they're doing in the brain.

Okay. Okay. Um, I'm sure that's all going to come come back up, but before we we measure any further, uh, I do have to ask you the Hemetics question, which is: you can place three thinkers, living or dead, into a room and listen on the conversation—who do you pick?

Oh, this is so this is very difficult because, you know, in my kind of there are obvious ones that I can choose here, right? Um, you know, I I could obviously choose, you know, Terence McKenna, and if I didn't choose Terence McKenna, even though it's so obvious, uh, I'd be it'd be kind of a little bit dumb, uh, because, you know, what I'm interested in. But I think what what kind of I guess I've all for the last kind of 20 years or so I've I've I've always felt myself I've always felt there's kind of a tension in my psychology in there's one part of me that kind of wants to confront the alien overmind, right? That wants to be fired off in a spaceship, um, you know, this kind of Terence McKenna idea, kind of leaving the planet, and then there's another part of me that just wants to off into a mountain uh and drink plum wine and do calligraphy, um, and and and it's still something that I wrestle with. So I, you know, it what what does one do with one's self? And and I guess I I'd want I'd want thinkers that come from different perspectives in that regard. So I might have, you know, Terence McKenna in the middle, and then perhaps someone like Philip K. Dick on the one side, kind of um promoting the kind of leaving the earth or hooking us up to the matrix, and then perhaps someone like Alan Watts or D.T. Suzuki kind of uh kind of bringing up the other side and more of a kind of philosophical kind of kind of enlightenment approach, and and perhaps I could kind of reconcile those two what appear to me contradictory positions. Do you know what I mean?

Yeah, it's um it's it's and and I I find that contradictory position in a lot of Terence McKenna's work as well. You know, in one breath he's talking about leaving the earth, um, you know, shedding off our material body and, you know, catapulting ourselves into orbit and beyond, and then the next minute he's talking about going back to, you know, the kind of the archaic revival and going back to uh the forest and and kind of shamanic rituals, and I don't know whether I'm misunderstanding the whole thing, whether there really is a deep contradiction there, uh, but I I kind of get the feeling that that man is kind of paradoxical in that in once in one sense we we do feel this urge to kind of um drive forward our technological prowess, our technological acumen, and become kind of like this this uh post-human intelligence species that traverses the galaxy, you know, this galactic citizens that kind of thing, and yet on the other hand, uh, we feel that we we we're kind of we feel drawn back to nature, and and we fear losing uh the the connection with kind of Mother Nature, and I I don't know how what would resolve that. So perhaps having those kind of three thinkers in the room uh might um might go somewhere in in that direction, but I'm not sure.

So do you think in writing this book it was sort of done in to resolve this tension you have between what answers can be resolved when you um are completely grounded like someone like Watts, who's mindful of their their territory, and someone like Philip K. Dick who's, you know, ramping up his paranoia to the point where, you know, you wouldn't even trust a house plant? You know, is this written to resolve that there is a connection between these two because both of them are going deep into something, but they're going different directions? So is this sort of involving the the conflict between those two ideas in a way?

Well, I'm not sure it it it necessarily achieves that. I think maybe it's um what is it that Tara Brach talks about, the um the coincidencium of positorum or something, where where there's a point where all of these uh contradictory positions kind of flow together, and you realize actually that it's that it's only a surface level contradiction, and then that somehow they're not um the tension is kind of illusory. Uh, perhaps I would I would hope um that that's the actual truth and that there's not truly a contradiction; there isn't really this kind of dichotomy between going back to nature or going uh, you know, heading towards the stars, uh, but actually it's part of, you know, some deeper truth. Um, you know, the book was really about, I guess, getting it out of my system, and I've been thinking about these drugs or well thinking about DMT for, as I said, you know, 20, 25 years, and had all of these different threads, uh, these kind of partial partial narratives uh of trying to kind of piece together the puzzle of work out what what what DMT is and why it's there and how it's possible for it to have these astonishing effects on consciousness that it does, um, and I thought, okay, you know, that like maybe sort of three years ago, three or four years ago, I kind of realized that I had a kind of if I brought all of these little pieces together, these threads together, I I had something that was approaching a kind of cogent narrative, uh, and so I thought, okay, well, you know, I could spend the next 20 years kind of refining it, but I think no, let's let's get it down, let's get it into a uh, you know, a coherent form, and and kind of just present it to the world. You know, I I don't think that it's the final word; this isn't the Quran, you know, this is it's it's it's just one particular vision of reality that I've kind of developed over a couple of decades, and I felt like, yeah, now's the kind of the time to to put it out there and let people um make what they will of it.

So how would you practically describe the book then?

Well, it's what the aim of the book was to kind of say, okay, um, you know, where did we come from? What is the kind of the fundamental nature of of our reality? You know, did our was our reality kind of just sort of a cosmic accident of some sort? Um, how did intelligence emerge within this uh apparently kind of randomly appearing universe? And and and what's the role of DMT in all of it? And I I I'm certainly not a creationist or um, but then again, I'm I'm I'm perplexed by by the by the structure of reality. I'm perplexed; I've, you know, I've always been astonished that um complex thinking, intelligent beings such as ourselves uh can emerge, and I do think that we emerged; I don't think that we were molded or sculpted by an intelligence as such. Um, I think that what's kind of uh remarkable about about the way that nature where the reality seems to work is that you often have very very simple rules um and very simple rules governing kind of the way the fundamental pieces of reality interact, and that often leads to that extremely complex behavior, and you can see this on in computer models. I I use the game of life; John Conway, the mathematician who died earlier this year actually, he um he developed this computer program called the game of life where you've got a grid of squares that can either be black or white, and they interact according to four very very simple rules, and yet over time if you let this this game this zero-player game run, you get the emergence of quite complex um self-sustaining uh emergent structures, um, and and and that's kind of what what I see happening at the ground of reality is that there is this fundamental what I call the code uh which is basically an information-generating um code um that, you know, so reality is constructed from kind of fundamental bit-like objects, you know, basic fundamental units of information that self-organize and self-complexify over time, and we find ourselves emergent within um one kind of slice of of reality. You know, building a universe isn't actually that complicated um in that all you need is to, you know, or should I say it it's not difficult to um to construct a universe like ours if you know the correct rules; if you know what rules are required at the ground of reality, you know, what are the fundamental bits, what are the fundamental units uh the ground of your reality, and how are they going to interact? What are the rules of their interaction? Well, if you know the rules of interaction, all you have to do is basically set the initial conditions and let the universe kind of run uh and eventually it will start to self-complexify. However, the key point is that knowing the correct rules is almost impossible uh a priori. So you can't you can't look at all possible rule sets and say this rule set this, you know, is going to lead to complex behavior. So that the best solution to this problem um is to run all possible universes. So you enumerate through all possible rule sets, fundamental rule sets, what you might describe as the kind of the fundamental rules of rules of physics or laws of physics; you run every possible universe, and you make decisions based upon its behavior: does it look like it's complexifying? Does it look like it's descending into kind of an endless tumult of kind of ceaseless chaos? Does it look like it's just going to run down and do absolutely nothing? You might find that a very very tiny percentage of this almost not infinite but extremely large number of universes you would actually start to see self-organization and complexification, uh, then you would you would let these universes run, and the other universes you would shut down. So the intelligence would come, if there was an intelligence, not in kind of sculpting or molding the universe like, you know, like a god, but really and simply letting all possible universes run themselves and then and then deciding which ones to shut down, which ones to keep running, and that could be done by a, you know, a relatively it wouldn't have to be an omniscient um kind of god, it would it could just be an intelligence that that that understand and understood these things, and these things there are things that we can comprehend as well. So I think that we um we find ourselves perhaps emergent within one of these possible universes that has been set running um and and um DMT is perhaps some kind of embedded code or technology, as I describe it in the book anyway.

Is this kind of embedded embedded code really um that allows us essentially to get a glimpse, at least minimally a glimpse, outside of this kind of very thin slice of reality that we find ourselves emergent within and and to give us a glimpse at the larger structure? So that's the basic idea of it, and the these these bits, these aren't um these aren't atoms; much much much much smaller.

So really this goes back to, I mean, it draws a lot on the ideas of um Ed Fredkin in particular, who was one of the who is uh he's still around I think, uh is one of the kind of the founders of what's called digital physics or digital philosophy, uh and Stephen Wolfram of course has has also picked up the mantle there um in in in thinking that perhaps or in kind of um working from the the assumption that the ground of reality, uh you know, the ground of reality is fundamentally digital, that there's a there's a a very simple fundamental unit of information, you know, it could be ones and zeros, it could be pluses and minuses, it could be seven shades of grey, uh it wouldn't really matter, but it would be discrete units that would represent information, and that they would interact in some way um according to some kind of fundamental rule set, and then from that you get the emergence of larger structures. So that what we would call the fundamental particles, so things like, you know, quarks for example, and you know, neutrinos and the Higgs boson and all of these things, these are actually higher-order structures, and then they themselves self-organize in ways that we do understand to form atoms, and then atoms organize to form molecules all the way up basically. So you've got many levels of um of organization, levels of complexification; most of them we kind of seem to understand to some degree all the way down to kind of the what we think of as the fundamental particles, but there could be layers below that that we don't understand, which would go down to the, you know, this fundamental digital ground of reality.

Okay. Have you just just out of curiosity, have you ever read Lucretius?

I haven't, uh, but um, I mean, a lot of Lucretius's these ideas came really from Democritus, uh, who I do uh reference in in the book. You know, the idea that um the the ground of the reality there is this kind of these fundamental units, these what I call in the book these um these fundamental pellets of the absolute, uh, you know, that which cannot be broken down any further, and the reality is is fundamentally organized from these units, and of course Democritus had no idea um what these things were as such, but I think he was certainly on the right lines that you know you you break things down fundamentally into smaller and smaller units until you get to a point uh where you you kind of hit the floor, you hit the ground of reality, um and presumably, you know, that is is how it it it works um in our reality, although although you know much smaller I think and more and stranger certainly than the Democrats or the creatures could have envisaged.

So with with regards to this idea that one thing sort of uh within your idea, one sort of unit or bits spirals often begins to complexify, like the game of life, um that sort of has connections to—I've read a bit of McKenna, but not loads, but I understand McKenna has a theory that our consciousness evolved from—well, his theory is that our consciousness evolved from Homo—is it Homo erectus eating uh mushrooms, and he believed that that evolved. So in a sort of abstract way, could we understand that as sort of the point where something spirals off as a bit and then begins to complexify into something else, or is it way more simple than that, and I'm sort of uh materializing it?

Well, I think it's yeah, I mean certainly these—so it's not that you've got a single bit is that you've got you've got large numbers of these bits. I mean, that's the key point here is that is that complex systems invariably emerge when you have very large numbers of simple systems that interact. Um, so the examples that I give in the book, so apart from the game of life where each each square on the grid is kind of, you know, it can be black or white, on or off, dead or alive, you've also got things like flocking behaviors of birds, starlings particularly, and you can see these remarkably beautiful and complex and dynamic configurations and reconfigurations of these birds in the sky, and the question is, you know, is how do they how do they achieve this? You know, how do they know? Do they have kind of a conductor? And the answer is no, is that each bird to each individual bird follows a very small number, maybe just two or three very very simple rules in terms of um, you know, whether it follows the bird in front, the distance it keeps between itself and the birds in its vicinity, you know, all these, you know, very very simple rules, and yet from it you get this extremely dynamic uh and complex emergent behavior, uh, and and and you see that at every level of organization. So each bird, of course, is an emergent structure, uh, you know, it's built from cells, living cells, and each cell is itself an emergent structure that's built from this this complex subcellular network of molecules, and each molecule itself is an emergent structure. So you get you get emergence all the way down, and and within one complex system such as a living organism, uh, you find many levels of of complexity; you find emergent structures within emergent structures, um, and so the human brain. So you're talking about, you know, the human the evolution of the human brain, you know, the human brain is is kind of the the complex emergent structure par excellence; it represents the pinnacle of complexification, at least that you know in the in the known universe that we're aware of anyway. Uh, you've got these the emergence of, you know, remarkable um properties of computation and representation and uh calculation and and prediction and oh, you know, etc., etc., you know, that this brain can almost miraculously achieve, and yet it's achieving it because it is built from extremely large numbers of simple, much simpler cells um called neurons that interact, and they interact in extremely complex ways with each other, and that is where the these extremely complex properties of the the entire brain emerges from. Now that doesn't explain why human brains in particular um are so different to or seem to be kind of on another level when it comes to intelligence when you compare it to even our closest uh ape relatives, um, but still, you know, these these apes they still have brains, so they still communicate, they still have some kind of language, their brains still performing extremely complex behaviors, uh, but it is still something of a mystery of where human-level intelligence came from, and and you kind of referred to there the stoned ape theory, really what you're talking about the stoned ape hypothesis, and you know the problem I guess with the stoned ape hypothesis is that it can be uh if you if you don't understand it or you you interpret it incorrectly, it it it's a kind of a Lamarckian process. So so basically when in terms of evolution you've got the accepted form of evolution which is Darwinian evolution, which is where certain randomly um certain random mutations, randomly acquired mutations are either more or less adaptive; they make it more or less likely that you will survive to reproduce basically, and so those those particularly adaptive features will be selected for. What the alternative, one of uh Darwin's contemporaries was Lamarck, who suggested that you could acquire some kind of characteristic during your life uh and then pass that on to your your offspring. And so some people have suggested that you know if you eat the mushroom that that will somehow change your brain um in some way, you know, maybe it would increase connectivity, perhaps these are all perfectly possible, but it's it's not something you can actually pass on to your your offspring. Um, so so so that's the key point here is if if if you want stoned ape theory to work, uh there must be it must be a it's got to be heritable; it's got to be something that that can be passed down. So what you can inherit is a taste for mushrooms perhaps or a um some kind of um drive towards some kind of drug curiosity, um some some drive that would lead you as opposed to other members of your um of your kind of species towards consuming these mushrooms, and and that is something that might be passed on, um whereas any effect of the mushroom on your you know on your physiology whilst you're alive is not going to be passed on. Um, so so that's why I struggle a little bit with the stoned ape theory is that uh it's it's often not properly formulated in a in in a proper kind of Darwinian sense uh in order to kind of make sense.

So yeah, okay. So then the um in quotes sort of realities which are formed from taking DMT or doing mushrooms, yeah, is there a differentiation between the the structure of the realities, you know, what we consider normal reality and what the reality you go into on a DMT trip? Because you're you're entering into something else which is still information, but what do you theorize is it that you're actually experiencing there in terms of um, you know, information?

Yeah, I mean, you're always so so kind of a point that I I labor a little bit is that that you whenever you're experiencing a reality, it is a reality that is constructed by your brain from information um that that is if there's anything we've learned uh from, you know, a couple of hundred years of neuroscience, it's that that the your your world is always constructed by your brain, uh whether it's real or not. So whether that world has a relationship to an environment doesn't affect whether or not uh it's it's, you know, what it's built from. Your brain is always constructing a kind of a model um of which is experienced as your your phenomenal world, and that model is is constructed as this emergent pattern of unified, highly differentiated pattern of information, um and that's the that is your world. Now, of course, in in in normal waking life, there is an obvious relationship between that world that you're experiencing and the environment; there seems to be there seems to be an obvious mapping there, and that makes perfect sense. You know, your brain constructs your phenomenal world out of information, but as a model of the environment, the idea is that you can navigate whatever there is out there in the in the external world, in the environment outside of your brain. The world that you experience is designed to allow you to make sense of it, to distinguish between predator and prey, to distinguish between um, you know, mate, someone you should and someone you should fight, um, and and just basically just to basically navigate your environment and find food and all of that and all of the other kind of complex stuff that that we humans do. Um, this world is designed or evolved, should I say, to to achieve that purpose; it's a functional model. And when you dream at night, of course, you lose access to sensory information, but your brain is still perfectly capable of building the same model, and it does it with with great ease because it's evolved to construct that model. The difference is that when you're awake is that the way that the model kind of updates

From moment to moment, is is is guided by sensory information, uh, but there's but it's not like you're you ever kind of have access to the world in itself. You only have access to this pattern of stimulation of of your nervous system, really. It's the way that light tickles your retina, um, or the way that sound waves vibrate uh your um your eardrum. You know, this is what triggers these chemic electrochemical impulses in your brain, and that's the only thing you ever have access to, so to speak.

And so your your brain is really trying to to learn the patterns of sensory information and understand the patterns of sensory information and build a functional model. So so when you go into the DMT space, what your brain is doing is constructing an entirely different model of reality. It's still built from information, but it seems to be uh it seems to bear no relationship whatsoever to the normal waking world, um, and and it's it's not only strange or bizarre, it's inconceivably strange and bizarre. So it's it's not just a world that you wouldn't predict or wouldn't expect; it's a world you simply could not have anticipated, uh, and and that is that's really part of the kind of the ontological shock uh that goes along particularly with your first DMT experience.

It is the shock of being confronted with a world that you could not possibly have anticipated, a world that is uh seems to be completely impossible, this higher dimensional reality which you're you are interacting with and observing nine or ten dimensional objects from all sides at once, and you know beings that are singing objects into existence. And it's something that you simply could not have conceived of before you took DMT, uh, and and for me, that's the most confounding thing about DMT, er, because as a neuroscientist, I know that that if you experience a world, it's your brain has to be constructing that world. So my question is, how the did your brain know how to construct this reality, uh, because it has to know how to do it, and it does it with great ease. You know, it builds these worlds with you know crystalline clarity, and people describe going to the same types of world, meeting the same kinds of beings, um the same kind of geometry, and it's like, well, how where when did the brain learn to do this?

We know how it learned to construct the normal waking world; it did it by sampling sensory information uh from the from the normal environment over you know millennia and millions of years, perhaps even uh you know evolved to construct this world, which is why it can do it so effortlessly. But you know, how did it learn to construct this bizarre world that has no relationship whatsoever to the norwaki world? To me, that is confounding. It's easy to say, oh, it's just oh, it's just hallucination, but that that is a very bad explanation; it doesn't really hold water when you actually get down into thinking properly and carefully about what that entails, because hallucination is something the brain constructs; it's hallucination is a perception that your brain constructs of its own accord, uh, and the question is, how did the brain learn to construct this this very very strange reality filled with intelligent beings, um you know extremely intelligent beings? Why would the brain come up with that? Um, that to me remains a mystery, no matter what people say, no matter what the you know your standard kind of run-of-the-mill orthodox neuroscientist might say, you know, that it's just hallucination, um I don't think they've really thought about it carefully enough, because when I when I see when I enter these these kind of realms, I I don't come back thinking that was it, that was a hallucination; I come back thinking I I have no idea how that was even possible.

So do you think there's um a reason that your brain blocks out the ability to do this like all the time, and why it remains within these spatiotemporal constraints? Well, of course, I mean, you have to think that you're you know, as going back to you know what is the purpose of your what is the purpose of perception? What is the purpose of the world that your brain constructs? It's it's it's functional, uh, it it's it's an adaptive model; it's it's the brain's attempt at building a model that works, and that doesn't mean it's the truest model; it doesn't mean it's the model that allows your brain to you know absorb as much information as possible from the environment at all. Your brain is actually in the business in if kind of the way we think about perception in kind of the modern era, in the 21st century, is that your brain is really trying to predict and filter out sensory information; it wants to deal with sensory information itself as little as possible, because as soon as sensory information enters your brain, it starts stimulating it starts it stimulates neurons which then fire; then every time sensory information comes into your brain from the environment, it risks disturbing uh the harmony, risks disturbing the system. And so ideally your brain says, okay, I've got this model; it seems to work, um what I'm going to try and do is use this model to predict sensory information, and if I predict the sensory information correctly, I'm just going to stop that you know block that sensor information, uh, and and simply rely on the model because the model is working, and it's only when the brain kind of fails in in making good um predictions about sensory information that it kind of updates its model; it absorbs that information. So your brain really is trying to maintain itself, and it does that um by actually filtering out as much sensory information as as possible, um yeah, and so so the question then is, so what happens then when when DMT enters the brain? Why is the brain suddenly filled with information that seems to be completely different? Uh, you know, it's not like your world model has just been kind of shattered, uh, it's it's like it's been completely dismantled and then an entirely new one reconstructed, uh one that's far more complex, far more intricate, uh seemingly much higher dimensional, and it's like, why is that the option? Why is that the way to go? It doesn't seem to make any sense, um you know if something is if a drug is somehow um destabilizing the system, the brain, which it really is, you know, it's the brain is always poised between order and disorder; what psychedelics do is they seem to tip the brain towards more disorder, um but and and that makes sense when you think about kind of if you think about regular doses of other psychedelic, do you think of a a gram of dried mushrooms, for example, you can you can send you can feel you're the world's starting to become more fluid, less predictable; objects seem to change their identity a little bit; it's become everything become kind of confusing, and yeah, the brain is kind of losing control of the world that it's the model that it's constructing, and that makes sense then if you take you know too much, uh then things start to disintegrate even more, then you can completely lose your kind of bearings, and okay, that makes sense as well, but then with DMT, it's like you go past all of that; you go from order to disorder and chaos and then to this entirely new order that bears no relationship whatsoever to the old order.

Oh, so you don't you don't think there's connections? You don't think that um not to sound too paranoid and conspiratorial, but you don't think in this this this higher order is affecting our regular adaptive state? Oh, I do, yeah, but I I think well, this is this is really the great question is um so so the question really that is often formulated as is the DMT world constructed by your brain, or is it a real kind of objective reality? Now, that's the wrong question, right? Because as as we've just kind of discussed, a world is always constructed by your brain, right? So the question you might ask, um you know, is is this the world you're experiencing now? You might reasonably ask yourself, uh, is it a a real world, a normal waking world, or is or am I dreaming? Now, the world would be the same in both cases; the difference would be that in the dream case, uh there would be no sensory information coming from the environment, right? So you can think about the same kind of question with the DMT world: is it is it like a a kind of a a dream in that it's it's it's a world that your brain is constructing entirely of its own accord, or is it kind of like a waking world? Is it a sensed world? Is it a world that is actually being modulated by sensory information from some other place, just like the normal waking world is, except it's not you know the normal waking world; it's not the normal environment that we're familiar with, you know, that we receive information from via the normal kind of sensory conduits? There seems to be some way perhaps that your brain is able to start receiving patterns of information from some other place to which it normally has no access, uh, you know, and how is DMT achieving that? How is DMT changing the the way that the information that your brain generates such that it's suddenly able to kind of gate the flow of information from this other reality? That that would be the explanation for uh for what DMT is doing, but of course, you know, any kind of standard orthodox neuroscientist would scoff at that idea because there does seem to be no way that your brain is capable of; there's no obvious route by which in information from some other reality, you know, some other dimension of reality could enter the brain, uh that's really the question; this is what I call the data input problem: where does the data come from? If you are really interacting with another world, another reality filled with intelligent beings, conscious intelligent beings, how does your brain get access? Because that's really the that's really the puzzle; it's not that these world exists; these worlds exist; there's nothing in physics that says that there can't be alternate dimensions filled with intelligent beings; the question really is how is it possible for us to access them, and that is a dates of data problems; it's how how does the brain get access to information from that other reality?

So in terms of um I'm sort of hoping you're familiar roughly with with the work of Kant, because this is this seems for to me to mirror what Kant it's all about. Do you think that DMT is an access to the thing in itself, or do you think that that world we're going to again is just another representation that we're given, and there might actually be something beyond that? Well, I think I think it's that you're faced with the same issue; I I don't think it's a so I think you you're in exactly the same position in that so for listeners, I guess so in the normal waking world, we're always faced with the issue of we only have access to the phenomenon, right, to the phenomenon being the phenomenal world, your experience, subjective reality, um and we assume that there is the noumenon, which is the world in itself that exists outside and beyond your perceptions, um and and that there is there is assumed to be some kind of relationship between the world in itself and and your phenomenal world, and that makes sense, uh but of course you only ever have access to your subjective uh phenomenal world, the phenomenon. And the way I see it, the same is true in the DMT space, um you know, you're entering a uh some kind of other reality that's that's for sure, that you're entering a different phenomenal world, that your phenomenon is changing uh dramatically, um but it will always it's still your phenomenon. Now, the question then, I guess, to reformulate the question um we had before is is how has the noumenon changed? Is there a different or is it or is it somehow your brain interacting with a different aspect of the noumenon? That that would be how I would see it, in that somehow your brain is is receiving information uh from a greater uh number of dimensions or a greater part of this of the noumenon, of kind of uh the larger structure of of of reality, whereas in the normal waking world, you know, your normal waking life, you're receiving them much limited sample if you like of information, and somehow that expands uh when when DMT enters the brain. And of course, that doesn't explain exactly how DMT achieves that, which I do discuss at some length in the book, uh but but it kind of hopefully it kind of sets up the problem.

So so if you do you sort of subsume any alterations of time into the same sense data, like like Kant would, you know, because I've done the DMT myself, but I've heard there is some sort of relatively severe alterations to your perception of time. Yeah, I mean, that's that's something which I don't I I don't think about it too much because the problem is is that again you you lead to the the issue of of changes in actual time or changes in perceived time. We certainly know for a fact that one's perception of time dramatically alters, you know, under the influence of the majority of psychedelic drugs, you know, people describe it taking them an aeon to climb a flight of stairs, you know, after they've taken acid, and whereas of course in in truth time hasn't actually changed, right, to any kind of external observer. Now, again, when you go into the DMT space, that there seems to be this kind of timeless quality to it in that uh time doesn't seem to work in the same way; you enter a realm where um it feels like the DMT space somehow always been there, and and and the question I guess is does is that because you're truly entering a timeless realm where the rules of time somehow do not apply, or is it simply that the way that your brain is simply not equipped to make sense uh you know because you know you your br your brain, how does your brain measure time? Well, there are a number of ways it does it, but it has to form representations about you know what's going on from moment to moment and kind of make judgments, and so you know your brain is always kind of constructing a model of time which is kind of always part of your model of reality, um and and you know that's why time could become very very fluid, and time can seem to move quickly or or much more slowly under certain circumstances because your brain is having to construct this model of time, um which is obviously distinct from clock time, and so that you know when you're in the DMT space, your brain is constructing this extremely bizarre hyper-dimensional model, and it's perhaps not surprising that it struggles to create a timeline for you there, which is perhaps what's going on. So whether there's actually you really are entering a place where time doesn't apply or whether there are different rules or yeah, it's it's a messy it's a messy problem, which is why I don't I don't deal with it too much.

Okay, one of the really interesting things you say early on is that we have become the alien societies of our fictions. So in what way have uh these alien societies sort of manifested themselves in our in our reality? Well, yeah, and this is kind of an ongoing process, but I do I when you kind of look at the world as a human, and whether this is illusory or not, you there is this this kind of ostensible disjoint between human civilization and the so-called natural world, the world of forests and mountains and rivers. There seems to be something strange about what we do, the way that um cityscapes kind of crystallize from steel and glass, kind of shimmering and uh you know electronic everything; it seems completely it seems non-earth-like, uh if you know what I mean; it seems like we're becoming less and less like citizens of the earth, and we're seeing that manifest in what you might say regard as quite positive ways, right? So the way that we are able to manipulate our environment in in good ways, um we can we can communicate instantaneously, you know, across the planets, uh we can travel to and fro, you know, in person across the planet; we can we can reach up uh towards the heavens; at least we can look at um you know different parts of the galaxy and you know towards the edge of the universe. All of these things uh are kind of I guess positive things in a way, but we also see the negative sides of it as well, in the kind of the continual exploitation and destruction of our of our environment, uh in that we we've lost the ability; again, it goes back to this tension, right, uh we've we've lost our connection to um the rest of um the natural world; we don't we don't seem to be part of the ape lineage anymore; we've seem to have cut the umbilical cord if you like, and so that's what I see; that's why I see us as becoming kind of like um you know the aliens of of science fiction, you know, of not necessarily just aliens kind of flying around in silvery kind of super light speed discs, but as as aliens uh as in beings that do that are not from the earth; that's what I mean by an alien, uh and we we become more and more; we seem to resemble a species that it doesn't belong here, uh and and in a way it feels like the earth would do well to kind of shrug us off, and that when McKenna spoke about us leaving the earth and shedding our material bodies or whatever or these kind of post-human ideas of uploading ourselves somehow into some kind of digital um hyperspace or whatever, um that that might be something that has to happen um sooner or later; the alternative being that we would simply destroy ourselves and the earth at the same time, uh so it seems to be kind of a a race against time, I think.

Okay, um is there anything you you feel that's key that we've we've missed or you'd like to add? Um, I don't know; it's pretty intense stuff there. Yeah, you know, um yeah, I think um I think we're we're just really getting to grips now uh with with DMT; I think we're going to see in the next sort of 10 or 20 years; DMT is the scientific study of DMT has really opened up together with with with the other psychedelics, and you're seeing now a torrent really of scientific studies that are that are starting to elucidate and reveal um what these drugs are actually doing um in the brain and how how they have these effects on consciousness, you know, from the level of interactions with receptors in the brain through to effects on global brain activity, uh but also I think if we're really going to get to the bottom of of DMT, we have to confront the fact at some point that we might be dealing with a true uh intelligence that does not uh that does not have its origins uh in this universe. That to me is going to be the great leap, I guess; that would be the great leap, uh you know, this kind of transcendental leap um that humankind uh could never have anticipated uh really uh that there could be these not only that there could be intelligences existing outside of our universe, which yeah, you could you could uh you could uh theorize that these are perfectly possible and maybe even plausible, uh but the idea that it's possible for us to with great facility and by inhaling a couple of long falls of one of the simplest plant alkaloids uh in the world, um that you can actually effortlessly communicate and establish communication with such intelligences; I think that would be the greatest discovery in in the history of humankind if that were to be validated. So I think you know in parallel, you know, alongside these kind of functional neuroimaging and and phenomenological studies of psychedelics that are going on and clinical uses as well, which is also going to be revolutionary in in psychiatry, uh I think it's important that we actually think about who it is we might be actually communicating with and meeting with and establishing uh two-way uh diplomatic relations um with uh on the other side of the veil, and um and that's something that particularly interests me is is is is realizing I think that DMT in particular is a technology, and that should be treated as a technology, uh and that there are ways to there are ways to develop it; it's not simply a case of sitting on a rug and uh and using a glass pipe, you know, raising a hand-blown glass pipe to the lips and taking a couple of long folds, but there might be much more efficient and effective technological ways to to enter and maintain entry in the DMT space and establish stable two-way communication with intelligences not of not of this universe.

So from your um personal experience, what uh what's the intelligence like, or how does it manifest itself, or I mean the the what's clear about the DMT space is that it is teeming with intelligence, um it's not like there is you know just a kind of a handful; it's not like walking into a as a semi-crowded room, um you know like a dinner party or something; it's like walking into a place that is filled you know to the brim with with with intelligence, and and it's so pervasive that you get the feeling, the sense of the intelligence is so pervasive and powerful that you you start to feel it as you're before you even get into the DMT space, as you're kind of hurtling through this this kind of tunnel of complex this complex procession of complex geometric forms; you you get this very very strong, profound sense that this place is going to be filled with intelligence. It's hard to explain um until you've been there, but once you've been there, you know exactly what I'm talking about, and then when you do enter the space, there's often a multitude of different types of intelligence um with a multitude of different intent levels of intelligence, uh types of entities, um ways of interacting with them, uh it it's it's an extremely diverse hyperdimensional ecology that you're bursting into when you when you take DMT, uh and that's what people need to be uh aware of, and and that's why you will never really get to the bottom of DMT, I think, but using standard approaches, uh standard methods of administration, you know, three or four minutes in that space is is is certainly it's sufficient perhaps to kind of orient yourself, um but that's about it; by the time you've oriented yourself and kind of established some kind of communication with one of the or more of the intelligences in there, you're but you're basically being pulled out again; you know, the drug is wearing off, um and it's it's not a particularly diplomatic uh way of of approaching somebody else's realm uh to kind of burst in their wide-eyed for five minutes, have a look around in awe, and then kind of bugger off again. I don't think it's the way that you know it's kind of unbecoming of a species of our intelligence that has stumbled across this technology; I think we need to treat it as a technology and treat the entities and the intelligences that lie within the DMT space with you know requisite respect, and that means learning to use the drug properly, you know, learning to administer in ways that you can maintain stable brain levels of of DMT uh over time, such that you can bring somebody into the space, hold them there for as long as required, you know, whether that be 30 minutes or 30 hours; I mean, there's there's no limits really; you know, DMT has these remarkable pharmacological peculiarities in that it doesn't exhibit tolerance; it is very short acting; it has these these these unique uh properties that mean that that you can use um intravenous infusion type techniques to actually maintain levels of DMT in the brain over time; one doesn't have to be restricted to kind of traditional modes of administration, um I believe.

Are you running some courses or was it? Sure, yeah, so um so on my YouTube channel, uh I currently have a 42 video lesson course; it's called Psychedelics and the Brain or Psychedelic Neuroscience Master Course, and it's basically in my opinion, well, not in my opinion, I think as an objective fact, it is the most comprehensive, detailed, um uh course on the on the effects of psychedelic drugs uh in the brain, how they work, you know, from the level of drug receptor interactions to how that affects neurons to how that affects global brain activity and the structure of your world and all of that kind of stuff; it's all in there over uh over eight units, um 42 video lessons; each is each is only sort of 15 25 minutes, and you don't really need any prerequisites beyond kind of high school biology, so anyone that really wants to understand what's going on in the brain when someone takes psychedelic

Drug should go to go to my YouTube channel. My, my handle is alien insect, and it's also my Twitter handle. My Instagram handle is also the same, alien insect. Um, so you know, follow me there for kind of updates and new courses and new books and that kind of thing. Okay.

Um, yeah. Andrew Gallamble, thanks very much. Thank you.