Joe Rogan Experience #1133 - Dennis McKenna

1. 0:00 – 15:00

   Four, three, two, one.…

   1. JRJoe Rogan0:02

      Four, three, two, one. (claps) And we're live. Hello, Dennis.

   2. DMDennis McKenna0:09

      Hi, Joe.

   3. JRJoe Rogan0:11

      (laughs)

   4. DMDennis McKenna0:11

      (laughs)

   5. JRJoe Rogan0:11

      Great to see you, as always.

   6. DMDennis McKenna0:12

      It's great to be here, as always. It's great to be here.

   7. JRJoe Rogan0:15

      So tell me about this, these, these cards that you gave me and what, what this is all about.

   8. DMDennis McKenna0:20

      Okay. Well, this is an interesting project. This is about the RV Heraclitus, which is a, which was associated with the Institute for Ecotechnics, which is ... Try to keep this, like, close to your face.

   9. JRJoe Rogan0:33

      Yeah. Okay. There you go.

   10. DMDennis McKenna0:34

       Further, uh, associated with, uh ... (sighs) You know, how do I explain it? It was actually a theater company called The Theater of All Possibilities. But the Institute for Ecotechnics was started in the early '70s, and they built a ship, this, this, uh, Chinese junk, essentially, with a ferro-concrete hull. And my connection was they have cruised, cruised the world, essentially, since 1973, looking into different things relevant to global ecology. They've done sampling in the Antarctic. And in 1981, they decided to go to the Amazon, and I was doing my graduate work in, in Iquitos at that time. So, that was my connection with the Institute of Ecotechnics. And, uh, you know, (laughs) a- at the time, uh, I thought, "These people are nuts." I mean, they were kind of nuts, and they were very, um, naive about what they were doing, as far as doing ethnobotanical work. Not that I wasn't naive about it at the time, but I had a better handle on it than they did.

   11. JRJoe Rogan1:42

       (laughs)

   12. DMDennis McKenna1:42

       Anyway, that was the original connection. And the same group, years after I had more or less, uh, you know, kind of severed ... I didn't really sever my relationship, but I kind of distanced myself from them. But then that same group went on in the '80s to build Biosphere 2-

   13. JRJoe Rogan2:02

       Ah.

   14. DMDennis McKenna2:02

       ... which you probably heard of.

   15. JRJoe Rogan2:03

       Yeah.

   16. DMDennis McKenna2:04

       And they had financing f- for Biosphere 2, so they'd gone to a whole other level of ambition and, and, you know, madness. But, um ... And Biosphere 2 went off track.

   17. JRJoe Rogan2:16

       Explain that to people who don't know what we're talking about.

   18. DMDennis McKenna2:18

       Well, Biosphere 2 was the idea of building a, a terrestrial environment that was completely shut off from everything and that was self-sustaining. And it was a huge complex. It was a big, a series of domes, really. Each dome replicated some earthly biome, like the desert, the rainforest, the ocean, and so on. And the idea was that, uh, it was a, uh, it was a dry run for building a Mars colony, you know, a- or some planetary colony. And the idea was Mars. And they put, uh, people into this environment for, like, two years at a time to see if they could make it work, if they could really have a, a balanced ecosystem. Well, as it turned out, it didn't work so well. (laughs) But they learned a great deal from this, and they also got a lot of adverse publicity because I think the, uh, I think the science establishment, in a way, became kind of jealous. And, you know, like, "These people, they don't know anything about what they're doing. They got $600 million to build this. What the hell?" (laughs) You know?

   19. JRJoe Rogan3:28

       Ah.

   20. DMDennis McKenna3:28

       So they, uh, got a lot of criticism. But the fact is, a lot of good science came out of this, and they're still going. And the interesting thing is they've had their fingers in many pies. You know, they have a gallery and a hotel in London called The Octo- October Gallery. I always stay there if I'm in London. They have a publishing company, The Synergetic Press, based in Santa Fe. That's who published this book-

   21. JRJoe Rogan3:56

       Ah.

   22. DMDennis McKenna3:56

       ... ultimately. So it's kind of like 30 years later, what goes around (laughs) comes around.

   23. JRJoe Rogan4:01

       And the book is Ethnopharmacologic Search for Psychoactive Drugs, and it's from, it's labeled from 1967 to 2017.

   24. DMDennis McKenna4:13

       Right. And the, and the story behind this is, um ... Just two. But just to complete the Heraclitus story-

   25. JRJoe Rogan4:20

       Okay.

   26. DMDennis McKenna4:20

       ... for a minute. So, the Heraclitus has been plying the ocean more or less continuously since 1973. And they are now renovating the ship because, you know, it needs it. It needs a new hull and all that. So they're trying to raise funds, obviously, for that. But it's just a very interesting story about people that are passionate about the ecology, about the Earth, and about science. Don't know a whole lot about any of it, but their passion drove them forward. And, and their passion, particularly the founder, a guy named John Allen, who's now ... I think he's in his 80s. He is in his 80s. But he was the visionary behind it. And without knowing a whole lot, they just went ahead and did it, you know? (laughs)

   27. JRJoe Rogan5:11

       Mm-hmm.

   28. DMDennis McKenna5:11

       So in that spirit, you have to hand it to them. And they have, they've done incredible things over that period of time. And so, it's a, it's a great story, and it's worth attention. And, uh, you know, it's up to you. I mean, it's ki- it's up to you if you wanna bring her on or somebody, but it's, it's, it's-

   29. JRJoe Rogan5:30

       It sounds fascinating.

   30. DMDennis McKenna5:31

       ... really romantic, you know, this is science in, in the true spirit of discovery, you know?
2. 15:00 – 30:00

   (laughs) …

   1. DMDennis McKenna15:00

      a chemist, and he had to determine if it was actually a psychedelic. So, in the grand tradition, he did that by self-injecting himself, you know? Uh, so he's a true pioneer, a- and I invited him to the conference. So, he's the first person to definitively show that DMT was a psychedelic. He's now 95. He's in great shape. I invited him to the conference, but he said, "Well, I'm 95. I don't go anywhere anymore."

   2. JRJoe Rogan15:31

      (laughs)

   3. DMDennis McKenna15:31

      But he submitted a very nice, uh, video introduction to it. And the other interesting thing that he did, after the '67 conference, he, he s- he was thinking, "Well, what's going on?" And, "What, what is it with the hippies and all the psychedelics?" And, and, uh, so his supervisor said, "Well, Steve, why don't you go over to Haight-Ashbury and hang out for a while?" So, he did, and he submitted a paper called The Scientist Among the Hippies.

   4. JRJoe Rogan15:59

      Aha.

   5. DMDennis McKenna16:00

      And they wouldn't let him publish. They said, "You, you can't publish this." So, it sat in his drawer for 50 years. When this book came along, he said, "I have something I'll submit here. I don't care if they, you know, it's- it doesn't matter anymore." So, one of the papers in this second volume is his original '67 paper.

   6. JRJoe Rogan16:22

      Oh, wow.

   7. DMDennis McKenna16:23

      And then, so the second volume is kind of, you know, because the government didn't step up to the plate like they said they would, um, there was no follow-up conferences. And, and I've, for a long time, I wanted to do a follow-up conference. I wanted to do it on the 30th anniversary in '97. It never happened. Time passes. So, 2017 was the 50th anniversary. It all fell together all of a sudden.

   8. JRJoe Rogan16:50

      Wow.

   9. DMDennis McKenna16:50

      You know, I found a venue in the UK, a beautiful country house that was, uh, called Tyringham Hall that was run by one of our friends who shares, you know, our perspective. He made that available. We put the word out. We got support to produce the conference. So, we brought about 16 people, um, you know, to Tyringham in England, spent three days presenting. And those videos are all up on the web. I'll send you the link. That's open access. And the other thing that we couldn't do in '67 that we did in, you know, 2017, there was no Facebook live streaming. Well, all our videos were Facebook live streamed.

   10. JRJoe Rogan17:36

       Ah.

   11. DMDennis McKenna17:36

       We had 60,000 people watching these lectures at some points, you know? I mean, so that's amazing.

   12. JRJoe Rogan17:44

       That's incredible.

   13. DMDennis McKenna17:44

       And that created excitement. And then we basically paid for the book by pre-selling, pre-selling it. And a lot of people stepped up and ordered. A lot of people were very patient because I was, you know, I was ... I thought, "Oh, this will be out by Christmas," right? Well, no, it's a big project, uh, so it took six months longer than I thought. Um, but now it's out there. And, uh, hopefully it'll be a, a landmark in the field like the first one was. And, and what we wanted to do to honor the first one was reprint the first one along with the second one.

   14. JRJoe Rogan18:24

       Ah.

   15. DMDennis McKenna18:24

       So, that's why it's two books. We did a high-resolution, uh, scan of the original book and reprinted that one, uh-... yeah.

   16. JRJoe Rogan18:34

       Doesn't it make you think, like imagine if Nixon wasn't president back then, what could have been done? Like what if they didn't have that sweeping 1970s psychedelic act where they made everything illegal? Like what if they continued with this stuff? Like who knows-

   17. DMDennis McKenna18:50

       Well-

   18. JRJoe Rogan18:50

       ... where we would be today?

   19. DMDennis McKenna18:51

       We, yeah, we could ask that question about a lot of things.

   20. JRJoe Rogan18:53

       Sure.

   21. DMDennis McKenna18:53

       What if that didn't happen? Like the, the psychedelic research that's happening now that's, uh, it's taken 40 years to get-

   22. JRJoe Rogan19:02

       Yeah.

   23. DMDennis McKenna19:02

       ... back to it. And basically, the psychedelic research is, is a lot of the same thing was going back, going on back in the even late '50s and '60s. What's going on now is they're repeating a lot of that.

   24. JRJoe Rogan19:17

       Mm.

   25. DMDennis McKenna19:17

       But with more rigorous experimental design, with, with better controls and all that. But it's the same stuff, you know, which is wonderful. I mean, I'm, I'm all for it, um, to see this work done. I, oh, I also have, you know, plenty to say about the limitations of that strictly clinical, uh, you know, um, sort of medical approach. I mean, I think, you know, organizations like MAPS and Heffter have to work within the constraints of what's possible. But I think in some ways, uh, they, uh, you know, they force themselves to, they're forced to put on blinders in a certain way to what else is possible.

   26. JRJoe Rogan20:02

       Mm.

   27. DMDennis McKenna20:02

       You know, for example, the way that, uh, ayahuasca has been sort of marginalized. And there is research going on about it, but there's nothing approved in the States. Uh, and I think it's important to pursue that work, but because you can't synthesize ayahuasca like you can psilocybin or MDMA or these things that are under clinical trials, it's much more difficult to study within the constraints of a phase one-

   28. JRJoe Rogan20:31

       Mm.

   29. DMDennis McKenna20:32

       ... you know, clinical trial. But in fact, ayahuasca is touching, I think, far more lives than say, well, I can't say about mushrooms because mushrooms are a lot out there. But, you know, the potential, the impact that it's having on society is much greater 'cause people are rediscovering this. And people are, I think, reaching out for... They're reaching out for anything that, that will work, you know?

   30. JRJoe Rogan21:02

       Mm.
3. 30:00 – 45:00

   Yeah. …

   1. JRJoe Rogan30:00

      going to open people's eyes-

   2. DMDennis McKenna30:01

      Yeah.

   3. JRJoe Rogan30:02

      ... and, and refresh the way people view this whole subject. I think when you, when you look at, when you're talking about ancient cultures and the use of psychedelics going back thousands and thousands of years, and then this dip somewhere around 1970, where it almost seems to have gotten down to a very low hum, but now the drums are beating again, and-

   4. DMDennis McKenna30:24

      Now it's coming back.

   5. JRJoe Rogan30:25

      Now it's coming back.

   6. DMDennis McKenna30:26

      Yeah.

   7. JRJoe Rogan30:26

      And I'm, I'm really fascinated and excited by that, 'cause I, I think this is, uh...

   8. DMDennis McKenna30:31

      Me too.

   9. JRJoe Rogan30:31

      I don't think it's the answer to everything, but I think it's the glue. I think it's, i- i- there's a, there's a thing about the psychedelic experience that forces you to recognize that you have these...... pre-established ideas of what things are, and that you've kind of put them in these boxes and you've sort of pushed it away and you're like, "Well, I've defined what a city is, and I'm just gonna put that over there. Now I know what that is. I'm not gonna think that, about that anymore."

   10. DMDennis McKenna30:58

       Right. Right.

   11. JRJoe Rogan30:59

       Um, do- "I've, I've defined what a road is. I've defined..." I mean, I, I remember after, uh, one of my first DMT experiences, just sitting around looking at roads differently.

   12. DMDennis McKenna31:09

       (laughs)

   13. JRJoe Rogan31:10

       Like, I was, I was on a road, I was like, "This is the craziest shit ever. We- we've decided that it's normal to lay this hard surface down on the ground so we could roll these fire-breathing beasts." (laughs)

   14. DMDennis McKenna31:20

       Pieces of metal. (laughs) Yeah.

   15. JRJoe Rogan31:23

       It's so strange.

   16. DMDennis McKenna31:23

       It's crazy. Isn't it? Yeah.

   17. JRJoe Rogan31:24

       But it was... Before that, it was just a road.

   18. DMDennis McKenna31:27

       Right, right.

   19. JRJoe Rogan31:27

       It was always a road. But after that, it became this weird symptom of what we're doing by erecting these massive structures and cities, and that, you know, we need this, this, this ground in order for, to, for us to use these vehicles on. And, but in the, in the process of doing that, we've sort of marred the landscape with it everywhere.

   20. DMDennis McKenna31:48

       Yeah. Well, psychedelics do give us the, the chance to rethink a lot of things.

   21. JRJoe Rogan31:53

       Yeah.

   22. DMDennis McKenna31:53

       You know, I think we've talked before about, um, uh, Simon Powell's work. He wrote about... He writes about psilocybin, wrote, um, The Psilocybin Solution, and that was-

   23. JRJoe Rogan32:04

       Mm-hmm.

   24. DMDennis McKenna32:04

       ... his first book, and I think his latest is The Magic Mushroom Explorer. But something in his work really struck me, which is, he pointed out that you have to look... That psychedelics, in some sense, are... They're scientific instruments. They give you an opportunity to look at phenomena in a way that you've never looked at them before, because they have this... Uh, because they take you out of your reference frame.

   25. JRJoe Rogan32:30

       Mm-hmm.

   26. DMDennis McKenna32:30

       You know, or they bring the background forward, or there's different ways to describe it. And Pollan actually describes it well when he talks about this disruption of the default mode network. It enables you to see patterns in nature that you're programmed not to see, you know. A lot of what our brain does, this whole reducing valve idea, is it filters many things out. It lets in just enough of the external world that you can relate it to prior experiences, what you think you know, and you construct this artificial model of reality, and that's the... That's what you inhabit. And I- I've said this many times, maybe worse than Pollan, maybe better, but I talk about how, you know, we're living in a hallucination, essentially, that's constructed by our brains, and in order to just deal with all the information that is available, i- it has to really restrict it. It has to put a choke on it so that what does get in can make sense. That's fine for ordinary consciousness, but you are prone to overlook things about reality that are important. And psychedelics temporarily give you an opportunity to lower those, lower those mechanisms, that default network, or sometimes called neural gating. If you're in a safe place where you don't have to worry about your, your safety, you know, there is no saber-toothed tiger gonna come get you, you know, and, and so you don't have to worry about your safety, then you can just relax into it and you can appreciate things that are always there. It's not that they're not there. These are not things you imagine. They're just things that you never notice because you're programmed not to. So, tremendous learning tools, and many, many scientists have, have said, you know, their insights have come from their psychedelic experience, from Steve Jobs to Crick to, uh, Kary Mullis. Uh, some of these folks admit it and others deny it, but it's true. You know? So, there are many, many things we can learn from psychedelics. That's only one of them, but from a scientist's perspective, that's an important one. You know, one of the things I want to do is create a system, a situation where you can bring specialists together in different disci- or in, in a discipline, say, mathematics or quantum physics or astronomy or, you know, even whatever art, and have these collective, uh, sessions together and then let people share their insight. Essentially creative solvent, problem-solving or creative sessions. And, uh, you know, uh, a- and that's, that's, that's the other thing I think we're looking for. You know, we need to develop a context in which these things is, can happen. Um, and that's one of the, you know, that's one of the restrictions of, of the strictly clinical approach that I chafe against. You know, uh, because they have to be, you know... You have to have a problem. It has to be to treat something, depression or PTSD or whatever. But we really need to use... You know, that's not the only thing psychedelics are good for. Sure, they can help people with mental problems. And in our society, who doesn't have mental problems?

   27. JRJoe Rogan36:03

       Right. (laughs)

   28. DMDennis McKenna36:03

       You know, as a society, we're wounded. But it goes beyond that. They are learning tools and teaching tools. And, uh, you know, you, you, you begin to see some of this in the, uh, in the work that Roland Griffiths is doing. You know, he's been able to get approval for people to take psilocybin for spiritual development, which is not exactly an illness for actual spiritual insight, so that's a start.

   29. JRJoe Rogan36:31

       And he's approved to do this?

   30. DMDennis McKenna36:33

       He's approved to do it.
4. 45:00 – 1:00:00

   And many other things,…

   1. JRJoe Rogan45:00

      very difficult to investigate-

   2. DMDennis McKenna45:02

      And many other things, many other things.

   3. JRJoe Rogan45:03

      ... like?

   4. DMDennis McKenna45:03

      Paranormal, you know, um, all of these things that people, you know, stigmatize as, as woo-woo and crazy. You know, and I am, we're not gonna... The idea is to bring rigor to these things, to say, "Yes, there are a lot of phenomena that we don't understand." It's not-

   5. JRJoe Rogan45:22

      What paranormal phenomena fascinates you?

   6. DMDennis McKenna45:25

      Well, you name it. I mean, UFOs is a good example. Um, you know, nobody really knows what's going on with UFOs. All we know is that the people have these experiences, and what are they? What are those experiences? Are they extraterrestrial encounters? We don't know. A lot of them don't really fit that mold. Are they hallucinations or altered states, or is there really something, you know, in the continuum that we, uh, you know, that only manifests under certain circumstances? And, and the idea is that, ye- you know, science, uh, especially in this era, tends to transform itself into dogma, and then it becomes dismissive of aspects of the world that are worthy of studying. But they don't fit into the scientific pattern, and so we dismiss them. I mean, a good example of this is Graham Hancock's work, for example, that he talks about, and many other people. Mainstream archeology is not open to this idea.

   7. JRJoe Rogan46:37

      They're becoming more open to it by force because of-

   8. DMDennis McKenna46:40

      They have to because more and more (laughs) evidence is showing-

   9. JRJoe Rogan46:43

      Yeah, yeah.

   10. DMDennis McKenna46:43

       ... but look, look at how long it's taken him to, uh, you know, knocking on the doors, beating these people over the head, practically, that, "Look at this evidence."

   11. JRJoe Rogan46:53

       It's very nice, though, to see him finally get-

   12. DMDennis McKenna46:55

       It, it is.

   13. JRJoe Rogan46:56

       ... really appreciated.

   14. DMDennis McKenna46:56

       Well, the battle is far from over, but he's-

   15. JRJoe Rogan46:59

       But he's, he's definitely gaining ground now with-

   16. DMDennis McKenna47:00

       He's definitely gaining ground.

   17. JRJoe Rogan47:01

       ... Gobekli Tepe and-

   18. DMDennis McKenna47:02

       Yeah. And can you imagine how that would change our view of, uh, humanity-

   19. JRJoe Rogan47:08

       Mm-hmm.

   20. DMDennis McKenna47:08

       ... our evolution, this whole thing? So, archeology is a good, a good example. Psychedelics are another good example. I- i- it's opening up. But for years, after the initial excitement about psychedelics in the '50s and '60s, the whole thing was suppressed for 40 years. Michael Pollan talks about this. What we're doing now is rediscovering... You were a psychiatrist in training in the '80s or the, uh, the '70s or the '80s, you wanted to talk about psychedelics, that was the end of your career.

   21. JRJoe Rogan47:41

       Mm-hmm.

   22. DMDennis McKenna47:42

       You could not even bring this up, you know? And, and (laughs) who knows? So it's one of these situations where-

   23. JRJoe Rogan47:51

       It's kind of stunning-

   24. DMDennis McKenna47:52

       ... it is stunning.

   25. JRJoe Rogan47:52

       ... when you think about the fact that, in the '60s, it probably was possible. It was... Before it was made completely illegal-

   26. DMDennis McKenna47:58

       It was going on.

   27. JRJoe Rogan47:59

       ... it was something to discuss, and the-

   28. DMDennis McKenna48:00

       Yeah, it was going on.

   29. JRJoe Rogan48:00

       ... and this conference-

   30. DMDennis McKenna48:02

       Yeah.
5. 1:00:00 – 1:15:00

   (laughs) …

   1. DMDennis McKenna1:00:00

      So effectively, the alien invasion was a complete success.

   2. JRJoe Rogan1:00:04

      (laughs)

   3. DMDennis McKenna1:00:04

      And not a shot was fired.

   4. JRJoe Rogan1:00:06

      (laughs)

   5. DMDennis McKenna1:00:06

      You know? And now here we are, and no one's even (laughs) realized that it's an alien invasion. (laughs)

   6. JRJoe Rogan1:00:11

      Do you subscribe to the idea that mushrooms came here perhaps on asteroids, that it was a, a panspermia sort of a situation?

   7. DMDennis McKenna1:00:18

      No, I don't.

   8. JRJoe Rogan1:00:19

      No?

   9. DMDennis McKenna1:00:19

      I don't subscribe to that idea.

   10. JRJoe Rogan1:00:21

       Whose idea was that?

   11. DMDennis McKenna1:00:23

       Well, Terrence's idea.

   12. JRJoe Rogan1:00:24

       Mm-hmm.

   13. DMDennis McKenna1:00:25

       You know? Um, and the idea of panspermia, I don't necessarily disagree with that.

   14. JRJoe Rogan1:00:30

       Right.

   15. DMDennis McKenna1:00:30

       I think that may well have happened, um, you know, that, that life came from, on an asteroid or-

   16. JRJoe Rogan1:00:38

       At least the building blocks.

   17. DMDennis McKenna1:00:40

       The building blocks of it. But mushrooms as such, we know too much about the phylogeny of mushrooms. We know where they fit into the phylogeny of life on Earth, and you can't really make the case that they were extraterrestrial because there were mushrooms ... You know, they're mushrooms, and they're-... part of, you know, they have a position in the well-defined phylogeny of fungi, which are some of the most ancient organisms. I mean, some of the most earliest macro, uh, terrestrial organisms that were of a macro scale were fungi. I mean, there were big fungi on, on, in terrestrial environments before there was much of anything else.

   18. JRJoe Rogan1:01:25

       Have you-

   19. DMDennis McKenna1:01:25

       But they weren't psilocybin mushrooms, presumably. (laughs)

   20. JRJoe Rogan1:01:28

       Have you paid attention to this most late, recent theory that perhaps, uh, the ancestors of octopus might have, somehow or another, gotten here from an asteroid.

   21. DMDennis McKenna1:01:38

       (laughs)

   22. JRJoe Rogan1:01:38

       That they're, they're, something about their unique ability to alter their RNA, which is-

   23. DMDennis McKenna1:01:43

       Mm-hmm.

   24. JRJoe Rogan1:01:43

       ... unique in the animal kingdom.

   25. DMDennis McKenna1:01:45

       Mm-hmm. I have heard about that. Um, and I haven't-

   26. JRJoe Rogan1:01:49

       From legit sources, apparently, right?

   27. DMDennis McKenna1:01:50

       Yeah, yeah.

   28. JRJoe Rogan1:01:50

       It's not many people.

   29. DMDennis McKenna1:01:51

       Yeah, legit f- sources. Honestly, I haven't read far enough into that to dec- decide. Um, but anything looked like-

   30. JRJoe Rogan1:01:59

       But if anything, it's interesting.
6. 1:15:00 – 1:30:00

   Hmm. …

   1. DMDennis McKenna1:15:00

      Yeah. I mean, they may have been take... But, they may have been taking it, but whether they were getting telepathy, I kind of doubt it.

   2. JRJoe Rogan1:15:07

      Hmm.

   3. DMDennis McKenna1:15:07

      But we know we could get telepathy on ayahuasca. It's not so uncommon. It happens all the time. People have group hallucinations, group visions.

   4. JRJoe Rogan1:15:17

      Has anybody ever bothered to independently, like, sequester people, put them into, like, uh, different rooms, have them do ayahuasca, and then have them describe a very similar experience or almost identical experience to prove that these telepathic experiences exist? Or at least to...

   5. DMDennis McKenna1:15:36

      As far as I know, that hasn't been done.

   6. JRJoe Rogan1:15:39

      See, yeah, because everybody wants to talk afterwards.

   7. DMDennis McKenna1:15:41

      Right. (laughs)

   8. JRJoe Rogan1:15:41

      Like, "Oh my god, did you see the dragon?" (laughs)

   9. DMDennis McKenna1:15:43

      Right. (laughs) I don't think that's been done.

   10. JRJoe Rogan1:15:46

       That seems like a, a worthy study.

   11. DMDennis McKenna1:15:49

       Mm-hmm.

   12. JRJoe Rogan1:15:49

       Because if, if... I've heard from more than one person, uh, in fact, my friend Kyle Kingsbury and his wife had an ayahuasca experience where they both, uh, had a visualization of their child, and then when they got back, she was pregnant and they wound up having this child from their visualization.

   13. DMDennis McKenna1:16:08

       Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

   14. JRJoe Rogan1:16:09

       From, from, from this experience. Um, obviously they're very close and they were together and they probably communicated quite a bit and, you know, I would, I would just think it would be a really interesting experiment.

   15. DMDennis McKenna1:16:20

       It would be very interesting. I mean, and that sort of points out, there is, you know, a realm of experience, a realm of knowing that these things give access to that's normally closed to us. I mean, (laughs) I mean, that's kind of a trivial statement, of course.

   16. JRJoe Rogan1:16:37

       Yeah.

   17. DMDennis McKenna1:16:37

       Um, but then you get down to questions of how verifiable is that, how real is that, how, uh, you know, and, and people get, um, I don't know if the term is "hung up," but they can get baffled when you start talking about, uh, you know, the reality of, say, the entities you encounter on DMT. I mean, this is, this is... Uh, some people I know are obsessed with trying to verify the reality of the entities-

   18. JRJoe Rogan1:17:08

       Yeah.

   19. DMDennis McKenna1:17:08

       ... that you find on DMT. And again, it comes down to if you experience them, they're real.

   20. JRJoe Rogan1:17:15

       Yeah.

   21. DMDennis McKenna1:17:16

       If... Anything you experience is real because you've experienced it. Does it have a corresponding existence in the external world? Well, you know, what's external? What's internal? Y- you know, we, we, we throw around these terms, these, these epistemological, metaphysical terms quite carelessly.

   22. JRJoe Rogan1:17:38

       Mm-hmm.

   23. DMDennis McKenna1:17:38

       You know, without really thinking about it. What does it mean when you say, "I'm in here and you're out there," you know? And then you take a psychedelic and you realize, "That's an artificial boundary." You know? We're all one. There is no separation.

   24. JRJoe Rogan1:17:53

       It's separate in normal consciousness, though.

   25. DMDennis McKenna1:17:55

       It's separated in normal consciousness, but then what is normal consciousness-

   26. JRJoe Rogan1:17:59

       Right.

   27. DMDennis McKenna1:17:59

       ... if not a reflection of your neurochemical brain state? I mean, everything you experience is an altered state because it's filtered into this brain, processed by the brain, and, you know, the brain is a biochemical engine that, you know... As I say often, we're made out of drugs.

   28. JRJoe Rogan1:18:19

       But it seems that our normal consciousness is the best state to propagate biological life and to keep ours, our, whatever we've created in terms of our community structures and-

   29. DMDennis McKenna1:18:32

       Right.

   30. JRJoe Rogan1:18:32

       ... relationships and friendships and the ability to build structures and houses and things like that. These, all these things are done best when you're here and present.
7. 1:30:00 – 1:32:34

   Yeah. No, I agree.…

   1. JRJoe Rogan1:30:00

      alien abduction.

   2. DMDennis McKenna1:30:01

      Yeah. No, I agree. It's, it's, um... I mean, it's hard to parse it out.

   3. JRJoe Rogan1:30:07

      Yeah.

   4. DMDennis McKenna1:30:07

      And I, and I'm not saying I accept it all, but I, uh-

   5. JRJoe Rogan1:30:11

      It's easy to dismiss-

   6. DMDennis McKenna1:30:12

      How we-

   7. JRJoe Rogan1:30:12

      ... but maybe you shouldn't, right?

   8. DMDennis McKenna1:30:14

      Well, there maybe is something there. We should approach it in the spirit of, here's a phenomenon.

   9. JRJoe Rogan1:30:21

      Right.

   10. DMDennis McKenna1:30:22

       We don't understand it. We shouldn't dismiss it. There's something to be understood here. Not necessarily his understanding of it, but something to be looked at there. And I thought this book was interesting for its balance, you know? I would not have Whitley Strieber on your show without Jeffrey Kripal (laughs) on your show.

   11. JRJoe Rogan1:30:41

       (laughs) That would be fun.

   12. DMDennis McKenna1:30:41

       That is the thing, because he... It would be fun. And maybe it's, you know, maybe it's a bridge too far. I'm, I'm not sure.

   13. JRJoe Rogan1:30:49

       Maybe not.

   14. DMDennis McKenna1:30:50

       Yeah, maybe not.

   15. JRJoe Rogan1:30:51

       Maybe we get to the bottom of this thing. (laughs)

   16. DMDennis McKenna1:30:53

       Yeah. Well, is there something to be got to the bottom of it?

   17. JRJoe Rogan1:30:56

       Right. Right.

   18. DMDennis McKenna1:30:56

       That's, that's the question.

   19. JRJoe Rogan1:30:57

       Is there a bottom at all?

   20. DMDennis McKenna1:30:58

       Is it just one man's delusion?

   21. JRJoe Rogan1:31:00

       Mm-hmm.

   22. DMDennis McKenna1:31:01

       Or is there really something at the base of it? And, and this is the... This is kind of the point that we were talking about a while back in this conversation about natural philosophy. Natural philosophy...... uh, you know, it has a wider scope for understanding. And you could say, well, me- meaning natural philosophy will accept every cockamamie woo-woo idea that ever (laughs) came along.

   23. JRJoe Rogan1:31:29

       Mm.

   24. DMDennis McKenna1:31:29

       Not properly. I mean, it sh- natural philosophy properly approached should be a way to evaluate these things rigorously, not abandon rigorous thought. But not be so dismissive of it as to say, "It doesn't fit into our paradigm. It doesn't fit into what we think we know, so we're not gonna talk about it."

   25. JRJoe Rogan1:31:51

       Right.

   26. DMDennis McKenna1:31:52

       That's dishonest. That's intellectual dishonesty, and, uh, we have too much of that, you know. Um, science is a very timid, um, kind of activity sometimes, uh, because in its current, in its current incarnation, it so depend- it's, it's corrupted in a certain way. You can't just be the curious monkey who's trying to apply, you know, clear thinking, rigorous thought to understanding nature. We don't have that luxury. Scientists don't have that luxury if they're practicing scientists. You have to be getting grants. You have to play the science game and, you know-

Episode duration: 2:42:17