In this episode, we're joined by the director of the documentary "Krishna Consciousness" about the cult movement known as the "Hare Krishna Movement" and the guru, Prabhupada, who is credited with bringing the movement to the masses in the late 60s and early 70s. We talk about his life, his teachings, and the impact he had on the culture of the time. We also talk about how the movement influenced the music of the day, including the Beatles and their relationship with Krishna Consciousness. And, of course, there's a song about Krishna consciousness by the Beatles. We're in no way affiliated with the Bhagwan Shree Krishna Movement, the cult, but it's a fascinating story and I think you'll agree that it's one that deserves to be told. If you haven't seen the documentary, you should definitely check it out, because it's worth a listen! Also, if you're a devotee of the movement, you'll know that the guru's teachings and teachings can have a lot to do with the Beatles, and that's a good thing. I mean a lot more than just a hit record, so if you don't miss it, you're not going to want to miss it. We'll see you next week on HBO's "The Devil Next Door" on October 18th, where we'll be talking about that! Thank you for listening to this episode of Behind The Mindset. . Logo by Courtney DeKorte. Music by Nordgroove.co.nz Artwork by Jeff Kaalec and our theme song by Ian Dorsch by Kirtan Anandrews Thanks for listening and supporting this episode? Please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts! Subscribe to our new album, and tell us what you think of this episode! if you like it, rating, rating and reviewing it on Apple Music, review us on iTunes, and share it on your podcast! we'll review it on the podcast and tag us on Insta! and we'll get a shoutout on the next episode of that you're listening to it in next week's episode of That's Alyssa_ or you'll be notified when it's out there on the pod? and the next one is coming out on next week s episode is out on Tuesday! Thanks again!
00:00:30.000Do you remember the Hare Krishna devotees in the airports?
00:00:33.000Because you're like me, like, you're old enough of that generation that you might remember the white robe, like, they'd have the flowers and they'd be selling books and shit in the airports.
00:00:41.000I don't know if I remember them in the airports.
00:01:21.000But it is, well, let's just get into from the beginning.
00:01:25.000How did you get involved in this particular subject?
00:01:27.000So there's a production company, Marwar Junction, and they had actually sold this show to Peacock and they were looking for a director.
00:01:34.000So this is the first show that I've made or helped to make that I haven't been involved in the sort of conception of the story from the jump.
00:01:43.000So they had developed the story and sold it to Peacock and they were shopping for a director and they liked my work and so they hired me to make it.
00:01:49.000And so did you have any experience with the Krishnas before this?
00:03:09.000Relinquishing your possessions and the hold that they have on you and just living this very peaceful loving life and Not just forgiving your enemies but letting them into your home and it's all that sounds great But all it takes is one psycho Yeah,
00:03:29.000So several gurus, Krishna consciousness gurus, had come over from India to the UK or to the US, you know, in the 1800s even, and then through the first half of the 20th century and had no luck because their timing wasn't right or they weren't the right person or both.
00:03:44.000But Prabhupada was the right dude at the right time.
00:03:46.000He showed up in Greenwich Village, New York City in 1965 and started preaching Krishna consciousness.
00:03:52.000And it just like, you know, took off like wildfire.
00:03:56.000And, you know, like Allen Ginsberg got down with it.
00:03:59.000Wasn't maybe a full-scale devotee, but like he was hanging out with him.
00:04:03.000But Prabhupada was already an old dude when he showed up in the U.S. And so in 1977, he died.
00:04:11.000And by that time, Krishna consciousness, there were like Krishna temples all over the country and in the U.K. because George Harrison had converted.
00:04:18.000That was one of his strokes of brilliance, Prabhupada.
00:04:21.000He sent a group of devotees to go camp outside the Apple Records office.
00:04:27.000And just, like, chant and dance until they basically got a meeting with the Beatles.
00:04:33.000And he was literally like, let's see if we can make the Beatles, you know, Krishna's.
00:04:37.000And with Harrison, it took, you know, and that song, My Sweet Lord, I mean, that's what it's about.
00:04:44.000So, but when Prabhupada died in 1977, you know, he hadn't had a lot of time to build up successors.
00:04:50.000And most of the leaders of the movement were young, or most of the members of the movement were young.
00:04:55.000So he took a risk, and I don't think he had a choice, and he appointed 11 of his closest, longest time devotees, all men, to be the gurus that would carry the movement forward.
00:05:08.000And while you could say that it worked, and that Krishna consciousness is still around and is bigger than ever, A few of those...
00:05:51.000There's a place out here, you know, I built a comedy club, and before I got the spot that I have now on 6th Street, I bought a place called the One World Theater.
00:06:02.000And the One World Theater was owned by a cult.
00:06:07.000And it's a beautiful theater and I had heard about it from my friend Ron White because I was telling him, you know, I think we should open up a comedy club.
00:06:14.000And he said, you should buy that theater.
00:06:26.000Yeah, so they start off, it seems wonderful in the beginning.
00:06:30.000Everyone's doing yoga, they're hanging out together, cooking meals together, and dancing, and like, it seems like all cults It goes sideways.
00:06:40.000In the beginning, it looks like a wonderful idea.
00:07:22.000And he changed his name to like, I forget, there's two different names.
00:07:26.000One was Michelle, and I forget what the other one was.
00:07:28.000So he changed his name again, moves to Austin, and starts this cult and has his followers build him this theater so he can dance in front of them.
00:07:39.000But it was all fucked up, and we wound up getting out of the deal, because there was a lot of problems and a lot of issues that had to be resolved with the property.
00:07:48.000And they didn't disclose that, so I got out of it and then got this place on 6th Street.
00:07:54.000You know in the process I really started investigating the cult and I didn't investigate it unfortunately before I signed contracts and I had gotten a call from my friend Adam like, hey man, did you watch the documentary on the cult?
00:08:06.000I was like, oh no Whatever is a documentary on a cult.
00:08:10.000It's generally a cult that went bad, right?
00:08:13.000And this one went bad and but it was the same sort of deal they all got names they were all given you know spiritual names and And they were told that you're reborn.
00:09:04.000Well, like, well, they finally like his followers turned on him.
00:09:09.000You know, and ISKCON, which is the International Society for Krishna Consciousness, which is sort of the formal name for the Hare Krishnas, what we call the Hare Krishnas, they actually, like, you know, kicked the new Vindavan out of the movement for a few years, half a decade or so,
00:09:24.000and then, like, kind of gradually brought that compound, that commune, it's not compound, that commune back in.
00:09:30.000But they have this fucking temple there, the palace of gold, like Prabhupada's palace of gold that they were originally building for Prabhupada to live in.
00:09:39.000But then he died before it was completed.
00:09:41.000But it's like this Taj Mahal-esque structure that's in the middle of nowhere in the hills of West Virginia.
00:09:53.000It's like a couple hours from Pittsburgh, basically, and up in the mountains.
00:10:19.000I like there's a big box of cash there.
00:10:24.000And so, but this place, I mean, even now, it's like, it's, well, for sure, in the 60s, for sure, in the 70s, it was cut off from the rest of the world.
00:10:34.000I mean, these young kids would join the Hare Krishna movement, and basically, a lot of the fuck-ups in the movement would get sent to Kirtan Ananda at New Vrindavan because he'd put them to work building the temple, right?
00:10:45.000So if you, like, joined and you were, like, you know, not fitting in for some reason...
00:10:51.000A lot of times they'd buy you a one-way bus ticket to like Morgantown or Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and you'd wind up up there, you know, in the hills under Kirtananda's tutelage, right?
00:11:02.000And it went sideways in a hurry, especially after Prabhupada died.
00:11:06.000He was already running New Vrindavan, like Prabhupada had visited it and approved of it.
00:11:11.000And actually Kirtananda had gotten booted out of the Krishna movement because he kind of tried to take it over.
00:11:18.000And at a certain point, like Prabhupada, you know, kicked him out.
00:11:21.000And Keith Hamm, Kirtananda, like mind fucked this local sort of like philosopher dude that owned the land into signing it over, promising to be like a non-denominational spiritual movement.
00:11:37.000And as the guy put it, we interviewed his daughter, and he said, you know, as soon as the lease was signed, they put on bedsheets and started chanting, right?
00:11:45.000And so, now you've got the Hare Krishnas as your neighbors.
00:13:02.000Yeah, and of course, we're like knocking around with bags full of lenses and camera gear and audio gear and stuff, and so we're a target-rich posse for these monkeys.
00:13:11.000But they'll get your sunglasses, your phone, whatever, if you're not careful, and then they like, Sort of skitter up a drain pipe or a tree, and you gotta buy these frozen mango packs from the street vendors and throw them up to the monkeys, and the monkeys will drop your shit back down to you.
00:13:24.000I'm convinced that the street vendors are in on it, right?
00:13:41.000The legend is that hundreds of years ago, this guy that was like, he brought a circus to Vrindavan and the monkeys came with him and they were trained to be pickpockets.
00:13:50.000And then they just kind of stayed behind.
00:13:51.000But I don't know if that's true or not.
00:14:06.000They probably scavenge, but also, like, they do get a lot of, like, you know, mango treats from Stanley's ship.
00:14:11.000Because Balaram Mandir, which is like the head Hare Krishna temple, is in Vrindavan, India.
00:14:18.000And so devotees from all over the world go there, like, as spiritual tourists, basically.
00:14:23.000And so, you know, monkeys steal shit from them or any other, you know, there's a lot of Krishna devotees from all over India, too, that aren't necessarily quote-unquote Hari Krishnas, but like follow the Hindu deity Krishna.
00:14:35.000So they come to, it's like a, you know, there's a lot of spiritual pilgrims to this city, all right?
00:14:40.000There's a lot of spiritual tourism there.
00:14:42.000And so the monkeys have a lot of targets.
00:14:44.000And so when they steal your stuff, you have to throw it to them?
00:14:49.000You gotta buy something and then throw it up to them.
00:15:13.000So eventually you throw them enough treats, and they're these kids, too, that if they see that a monkey has stolen something, they'll come over and they'll be like, basically it's like, for a few rupees, I'll handle this deal for you.
00:15:26.000And then they climb up the tree or the drain pipe, and they do a direct hand-to-hand exchange.
00:15:31.000So we learn the hard way, that's the thing to do.
00:15:34.000If the monkey steals the whatever, hire the kid, He goes and brokers the deal with the mango juice guy and makes it all happen for you.
00:15:43.000So do other monkeys realize this is happening and try to steal the mangoes before you give it to them?
00:16:10.000These two brothers whose father, his name was Chaka Dari, his Christian name.
00:16:18.000His government name was Charles St. Denis.
00:16:20.000His name was known as Chaka in the movement.
00:16:23.000And his sons were doing this really ancient ritual to sort of release the soul of someone who's been murdered.
00:16:31.000And so they had their father's ashes, which he was murdered, you know, decades ago at New Vrindavan on orders from Kirtananda because he was challenging Kirtananda's authority.
00:16:41.000So, Kirtan Ananda had people murdered, too?
00:16:52.000Yeah, one of the principal sources for the documentary is a guy who's a retired homicide cop named Thomas Westfall, who was a local, just a local cop.
00:17:03.000In West Virginia when the Krishnas set up shop at the Nuvrandavan commune.
00:17:09.000And so he started keeping a close eye on them early and sort of saw Kirtananda's rise to power.
00:17:16.000And, you know, he believes that there's at least a handful more victims up there whose bodies haven't been found.
00:17:56.000You know, I think he had a psychological disposition towards being a despot, if you will.
00:18:02.000And then once Prabhupada was gone, and Kirtananda, along with ten of his compatriots, was appointed a guru, you know, and had that sort of power.
00:18:23.000Kirtananda was a genius at running schemes and scams to make money.
00:18:27.000He would dispatch like the hottest young female Krishna devotees to like stock car races and rock concerts and stuff to like raise money for whatever they just make it up the starving children of India or they just make up charities and they'd flirt with dudes you know especially at rock concerts guys that are like high We're good to
00:19:28.000He looks like a guy who's a little unhinged and I've met people like that unhinged and I've met people like that in like the psychedelics movement and There's a few of these movements that are so open And basically anybody can become a part of it.
00:19:44.000You know, the concept behind it is, you know, we're all seeking enlightenment.
00:19:48.000But then you'll see someone who gets in there and you're like, what is, this guy's schizophrenic or something.
00:20:42.000Although I think they, especially at New Vrindavan, at the place that Kirtananda ran, They kind of took that belief, you know, that yes, children are a material attachment, right?
00:20:55.000But he took it to an extreme and just basically just cut off, you know, kids from their parents, like, entirely.
00:21:01.000And that was not unique to Nuvendava, and that happened...
00:21:05.000In a lot of temples around the country in the U.S. And the pedophilia happened in these temples as well?
00:21:11.000But I will say, again, to ISKCON's credit, that unlike the Catholic Church, once the evidence started to emerge that there had been, I think it's fair to say, systemic raping of kids at their religious facilities, they addressed the issue head-on.
00:21:29.000And for the most part, I think, have done an excellent job of You know, weeding out the pedos.
00:21:59.000But the kids that grew up in Nuvaindavan, they have online communities where there's a lot of...
00:22:04.000For obvious reasons, like resentment and bitterness and anger, still at the leadership of the Hare Krishna movement for not, in their opinion, fully atoning for the sins that occurred there.
00:22:33.000And you're doing it in the most evil way, because you're supposed to be a part of this peace and love movement that's like the optimal way to live life.
00:22:44.000Well, and that's why this guy, Charles St. Dennis, Chaka, was murdered, is he was calling out Kirtananda for his hypocrisy.
00:22:52.000Now, I don't know if he called him out for the, you know, raping kids, but like...
00:22:57.000Kirtananda was having gay sexual relationships with some laborers that had been hired to come help build the temple that weren't necessarily devotees.
00:23:07.000And it was like an open secret in the commune.
00:23:11.000And he called him out for it and also called him out for the materialism, for driving around in a limousine, for having...
00:23:16.000They would buy him a new fancy SUV every year or whatever.
00:23:21.000And Charles St. Denis called him on his bullshit publicly.
00:24:04.000And once you start questioning things, you find, like, you're not allowed to, and it's...
00:24:11.000It's just very bizarre how many of these.
00:24:13.000Like, I was having a conversation with Marc Andreessen, you know, the venture capitalist guy, and he was like, California still has a lot of active cults right now.
00:25:19.000You know, talking about the pedophilia stuff, I'm going to take this on a detour because there's something I wanted to say last time I was on your show, which is that I am convinced that you saved at least one kid's life with something that you said the last time I was on, which is that we were talking about my own experiences as a survivor of childhood sexual assault.
00:25:39.000And you told a story about how when you were a kid, you were in a library, and this, like, sick-fuck pedophile guy, like, was trying to get you out of the library.
00:25:54.000The reason that I think you saved at least one kid's life is this, because, and again, speaking from firsthand experience, as a male survivor, especially of childhood sexual assault, you think, like, how could I have let that happen to me?
00:26:11.000You know, even though intellectually you look at a seven, eight, nine-year-old boy, you're like, you got no chance against a grown man, right?
00:26:19.000But for, you know, Joe Rogan to say, like, a librarian saved me from this happening to me, right?
00:26:41.000And for a guy that's suffering that and thinking, it just helps when somebody in a position like yourself says, hey, it could have happened to me.
00:27:34.000I mean, I try and do what I can to dispel the stereotype because, you know, that was one of the things that, you know, scared the shit out of me when I was a teenager is the idea that I was going to become a pedophile myself.
00:28:13.000I mean, when you talk about, like, one of my daughters is very much against the death penalty, and I think for a good reason.
00:28:21.000And because we've had conversations about people that are unjustly accused, and she knows that I've had many people on my podcast that spent a long time in jail.
00:28:29.000For crimes that they didn't commit and some of them were on death row and they could have been executed.
00:28:36.000And when we were talking about it, we said in a perfect scenario when you absolutely know that the law has got the right person and that this person has done something and then they have killed people, whether it's a serial killer or whatever it is, yeah,
00:29:18.000It's just so strange that it's not a very, very rare, uncommon thing that exists in a handful of places in the world occasionally.
00:29:31.000But then when you hear about something like the Catholic Church, You know, there was Pope Benedict when he got kicked out.
00:29:40.000There was a lot of people that didn't understand what was going on.
00:29:45.000And I was looking into it and you find out what that guy did.
00:29:51.000And one of the things that he did that's so evil is he would move people.
00:29:55.000So he would take a priest that was molesting kids and just move them to another unsuspecting place.
00:30:03.000And he went on to molest—one of these guys that they caught went on to molest 100 deaf kids, at least 100, that they're aware of.
00:30:12.000And he knew that this guy was a pedophile.
00:30:18.000The Catholic Church in particular is just like— I went to Catholic school, and nothing happened to me, but things did happen to people that I know that did go to Catholic school.
00:30:29.000It's just like, is there another religion that is more connected?
00:30:32.000Like, when you hear the term Catholic priest, pedophile is right.
00:30:38.000Like, if you were playing a game, like Catholic priest, pedophile!
00:30:41.000You know, like, you would say that, you know?
00:31:22.000Well, first of all, he finally went to prison for murder.
00:31:27.000You know, murder for hire, basically, along with racketeering and, like, he was selling, like, counterfeit, you know, football hats and shit.
00:32:08.000Like there was this tomb and there were flowers and incense and photos of him and stuff.
00:32:13.000And it was basically after he got out of prison eventually as an old man.
00:32:18.000And he went to India and Pakistan and drew a following of Pakistani boys, basically, that are now men in their 20s and 30s.
00:32:29.000And they occupy this sort of compound around his tomb.
00:32:33.000And the one that we sort of bullshared away past was starting to get, like, a little suspicious of what we were doing and of our story, which is like that we were just tourists, basically, that had sort of wandered by this place and were interested by it.
00:32:47.000And all these dudes just started coming out of these, they looked like vacant buildings, but they clearly weren't.
00:32:54.000You know, all these, like, follows are Kirtananda, and the translator's like, it's time to go now, time to go now, time to go now.
00:33:00.000And so, you know, we boogied out of there.
00:33:35.000The cult thing is so bizarre because it's so common.
00:33:39.000And it just seems like there's so many people that want to be led by someone who has the answers.
00:33:46.000Because most people are like you and I, they're like, try to do our best, live our life, fuck up, make mistakes, try to figure out what makes you happy.
00:34:08.000Yeah, I will say, you know, I've spent a lot of time with Hare Krishna or with Krishna consciousness devotees, you know, in making that show.
00:34:16.000And generally speaking, they are positive, peaceful souls.
00:34:21.000They seem at peace with their place in the world.
00:34:24.000In a way that, you know, I frankly found sort of compelling and attractive.
00:35:00.000I mean, look at televangelists, right?
00:35:03.000I mean, there's real Christians out there that are really great, wonderful people that want to live by the teachings of Christ and live a better, more just and holy life.
00:35:14.000And they really do want to live like that.
00:35:16.000And then there's psychos who want private jets and a giant arena to have all their followers and they want mansions.
00:35:40.000There was a school bus that would not—he wasn't driving kids around, but they bought a school bus to kind of take people from one part of the, you know, commune to another or whatever.
00:35:48.000But really why he was there—and he was one of the dudes that, like, joined the—he was in Vietnam, Vietnam combat vet.
00:35:55.000I think I saw hardcore combat in Vietnam, came back bent in the head, was trying to find the answers, trying to find help probably for PTSD, found the Hare Krishnas, joined, but the first temple or two that he was at, they were like, something a little off about this guy,
00:36:12.000Kirtananda met this dude and was like, oh, I got a purpose for you, brother.
00:36:16.000You know, you're now enforcer number one.
00:36:18.000And so if you fucked up, if, like, you weren't supposed to have a television, or if you broke the rules or you defied Kirtananda in any way, if you got some money from your family and you didn't kick it to him, Tirta came and paid you a visit, okay?
00:36:45.000He diverted a little creek by damming it up and then buried the body and then took away the dam.
00:36:52.000So the homicide cop, Thomas Westfall, he was like, I was looking for that body everywhere and never thought to look under the little river, you know?
00:37:00.000Did they bring cadaver dogs to try to search for it?
00:37:04.000Eventually, like, what happened was, and the reason that Kirtananda, why they finally got him, is that Tirta flipped on him.
00:37:11.000Now, they arrested Tirta, Thomas Drescher, for murder because there was another devotee that got killed in Los Angeles that was also sort of outing Kirtananda and his, you know, corruption and whatnot.
00:37:25.000And so they got Dresher, and once he was in prison, like, Kirtananda held the ceremony and, like, appointed him to this, like, high status within Krishna consciousness.
00:37:34.000And, of course, that was, like, a way to try and keep him quiet, right?
00:37:39.000But then there was this incident known as the Winnebago incident where Kirtananda was riding in Winnebago with this, like, I think it was a little boy from, like, Pakistan or India.
00:37:49.000And the, like, curtains jostled open, and he was seen in full view by multiple witnesses, like, sodomizing this kid.
00:37:57.000And, like, too many people saw it to cover it up, right?
00:38:01.000And word got to Thomas Drescher in prison that this had happened.
00:38:06.000And he heard from enough people who he trusted and believed that this was true, that he immediately flipped on Kirtananda and said, like, yep, he paid me and ordered me to kill these guys, and here's where you can find the bodies.
00:38:23.000You know, he didn't want to believe it.
00:38:25.000So it was only when he was, you know, he didn't firsthand witness it himself, but it was only when he was faced with, like, multiple people who he trusted who were telling him, we saw this, it's true, you know?
00:38:38.000And then to his credit, I think he immediately flipped.
00:38:42.000You know, we tried to do an interview with him, but we couldn't get into the prison to get him to go on camera.
00:38:48.000So we do, in the show, we do have audio interview excerpts with Drescher.
00:38:58.000One of the saddest things about Holy Hell is they talked to some of the devotees that had left and now they're lost because they had essentially, they had left 20 years of their life with this guy and now here they were 50 and like this one lady was like a dog walker now.
00:39:18.000She had just kind of lost, no real purpose in life, didn't, you know, her whole thing was bullshit.
00:39:27.000And some of the kids that grew up at Nuvrindavan under Kirtananda when it was legitimately a cult by any definition, you know, some of them are still followers of Krishna consciousness.
00:39:38.000Some of them, you know, have left it way behind, right?
00:39:51.000I mean, my friend who's really into the Hare Krishnas, he's a very peaceful guy, and the way he looks at it is like, you know, this is a way to live.
00:40:02.000This is a possible way to live for some people that, if done correctly and done with the right spirit and the right mindset, like, really can be a beautiful, blissful way of existing.
00:42:23.000Yeah, I felt a lot better about death, too, after I did it.
00:42:27.000Well, my experience was that I got a short glimpse at sort of a user manual for the cosmos, and in there was the knowledge that Reincarnation is real.
00:43:03.000It feels true to me in a way that the Evangelist or fundamentalist Christian idea of like you can just do a bunch of bad shit and then, you know, promise yourself to Jesus and have a clean slate.
00:43:25.000I mean, it's fascinating that that concept has existed for so long.
00:43:29.000And even the concept of heaven that existed for so long.
00:43:33.000And angels and souls and all those things.
00:43:38.000I think we have a very limited ability to grasp reality.
00:43:43.000And I think that limited ability is biological.
00:43:47.000It's kind of based upon our primate origins and what we are as a thing, as a biological entity.
00:43:54.000We have essentially the tools that we need in order to survive.
00:43:59.000And those tools are the ability to recognize danger and communicate and establish community and purpose and all these different things.
00:44:10.000But when you have like real breakthrough psychedelic experiences, to me it seems like it's allowing you A vision into all that exists.
00:44:24.000Not just what you're physically capable of seeing as a human being, but this chemical gateway or whatever it is that psychedelics give you allows you to see that these things...
00:44:39.000What I got out of it is that everything is connected.
00:44:41.000Every action, every thought, your thoughts, your life, your words, your deeds, the way you approach things, the way you respond to things, that they're all connected in some very strange way.
00:44:57.000And the living my life The more I follow that as thinking that everything is all connected the more my life has been more beautiful right the more my life has been more rewarding and rich and More more pleasing more filled with love and community and it's something that I kind of need to like remind myself all the time because I think the biological entity It
00:45:27.000has certain, like, human reward systems that are built into it.
00:45:32.000To try to acquire resources, to try to, you know, to try to establish dominance, to try to succeed.
00:45:41.000There's all these different things that, as a human, you know, people, they want success, they want all these different things.
00:45:48.000And that those things can kind of, because you could see the physical manifestation of that work, That can sort of overcome the idea that everything is connected.
00:46:03.000And so that's, I think, why people cheat on their taxes or insider trade or do all these different things, fuck people over in business deals, and they don't think that they're going to experience any negative consequences of it.
00:46:15.000But I don't think anybody gets away free.
00:46:19.000Again, that's why I like the idea of karma and reincarnation.
00:47:11.000And it's so filled with flaws that the human operating system is designed to ward off predators and to fight off neighboring tribes and to try to avoid starvation and to try to make sure that your genes pass on and that your enemy's genes don't.
00:47:28.000And to exist in 2024 in modern Western world with all of our technology and all of our knowledge and all the information that we have available with this ancient primate software is so problematic.
00:47:46.000There's so many things that can go wrong, so many people that go sideways with it.
00:47:50.000Drug addiction and gambling addiction and sex addiction and this addiction and that addiction and so much chaos and thievery and violence and deception and fraud.
00:48:04.000There's just so many things that exist that Are negative, but are tied to this concept of achieving and getting more, which is this famine-based mentality, this resource-acquiring mentality that really is like the monkey stealing your sunglasses so it can get mangoes.
00:48:28.000And I felt like with DMT, I got like a very short, it was like, I felt like there was this sentient, generally benevolent force out there in the cosmos that was like, okay, look, I'm going to give you a lot of information.
00:48:39.000You're not going to be able to retain most of it, but you're ready?
00:49:05.000I'm not opposed to the idea of reincarnation, but I got a vibe that there's other things, and there's other dimensions, and there's other experiences, and there's maybe levels of existence, and that this existence that we're experiencing right now as human beings is just this very strange,
00:49:23.000confusing Almost like a puzzle that you are on this planet trying to solve and you can get distracted.
00:49:34.000You can get distracted by all sorts of things in this life, but the things that bring you happiness and love, you have to kind of like sort those out and choose those amongst the different options that the puzzle gives you.
00:49:57.000I recently got to know him and he asked me to give you a message because I guess two or three months ago you were musing about whether or not he was still alive because he hadn't posted any new episodes recently.
00:50:17.000Lorenzo and I and the aforementioned Technopig and Octopus Messiah are in the process of collaborating with some AI animation artists on a documentary about the stoned ape theory.
00:50:34.000He broke it down on the podcast where he was explaining to me the actual mechanisms that would be involved in psilocybin accelerating the human mind and the ability to form language and Concepts and creativity and all the different things that Terence talked about.
00:50:57.000But you know, Dennis is a hardcore, fact-based scientist guy.
00:51:02.000You've had several great guests on there talking about that theory, but I've been like, there's about to be already, it's showing signs, but there's about to be just a glut of AI animation Movies, even in documentaries, I think AI animation is going to replace recreations,
00:51:18.000where they hire actors to recreate stuff.
00:51:37.000A, I think that Terrence McKenna would have loved the idea of using AI animation to, like, you know, show the evolution of our species, you know, as they pick the mushrooms out of the cow shit and stuff.
00:51:49.000And also, one idea that we're toying with, I think we'll go forward with now that we've actually, you know, I think we've got the technology actually dialed in, where we've built this AI world, this Terrence McKenna AI world, where we can give it ideas and it'll spit back imagery to us that feels right,
00:52:05.000is building some sort of, like, A.I. Avatar of Terence McKenna.
00:52:09.000So the idea is that the spine of the documentary will be any time...
00:52:14.000Because Lorenzo has incredible archives of Terence McKenna.
00:52:31.000So you're hearing Terence McKenna's voice, but seeing AI. So for people who don't know what the stoned ape theory is, we should probably explain it to them for people who've never heard it before.
00:52:40.000And the concept is that at one point in evolution, there was climate change and that these Rainforest, tropical rainforest had receded into grasslands and that these primates had started experimenting with different food sources by flipping over cow patties and looking for grubs and all these different things.
00:53:01.000And one of the things that they would do is probably test the mushrooms that were growing in the cow patties.
00:53:08.000And in many places where psilocybin exists, these things are extremely prevalent.
00:53:13.000Like my friend Duncan, who grew up in Asheville, North Carolina, told me that mushrooms were so prevalent That the local ranchers, they started putting feed in, with the cattle feed, some sort of anti-fungal thing to keep fungus from growing in cow shit.
00:53:33.000Because so many kids were going onto the field and picking psilocybin mushrooms.
00:53:43.000So the concept is that low doses of psilocybin increase visual acuity, make people more amorous, so it probably heightened sexual arousal, made people more likely to breed, and made people more curious,
00:53:58.000probably because of the increase in visual acuity, made people better hunters.
00:55:09.000Now, I don't know if I buy the stoned ape theory in the same way that I fully buy into, you know, the concept of the bardo and reincarnation and karma and all that, but it's sure fucking fun to think about, man.
00:55:19.000Well, doesn't it, I mean, it mimics DMT. Like, psilocybin and dimethyltryptamine are very closely related.
00:55:27.000You know, I think, I think when it's broken down, I think, I'm going to fuck this up, but I think it's N-4-phoroloxy and dimethyltryptamine.
00:55:36.000It's like, it's very close to what dimethyltryptamine is.
00:55:39.000And, you know, we also know that dimethyltryptamine is endogenously produced.
00:55:43.000You know, it's produced in the human brain.
00:55:49.000Rick Strassman, who wrote that book, DMT, The Spirit Molecules, talked about that.
00:55:53.000And they've done a lot of great research at the Cottonwood Research Foundation, trying to determine where it's produced, why it's produced.
00:56:01.000They used to think it was just produced by the pineal gland.
00:56:04.000Now they think, I believe, it's produced by the whole brain.
00:56:06.000And this thing that these primates were finding...
00:56:13.000Was giving them that and giving them more of an understanding of the world around them and expanding the brain.
00:56:19.000And the other thing about the human, the concept of the stone date theory is this bizarre fact in the history of humans that In the entire species, like the record of species, one of the biggest mysteries is the doubling of the human brain size over a period of two million years.
00:56:39.000And McKenna says that that coincides with this exact same time period where the tropical rainforests were receding into grasslands and then they believed that these primates were experimenting on new food sources.
00:56:52.000So there's all these things that sort of line up with it and it makes it a fascinating idea.
00:56:57.000But if you think about, like, if they found out that this thing gives them this feeling and they were, you know, they're repeatedly using it over and over and over again and then their offspring did it and their offspring did it and And you're, you know, playing this out over a couple million years.
00:57:44.000We have so many attributes that are far beyond any other primate, and it kind of makes sense.
00:57:51.000And also, there's people that can achieve those states without psychedelics, which is fascinating.
00:57:57.000And I've gone pretty close with some breathing exercises, and especially breathing exercises in sensory deprivation.
00:58:06.000You can achieve some definite psychedelic states.
00:58:11.000I haven't had the full visual effects that are available with DMT. But boy, you definitely get to some bizarre place where if it was a drug, it would be a very popular drug.
00:58:47.000They're chanting of ancient sacred mantras and meditation.
00:58:51.000Well, that's the other thing that happens with DMT rituals, that they play Icaros, these ancient South American songs that sort of enhance the experience.
00:59:02.000Like when you do DMT with Icaros playing, the DMT dances to the sound, and it's very strange to watch.
00:59:18.000It's hard to believe that it's really happening while it's happening.
00:59:21.000And, you know, you've got to kind of let go and just let it happen and experience it.
00:59:27.000Because you're so blown away by it all, it's hard to just not just go, what the fuck, like every five seconds.
00:59:34.000You've got to kind of just take it in and accept it.
00:59:38.000I tried to get my dad to try DMT. My dad died recently.
00:59:42.000And about six months ago, I tried to get him to try DMT. I was like, listen, you know, until I tried this, Dad, you know, I was like, same as you, like basically Spock, like cold, logic, reason, right?
01:00:36.000He's probably got like 48 hours to live.
01:00:38.000And the airspace over Ukraine's closed, so there's no way that I could get from where I was in Ukraine to Anchorage, Alaska to be with him.
01:00:46.000And so I was just sending, like, text messages on signal to the nurses, and they were reading them to him.
01:01:08.000But to answer your question, what was I doing in Ukraine?
01:01:15.000I'm looking into a possible documentary that would be set against the backdrop of the current war, but that would be more about, like, what is actually the true nature of corruption in Ukraine?
01:01:54.000And, you know, when there was so much resistance to the concept that Ukraine was corrupt when we first started backing them, you know, that was what was fascinating to me because It was always talked about how corrupt Ukraine was.
01:02:40.000Unfortunately, it's kind of a step on the evolution of free democracies to have this phase where you're like, you know, things are super corrupt.
01:02:47.000Like, I spent some time at an Orthodox monastery in Ukraine last month, and I asked the sort of head of the monastery, like, what would you have to do to get rid of corruption in this country?
01:03:02.000He's like, I'm a man of God, so I'm not advocating this.
01:03:04.000But what you could do is you could take...
01:03:06.000Because the main problem in Ukraine right now, as I understand it, is the judicial system.
01:03:09.000They have what they call telephone law, which is basically like before a judge makes a ruling, he gets a phone call telling him which way to rule.
01:03:22.000Every uh every judge and shoot them and then and then and then all the judges or all the like government officials that come to their funerals shoot them and do that two or three times and then we might be able to start over like she was saying that's how systemic this is but Jesus I mean man of God's telling you this yeah that's a guy who's like reached the limits yeah yeah oh my god But I'll tell you,
01:03:45.000my time in Ukraine really changed my perspective on that war, and I came back a real sort of hawk, thinking that we should fully support Ukraine in the war.
01:03:58.000Part of it was just being with the people who the Ukraine...
01:04:01.000I just like the Ukrainians, you know, in a way that I've been to other former Soviet bloc countries.
01:04:06.000And it's kind of like, I won't name any of them, but I just feel like, I'm not sure you guys are really down with the freedom and democracy thing.
01:04:14.000It seems like you were subjugated for a while and you just didn't get the same vibe.
01:04:19.000I think that Ukrainians are legitimately freedom-loving people.
01:04:24.000That had been under the thumb of corrupt leadership for decades now.
01:04:29.000But part of it was, there was something very enthralling about being in a place where everyone was so unified, like this country under attack.
01:04:46.000I mean, and just that in coming from America, where everything is so splintered and divided now, and to be in a place where everyone is so on the same page, there is something very attractive about that.
01:05:01.000Well, that is what happens when you get invaded.
01:05:04.000Do you remember what it was like in America after 9-11?
01:05:39.000It was like everybody was just so blown away by the experience of being attacked and so just shaken out of it and so aware of how fortunate they were to not be one of those people who died.
01:05:52.000And that we are legitimately all together and that there are forces out there that are evil and that we have to stay united.
01:06:01.000And I hate to think that that's what's required to wake people up from this division.
01:06:07.000But I always wonder, like, I wonder if maybe the division that we have in this country is because of the fact that we're never attacked.
01:06:14.000And because of the fact that we only experienced a few of the Pearl Harbor, 9-11, there's only a few of these moments where we've had to wake up.
01:06:34.000But, I mean, we fucking, man, I mean, the Ukrainians, they had nuclear weapons, and in 1994, the quote-unquote West, the US and the UK, basically convinced them, you know, to give up their nukes in exchange for a guarantee that we would help them protect their sovereign territory.
01:07:00.000There's the NATO encroaching on Russia's territory.
01:07:03.000I mean, in 2004, like, NATO started handing out membership cards like fucking Cracker Jack prizes, right?
01:07:08.000Putin gets re-elected in 2004, 20 years ago, and all of a sudden, like, all these former Soviet, you know, small territories are now NATO countries.
01:08:19.000I mean, it's to, you know, to say, like, oh, like, World War III is imminent, it sounds doomsayer, but it feels like it could go that way in a hurry.
01:08:30.000That's the problem if we sort of like showed our ass and back down, you know, if Putin keeps going, is then China may just test that red line with Taiwan.
01:08:46.000At least when I've talked to people that understand.
01:08:49.000You know, I just I mean, I think that the war in Ukraine could have been prevented.
01:08:53.000I think that There was this false dichotomy where there were forces in the U.S. government, and this is part of the documentary I want to make, is about, that forced you, there was like, you either have to be, you know, a puppet of Russia or our puppet.
01:09:07.000You either have to be NATO or there's no middle ground.
01:09:11.000When, in fact, I think that Ukraine could have been a bridge, a peaceful bridge, between Russia and the quote-unquote West, where maybe it could have joined the European Union, economically free trade, but not joined NATO, right?
01:09:25.000Because that's what Putin was so adamant against.
01:09:28.000And you understand, I mean, I think he's a war criminal fucking power mad, you know, asshole, right?
01:09:33.000But you can sort of see from his perspective.
01:09:36.000If you look at a map and you start to see all these NATO countries around Russia, you kind of see, you know, what motivates him.
01:09:44.000Well, that's what people in the State Department had always said that was his red line.
01:10:09.000And I don't want to tip my hand too much, but I think I've got pretty convincing evidence that the US Department of Justice has been used by the US State Department To further US foreign policy interests in Ukraine in ways that aren't really like right like bringing either bringing criminal charges Against people you in the US but like Ukrainians like charging them with crimes in the US including some people that have never even set foot in the United States charging with crimes or Getting them out
01:10:40.000of trouble like dropping criminal charges against them to sort of like And again, it goes back to our designating, you're a good guy, you're a bad guy.
01:11:34.000But the fact that, look, the fact that 50 cents of every dollar that we send there, you know, this isn't actually how it goes down, but even if that was the case, is going into somebody's pocket doesn't mean that we can just turn Ukraine over to Russia, in my opinion.
01:11:49.000I think that we should be backing them full-on militarily, not with U.S. troops, but giving them what they need to fight.
01:11:56.000Because, you know, I talked to a lot of Special Forces guys over there that were basically like, Those Russian human waves attacks were just like mowing these guys.
01:12:30.000There's so much territory east of the Earl Mountains.
01:12:33.000It's just a bunch of villages, what we call flyover country, right?
01:12:36.000Well, Putin is offering deals, like sign up, where it's like, You know, more money than they make in a year per month, A. And then B, if you're killed, your family's set up for life.
01:12:45.000They can buy a house, you know, whatever.
01:13:07.000No, I asked my parents about that, too.
01:13:10.000My dad, before he passed, they were like, no, we don't remember.
01:13:12.000Even, like, Watergate, Vietnam era, you know, they weren't really old enough to remember the Great Depression, but even that was just sort of limited to the U.S. I mean, I know there were global, you know, Yeah, it does.
01:14:25.000I agree with your assessment of that danger 100%.
01:14:28.000That's another reason why I think that we have to help Ukraine stop Putin now.
01:14:31.000Because if he keeps going into Ukraine and then he invades a NATO country and we decide that we've got to go up against him, Is there any evidence that he would do that?
01:15:33.000So then if he doesn't, and then he invades a NATO country, and we go up against him, Man, those documents leaked recently from Russia that were showing what their lines were for when they would start using quote-unquote tactical nukes.
01:15:52.000Well, they were, whatever, if they started to lose a certain percentage of troops, I can't recall the specifics, but they were like shockingly...
01:16:01.000Shockingly liberal on when they would start to use tactical nukes on the battlefield in Europe.
01:16:08.000Like if they started to have certain percentages of battlefield losses, not in the current situation, but as they go further into Ukraine or in a war that came into Russian territory.
01:16:19.000So I just think we should stop this shit now.
01:16:34.000Criteria for a potential nuclear response range from an enemy incursion on Russian territory to more specific triggers such as the destruction of 20% of Russia's strategic ballistic missile submarines.
01:16:46.000This is the first time we've seen documents like this reported in the public domain, said Alexander Gabuev, director of Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center in Berlin.
01:16:59.000They show that the operational threshold for using nuclear weapons is pretty low if the desired result can't be achieved through conventional means.
01:17:07.000Russia's tactical nuclear weapons which can be delivered by land or sea launched missiles from or from an aircraft are designed for limited battlefield use in Europe and Asia as opposed to the larger strategic weapons intended to target US modern tactical warheads can still release significantly more energy than the weapons dropped on Nagasaki in Hiroshima in 1945. Oof.
01:17:46.000So to answer your question, I think that, you know, the territory that Putin has taken, you know, and again, also, we like, just like we didn't back him up after the security assurances that we gave, we, the U.S., gave Ukraine in 1994. 2014,
01:18:03.000right, there was that revolution in Ukraine, and in response, Putin invaded Crimea with the little green man, the guys that didn't have an insignia.
01:18:11.000And the U.S. State Department went to, and Ukraine was going to fight.
01:18:15.000And the U.S. State Department went to Kyiv and was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
01:18:27.000So, to answer your question, I think that that territory that Putin has seized, my impression from talking with a lot of Ukrainians in recent weeks has been that They feel like Ukraine could still be Ukraine without that territory.
01:18:41.000Basically, you could have a three-week period where people could either move there if they want to be Russians, or they can leave if they want to be Ukrainians.
01:18:50.000And then you could have a kind of a North Korea, South Korea, DMZ kind of situation.
01:18:54.000I think that's probably the best possible outcome right now.
01:18:58.000But even to do that, again, we've got to properly arm the Ukrainians so that they can stop Putin from moving further into their country and actually taking territory that they could not live without.
01:19:09.000So do you think ultimately he plans on taking all of Ukraine?
01:19:16.000When I was in Kyiv and I went to how close the fighting actually got to the capital city, it was shocking how close it was.
01:19:24.000Like that town, Bucha, where there was all those atrocities committed.
01:19:27.000I mean, there's this one, I saw this one auto, this like massive graveyards of like automobiles.
01:19:33.000And what happened was people were trying to get out of this town as the Russian troops, the Russian, because they invaded from Belarus from the north and they came in and they're trying to go like lightning strike on Kyiv.
01:19:43.000And they got within, I think, 10, 12 kilometers of the city.
01:19:48.000And then they got stopped because the guys started blowing bridges.
01:19:50.000Special Forces started blowing bridges and hitting them with javelins and stuff.
01:22:12.000Even when the interpreter wasn't around, just, like, really clicked with this guy.
01:22:14.000Anyway, um, but yeah, I did have it set up where I had an interpreter, you know, a driver, and security.
01:22:21.000And then I had, you know, conversations that I'd lined up.
01:22:24.000But a lot of it was people had documents or people had information that the only way I was going to get these documents or have them tell me this information was to go to Ukraine.
01:22:33.000It was the only way they were gonna, you know, trust it, trust me.
01:22:37.000How much different was it than what you expected?
01:22:41.000Well, it's, I really, back to my new love for the Ukrainian people.
01:22:46.000In Kyiv, like, or Lviv, which is a fantastic city, it's in eastern Ukraine near the Polish border.
01:22:54.000You know, it's like you wouldn't, until the rockets and the Iranian drones start flying into the city, You wouldn't know anything was going on.
01:23:03.000People are out, dressed nicely, going to dinner, going to bars, going to clubs, like they're out and about, you know?
01:23:09.000And then all of a sudden, the air raid sirens go off.
01:23:12.000And there's this app that I jokingly texted my wife.
01:23:17.000I was like, this is the worst video game ever.
01:23:19.000Because it's this app that shows you what's incoming, like what kind of missiles and how many, and what kind of drones and how many.
01:23:27.000And then as the air defense systems shoot them down, they like blip off the screen, you know?
01:23:32.000So you can like see, like, the shit's coming your way and like how many are they shooting down.
01:23:36.000It's like the worst version of missile command because you can't actually do anything, right?
01:25:31.000It's like a day of a nationwide red alert, which means that, like, missiles were hitting all over.
01:25:36.000And so people are watching this app on their phone, and you can see the stuff that's coming, you know, to the Oblast, which is like a state, you know, that we're in.
01:25:45.000And as the stuff is being shot down, like, people are, like, cheering from the chairlifts.
01:25:59.000Yeah, I have a friend from Israel, and he's a kickboxing coach, my friend Shuki, and when he was living in America, he lives in Israel now, but when he was living in America, I went over to his house for dinner, and Him and his wife,
01:26:15.000they'd be playing the bongos and dancing.
01:26:17.000And I'm like, you guys are like, you have so much spirit.
01:26:47.000And that's a crazy thought is that the thing that's going to cure what ails us is conflict and getting together and banding together to fight a common evil.
01:28:43.000And the leaders don't necessarily have the best intentions for everyone.
01:28:47.000They have the best intentions for themselves and for the people that are providing them with money.
01:28:54.000And this is the trap that we're all stuck in.
01:29:00.000Everyone on earth, all of us, being led by groups that decide that they're in control of these massive numbers of people, and they want control of the resources of these other territories, and they want to do something to those people,
01:29:16.000and they'll have people convinced, this is your enemy, you have to go kill them.
01:29:20.000People that you've never met, you have no issue with, you don't know anything about them, you've literally never seen them before.
01:29:26.000You might not ever see them even when you're killing them.
01:29:30.000And this is a thing that we don't believe could ever be stopped in our lifetime, which is insane.
01:29:37.000If you really start to think about it that way, it sounds so insane.
01:29:41.000Like, if you were approached by an alien life form, That said, what is the source of all this murder and killing and destruction?
01:29:53.000We're a group and we're being led by the people that are in charge of this group that are very secretive and that are being influenced by massive amounts of money and the military-industrial complex.
01:30:03.000And they've got everyone convinced that you have to divert all of our resources.
01:31:29.000I wonder if the limitations of our primate architecture Will not allow us to escape this never-ending cycle of war.
01:31:40.000And that may be the only thing that will would be an intelligence that far exceeds our own and doesn't have the same limitations, motivations, human reward systems, all the things that hold us in these patterns.
01:31:56.000And that an artificial intelligence that is far superior to what we're capable of generating with our monkey minds will be the only thing that prevents us.
01:32:07.000Well, back to DMT, I think that intelligence is already out there.
01:32:10.000We don't have to build it with computers here on Earth.
01:32:37.000Well, maybe the problem is money in general, like the concept of money.
01:32:41.000And I'm not a proponent of socialism, because socialism always leads to communism, which leads to military dictatorships that are dictating whether or not you can do this or that.
01:32:51.000And there's always groups of people that have massive resources, and they keep everybody else subjugated.
01:32:57.000Anybody that thinks that socialism and communism is the future, show me where it works, ever.
01:33:06.000Whether it's cults or militaries or anything.
01:33:09.000So there's human beings that have immense power that is unimaginable to the common person, dictating what the common people can and can't do.
01:33:18.000And the only way to enforce that is with force and with killing.
01:34:05.000And this is essentially the Model T. Of, you know, this sort of human-computer interface, biological interface, something that goes into your mind, into the brain itself, and connects with it and allows you to use things.
01:34:21.000I get why that would help a dude, like, in his situation, but do you have any concerns about that, like, large scale?
01:34:29.000Yeah, I have concerns with everything that involves human beings.
01:34:32.000Because I don't think there's ever been a thing that involves human beings that doesn't get co-opted and corrupted.
01:34:37.000There's always something, someone comes along that uses it and has power.
01:34:43.000And that's the scariest thing about someone achieving some sort of artificial general intelligence, some sort of super intelligence, especially something that's sentient.
01:34:54.000And can figure out what we're doing wrong and also figure out what was done wrong to code it and make a better version of itself.
01:35:02.000And I think it's going to lead to a new life form.
01:35:07.000I'm almost positive of that, that that's what all this stuff is doing.
01:35:13.000I mean, have you ever seen the head of Google where he was talking about how their AI has done things that they didn't expect?
01:35:20.000Like, it learned a language like instantaneously that it wasn't programmed in and can translate that language now and communicate in that language and they don't know how it did it?
01:35:30.000Well, hey guys, hit the fucking brakes.
01:35:33.000Like, you don't know what it's doing and you're just gonna keep feeding it?
01:35:56.000Like, we are the problem that we're trying to solve.
01:36:00.000And if we're trying to solve that problem by creating something that won't have those problems, it just logically seems to me that that thing is going to realize that we're the issue.
01:36:42.000Why are we so attached to wanting the newest latest greatest technology?
01:36:47.000It almost seems like that motivation is Tied in to the creation of artificial intelligence that if you looked at us I always say that if you looked at us from above if you were some other species that came And you were looking at human beings you would say well,
01:37:07.000Well the the main thing it does if you You know, there's all the wonderful things, the art, the music, all the wonderful things that it does for itself.
01:37:17.000Food and culture and all these interesting things.
01:38:21.000We're kind of doing that to ourselves.
01:38:23.000I mean, population level, in terms of, like, viability, they've dropped substantially over the last few decades, whether it's because of microplastics in our food that have diminished our reproductive cycles.
01:38:36.000And if you look at the number of births, In developing countries, what happens?
01:38:45.000How many women are having miscarriages?
01:38:50.000The numbers keep going up and up and up.
01:38:51.000It seems like there's a current trend because of what we have done with our environment, what we have done with our food supply, what we have done with medicine and pharmaceutical drugs that's leading us to be less and less viable.
01:39:05.000And all you'd have to do is step in and provide human beings with something that gives them an incentive to no longer breed.
01:39:13.000Especially if it makes it very attractive to no longer breed.
01:39:28.000Or you just have a biological woman who yells at you.
01:39:31.000I mean, you could clearly see how if you were a super-intelligent species, a super-intelligent thing that looked at us and said, well, what's the best way other than mass destruction of stopping these things from ruining the world?
01:41:14.000Do you think they're covering up things that they've invented?
01:41:18.000I think that's probably the most, again, I would like to believe that what they're covering, what I want to believe, in the same way that I want to believe in the stoned ape theory, because I think it's fucking cool, is I want to believe that they're covering up contact with, you know, species from outer space, other intelligent life.
01:41:34.000What I suspect is really going on is that they're covering up shit that they're making that maybe has slipped the leash, you know, or that for whatever reason they're just trying to keep completely secret.
01:41:45.000The stuff that has maneuverability that can't be explained.
01:41:52.000I think we're probably being visited as well.
01:41:54.000And I think we might be being visited by something that is us from the future.
01:41:59.000I think it might not even be us from the future, but being what happens when a species like us Gets involved in digital intelligence and creates something that transcends the biological limitations.
01:42:24.000Which is this big-headed thing with no muscle, no genitals, and it seems very humanoid in a way, which doesn't necessarily make sense.
01:42:36.000If you're dealing with different environments, and we think about the massive variety of species that exist on the planet that we're aware of.
01:44:15.000He doesn't seem like a guy who's lying.
01:44:18.000And one of the more bizarre aspects of his story was how many of the things that he talked about now we know are true, you know, in terms of...
01:44:27.000The technology in terms of what people have seen, 3D printing, there's all these different things.
01:44:33.000Like the ship that he went into, there's no seams.
01:44:36.000He's like it's all like as if it's made out of one piece of something, which is 3D printing.
01:44:44.000And that there's no instrumentation and that somehow or another these things are integrated somehow.
01:44:52.000With their minds or with something, where it's allowing them to pilot these things without digital instrumentation and buttons and switches.
01:45:00.000They're using some other method to control these things.
01:45:03.000And that's what he was supposedly brought in to try to back-engineer.
01:45:47.000That can essentially use some new element and use this new element that's bombarded with radiation that allows you to manipulate gravity and move at insane speeds almost instantaneously to anywhere in the universe.
01:46:14.000If you have this thing, if this thing has really been donated, which is like what a lot of these people that work on them, they call them donations.
01:46:21.000If you really have these things, what do you do?
01:46:26.000But if we have been doing this since the 1980s, which is – Lazar said it's been around far longer than that, but when he was working on it, it was the 1980s.
01:46:36.000You can imagine that by now we might have figured out a way to get a drone going that uses these technologies and that these drones can appear and disappear, they can fly at the same rates of speed, they can hover stationary at 120 knot winds like they've observed.
01:48:11.000And you could see by the way that it was like blocking out the stars, that you could see that there were like apparatus on it of some kind.
01:48:18.000And I always thought that it was just a military aircraft where they thought they had a cloaking device.
01:48:24.000See, now that's what other people saw was these smaller things on the same night that were explained away as being some sort of military flares or weather balloons or some shit.
01:49:46.000I actually went on the record with the newspaper I worked for right away because they were immediately dismissing those smaller lights that we just saw as whatever the explanation was.
01:49:57.000And I was like, there's something else in the sky that night too.
01:51:06.000And what's interesting is when he's trying to describe the shape, and he puts it at a bigger size than I have it in my memory, I do remember talking with my friend.
01:51:16.000It was hard to describe what we just saw.
01:53:17.000I know people said that they saw a triangle, so then for a while they were saying that's why he was probably talking about the B-2 bomber, the stealth bomber, because they're kind of triangular.
01:55:33.000What I would give to see something like that.
01:55:35.000But, you know, to your point about, like, look at how people, about the technology, maybe it's being kept quiet because of the military applications.
01:55:42.000Like, look at how people freaked out when it leaked about this new Russian space weapon, right, a couple weeks back, or three weeks back, whatever.
01:55:51.000It's like an ability to disrupt, like, satellite communications in space.
01:55:54.000Like, Russia, like, somehow it leaked, maybe deliberately, out of Russia that they've got this far more advanced technology than we thought they had.
01:56:02.000To a weapon that would be in space that could disrupt communications and satellites and really fuck us up.
01:56:09.000And it leaked and then there was this one congressman that went public with it and was like, we have a real problem.
01:56:21.000But imagine if it was something like on the scale of like a weaponized ship that could be cloaked like that, or some of the technology, or if we did have, as you said, this donated technology that's from an extraterrestrial intelligence.
01:56:34.000That the U.S. has been figuring out applications for.
01:56:39.000Because what if that leaked right now?
01:56:41.000What do you think Putin would do, you know?
01:56:43.000Who the fuck knows what he would do if all of a sudden it leaked that we had these, you know, military capabilities that are far beyond what he thinks we have.
01:56:51.000That's my thought about these things that they keep seeing, because they always see them in areas where they do military tests, right?
01:57:01.000The Tic Tac was off the coast of San Diego, which is where all the military bases are, and the things that Ryan Long had seen were all off the east coast in restricted airspace, in space where they run fighter jet training and And he said when they upgraded their technology in 2014,
01:58:14.000That's where they would test those things.
01:58:16.000And what better way to test whether or not people could see them than to run them out there when people are using new jets with new capabilities.
01:58:27.000And the fact that, you know, the Tic Tac, when Commander David Fravor brought this information and reported it, and they showed the videos to these admirals, and they were nonplussed.
01:58:56.000Or is this, and the other thing is that When Fravor communicated this stuff, these guys who are running these sensors, they're running the detection systems, are saying, we're seeing these things all the time, every couple weeks.
01:59:14.000And this is also 2004. Did they have the ability of 2004 or something to go from above 50,000 feet above sea level to 50 feet in less than a second?
01:59:28.000And people try to, you know, argue it away or explain it away by saying, oh, it's a failure of the detection systems and there's a glitch in the...
01:59:39.000Yeah, but visuals, they have more than one fighter jet has seen it.
01:59:44.000They have video of this thing moving at a speed that would turn human beings into jelly.
01:59:48.000Like if there's a biological entity inside that thing and experiences that g-force, you're talking about some fucking insane g-force, like 1,300 times what a human being can tolerate and just gone, silent.
02:00:09.000And the witnesses have been reliable, too.
02:00:11.000I've often suspected that in the last 20 years, especially in the last five, it feels like the witnesses, the guys coming forward saying, look, I know what I saw.
02:00:22.000The ones that are associated with the government, even commercial airline pilots will be on the FAA, but especially military pilots, you know, they're being allowed to speak, that it feels like the waters are being tested by the government for some reason.
02:00:33.000Like, we're going to let this out a little bit.
02:00:35.000We're going to let the people that actually...
02:01:32.000They talk about these Vimanas, these crafts, whatever these beings operate.
02:01:40.000So in that case, are we just getting better at detecting them, or are they showing themselves more often for some reason?
02:01:45.000Well, in unique circumstances, if someone sees something like this, like you, so you see this in 1990-whatever it is in Phoenix, if you lived 5,000 years ago and you see this, what does that sound like?
02:01:59.000What does that sound like to everybody?
02:02:00.000It sounds like you're out of your fucking mind.
02:02:08.000Unique experiences are very difficult to classify.
02:02:12.000You know, if you have an experience with a ghost.
02:02:14.000If a ghost shows up in this room and we all see it and it doesn't show up on camera and we swear we saw an apparition of fucking Forrest Gump standing there, you're like, what the fuck is that?
02:03:21.000They're used to seeing things, and they're seeing something that rotates.
02:03:25.000This is the other thing about the craft that coincides with what Bob Lazar said.
02:03:29.000It's moving like this, and it turns sideways.
02:03:32.000And Lazar said that's what it did, that it would direct its generator, whatever that gravity generator is, it would direct that towards the way that it wanted to go.
02:03:42.000So it would literally turn sideways to move forward.
02:03:45.000I mean, Kenneth Arnold was talking about these things in the 1950s, right?
02:03:49.000So for sure in the 1950s, we didn't have the capability to make something like that.
02:03:53.000Something with no visible means of propulsion that's shaped like a saucer that flies silently through the air and, you know, moves at a speed and has capabilities in terms of maneuverability that far exceeds a jet that we had back then.
02:04:39.000But the thing on the military installations, of course, the two theories are one is that there's some sort of extraterrestrial intelligence that's drawn to our military activity.
02:04:48.000But what seems like the more rational explanation is, as you said, that's where they test this shit.
02:04:53.000Or, you know, if I was an intelligent species that's willing to donate these crafts like they claim, They kind of let these things land or crash and then they'll do it in a very strategic way where they know that the military will be able to cordon off the area and isolate and stop people from talking about it.
02:05:14.000And the idea that people in the military aren't able to keep secrets, well, that's nonsense.
02:05:18.000They're really good at keeping secrets.
02:05:41.000But I wouldn't fucking go public and tell everybody.
02:05:44.000If they're willing to show me this shit...
02:05:48.000No one's going to believe me anyway, right?
02:05:51.000And so I'm like, what good does it do if I make myself look like a moron, A? B, now I can't have access to it anymore, because I told them.
02:06:02.000Because I told people about it, because now they can't trust me.
02:06:31.000But Jackie Gleason actually had a home built in upstate New York that looked like a UFO. And he had this home built after this supposed experience.
02:07:49.000Well, we certainly want to believe the stories that they hover over military bases and shut down nuclear weapons.
02:07:54.000And, you know, my comedy club is called The Comedy Mothership.
02:07:59.000And you walk into the comedy club, there's a gigantic artificial UFO that we had built.
02:08:06.000So when you walk into it, like as you walk in the front door, there's this big...
02:08:11.000Construction of a UFO that has a beam that comes down and we use it as a projector to show who's coming soon on the big screen.
02:08:18.000But I named the rooms Fat Man and Little Boy.
02:08:23.000Because those are the bombs that we dropped.
02:08:25.000And right after we dropped those bombs, that's when all the UFO activity happened.
02:08:30.000That's like there's a giant uptick in UFO activity after 1945. And in the UFO folklore, it's like they realized that we have the ability to drop nukes.
02:08:43.000And then they started shutting down nuclear weapons at bases and making their presence known at these military bases to say, hey, Keep it together, bitches.
02:09:09.000It's the humans are engineered by some superior life form to try to accelerate our evolution.
02:09:17.000And bring us to this place and that they've helped us along the way but we're autonomous and we're allowed to do what we want to do and so we do Disgusting crazy shit like drop nuclear bombs from propeller planes by the way right right propeller planes on Cities and that once they did that they're like,
02:09:36.000okay Slow the fuck down We're here Now, whether they've always been here, like in the Vedic texts or even in the Bible, Ezekiel's description of the wheel within a wheel.
02:09:53.000Pull up Ezekiel's description of what he saw.
02:09:56.000This is one of the favorite descriptions from the Bible, from the Old Testament, about UFOs that people love to bring up.
02:10:06.000Because Ezekiel has this thing that he describes.
02:10:09.000And it's the most bizarre depiction I looked.
02:10:18.000I saw an immense dust storm come from the north, an immense cloud with lightning flashing from it, a huge ball of fire glowing like bronze.
02:10:26.000Within the fire were what looked like four creatures vibrant with life.
02:10:30.000Each had the form of a human being, but each also had four faces and four wings.
02:10:34.000Their legs were as sturdy and straight as columns, but their feet were hooved like those of a calf and sparkled with the fire like burnished bronze.
02:10:42.000On all four sides under their wings they had human hands.
02:13:57.000Well, you know, there's a university in Israel, I think it's the University of Jerusalem, that theorized that the Moses experience of the burning bush was a DMT experience.
02:14:12.000Like when you say Moses saw the burning bush, well, what kind of bush would burn that would give you a psychedelic experience?
02:15:07.000Well, again, back to the Christians and Prabhupada, that was his thing.
02:15:09.000It was like, you can't hold on to it with psychedelics alone, and you don't need psychedelics to get a hold of it in the first place, was what he was preaching.
02:15:18.000And he probably recognized that The problem with taking psychedelics is that it's so accessible.
02:15:27.000I mean, it's the beautiful thing about it.
02:15:28.000But you also could say that could be a problem because then a bunch of people with no discipline would just start popping these things and having these experiences and having no sort of framework, no moral framework, no ethical framework, no understanding of what are you experiencing and what to do with this stuff.
02:15:47.000But if you acquire it If you acquire it endogenously, through discipline, then you are on a path, and through that path, you can achieve this thing, and you realize that this is a very difficult thing to achieve, and that you have to stay on this path in order to get this enlightenment.
02:16:07.000I could see how someone would say, no, listen, that's not the way.
02:16:17.000He said it reminds me of an ancient story of this monk had acquired a city of levitation and practiced this.
02:16:29.000And it said to the Buddha, when the Buddha came to town, you know, I've spent 20 years acquiring the City of Levitation, and I can walk across the water.
02:16:39.000And the Buddha said, yeah, but the ferry's only a nickel.
02:17:10.000Also, McKenna was, you know, he was a proponent of taking psychedelic drugs, so he probably would want people to think that his way is the way.
02:17:24.000I don't know man, but it's all look just the fact that the the psychedelic experience is a real thing and When you do take that and you do have those experiences and you realize that it's a real thing and like how did I not know about this?
02:17:38.000How was the most profound thing that's ever happened to me?
02:17:41.000Something that is a Schedule I drug that's illegal for whatever reason that no one's explained to me accurately.
02:17:49.000No one's ever explained it in a way that makes sense.
02:17:53.000Why is a thing that doesn't kill anybody, that exists in the human mind?
02:17:56.000That was the other thing that McKenna said about DMT. It's illegal, but everybody's holding.
02:18:28.000And also the fact that it's naturally occurring, not just naturally occurring in the human mind, but naturally occurring in nature, and that there seems to be some sort of mitigation strategy by the human body in order to keep you from tripping balls by consuming all the different plants that have DMT in it,
02:18:50.000So monoamine oxidase breaks it down in the gut.
02:18:53.000So if you consume like grasses, like phalaris grass, it's very rich in DMT. If a human being consumed that, you're not going to trip because the monoamine oxidase in the gut breaks it down.
02:19:04.000So the strategy that they came up with with ayahuasca was to combine these psychedelic plants, these plants that contain dimethyltryptamine with other plants that contain harmine, Which is a monoamine oxidase inhibitor.
02:19:19.000And that the two of these together will allow an orally active version of dimethyltryptamine.
02:21:28.000You know, it's not bordering on criminal.
02:21:29.000It is fucking criminal that the government has kept MDMA therapy from, like...
02:21:33.000Especially guys coming back from these fucking wars in the Middle East, you know?
02:21:37.000They're all fucked up with PTSD. Because as somebody who has PTSD, not from combat, but from childhood trauma, MDMA is just like a godsend.
02:21:51.000I mean, MAPS, that organization MAPS has been doing fantastic research with it, and it seems like it's on the path to legalization now, finally.
02:22:00.000But there are so many guys that needed that so badly.
02:22:04.000And including the people that are making it illegal, unfortunately.
02:22:38.000And, you know, we know for a fact that all that stuff was made illegal during the sweeping Psychedelics Act of 1970 that was designed to subvert the war movement and to subvert the civil rights movement and to go after the Black Panthers and all these different people that were...
02:22:55.000Disrupting the government's control over society.
02:22:58.000And the best way to do that is to make all drugs illegal and then go after those people and just throw water on the whole party.
02:23:13.000If you look at the music from the 60s all the way up to 1970, and then there's this confusion period of 1970, and then you look at the music of the 80s, like, what the fuck happened, everybody?
02:23:49.000And I think the plot has come back, and I think you could kind of credit Lorenzo from the Psychedelic Salon with the distribution of all those Old recordings of Alan Watts and McKenna and all those different psychedelic bards that were talking about these things that got people more curious and interested in them.
02:24:07.000And then, you know, people realizing that we needed to do something for these soldiers that are coming back with PTSD and psilocybin ceremonies and ayahuasca and MDMA, which is being used by MAPS. MAPS has done an amazing job.
02:24:39.000And even then, I mean, it really takes people leaving office and dying off.
02:24:44.000It takes the old people going away, the corrupt politicians that are in charge of deciding what is and is not legal.
02:24:53.000They have to vanish and they slowly get phased out generation after generation and then the new people coming into play, some of them have military experience, some of them know people that have been really helped by MDMA therapy or ayahuasca or ibogaine,
02:25:08.000people that have like severe addictions to pills and all sorts of different opiates.
02:25:13.000Ibogaine is like one of the greatest things that's ever been discovered to help heal people from these problems.
02:25:23.000So many weird competing factors are all happening all together.
02:25:29.000And they're all in this wild chaos that is the age of information.
02:25:33.000The age of information and technology that's allowing people to have access to these things but also realize how crazy the world we live in is.
02:25:41.000And then, you know, you have TikTok where people are just being distracted all day long and being confused.
02:25:52.000I feel more hopeful now, Joe, once we started talking about psychedelics again than I was when we were talking about war.
02:25:58.000Well, psychedelics might be the only thing that prevents war.
02:26:01.000It might be the only thing that helps people.
02:26:03.000I mean, if you can get large-scale use of psychedelics sanctioned, and not just in America, but worldwide, I think it will have a tremendous impact on the way people view this experience, because this is a small, tiny Finite experience that we're going through.
02:26:20.000It seems like it takes forever, but I mean, you're 53, I'm 56. It's like, Jesus, man, we're more than halfway to the finish line, and it's like it just happened.
02:27:52.000No, the correct idea is legalization And centers that are set up by ethical experts who really have experience in these things that can provide both counseling and medical services and allow people to do the correct dose safely under supervision.
02:28:14.000It gives them some sort of a framework as to what to do with this, what has happened, what this means, and how you can apply this to your life.
02:28:23.000And if we could figure out how to do that in a structured way, We probably could help an enormous amount of people.
02:28:38.000But legitimately, there's a legitimate comment, which is that that's what Prabhupada and that's what Krishna consciousness, in a sense, was offering, was integration of the psychedelic experience.
02:28:46.000Here's a framework for integrating everything you've been experiencing on acid and mescaline.
02:28:52.000You know, whatever the hippie kids were into.
02:28:55.000Yeah, and I think Prabhupada and the people that were legit were really trying to do that and they were really trying to spread this message.
02:29:04.000And if you think about what they were able to do during the 60s with the help of George Harrison, they opened up a lot of people's minds to these ideas and probably changed a lot of lives and the directions of a lot of people's lives.