The Joe Rogan Experience - Joe Rogan Experience #359 - Alex Grey

00:00:03.000 Hey you freaks. 0.99

00:00:04.000 What's going on party people?

00:00:06.000 We're back.

00:00:07.000 I've been busy squatching, so I haven't had time to be podcasting.

00:00:12.000 I'm out there searching for Bigfoot.

00:00:15.000 What are you doing, Brian?

00:00:16.000 You're not answering the Bigfoot question just sitting here doing podcasts.

00:00:20.000 I've already made up my mind.

00:00:21.000 Come out there for the people, son.

00:00:23.000 Come out there steady-squatching.

00:00:26.000 This episode of the Joe Rogan Experience Podcast is brought to you by Squarespace.

00:00:31.000 Squarespace is one of our newest and Favorite sponsors.

00:00:37.000 I don't really have any favorites, but I really enjoy this one.

00:00:39.000 I really like it.

00:00:40.000 I like everything about it.

00:00:41.000 What it is is a website that allows you to very easily create your own website.

00:00:47.000 There's templates that you can use.

00:00:49.000 There's various images that you can upload.

00:00:51.000 And you can make a really cool-looking website, including setting up a store.

00:00:55.000 You can set up an online store super easy.

00:00:59.000 It's ridiculous how easy it is.

00:01:01.000 And it's cool and it's fun.

00:01:03.000 You can also try it out.

00:01:05.000 You can go there and set up a website and not even have to use your credit card.

00:01:14.000 You just try it out.

00:01:15.000 Hold on, let me just pull this up.

00:01:18.000 Yeah, it's cool because you just have all these designs.

00:01:19.000 You could put together a website almost within five minutes.

00:01:23.000 Well, you have.

00:01:24.000 I couldn't.

00:01:25.000 It would take me a lot longer than it would take you. 1.00

00:01:27.000 But Brian can whip through one of those fucking things. 1.00

00:01:30.000 And it's... 1.00

00:01:32.000 I love the fact that someone figured that out.

00:01:36.000 Because it used to be so daunting.

00:01:38.000 The idea of creating a website was terrifying.

00:01:40.000 What am I going to do?

00:01:41.000 This makes it super easy.

00:01:44.000 It's really intuitive.

00:01:46.000 And it works on everything.

00:01:47.000 It works on a cell phone.

00:01:49.000 It works on your iPad.

00:01:50.000 It works on an Android tablet.

00:01:52.000 It works on every phone.

00:01:54.000 It works on every browser.

00:01:56.000 They've got it down.

00:01:58.000 It didn't used to be down.

00:01:59.000 It used to be really difficult to get a website, but now almost anybody can do their own.

00:02:05.000 If you go to squarespace.com forward slash Joe, you can try it out.

00:02:08.000 No credit card necessary.

00:02:10.000 But if you decide to purchase it, use the offer code, excuse me, use the offer code JOE5, just J-O-E and the number 5, all one word, and then you will save 10% off first purchase new accounts, including monthly and annual plans.

00:02:25.000 So that's squarespace.com forward slash Joe, and the offer code is Joe and the number 3, excuse me, 5, Joe and the number 5. Don't use Joe the number three.

00:02:36.000 You'll confuse the fuck out of people.

00:02:38.000 They'll think, man, someone's just really stuck on those old March podcasts.

00:02:44.000 We're also brought to you by Ting. 0.85

00:02:46.000 If you have heard of Ting before, if you've heard of us talk about it on a podcast, one of the things that makes me so happy is when I run into people and they tell me that something that we're advertising on the podcast is exactly as promised.

00:03:03.000 And that's one thing that I keep hearing about Ting.

00:03:05.000 It's a really good cell phone service.

00:03:08.000 It uses a Sprint backbone, but it's set up to be a lot cheaper than most cell phone plans, and it's set up in a really cool, ethical way, including if you...

00:03:19.000 If you don't use the minutes that you signed up for, they knock you down to the next level and credit you at your next bill.

00:03:25.000 They literally give you credit for unused service.

00:03:27.000 I mean, nobody does that. 0.98

00:03:29.000 Usually if you don't use your service, they're like, tough shit, that's what you offered. 0.99

00:03:33.000 That's what you bought. 0.99

00:03:34.000 That was your contract.

00:03:35.000 Your contract was 100 minutes a month or whatever the hell it is. 1.00

00:03:38.000 Dude, I love fucking Ting. 0.99

00:03:39.000 They're great! 1.00

00:03:39.000 It's great. 1.00

00:03:40.000 And when we were in Vancouver for 24 hours, I used both of my cell phones, one from AT&T and one from Ting.

00:03:47.000 And I just got the bill to find out how much my overages were for, you know, using international air.

00:03:54.000 AT&T, because I was on a shitty day to plan and I was being stupid, it was $270 or something like that. 0.98

00:04:03.000 That's crazy! 0.98

00:04:04.000 Yeah, for one hour, for one day. 0.99

00:04:06.000 That's so ridiculous.

00:04:07.000 My Ting, which I used a lot actually because I had better service there, $17. 0.91

00:04:15.000 Wow, that's insane.

00:04:16.000 That's insane.

00:04:17.000 First of all, the tin can make it that cheap, but it's also insane that AT&T could send you a bill that high.

00:04:22.000 It's so weird that you go over to Canada and all of a sudden the same rules don't apply.

00:04:27.000 It's only like three hours away.

00:04:28.000 Right.

00:04:29.000 It takes us five to get to New York.

00:04:31.000 It doesn't make any sense. 1.00

00:04:33.000 It's so stupid. 1.00

00:04:34.000 I'm so tired of countries. 1.00

00:04:35.000 And it's really fucking stupid of just AT&T even doing that because they know there's people like me that wouldn't... 0.98

00:04:40.000 Because what they want you to do is they want you to call them, get on an international calling plan or data plan, choose which one you want, and then it would probably be cheaper. 1.00

00:04:49.000 But what they're doing is like, hey, you didn't call us, so we're just going to fuck you. 0.98

00:04:53.000 You know, I mean, where Ting's just like, hey, man. 1.00

00:04:56.000 Strong words.

00:04:57.000 Whatever.

00:04:57.000 Strong words.

00:04:59.000 Maybe AT&T's just misunderstood.

00:05:00.000 They also don't charge you for teethering either, which is another thing.

00:05:03.000 I think it's called tethering.

00:05:04.000 Tethering.

00:05:05.000 Teetherist, teether.

00:05:07.000 That's one of those that you don't really say that much, but you see written down a lot.

00:05:10.000 Yeah, it's like something else like some people say rolfing when it's like...

00:05:14.000 Oh, rolfing?

00:05:15.000 The massage thing?

00:05:17.000 No, no, no.

00:05:18.000 When you're rolling on the floor laughing.

00:05:20.000 Oh, RO. Yeah, rolling the floor laughing my ass off.

00:05:23.000 Some people say that.

00:05:24.000 It's like, what?

00:05:24.000 I've never heard that.

00:05:25.000 But people just spell it out.

00:05:27.000 Yeah, those people need help.

00:05:28.000 But yeah, they don't charge you for tethering, which you shouldn't have to pay for anyways.

00:05:34.000 You have to have a software button that turns on and off, that's why you have to pay for it.

00:05:39.000 Yeah, you're still using the same amount of data.

00:05:41.000 What do you care if I use it off my phone or my laptop?

00:05:44.000 Right.

00:05:44.000 I have the phone.

00:05:46.000 This is my phone, so it's not wearing out the phone.

00:05:48.000 There's no reason.

00:05:49.000 But with Tang, they give it to you for free, which is how it should be.

00:05:53.000 You also get free voicemail and stuff.

00:05:55.000 It comes with free stuff.

00:05:56.000 It's an ethical company.

00:05:58.000 It's a fair company.

00:06:00.000 And they have great phones.

00:06:01.000 They have the coolest Android phones including the Samsung Galaxy Note 2. Which is that big giant thing.

00:06:07.000 That's the one that you can, I mean, you really read websites on it, take pictures with it, you can watch movies on it, and looking at your photos on it is a completely different experience than a smaller phone.

00:06:15.000 You know, the people that try it, it's a pain in the ass for people to get used to, but once they try it and they get used to that giant screen, you don't ever want to go back to a little tiny baby screen.

00:06:24.000 This is what I want right here.

00:06:25.000 Oh, they have the Galaxy S4 now?

00:06:27.000 I want it.

00:06:27.000 Yeah.

00:06:27.000 It's amazing the technology that's available today, but The point is you don't have to lose technology to use the Ting service.

00:06:35.000 It's cheap.

00:06:36.000 It's awesome.

00:06:38.000 And if you go to rogan.ting.com, you'll save $25 off of either one of your new cell phones or the service.

00:06:46.000 So go and check it out, you freaks.

00:06:48.000 We're also brought to you by Onnit.com.

00:06:52.000 If you have never been to Onnit.com, the best way to describe it is it's a human performance website. 0.75

00:07:00.000 And damn am I tired of doing commercials about this.

00:07:03.000 It's impossible to think of new things to say about Onnit. 0.84

00:07:07.000 If you've never heard of it before though, it's a company that we sell like kettlebells and battle ropes and vitamins and it's all like stuff that is designed to help human performance.

00:07:21.000 Whether it's your endurance with Shroom Tech Sport or whether it's physical strength with things like battle ropes or maces.

00:07:29.000 And I know maces and clubs, they look like weapons, but they're not weapons, okay?

00:07:34.000 They're not.

00:07:35.000 They're just exercise equipment. 0.88

00:07:37.000 And it's exercise equipment that mimics the use of weapons because, believe it or not, those dudes who had to swing swords, you have to live in Game of Thrones time, you have to be strong as shit, man, to be able to swing a big giant piece of metal.

00:07:51.000 I'm not advocating any sword use, but I'm saying when you use something like that, like a steel mace or a steel club, using these weapon-like pieces of exercise equipment, it actually makes you use your body as one whole unit, and it improves your athletic performance in other areas.

00:08:12.000 We're good to go.

00:08:17.000 We're good to go.

00:08:39.000 And away we go.

00:08:40.000 The Joe Rogan Experience.

00:08:43.000 Train by day.

00:08:44.000 Joe Rogan Podcast by night.

00:08:45.000 All day.

00:08:46.000 Check it out.

00:08:54.000 Jesus Louisas.

00:08:57.000 What are we doing here?

00:08:58.000 We're sending emails.

00:08:59.000 I'll explain who the person on the podcast is today.

00:09:02.000 One of my favorite artists in the history of the universe.

00:09:04.000 How about that?

00:09:06.000 There's a small handful of people that I would have liked to meet more than you.

00:09:11.000 Having you on the podcast the first time was a true honor and a treat.

00:09:15.000 And it's just cool to be in contact with you.

00:09:18.000 I think you represent a very positive and a very unusual force in the world of art and in the world of consciousness as well.

00:09:29.000 Your artwork is so moving and so representative of the psychedelic state that it actually has an effect on people.

00:09:38.000 I think your artwork is probably some of the The most accurate psychedelic artwork I've ever seen. 0.99

00:09:47.000 I can't tell you how many people I've been with that have seen your artwork or seen one of your pieces for the first time and just went, Fuck! 0.98

00:09:56.000 That's like the usual reaction when they see one of your crazier pieces. 0.99

00:10:02.000 The one that I always think of when I think of you is these three faces.

00:10:06.000 They look like Egyptian sort of pharaoh type faces and they're all three.

00:10:11.000 One is facing forward and two on the sides and it just seems like a DMT trip.

00:10:16.000 It seems like you're tripping when you're watching it.

00:10:17.000 Right.

00:10:18.000 Yeah, it's an attempt to point to the embeddedness that we are in time, the flow of time, and yet that there is always a timeless being that we also are,

00:10:34.000 the witness of that being in time.

00:10:40.000 Why is that so terrifying?

00:10:42.000 Because we are in time and there's a countdown, you know, where none of us get out alive, etc., etc.

00:10:51.000 Yeah, hey Ray, hey, we love you.

00:10:54.000 Yeah, he just passed.

00:10:59.000 It really is a weird thing though to see it so clearly captured in artwork.

00:11:04.000 And it's one of the weirdest things that people point to when they point to either ancient religious art or...

00:11:12.000 You know, just various things where it's hard to find evidence of psychedelic use in their art.

00:11:22.000 It's hard to find moments where they – like this is one.

00:11:26.000 It's hard – there was nothing like this that came out of the old world.

00:11:31.000 And it's fascinating to me because if McKenna was right with this idea of the stoned ape theory and that mushrooms probably shaped human culture, it's like clearly there were long periods of time probably where people weren't getting that.

00:11:47.000 Yeah, but there was a continual evolution of the ability to express the dimensions of the world and of the imaginal worlds.

00:12:06.000 And you can see it from cave art, which they now believe That even the Neanderthal may have had early form of cave art.

00:12:18.000 So it wasn't just the Cro-Max, but we may have had ancestors who were also artists.

00:12:30.000 Yeah.

00:12:31.000 The cave art is one of the weirder things about ancient man.

00:12:36.000 Have you seen the Werner Herzog documentary about the ancient cave art?

00:12:40.000 I believe it was in France, is that where it was?

00:12:42.000 Yeah.

00:12:42.000 What is it called?

00:12:43.000 Cave of Dreams?

00:12:44.000 Yes.

00:12:47.000 I actually didn't see it, and I've heard all about it, and I really want to, you know, and I haven't yet.

00:12:53.000 Oh, it's one of those things, yeah.

00:12:55.000 Did you love it?

00:12:56.000 Yeah, I only got a chance, I was running out the door when it was on, so I only got a chance to see it for about an hour, but it was fascinating.

00:13:04.000 Just the idea that they were painting these incredible things, what was it, 30,000 years ago, 40,000 years ago, something crazy like that.

00:13:11.000 And this is some of the oldest stuff.

00:13:13.000 Just does the idea that you're looking at something that someone 40,000 years ago drew, it seems so insane.

00:13:20.000 But it also seems like a blip.

00:13:23.000 Exactly.

00:13:23.000 When you really stop and think about 40,000 years to go from that to us, from drawing on rocks as being your main form of expression, like drawing buffalo, to 40,000 years later taking pictures of yourself and sending them to people on the other side of the planet.

00:13:42.000 It's not that far.

00:13:44.000 30,000 years is like really quick to do that.

00:13:47.000 We're still making pictures.

00:13:50.000 Yeah.

00:13:50.000 And making pictures is becoming an even more important part of communication.

00:13:56.000 What do you think that is, that feeling that you get when you see a piece of art, when you see something beautiful?

00:14:03.000 When you see something, even if it's the same feeling for me, it's almost exactly the same thing.

00:14:08.000 When I see nature, a beautiful scene in nature, as I see a beautiful human creation.

00:14:14.000 So it seems to have no differentiation in my imagination.

00:14:19.000 When I see a beautiful sunset or a beautiful forest, you know?

00:14:24.000 In the mountains and a lake and that perfect classic scene.

00:14:27.000 Or if I see a beautiful painting or a beautiful piece of art, it's the same thing.

00:14:32.000 It gives you that, wow!

00:14:33.000 That's what we're looking for all the time.

00:14:35.000 This powerful expression.

00:14:38.000 We crave it.

00:14:39.000 I think it's actually something that human beings, you know, either secretly or not so secretly crave.

00:14:49.000 In looking at other people and in finding it in their lives, I kind of think that's almost an aesthetic and spiritual quest in itself.

00:15:04.000 To find the beauty in the moment, in every moment, is actually quite a Profound state to be in, you know?

00:15:18.000 Yeah.

00:15:19.000 It's just such a strange thing to be able to do.

00:15:22.000 You know, if you looked at it, if you were outside of human culture, and you said, what are they doing there?

00:15:28.000 They're creating beautiful things, and they all look at it and get a positive feeling from it.

00:15:32.000 Huh.

00:15:33.000 How strange.

00:15:35.000 Like, that image serves no other function other than to express themselves?

00:15:39.000 No, they can't eat it.

00:15:40.000 They don't make houses out of it.

00:15:42.000 They just make it and they look at it and stare at it and they think it's awesome.

00:15:46.000 Well, you know, in the back of the dollar bill, they have that somewhat Masonic-looking pyramid with the eye in the triangle floating above.

00:15:57.000 And so it's an unfinished pyramid.

00:16:00.000 And I've heard it interpreted as the individual or the nation as incomplete.

00:16:07.000 Without guidance by higher vision.

00:16:11.000 And so the aspiration for a higher vision is what distinguishes maybe a sacred art and a psychedelic art that aims at a universal kind of mystical visionary experience and just kind of fantasy art.

00:16:32.000 Because I think that with the Widespread use of psychedelics.

00:16:39.000 So many people have seen these realms that that's why it causes a bit of a When people see it sometimes, it's because they've seen it inside themselves, but maybe not outside themselves.

00:16:55.000 Yeah, it's almost like a familiar image. 0.96

00:16:59.000 Even though it's so bizarrely outrageous, you're just like, wow, have I seen this goddamn thing before? 0.95

00:17:07.000 What is it about? 0.98

00:17:08.000 Especially that one with the three heads.

00:17:10.000 That one really knocked my socks off.

00:17:12.000 Yeah.

00:17:14.000 You're going to make a whole building like that, man?

00:17:16.000 That's what the Entheon is about.

00:17:19.000 That's too much.

00:17:21.000 I can't take that.

00:17:22.000 Well, it's all the way around.

00:17:25.000 I know.

00:17:26.000 20-foot heads.

00:17:27.000 It's going to be the coolest place on the planet Earth.

00:17:30.000 That is, without a doubt, going to be the coolest building on the planet Earth.

00:17:36.000 There's nothing cooler than that.

00:17:37.000 You made an Alex Gray building.

00:17:41.000 And an Allison Gray building.

00:17:43.000 Yeah, exactly.

00:17:45.000 This is her sacred language that is the thing that binds the building together.

00:17:54.000 That looks straight out of a piece of the wreckage from Roswell.

00:17:59.000 That's what I would expect that writing to come from.

00:18:01.000 That looks awesome.

00:18:03.000 If human language...

00:18:04.000 That looks like something someone would get tattooed on them.

00:18:07.000 They wouldn't even know what it meant.

00:18:08.000 It just looks so cool.

00:18:10.000 Well, you know, I thought you could, you know, if you had like one head here and then it...

00:18:16.000 It could go completely around the body or something.

00:18:19.000 Oh, someone will do that now that you just suggested it.

00:18:23.000 Someone will definitely do that.

00:18:24.000 Or you could make a t-shirt or something.

00:18:27.000 Maybe that's a good move, yeah.

00:18:29.000 Are you going to sell t-shirts for me?

00:18:32.000 People would love to have this t-shirt, I guarantee you.

00:18:35.000 Well, you know, there's an Entheon t-shirt that we're going to be working on.

00:18:40.000 We should explain to people what Entheon is if they didn't listen to the first podcast.

00:18:47.000 Essentially, you've created your own religion.

00:18:50.000 Everybody's always said that wouldn't it be amazing if somebody created a religion...

00:18:54.000 That actually wasn't based on anything ancient or based on trying to get your money, but based on the true principles of love and the word that you like to use all the time, God.

00:19:08.000 You want to take that word back.

00:19:10.000 You're trying to take that word back from the Bible bangers. 0.88

00:19:12.000 But it's kind of an amazing thing to do because I know you and I know what you're about.

00:19:21.000 You're not doing this for any nefarious reasons.

00:19:23.000 You're doing it for the perfect reasons.

00:19:25.000 And that's really rare where someone has a voice and they choose to just go all in like that.

00:19:33.000 You've created religion, man. 0.87

00:19:35.000 Well, it's an orientation toward the spiritual.

00:19:43.000 Legitimately spiritual.

00:19:52.000 Embrace of the expanding and evolving spirit of humanity, we have to start thinking as a planetary civilization.

00:20:05.000 And the Internet has helped us all to form an image of a networked kind of distributed intelligence that goes all around the world.

00:20:19.000 Yeah, that's happened before people even realized it.

00:20:22.000 It's already crept up on people.

00:20:24.000 Exactly.

00:20:25.000 It's now kind of the ocean in which we swim, but by making note of it, we notice it.

00:20:36.000 Yeah.

00:20:37.000 And so by the power of that community that connects virtually with each other, The Kickstarter campaign for the building of Entheon has been going strongly and just creeping upward every day and just today broke the 100,000 mark.

00:21:07.000 We're going toward 125, and we've got about nine days left.

00:21:13.000 So how do they get to this, if people want to contribute to this Kickstarter?

00:21:16.000 Well, they can go to kickstarter.com and go Entheon.

00:21:23.000 Where do they put that?

00:21:24.000 In the search.

00:21:26.000 I just Googled Alex.

00:21:27.000 There you go.

00:21:27.000 Oh, there you go.

00:21:29.000 Okay, just Google that.

00:21:31.000 Google Alex Craig Kickstarter.

00:21:34.000 And what you're doing is essentially you're building a temple.

00:21:39.000 You're building a work of art.

00:21:42.000 It's kind of fascinating because if a lot of people who believe that psychedelic drugs are at the heart of almost all religions and psychedelic experience and psychedelic imagery in ancient religious artwork where there's things that represent mushrooms and shapes that are mushrooms.

00:22:02.000 These incredible buildings that have been built for religion.

00:22:06.000 I mean if you really stop and think about some of the greatest architectural achievements, it's been like the most beautiful ones have been the ones that were created for religions.

00:22:14.000 It's like they – in whatever part of what they are that is good, wanting to achieve some higher level, they've done it with their art, with their architecture, with You look at some of the ancient Roman architecture that's dedicated to the Catholic Church,

00:22:30.000 it's staggering stuff.

00:22:32.000 Outside of the creepiness of the Catholic Church, which is undeniable, and I came from it, the architectural artwork is just masterful.

00:22:41.000 It's stunning.

00:22:42.000 It's like nothing else, you know...

00:22:46.000 Michelangelo.

00:22:46.000 Yeah, there you go.

00:22:47.000 There you go.

00:22:48.000 You know, the greatest of all geniuses, artistic, you know, architectural and his paintings and sculptures.

00:22:58.000 Do you think that any of those guys tripped?

00:23:02.000 Well, you know, he was a Neoplatonist.

00:23:07.000 What does that mean?

00:23:09.000 Well, that means he was an idealist and that he had just become familiar with the We're looking at the image in 3D. That is insane.

00:23:20.000 Yeah, yeah.

00:23:21.000 I'm sorry, so keep going.

00:23:23.000 Yeah, exactly.

00:23:24.000 So you spun around a little bit and got to see all the heads.

00:23:28.000 That's cool.

00:23:29.000 That is amazing.

00:23:32.000 So all these works are going to be on view within Entheon.

00:23:37.000 Dude, you can change people's lives just with these pictures.

00:23:41.000 They're so trippy.

00:23:42.000 They make you like that one right there.

00:23:44.000 That makes you go, okay, what is real and what's not real?

00:23:47.000 That thing's too freaky.

00:23:49.000 Yeah.

00:23:50.000 What is reality?

00:23:52.000 Why is that image so familiar?

00:23:55.000 Because we are connected with everything, you know?

00:23:58.000 I mean, look, all the mystic traditions talk about there's only one of us.

00:24:07.000 Right.

00:24:07.000 All of them, yeah.

00:24:09.000 And so that's the foundation of the understanding is a sense of oneness.

00:24:21.000 The idea of the networked self and of a planetary sense of humanity is, I think, wearing away the nationhood and nation-state I deal toward a hopeful and democratic but will struggle for some time with that.

00:24:46.000 Yeah, I think it's a possibility.

00:24:47.000 I have hope for people.

00:24:49.000 I really do.

00:24:50.000 And I think the internet is what gives me the most hope because I think that it's the first time people have ever had a straight pipe.

00:24:58.000 Everybody has a straight pipe to everybody else and information is settling and people are starting to understand, they have a greater understanding of what constitutes a happy life and how to achieve happiness and how to Surround yourself with positive people and how to express yourself in a healthy way.

00:25:19.000 And that's all the Internet.

00:25:20.000 The Internet has given people, I think, a way better understanding of life itself than any generation has ever had before.

00:25:27.000 And so to have this and to create it with the Internet.

00:25:32.000 It's kind of perfect.

00:25:35.000 It's kind of beautiful.

00:25:36.000 Yeah, like crowdsourcing sacred space.

00:25:40.000 It could only happen today with friends.

00:25:46.000 Well, because of people like you, though, that are doing things like that, that's one of the reasons why I have faith.

00:25:51.000 It's one of the reasons why I think that...

00:25:54.000 I know a lot of people gravitate towards your stuff.

00:25:56.000 A lot of people gravitate towards your words.

00:25:58.000 And they gravitate towards your artwork.

00:26:00.000 And I think that gives me hope.

00:26:01.000 I think that there's people that are trying to put themselves on a good frequency.

00:26:07.000 And there's people that are not.

00:26:08.000 There's people that are just unbelievably negative.

00:26:10.000 They'll never let it go.

00:26:11.000 Sure.

00:26:12.000 But they're at that phase of the alchemical journey of healing.

00:26:18.000 Maybe.

00:26:19.000 It's like, I don't know.

00:26:23.000 It's all, I think...

00:26:25.000 There's a spectrum, for sure.

00:26:27.000 There's a spectrum of fortune, luck, the luck of the draw of where you were born, who you're associated with, your family.

00:26:36.000 That's an undeniable...

00:26:38.000 Luck of the draw.

00:26:39.000 I thank every day I grew up with the people I grew up with.

00:26:44.000 I got really lucky with my parents.

00:26:46.000 They were really nice.

00:26:47.000 That's not the case with everybody, and that's luck.

00:26:51.000 Some people are just born into such a massive deficit.

00:26:56.000 I got a few years on you, I think.

00:27:02.000 I recently read about a Schopenhauer essay where he talks about how almost everyone at a certain age looks back on their life and even events that appeared random during their occurrence appeared to have been fated.

00:27:25.000 And took them in a particular direction and that really had become very important for them.

00:27:33.000 And so it's curious because, I mean, it was like that with meeting Allison.

00:27:41.000 It was like that with taking LSD. It was, you know, there...

00:27:49.000 Momentous and life-changing kind of occurrences and they can turn you from a sour And suicidal person to a person that has a love for life and a commitment to trying to leave the most...

00:28:15.000 the gift that you've been sort of requested to perform.

00:28:27.000 You know, the service you've been asked to perform.

00:28:31.000 What do you mean by that?

00:28:32.000 Well, Entheon is a sanctuary of visionary art and that's always been our aspiration is to provide a more, on a more permanent basis,

00:28:48.000 of course that's still an aspiration at this point, but That we did acquire the land of 40-acre property and we do have permission now after over a couple of years of negotiation and preparation of site plan and getting site plan approval from the town.

00:29:11.000 We now have the permission to build Entheon and it is And the Kickstarter has been a way of connecting with this net of beings that have also taken on the imagining of it with us and the financing of it.

00:29:32.000 Where do you see this going?

00:29:34.000 Do you see this becoming Entheon?

00:29:36.000 Once Entheon is built, what if a bunch of people want to move into the property?

00:29:42.000 Would you consider setting houses?

00:29:43.000 We have a guest house.

00:29:44.000 You have a guest house?

00:29:45.000 Yes, we have a guest house to receive them and it is open now for business.

00:29:51.000 We've been hosting numerous people that come and stay there already.

00:29:56.000 We're open on a more weekly basis now.

00:30:02.000 But it's just a beautiful time of the year, and there's wisdom trails you can walk around, and there's some art in the house.

00:30:09.000 The cosmic Christ is there.

00:30:11.000 How far in is the construction process?

00:30:14.000 Well, we have done reinforcing of the carriage house around which this building is going to be, the heads are going to be clad.

00:30:25.000 And for folks who are just listening on iTunes, you can see it if you go to alexgray.com and go look at some of the images.

00:30:41.000 It's the weirdest, craziest, coolest looking building I've ever seen in my life.

00:30:44.000 And if you do completely build it this way, it's really going to be one of the coolest things on earth.

00:30:50.000 I mean it's a building that's a work of art and it's a stunning work of art.

00:30:54.000 It really is badass.

00:30:56.000 It's very interesting because it makes a statement and I see it as within a lineage of the development of different kinds of sacred architecture and just one other little bud on that tree.

00:31:13.000 But it's attempting to point to the underlying Unity of the quest for wisdom and compassion and all the different religious quests and that they have, they share also in common the angel of creative expression which is the imagination and all World religions were born in the creative imagination

00:31:44.000 with the visionary mystical experience.

00:31:48.000 There was the founding of Islam on the journey of Muhammad to the seventh heaven, and he encounters many visionary kinds of dimensions on the way.

00:32:10.000 You know, receives his wisdom.

00:32:12.000 And, you know, you have Mary receiving an angel.

00:32:18.000 You know, you have Moses talking to a burning bush.

00:32:23.000 All of these are visionary mystical experiences and they're the foundations of many of the world religions.

00:32:31.000 Mara is dispelled in the visionary experience with the Buddha.

00:32:38.000 The soldiers, the Buddha turns the arrows into flowers.

00:32:43.000 These are all kinds of visionary, mystical contact with an infinite, intermediate realm between the physical, material world and the transcendental world.

00:32:58.000 And all the really mystical traditions have them.

00:33:07.000 We've just kind of lost track of them, except now we've recovered them through psychedelics.

00:33:13.000 Do you think that that was the heart of – you feel like that was the heart of all organized religion?

00:33:19.000 That originally it was some sort of a psychedelic experience?

00:33:22.000 Well, a mystical experience.

00:33:25.000 So it could have been like yoga or kundalini or something like that?

00:33:28.000 It can happen on the natch and it has for many but for some fasting and there are numerous kinds of austerities and things like that.

00:33:43.000 It could have been a natural part of life.

00:33:46.000 Yes, I haven't been eating for three days, but the water is a little tasting funny.

00:33:52.000 And lo and behold, there's a vision and an angel appears.

00:33:56.000 People would say, hey, yeah, you're about to die.

00:33:59.000 You're hallucinating.

00:34:00.000 Yeah.

00:34:01.000 Or just eat this and you'll be okay soon.

00:34:06.000 So you can go to the edge and see the other world as well.

00:34:10.000 And that It can be valid as well.

00:34:15.000 One of the weird things about psychedelics is people always, even if it was one of the most profound experiences ever and one of the most amazing experiences ever, people will tell you, yeah, but it was just your mind playing tricks on you.

00:34:30.000 Like, it doesn't matter.

00:34:31.000 And you can go, okay, but whether I really did travel to another dimension and communicate with infinite beings that were made out of love and understanding, who told me the secret to life is positive energy and positive...

00:34:45.000 Even if it was just my imagination, I still experienced it.

00:34:49.000 I experienced it as if it was real.

00:34:51.000 So whether it was real or whether it wasn't real, I get the exact same result.

00:34:55.000 Something happened that was unbelievably incredible.

00:34:58.000 It took me to some place that was infinitely beautiful, and then something happened to me.

00:35:02.000 Either that happened or it didn't happen.

00:35:03.000 Well, it definitely happened.

00:35:04.000 It doesn't matter if it was imaginary.

00:35:06.000 It doesn't matter if it was only inside my head.

00:35:08.000 The whole world comes out of the inside of your head.

00:35:11.000 When we're kids, I remember when I was a kid, they would say like, oh, he's got such an imagination, this one.

00:35:17.000 It was talking about kids that were liars.

00:35:19.000 That's how people treated the imagination. 0.95

00:35:21.000 The kids were just fibbers.

00:35:23.000 Because that's imagination to some people.

00:35:25.000 Some people, they didn't think it was something to be encouraged.

00:35:29.000 But it's really where everything comes from.

00:35:31.000 And that's the weirdest thing about it, is the imagination conjures up an idea which becomes a laptop.

00:35:37.000 It conjures up an idea which becomes an airplane.

00:35:40.000 It all comes from the imagination.

00:35:42.000 Whether it's artistic, whether it's a song, whether it's a joke, it's the weirdest thing ever.

00:35:48.000 And everybody wants to pretend that it's so normal. 0.97

00:35:50.000 It's so normal you're just thinking shit up out of the middle of fucking nowhere and creating nuclear power. 0.97

00:35:56.000 You know, what did you do? 0.99

00:35:57.000 You sat down and you wrote some stuff on a pad and then you figured it out?

00:36:01.000 Where's this all coming from?

00:36:02.000 Where's the idea to even do that coming from? 0.98

00:36:05.000 Where's the idea that some guy wants to be like a fucking bird and put wings on and figure out how to fly? 0.98

00:36:10.000 And he eventually figures it out. 0.98

00:36:11.000 Now we just travel all over the world and we don't think anything of it.

00:36:14.000 I mean, the imagination is crazy.

00:36:16.000 The imagination has done some amazing things for human beings in this world.

00:36:21.000 And yet we still don't give it the credit it deserves.

00:36:24.000 It's kind of shocking.

00:36:25.000 Imagination is like the most underrated thing of all time.

00:36:28.000 And yet it's the foundation of all our advancement and evolution.

00:36:32.000 And people are like, what you need is to work hard. 0.99

00:36:34.000 Don't have a fucking imagination sitting there seeing some shit that's not there. 1.00

00:36:39.000 All right? 1.00

00:36:41.000 Well, I think that that's the other thing that the visionary experience with psychedelics does is it convinces people of the existence of the realms.

00:36:55.000 And if they, you know, suddenly find themselves in a DMT space, you know, it's like very unsettling, perhaps.

00:37:04.000 But then at least you can see that there is a there there.

00:37:11.000 There is an infinite there there.

00:37:13.000 And so this inner consciousness experience that the The one self is having through us is something I'm just fascinated by.

00:37:31.000 I'm fascinated by how the mystics get at the one.

00:37:34.000 Do you think, and this has always been a very strange one amongst the mushroom connoisseurs of the world, some believe that in consuming that life form Which is really closer to animal than it is to plant,

00:37:50.000 right?

00:37:50.000 Yes.

00:37:51.000 And consuming that mushroom, what you're doing is that's how it communicates with you.

00:37:55.000 That's right.

00:37:56.000 And then these visions that you're getting, this information that you're getting, just almost downloaded to you in a way that you can't understand or even comprehend most of it.

00:38:04.000 I always describe trying to remember what you're learning on mushrooms like trying to grab fish in a river. 0.97

00:38:13.000 I can't fucking grab anything. 0.96

00:38:15.000 I can't hold on to it. 0.98

00:38:16.000 It's just too crazy.

00:38:17.000 I'm seeing too much.

00:38:18.000 I'm trying to calm down, but I'm seeing too much.

00:38:20.000 And then you sort of go, oh, okay, this is where everything comes from.

00:38:26.000 It comes from this crazy place.

00:38:28.000 Yeah.

00:38:29.000 The endless imagination and in flowing streams just like that.

00:38:34.000 And most of the big ones get away.

00:38:37.000 And then a few are just life-altering.

00:38:43.000 And the thing that really welded Allison and I together, because it was my first acid trip in her apartment that opened me up to the world of light and the world of a higher possibility.

00:39:02.000 Beyond suicide and nihilism and all that.

00:39:05.000 Was that how you were approaching life?

00:39:07.000 Yeah.

00:39:09.000 What do you think the cause of that is?

00:39:12.000 Is that environmental?

00:39:13.000 Is it behavioral?

00:39:15.000 Is it pattern that you get into?

00:39:17.000 Well, let's see.

00:39:19.000 I was 20, 21, and probably there's something chemical going on.

00:39:25.000 Hormonal changes?

00:39:26.000 Possibly.

00:39:27.000 I was wondering whether I was crazy.

00:39:33.000 We had a steady diet of kind of nihilist and existentialist authors and it reinforced the sense of absurdity because I thought that was what sophisticated artists would want to put into their work was a healthy dose of nihilism and cynicism and sarcasm and all that and yet that also felt very wrong.

00:39:59.000 It's very competitive.

00:40:02.000 I don't know.

00:40:04.000 Anyway, I was struggling with this kind of polarity kind of situation and prone to extremes and things like that.

00:40:14.000 My prayer in the morning was basically You know, God, if you exist, you know, show yourself because I'm tired of life, you know.

00:40:29.000 At 21, right.

00:40:30.000 Oh my God, that's so crazy.

00:40:33.000 And so it was kind of like a challenge.

00:40:35.000 It was kind of like, yeah, right, show me.

00:40:39.000 And so, and I was, nothing happened.

00:40:43.000 It's art school.

00:40:44.000 I was saying goodbye to my professor on the corner.

00:40:46.000 Around the corner comes Allison in a VW. Says, hey, I'm having a party later tonight.

00:40:52.000 Hey, why don't you come on over?

00:40:53.000 And the professor picks me up and says, hey, I've got some clue in acid.

00:41:00.000 And so, hey, I was going to kill myself.

00:41:03.000 The professor had acid? 0.54

00:41:04.000 Yeah.

00:41:05.000 What a cool professor.

00:41:06.000 He was very cool.

00:41:07.000 You don't get those kind of professors anymore.

00:41:09.000 Was that Columbus College of Art and Design?

00:41:10.000 No.

00:41:11.000 I was out in the museum school in California.

00:41:16.000 Boston.

00:41:17.000 In Boston?

00:41:18.000 Yeah.

00:41:18.000 That's where we met.

00:41:20.000 Oh, wow.

00:41:21.000 Yeah, in conceptual art.

00:41:23.000 Where's that?

00:41:24.000 Of course.

00:41:24.000 Let's see, it's on the Fenway, you know, near Gardner Museum, where the Museum of Fine Arts is.

00:41:31.000 I grew up in Newton.

00:41:32.000 The suburb.

00:41:33.000 I went back recently.

00:41:36.000 It was really interesting.

00:41:37.000 We were driving around.

00:41:38.000 I forgot how historic certain parts of Boston are.

00:41:43.000 When you look at graveyards that are from the 1600s and really old buildings, you're like, wow, I forgot.

00:41:50.000 This is a historic town.

00:41:53.000 Well, I always felt very much at home in Boston.

00:41:57.000 Did you hang around with any Irish drunks?

00:41:59.000 Because that would change your mind.

00:42:00.000 With the quickness. 0.88

00:42:02.000 Irish drunks on coke. 0.86

00:42:04.000 I knew a lot of those.

00:42:06.000 Italian ones as well.

00:42:07.000 I don't want to discriminate.

00:42:08.000 The people that I liked was the kind of philosophical tradition that was there.

00:42:14.000 I loved Emerson for instance and Thoreau and William James there at Harvard and then later Tim Leary and Ram Dass and those guys.

00:42:25.000 And so there was a tradition of a kind of altered states and they did a lot of the experimentation, the original experiments with Walter Pankey when he did the Good Friday experiment.

00:42:39.000 It's an amazing city as far as like education goes.

00:42:42.000 I think it has more colleges per capita than anywhere else in the world or in the country rather.

00:42:47.000 And I also think if you think about like Harvard and MIT both in the same city.

00:42:52.000 I mean it's Cambridge but what are the odds of that?

00:42:55.000 Cambridge is basically Boston.

00:42:57.000 It's the same thing.

00:42:59.000 It's like, wow, what a crazy town for smart people.

00:43:02.000 Oh my God.

00:43:03.000 If they were so smart, why would they be there?

00:43:04.000 It's so cold.

00:43:06.000 Well, they hunker in and work hard.

00:43:10.000 Yeah, it makes you a hard worker. 0.96

00:43:12.000 That's for damn sure. 0.83

00:43:13.000 You grow up with a work ethic. 0.96

00:43:15.000 I grew up, I learned how to work hard because everyone around me worked hard.

00:43:18.000 Look at you.

00:43:19.000 I got lucky.

00:43:20.000 No, well, for sure, trust me, there's a lot of luck involved. 0.97

00:43:24.000 But, you know, growing up with people in Boston, like, it really definitely, when that fucking winter comes, man, you gotta be prepared. 0.98

00:43:33.000 See, I love California, but there's something about it, like, I even look at my kids and I'm like, you know what, it'd do you good to freeze your ass off every now and then. 0.99

00:43:42.000 It could do you good to realize that you got to get in the house because it's cold outside, you know, to know that that shit's out there. 0.99

00:43:48.000 I think there's a humility that comes with having to deal with weather. 0.99

00:43:52.000 And unfortunately, as we're saying this podcast, a bunch of people died in Oklahoma with a horrible tornado.

00:43:59.000 So, you know, we have to acknowledge how sad that is and how fucking crazy it is that there's a part of the world where The sky becomes an angry machine, monster, you know, spinning wind that picks up semi-trailers and sends them flying through the air.

00:44:16.000 That is horrific. 0.71

00:44:17.000 Move out of Oklahoma, by the way.

00:44:19.000 What's that?

00:44:20.000 Move out of Oklahoma, by the way.

00:44:22.000 Well, a lot of them can't, man.

00:44:23.000 That's the problem.

00:44:24.000 A lot of people are poor, you know, and they've been there for years, and their family's there. 1.00

00:44:28.000 It's not that easy to just kind of pack up your shit. 1.00

00:44:31.000 Just go to Michigan. 1.00

00:44:32.000 It's cheaper.

00:44:33.000 It's definitely cheaper.

00:44:35.000 More bullets, though.

00:44:37.000 Maybe.

00:44:37.000 Around Detroit, apparently.

00:44:39.000 Detroit is like the worst place in the world to be a book.

00:44:44.000 They say that Detroit has a 47% illiteracy rate in Detroit.

00:44:49.000 Did you make that up?

00:44:50.000 I just made it up.

00:44:50.000 That's hilarious.

00:44:52.000 It's crazy if you really stop and think about it.

00:44:55.000 47% illiteracy rate?

00:44:56.000 What is going on?

00:44:58.000 No one's paying attention to anybody.

00:45:00.000 The government should absolutely focus on situations like that.

00:45:06.000 The idea that we shouldn't intervene in places where it's gotten so out of hand that half the people can't read.

00:45:11.000 That should be thought of as an epidemic.

00:45:13.000 Because all of those people that can't read are going to give birth to children that probably can't read either. 1.00

00:45:18.000 And you have thousands, if not millions of people who can't read, and then they're going to enter into the world unprepared, unprepared to communicate, to exchange information, to be able to find things out for themselves.

00:45:29.000 I have to take a bunch of people's words for things because you can't read things.

00:45:32.000 I mean there's so much involved in being illiterate.

00:45:34.000 The fact that there's like millions of potential crazy people that are going to go through life completely illiterate in 2013 and no one is up in arms about that.

00:45:44.000 It's really kind of shocking.

00:45:46.000 It is and it's something each one of us has to focus on in whatever way we can.

00:45:54.000 Yeah, it's hard to make a person.

00:45:57.000 It's hard to raise a human being.

00:45:59.000 It's not an easy thing.

00:46:00.000 And when we're looking at human beings that are being raised in really terrible conditions, it should be one of the first things the whole world concentrates on.

00:46:12.000 Before you concentrate on—I mean, it sounds so hippie, but it seems like if you really want to have a happy life, you've got to be doing more good than you are harm.

00:46:20.000 And there's got to be a way to do that first.

00:46:25.000 There's got to be a way to say, look, there's X amount of people in the world that are starving.

00:46:29.000 Let's all globally chip in to try to stop that from happening so that these starving people don't have starving children who never get a chance to get some momentum in life and be comfortable and happy.

00:46:40.000 It never comes.

00:46:41.000 It never comes.

00:46:42.000 To just give them a chance?

00:46:44.000 Wouldn't that be like the most important thing you could ever do?

00:46:46.000 It would seem.

00:46:47.000 As a race?

00:46:48.000 It would seem.

00:46:48.000 To stop the worst conditions.

00:46:51.000 To stop the worst conditions.

00:46:53.000 But Sam Kinison had the best bit about that.

00:46:55.000 Oh, it was so cruel, but it was so amazing.

00:46:57.000 What'd he say?

00:46:58.000 He was talking about Ethiopian children.

00:47:00.000 Oh, they have those commercials.

00:47:01.000 He's always like, just fix yourself some dinner.

00:47:03.000 You're sitting there in this commercial, and he's like, won't you help him?

00:47:07.000 Won't you send it?

00:47:08.000 He's like, why don't you help him?

00:47:10.000 You're only five feet away.

00:47:12.000 He's got behind the camera.

00:47:13.000 He's got a Snickers bar going, not now, not now.

00:47:15.000 Shut the camera.

00:47:16.000 It was one of the best bits ever.

00:47:18.000 He was like, we have deserts in America too. 1.00

00:47:20.000 We just don't live in them, asshole. 1.00

00:47:22.000 Yeah, like he said that we, you know, I forget how it goes. 0.99

00:47:25.000 It's something about, yeah, we sent, we came over here with your food and it occurred to us that you wouldn't need food if you people would move where the food is. 0.99

00:47:34.000 Like you live in a fucking desert. 0.99

00:47:36.000 And he grabs him and he puts his face in the sand. 1.00

00:47:38.000 See who that is?

00:47:39.000 That's sand.

00:47:40.000 You know what's going to be a thousand years from now? 1.00

00:47:41.000 Fucking sand! 1.00

00:47:43.000 It's a terrible, mean bit. 1.00

00:47:45.000 Even though Kennison's dead.

00:47:47.000 Long dead.

00:47:48.000 Still, it's such a mean bit.

00:47:50.000 But it was hilarious. 0.97

00:47:52.000 It crossed that line of being fucking mean but so funny. 1.00

00:47:57.000 Like, oh, you motherfucker. 1.00

00:47:58.000 Oh, God. 1.00

00:47:59.000 He was a wild motherfucker, Sam Kennison. 1.00

00:48:03.000 Incredible. 1.00

00:48:04.000 We were talking about Hicks before the show started.

00:48:06.000 Yeah.

00:48:07.000 We both thought that Hicks was the first truly psychedelic comedian who had psychedelic ideas that he was putting forth.

00:48:17.000 Some of them weren't even that funny.

00:48:19.000 They were just incredibly profound. 0.72

00:48:21.000 That it was in the middle of some other shit that was funny was what was so weird about it. 0.94

00:48:25.000 Right, right. 0.98

00:48:26.000 And that's how he would drop those meaningful mind bombs into your psyche so that They kind of melted and stayed.

00:48:39.000 He knew how to kind of stain your consciousness with a new perception.

00:48:49.000 And a lot of his stuff still holds up.

00:48:51.000 Totally.

00:48:52.000 Especially if you haven't heard it before.

00:48:54.000 It still holds up.

00:48:56.000 Because what he was saying about the Bush administration, the first Bush administration, by the way, that was when he was railing against a machine.

00:49:06.000 It's just like you could just take it and substitute the words and it works today.

00:49:10.000 It worked with George W. It works with Obama.

00:49:14.000 The material works.

00:49:16.000 Just substitute this guy for that guy and it's still relevant.

00:49:20.000 He gave birth to a whole completely different style of comedian.

00:49:25.000 The style of comedian that came after him was like they wanted to educate you. 1.00

00:49:30.000 Which is really weird because some of them were idiots. 1.00

00:49:32.000 So there was on the wall of the back, the green room at the Dallas, no, the Atlanta punchline, there's a big sign that says, don't stop trying to be hicks. 1.00

00:49:44.000 Oh, quit trying to be hicks.

00:49:46.000 Yeah.

00:49:47.000 Because there were so many guys that were doing that.

00:49:49.000 There were so many guys.

00:49:50.000 Wow.

00:49:51.000 Yeah, it was just so amazing to watch that he like, I mean, Dr. Amit Goswami, he's a physicist, one of those particle guys, had a funny thing to say about people that were sort of faking it.

00:50:06.000 He was like, he goes, let them.

00:50:08.000 He goes, I let them use the word quantum if they don't understand it, because maybe it'll have them seek to understand it now.

00:50:16.000 And I remember hearing, I'm like, wow.

00:50:18.000 That's so profound.

00:50:20.000 That's interesting.

00:50:21.000 I would have never thought that far ahead.

00:50:23.000 Like, he's, like, letting people fake it, not calling them on it, just so they just keep looking into it.

00:50:30.000 If they're intrigued, then why should he be the stop?

00:50:34.000 Exactly. 0.99

00:50:35.000 Why should he be able to, like, listen, bitch, you know you don't know what you're talking about. 1.00

00:50:43.000 Hicks made a lot of people aware of psychedelics, too. 0.99

00:50:46.000 There was a lot of people that did not know anything about heroic doses or any of that shit. 0.91

00:50:51.000 Hicks was the first stand-up comedian to ever talk about things that way. 0.98

00:50:55.000 The other ones that would talk about mushrooms, they would be like, hey, we did mushrooms, and we got all goofy, and Bobby thought he was a horse.

00:51:03.000 That's usually the story.

00:51:06.000 What Hicks was describing was like, what is this guy seeing?

00:51:10.000 How come it's different than everybody else that takes mushrooms?

00:51:13.000 I think it was so interesting and fascinating when he would talk about it that it just led a lot of people to explore that.

00:51:21.000 I think he was another kind of apostle in a kind of nightclub setting.

00:51:29.000 Yeah, and digitally he still is.

00:51:31.000 We can still hear his words.

00:51:32.000 Exactly.

00:51:33.000 Because we resonate with the authenticity and the rawness that he projected and with a psychedelic perspective that allowed him a kind of brutal honesty and yet There was something remarkably magnetic because he was like a laser about the truth it seemed.

00:51:59.000 That was what he wanted to be about even at the – and to reveal a kind of underlying darkness was something that he was an expert at.

00:52:18.000 Yeah, he really was. 0.98

00:52:20.000 And he had a lot of references that he would use in his material that would make you seek out other shit. 0.96

00:52:27.000 Like what Terrence McKenna would call a heroic dose, you know? 0.99

00:52:30.000 And I was like, who the fuck is Terrence McKenna? 0.98

00:52:31.000 And then I started reading about Terrence McKenna going, whoa, this guy. 1.00

00:52:35.000 Holy shit. 0.99

00:52:36.000 I started reading Food of the Gods, and I was like, oh my god. 0.99

00:52:39.000 I'm like, where's this guy been?

00:52:40.000 You know, I mean, Hicks exposes people, or did expose people.

00:52:43.000 Yes, he did.

00:52:44.000 And then once you got into the McKenna door, then you were off to the races.

00:52:47.000 Yeah.

00:52:48.000 Once you start listening to those McKenna MP3s that are available online, you want to talk about something that will just crack your consciousness.

00:52:55.000 Those McKenna MP3s of some of those lectures that he gave, he just...

00:52:59.000 That guy had a very strange way of thinking.

00:53:03.000 Yes.

00:53:03.000 I used to think of him as the...

00:53:06.000 The spokesmonkey for the mushroom, you know, that he was kind of plugged in to that.

00:53:14.000 But he and his brother are both extraordinary in their intersection with the plant kingdom and the fungal kingdom.

00:53:24.000 And Cat McKenna as well, who continues the work at Botanical Dimensions.

00:53:30.000 What is it?

00:53:31.000 Was it a story they told of La Chujera where they took too much and Dennis kind of went radio silent for a couple of weeks?

00:53:40.000 Went completely crazy for a while?

00:53:43.000 Yes.

00:53:43.000 They're dealing with dinner plate size mushrooms and they're eating them all day.

00:53:49.000 Would you like to interview Dennis?

00:53:51.000 I've had him on.

00:53:52.000 Oh, you've had him on?

00:53:53.000 I bet you did.

00:53:54.000 Oh, he was great.

00:53:54.000 With the Brothers of the Screaming Abyss?

00:53:56.000 Yeah, yeah.

00:53:57.000 We talked about his book.

00:53:58.000 Awesome.

00:53:58.000 We just talked about psychedelics.

00:54:00.000 And we talked very specifically about the actual science behind the possibility of psychedelics creating language, particularly psilocybin.

00:54:10.000 And he was explaining how it would make sense that language was created through the use of psilocybin by Virtue of the effect that psilocybin has in a very scientific way that I can't recreate.

00:54:23.000 Interesting.

00:54:24.000 Yeah, and I was like, oh, I never even heard anybody say it that way before.

00:54:27.000 But that completely makes sense.

00:54:28.000 Yeah.

00:54:29.000 Obviously one theory, and I don't understand really what he's saying.

00:54:32.000 It just sounds awesome.

00:54:33.000 You know, I don't know whether or not there's some science to it where other people might disagree with it.

00:54:37.000 Let's say that it's commonplace for people to want to express themselves creatively.

00:54:44.000 In the wake of a psychedelic experience.

00:54:47.000 Yeah.

00:54:47.000 I was going to ask you though.

00:54:48.000 Why do you think that is that people would dismiss that?

00:54:51.000 Why do you think it is that people would ridicule that?

00:54:56.000 Like someone saying that you actually learned something from a psychedelic experience.

00:55:00.000 You say that to the average person and they'll look at you with ridicule.

00:55:05.000 Like how did that happen do you think?

00:55:07.000 Well, I – I'd like the listeners to help us think of a word to place that in the same context as homophobia or misogyny or Something like racism.

00:55:32.000 Why do people who alter their consciousness or who speak of it inspire the hysteria in people that don't take them?

00:55:49.000 That's a great line.

00:55:52.000 Yeah, well, I think that for a lot of folks, first of all, they equate drugs with bad.

00:55:59.000 They think of drugs – the problem is meth is a drug too, and meth wrecks lives.

00:56:06.000 Cocaine is a drug too. 0.92

00:56:07.000 Cocaine fucks people up.

00:56:08.000 But then there's pot, which doesn't, and then there's mushrooms, which doesn't. 0.61

00:56:12.000 These are – they're all drugs though.

00:56:14.000 Well, I mean you could look at some as a food drug.

00:56:17.000 And it's better maybe to classify some as a sacrament that have been a sacrament for longer than they were a, quote, drug.

00:56:28.000 They were a way that people connected with the higher dimensions.

00:56:35.000 What is the term entheogen?

00:56:37.000 What is the actual translation of that?

00:56:40.000 Entheo.

00:56:41.000 Theo, of course, is god or the divine.

00:56:44.000 And Entheo would be the divine within.

00:56:47.000 A bunch of dudes that are really douchey just decided to name their son Theo after hearing that.

00:56:53.000 That's my boy, the god.

00:56:56.000 The god Theo. 0.97

00:56:58.000 Fucking awesome. 0.97

00:57:00.000 So that's what Entheogen means. 0.98

00:57:02.000 Yeah.

00:57:02.000 So it's from the god?

00:57:04.000 It's a way to discover or a...

00:57:10.000 A substance that allows you to discover the God within or the divine within, the spirit within.

00:57:16.000 I don't blame people that discriminate against psychedelics if they haven't had psychedelics.

00:57:23.000 I think it's just an ignorance thing.

00:57:25.000 I think people have a lot of bad ideas and they don't necessarily think it's their responsibility to be right about something that they haven't experienced themselves.

00:57:35.000 And that is – in society, it's sort of – it's looked down upon.

00:57:39.000 It's looked down upon to alter your consciousness like that, that if you do it, you're probably looking to escape reality.

00:57:44.000 That's like the standard take on it.

00:57:46.000 Yet many of these people would consider themselves to be religious people.

00:57:50.000 Sure.

00:57:51.000 A lot of them.

00:57:52.000 So if you look at the foundations of all world religions as we've just gone through it, we can see that they were based on this visionary mystical experience.

00:58:02.000 Which is what we're saying is of value for everyone.

00:58:06.000 Yeah, but Alex, that was thousands of years ago.

00:58:08.000 We don't want it anymore.

00:58:10.000 If Jesus came around today, no one would believe him.

00:58:13.000 If there was some dude that was claiming that he was the son of God, he was giving wisdom to everybody, they'd probably put him in Guantanamo Bay. 1.00

00:58:20.000 There's no way they would let that guy just run around running shit. 0.99

00:58:22.000 I think there's a lot of... 0.99

00:58:23.000 People, God-inspired people are on the loose.

00:58:29.000 Oh, for sure.

00:58:30.000 They're just like spores.

00:58:31.000 Yeah, absolutely.

00:58:32.000 But the idea of the one, a messiah coming back, a magical messiah with power to bring back people from the dead...

00:58:40.000 Did I already say my theory about the second coming?

00:58:45.000 No.

00:58:46.000 I would love to hear it.

00:58:47.000 You're smiling like a little kid right now.

00:58:48.000 Okay, because I thought I repeat myself endlessly.

00:58:52.000 Welcome to the podcast.

00:58:54.000 That's what we do here.

00:58:57.000 Okay, so the first coming of Christ was the revelation of the connection of, basically of the divinity of humanity.

00:59:12.000 Right.

00:59:13.000 That was the revelation.

00:59:15.000 And the second coming, through a kind of idiosyncratic In this tradition that is coming out of South America,

00:59:34.000 a lot of ayahuasca churches all over the world are drinking and contacting this higher dimension through the ayahuasca.

00:59:50.000 In no demeaning way, I call it the green Jesus.

00:59:55.000 And Green Mary, really, because it's revealing the divinity of nature.

01:00:03.000 And there's nothing more important right now than recognizing the divinity and the sacredness of nature and saving the life-web in whatever ways we can.

01:00:18.000 Somehow turning our ship around from a self-destructive species.

01:00:23.000 You know, this is the tight place we're heading into.

01:00:26.000 It is, but hasn't it always been like this?

01:00:28.000 Isn't this the yin and the yang that makes people human?

01:00:31.000 Perhaps.

01:00:32.000 Is this the push and the pull?

01:00:33.000 Sometimes we need to rally against an impending doom in order to...

01:00:37.000 Oh, God, I know.

01:00:37.000 It's a part of being a person.

01:00:39.000 We're goofy. 0.68

01:00:40.000 We want to cram for tests. 0.97

01:00:42.000 We're adolescent species and wildly destructive.

01:00:46.000 And we only exist through the grace of the kind of spirits that are tolerant because we're so creative, I think, that they hope that we will work on this together with the intelligence that's That's seeding today.

01:01:06.000 And we've also been born in a super lucky spot.

01:01:09.000 As far as the history of humanity, we didn't have to go through the people trying to make it across the west with wagon trains.

01:01:15.000 We didn't have to go through any of that.

01:01:17.000 We're lucky.

01:01:18.000 We have internet.

01:01:19.000 Perhaps we'll be floating in some astral dimension in the next lifetime.

01:01:27.000 That's possible, too.

01:01:29.000 Do you feel you have a responsibility?

01:01:35.000 The fact that you have this voice and you're looked at as this sort of psychedelic visionary guy, do you feel like you have a responsibility to try to get information out, things that you've learned, things that you think possibly could help people?

01:01:50.000 Because you obviously have a vision of things and you obviously have a very well thought out view of humanity and of consciousness.

01:01:59.000 Do you feel that you have an obligation to express these thoughts?

01:02:02.000 I think that anyone who experiences the deeper realms Maybe has a turnabout in their conscience.

01:02:13.000 It's not just about higher consciousness, but there's a sense that if you're connected with everyone and with everything, then what's your moral responsibility or your ethical response to your interconnectedness?

01:02:33.000 There's a bunch of hippies who just took their pants off right now. 1.00

01:02:35.000 They're like, I can't take it.

01:02:36.000 This guy's too love.

01:02:38.000 It's too much love, man.

01:02:39.000 Sorry.

01:02:41.000 Well, I think that there's a natural resistance to allowing it to be as magnificent as it actually is.

01:02:50.000 There's also a fear of the unknown, too.

01:02:52.000 Totally.

01:02:53.000 People that haven't had it, I think that's why I don't fault them, the ones who are anti...

01:02:58.000 A lot of people associate drugs with ruining your life, not with saving your life.

01:03:03.000 They're capable of both.

01:03:05.000 Totally.

01:03:06.000 In my case, it was the other.

01:03:08.000 It was the saving my life and meeting my wife and 39 years later, here we are.

01:03:14.000 Whatever seed was born in the saving of a life and giving a literal turning point and saying, can you see me now?

01:03:26.000 Well, a switch literally was turned on and you became a different person.

01:03:30.000 Like shedding a cocoon and a caterpillar becomes a butterfly or whatever the fuck happens whenever you have a really profound experience.

01:03:39.000 But some people don't do that.

01:03:41.000 Some people do.

01:03:42.000 This is what I say is that a really profound psychedelic experience is like control-alt-delete for your consciousness where your brain… It reboots with a fresh operating system.

01:03:52.000 And there's only one folder on the desktop. 0.98

01:03:54.000 And the desktop folder says, my old bullshit. 0.78

01:03:57.000 And you can either open it up and go right back into these predetermined patterns of behavior once the psychedelic experience has faded. 0.96

01:04:05.000 Because it'll be more comfortable that way than sort of reassessing the way you've been living your life.

01:04:09.000 Or, you know, you can hit delete and try to keep going and do DMT again.

01:04:16.000 Try to get right back there, right when it stops being fresh.

01:04:19.000 Just reintroduce that mind.

01:04:21.000 Oh, there it is.

01:04:22.000 Okay, I got it.

01:04:23.000 Okay, thanks.

01:04:23.000 There's an evolutionary toehold that you can shine a light toward your future that you're headed toward rather than depend on the effects of past behavior.

01:04:41.000 You know what's been really tripping me out is how many people that I know that are starting to have semi, at least, psychedelic experiences from doing yoga.

01:04:51.000 I've had maybe one time in my life where I did yoga and I felt like I was high.

01:04:56.000 I felt like I was high on marijuana.

01:04:57.000 That's what it felt like.

01:04:58.000 At the end of it, it was like, wow.

01:05:00.000 Whatever it is, that switch that you can hit when you do the right poses for the right amount of time, with the right amount of energy, there's a weird switch that you hit at the end where I was literally high.

01:05:11.000 But that's as far as I've ever taken it.

01:05:13.000 I've never had a hallucination or I've never astrally projected. 0.98

01:05:17.000 But I have heard some of the fucking craziest things from people that practice kundalini yoga, that if I didn't know them really well, and the way they were telling it to me is so matter-of-factly, I would say, this guy's crazy. 1.00

01:05:31.000 He's just making up a bunch of shit. 0.99

01:05:32.000 Except for the one time that I got myself high. 1.00

01:05:35.000 Because I was really high.

01:05:36.000 I mean, I was high.

01:05:38.000 I felt great.

01:05:39.000 I had love in my heart.

01:05:40.000 I wanted to hug people.

01:05:42.000 I felt like colors were brighter, sounds were cleaner.

01:05:45.000 I really felt really high.

01:05:47.000 And it was just from doing yoga.

01:05:50.000 And I was like, if that's possible, I've never really continually practiced Kundalini, but the people who really get into pranayamas and all that, they say that there's a wavelength that you can hit where you tap into that whatever it is, the pineal gland,

01:06:06.000 whatever it is, the DMT factory, and you just boom!

01:06:09.000 Open up the doorway and punch right through.

01:06:11.000 And that you can do it through yoga.

01:06:13.000 Yes, absolutely.

01:06:14.000 Have you done it through yoga?

01:06:17.000 Yes, and there are different kinds of like the idea for Entheon.

01:06:23.000 The idea for Entheon really came about first of all through Allison and I had a routine of yoga and then meditation and during that period basically Instead of,

01:06:39.000 like, kind of forcing myself to imagine something, I was saying, well, God, what do you want?

01:06:46.000 You know, what would you like me to put on there?

01:06:51.000 And so it showed this, the interconnected kind of Godhead type thing.

01:06:57.000 It's perfect.

01:06:58.000 God's on it.

01:07:00.000 Okay, just do something like that.

01:07:03.000 Yeah, come on. 0.77

01:07:04.000 Here it is.

01:07:05.000 Okay, thank you.

01:07:06.000 So, you know, that's on the natch, I guess.

01:07:11.000 You're not on the natch ever, dude.

01:07:13.000 Let's be honest.

01:07:14.000 Exactly.

01:07:15.000 You're so psychedelic anyway from point A. You're naturally psychedelic.

01:07:19.000 And then on top of that, all the things you've done, how could you ever pretend that you're ever on the natch?

01:07:24.000 You've experienced too much to be on the natch.

01:07:27.000 Well, your reference point is now more cosmic than sort of isolated.

01:07:37.000 Yes.

01:07:37.000 And you feel more connected with people because – and it must happen to you – You have a community.

01:07:48.000 You have met with many of the people that come out to see you over your tour and things like that.

01:07:58.000 How has your sense of community evolved in your understanding?

01:08:04.000 That's a good question.

01:08:05.000 Well, what I've found is that by doing something like a podcast, having conversations with people like you and my friends that come on, you're putting out the kind of conversations that we're having right now.

01:08:22.000 You're putting these out to people that I think we're good to go.

01:08:43.000 These people like Chris Ryan or Daniele Bolelli or all these interesting people that I get to talk to on a regular basis.

01:08:48.000 To me, that's a beautiful little situation that I've stumbled into.

01:08:54.000 And for me, I feel very fortunate just to be able to have all these conversations with people.

01:09:01.000 Now there's a sense of obligation because I know that people enjoy these conversations and I don't want to ever have them think that I'm not going to do it anymore.

01:09:10.000 We're going to keep this going like it's fun.

01:09:12.000 I know you enjoy it.

01:09:13.000 I enjoy it too.

01:09:14.000 It's totally mutual.

01:09:15.000 Thanks a lot.

01:09:16.000 I'm glad you like it.

01:09:17.000 And I think with that...

01:09:20.000 It's with that attitude.

01:09:22.000 We've created this group of people that listen to the podcast and maybe they've never had really introspective conversations with people.

01:09:35.000 Maybe they've never really thought about Living in another part of the world or maybe they've never thought about expanding the life that they live outside of this one realm of consciousness that they've inhabited their whole life, one way of looking at the world,

01:09:51.000 whether it's racist or gluttonous or whether they've just been abusing their body or whether they've just been lazy about getting things done.

01:10:01.000 And when you hear a podcast Where you get a chance to see all these different people's takes on things.

01:10:10.000 From Everlast, the singer, to my friend Joey Diaz.

01:10:14.000 And all these different people's takes on things.

01:10:15.000 They're all different and dynamic.

01:10:17.000 And having access to that is like having a bunch of really smart friends around you all the time.

01:10:24.000 So if you can listen to these podcasts...

01:10:26.000 Not everybody's really smart.

01:10:28.000 I'm not saying we're all really smart.

01:10:31.000 I'm saying some of them are really smart.

01:10:32.000 But you get a chance to have these interesting conversations and they enrich people's consciousness.

01:10:38.000 Because you might be stuck in a bad spot.

01:10:40.000 I've been in a bad spot in my life where I didn't have a lot of cool people to talk to.

01:10:43.000 You couldn't just tune into a podcast.

01:10:45.000 And so my sense of community is sort of...

01:10:49.000 It's one, become a thing of obligation, a happy obligation.

01:10:54.000 But I definitely think we're obligated to continue to provide content.

01:10:59.000 I remember being addicted to radio shows or different bands when I was a kid.

01:11:05.000 You want more stuff.

01:11:07.000 You want constantly more stuff.

01:11:08.000 So that's a big part of community with me.

01:11:12.000 But it's also...

01:11:14.000 One of the happiest things that I've gotten from this podcast is people coming up to me telling me that it changed the way they think about things.

01:11:24.000 Telling me that now they're happy.

01:11:27.000 Telling me that now they eat healthy. 1.00

01:11:29.000 Telling me that now they just stopped being an asshole to people. 1.00

01:11:32.000 They realized they were really just frustrated and they needed to get their shit together. 1.00

01:11:36.000 It's over and over and over again. 0.97

01:11:38.000 And that sense of community, I mean, it was completely accidental.

01:11:43.000 We didn't set out to try to create some sort of a group that sort of tunes in.

01:11:49.000 We just hope people enjoy the podcast.

01:11:51.000 We didn't think it was going to be...

01:11:53.000 I know.

01:11:55.000 It's a very interesting thing.

01:11:57.000 When do a group of supportive listeners become a community?

01:12:02.000 And it's kind of like we see that today people would like to gather in a lot of different places and to coalesce for a few hours and have a temporary community. 0.97

01:12:23.000 Well, I think we'd like to have a full community, but we don't trust people to not get fucking kooky. 0.96

01:12:28.000 You know? 0.99

01:12:28.000 It's like, not everybody has their shit together. 0.99

01:12:30.000 No, you can't just walk into my house. 1.00

01:12:31.000 You might be nuts and tired. 0.99

01:12:33.000 It's true. 0.96

01:12:34.000 It's true.

01:12:34.000 And by the way, I'm tired.

01:12:35.000 I just got home from work.

01:12:36.000 I'd really like to just watch TV. I don't want you coming over my house.

01:12:38.000 So there's a certain boundary that we all have to set up.

01:12:41.000 That's why the church model of the, you know, there's a time when you devote some time to this other thing, too, that's going on that's more of a community thing.

01:12:53.000 That's why I ask about it, because it's something that we've been thinking about a lot.

01:13:01.000 It's going to happen on its own.

01:13:03.000 People are going to gravitate.

01:13:04.000 I told you, all the fringe people from all over the planet are coming to you, my friend.

01:13:09.000 They're going to zoom in on you, along with some cops, probably.

01:13:12.000 You're going to get some undercover cops that are going to try to pretend to be your friends and try to get deep into the organization and find out you're for real.

01:13:19.000 And then eventually they'll admit it to you.

01:13:21.000 You'll give them some acid.

01:13:22.000 They'll tell you they're a cop.

01:13:23.000 They'll apologize.

01:13:24.000 You'll say it's okay.

01:13:25.000 We don't give anything to anyone or really advocate that much.

01:13:33.000 We do tell the truth about what happened to us.

01:13:36.000 And I'm of the belief that the The discovery of LSD 70 years ago this year is quite a miraculous occurrence and probably of a religious importance to humanity in the great scheme of things.

01:14:01.000 And I think 70 years after the crucifixion, basically, it wasn't going so well for the Christians, you know.

01:14:11.000 And so there's a time, you know, and that's why I was trying to think of, oh, this is kind of like a civil rights issue that is pointing toward a higher freedom of consciousness and special places.

01:14:37.000 I'm not saying these are not...

01:14:40.000 Potentially dangerous substances and in the wrong hands at the wrong time and things like that can be a terrible weapon even.

01:14:49.000 So they're definitely things that shouldn't be toyed with and some people should stay very clear of them.

01:14:58.000 They happen to be something that gave us tremendous insight and I think many other people as well, not because I said so, but because people naturally have It's just a weird thing that we have once we write things down on paper.

01:15:17.000 We say, this is a law.

01:15:18.000 Even when it gets to the overwhelming breaking point, and it's probably not there with psychedelics.

01:15:25.000 I think it is with pot.

01:15:27.000 When it gets to the undeniable breaking point where people just – they're like, no, like 70 percent can say they favor legalization.

01:15:34.000 Like, sorry.

01:15:36.000 It's just – it's not up for grabs.

01:15:38.000 The federal government is not really interested in what you're really – oh, 70 percent?

01:15:42.000 That's great. 1.00

01:15:42.000 Call us when it's a million percent and we'll still tell you to fuck yourself. 1.00

01:15:46.000 It's like they just – The laws don't make any sense, and it only points at this time to suppression. 0.99

01:15:54.000 It's the only thing that makes sense.

01:15:56.000 They're non-lethal.

01:15:57.000 They're non-lethal, life-changing, and there's a lot of people that give it five stars on Yelp. 0.98

01:16:03.000 Some people have had some bad times on Mushrooms, that's a fact, but if Mushrooms had a Yelp page, it would be a motherfucker. 0.99

01:16:11.000 That shit would be filled with stars, and there would be a link to... 0.99

01:16:15.000 Every one of those reviews would say more at the bottom. 0.99

01:16:18.000 You'd have to click to get an extra paragraph or two.

01:16:20.000 How many infinite stars are there?

01:16:22.000 Yeah.

01:16:23.000 It would be, yeah. 1.00

01:16:25.000 If you had less than five stars for mushrooms, you're an asshole. 1.00

01:16:28.000 Give it five stars, stupid. 1.00

01:16:30.000 It was the best thing that ever happened to you. 1.00

01:16:32.000 I mean, Johns Hopkins University is now starting a public study saying that just one mushroom trip 20 years ago has a profound effect on personality and improved people's outlook and their level of happiness.

01:16:43.000 It can make people happier. 0.99

01:16:45.000 That sounds so stupid that it's illegal. 1.00

01:16:49.000 How many people are like you? 0.99

01:16:51.000 How many people are like, well, I just needed that reset, and with a loving person that I meet, I have a great time, and then all of a sudden, boom, I'm off to the races on a totally different track.

01:17:01.000 How many people have to say that before...

01:17:04.000 We, as a culture, go, well, this Alex Gray is way cooler.

01:17:08.000 He's a way better version.

01:17:09.000 Look, he makes amazing art.

01:17:10.000 He's a nice guy.

01:17:11.000 He's happy.

01:17:12.000 He seems fulfilled.

01:17:13.000 He's trying to create a center, a beautiful building where people can come and worship all this stuff.

01:17:18.000 What is wrong with that?

01:17:19.000 What's going on here?

01:17:21.000 What are we trying to protect people from?

01:17:23.000 It sounds like you're trying to protect people from enlightenment.

01:17:26.000 That would sound preposterous.

01:17:29.000 What kind of a benevolent leader would you be if you're trying to protect people from potential enlightenment?

01:17:34.000 Or are you scared of potential enlightenment yourself?

01:17:36.000 And knowing that if you do take mushrooms, you can't put on the bulletproof vest and tear gas the kids.

01:17:43.000 You can't.

01:17:44.000 You're not going to do it.

01:17:45.000 You're not going to be the pepper spray cop when the kids are protesting because they're not going to be able to afford...

01:17:50.000 You have a conscience.

01:17:50.000 Yes.

01:17:51.000 You have a conscience and you want to do...

01:17:54.000 You can't do that gig anymore.

01:17:55.000 Yeah.

01:17:56.000 You got to get a new gig.

01:18:00.000 Well, if you do do it, you'll have nightmares.

01:18:02.000 Yeah, yeah.

01:18:04.000 Imagine doing mushrooms and then pepper spraying kids.

01:18:06.000 Oh my god, the demonic nightmares that you would have for decades.

01:18:12.000 And then the habits that you'd form to avoid confronting them.

01:18:18.000 Yeah.

01:18:19.000 Oh, Jesus. 1.00

01:18:19.000 You'd become a fucking gambling addict for sure. 1.00

01:18:22.000 Three cigarettes in your mouth at the same time. 1.00

01:18:26.000 Looking to bet on a roach crossing a parking lot.

01:18:29.000 You bet on anything.

01:18:31.000 Whatever to distract yourself from.

01:18:33.000 There's a lot of people out there that just got started off in a bad way.

01:18:36.000 That's true.

01:18:37.000 And very few things can help them.

01:18:39.000 Except psychedelic experiences.

01:18:41.000 They're one of the best ways to affect those.

01:18:44.000 And like we said, it doesn't have to be a drug.

01:18:46.000 You can get psychedelic experiences through meditation.

01:18:49.000 If you've practiced it enough, allegedly, he says he's done it.

01:18:53.000 I've never got there other than getting high.

01:18:55.000 Like you're saying, doing yoga and then meditation, even not for a long time.

01:19:01.000 There are many different approaches to meditation, from the simplest kind of watching your breath to a kind of, Alison talks about an aesthetic kind of reception of considering each moment for the beautiful,

01:19:18.000 special, unique I think that it is.

01:19:22.000 Like we listen to music.

01:19:24.000 You know, we listen with an ear of appreciation and things like that.

01:19:29.000 If we had an aesthetic scrutiny and could see the beauty of Of our cosmic situation, you know, that we evolved to this point where we can talk to each other through a network of intelligence and light and share potential connection,

01:19:48.000 community, even of a new wave of consciousness that's spread throughout the world.

01:19:56.000 I feel like these podcasts and things like that are the mushroom fruit Of a mycelial body of underground intelligences that interweave and then they pop out on these special occasions.

01:20:15.000 It's a door to open people up to people like you, to new possibilities, new ways of thinking.

01:20:21.000 And sometimes that's all you need is just one unique idea that's put in your head by someone that you don't even know.

01:20:27.000 Just listening to them talk to somebody else And that thought sends you off in a different direction.

01:20:32.000 A person's words can be psychedelic.

01:20:35.000 There's a lot of different things.

01:20:37.000 Childbirth can be psychedelic.

01:20:38.000 There's a lot of different things that happen to you in this life.

01:20:42.000 We think of psychedelics as being hallucinations, and we think of them as being sort of child's fair.

01:20:50.000 But the reality is that there's a lot that comes out of them that It's very difficult to get any other way.

01:20:57.000 And the way it comes out so reliably, it's like no one...

01:21:04.000 Like, mushrooms work for almost everyone on the planet.

01:21:07.000 Like, no one's immune.

01:21:09.000 Like, you could be out of focus and not really get there with Kundalini. 0.99

01:21:12.000 You really just can never really get your shit and groove, and you just have a bad class. 0.98

01:21:16.000 You take five grams of mushrooms, you're off to the moon no matter if you like it or not. 0.99

01:21:20.000 You're gonna get sucked into the wake, and hopefully you can let go, ride it out, and be okay.

01:21:28.000 But you might just clench up, and it might just go haywire.

01:21:33.000 Yes.

01:21:34.000 And that's why you're always choosing a supportive and safe setting, if possible, and under ideal conditions, even those that you don't have to worry about anything about it,

01:21:50.000 that you can relax totally and that you're supported by loving friends, so that you feel that you can go as deep and as high as possible.

01:22:02.000 And with those conditions and your favorite music, we like to use a kind of spiritually uplifting Bach and stuff like that.

01:22:12.000 Kind of heavy for some people, but I love that stuff.

01:22:14.000 I thought you were going to say Christian rock.

01:22:16.000 No, no.

01:22:18.000 But I like, you know, like we used to listen to musical offering all the time and it's so eerie, but it favored the tripping mind with all the fugues and things like that.

01:22:29.000 The infinitizing is really there in Bach.

01:22:33.000 I forgot to tweet people and tell them that we're live.

01:22:36.000 Ah. 0.99

01:22:37.000 Fucked up. 0.99

01:22:38.000 Start ever? 0.99

01:22:38.000 No, we don't have to start ever. 0.99

01:22:40.000 We've been live for a while.

01:22:42.000 Hold on.

01:22:44.000 Live for a while with...

01:22:47.000 Me too.

01:22:53.000 Sorry.

01:22:54.000 Sorry, folks listening.

01:22:55.000 No, it's good.

01:22:56.000 So do you ever go back to Columbus, Ohio?

01:22:58.000 I actually...

01:22:59.000 All my friends went to CCAD, and that's actually the college I was actually supposed to go to, but I ended up not going.

01:23:05.000 Huh.

01:23:06.000 Do you ever go back?

01:23:07.000 Do you ever visit?

01:23:08.000 I mean, I bet you're like a superhero there now.

01:23:11.000 Well, I think the great return home has not really happened so much.

01:23:18.000 But I do visit my mother and family and things there.

01:23:24.000 The heartland, baby.

01:23:25.000 Yeah.

01:23:26.000 Well, we'll see.

01:23:27.000 You know, there's some festival things that are happening in the region.

01:23:31.000 And this year we're going perhaps...

01:23:36.000 To another part of the world, but then at some point, I think we'll coordinate.

01:23:42.000 Now what part of the Hudson Valley, is it the Hudson Valley that you're putting this?

01:23:47.000 Yes.

01:23:48.000 Where is it at?

01:23:49.000 We're in the town of Wappinger, and Wappinger is a beautiful town that's right on the Hudson River, and it's related to Wappingers Falls.

01:24:02.000 And Wappinger is the name of the native people who inhabited the region 400 years ago.

01:24:09.000 And they were a wonderful kind of series of tribes that went all the way down.

01:24:15.000 How do you spell Wappinger?

01:24:16.000 W-A-P-P-I-N-G-E-R. That's a cool name. 1.00

01:24:26.000 It is.

01:24:27.000 It's amazing.

01:24:28.000 It's got resonances with many creatures and with a kind of good attitude.

01:24:35.000 They had an awesome idea about the Hudson River.

01:24:44.000 We call it the Hudson now.

01:24:46.000 It used to be the Mohicanitok, the great flow that goes both ways. 0.99

01:24:53.000 And that makes sense.

01:24:55.000 It's a tidal river, and it goes up right to our town, right to around there, and then it goes back to the ocean.

01:25:03.000 It's just amazing.

01:25:05.000 What kind of town is this in?

01:25:07.000 Well, it's been many things, and it's right now.

01:25:15.000 Now I'd say it's an evolving town.

01:25:19.000 And the place that we inhabit, it used to be called Deer Hill.

01:25:26.000 And Deer Hill was a United Church of Christ congregation and also an interfaith kind of camp.

01:25:36.000 So they had a very trans-denominational or interfaith kind of approach to spirituality.

01:25:45.000 And they had it on the market for like seven years and finally when we found each other we felt like we had a lot in common.

01:25:53.000 That our message was an attempt at a universal message of spirituality and interconnectedness and using nature as a setting for this kind of soul renewing kind of surrounding in a creative environment.

01:26:14.000 So we do all kinds of creativity classes there from dancing and movement and yoga and meditation and things like that.

01:26:27.000 So how much of the place is done?

01:26:28.000 The inside is done, it's just the outside needs to be completed with the artwork?

01:26:34.000 With Entheon, what we have is an old carriage house.

01:26:43.000 And it's been structurally reinforced and we've actually put quite a bit into it already in sealing and shoring it up.

01:26:52.000 But then we have to take the roof off and we have to establish new steel foundations in all the corners.

01:27:00.000 And we're building the heads 16 feet away from the entry to the brick building.

01:27:11.000 So what you'll have is a large atrium in front of the brick building when you walk into Entheon.

01:27:19.000 And with this, there will be the reception, there will be the bathroom and coat closet and things like that, but there will also be a fountainhead there that will mount against the wall of this old carriage house.

01:27:33.000 So you'll see this dramatic kind of 75 by 23 foot high wall of brick.

01:27:40.000 Is this it right here?

01:27:42.000 We're looking at it right now?

01:27:43.000 Yeah.

01:27:43.000 It's up here as well.

01:27:45.000 Pull it all the way back, Brian, for a second?

01:27:50.000 The construction looks, like, pretty in-depth.

01:27:53.000 Like, you guys did a lot of stuff to the place.

01:27:56.000 Oh, yeah.

01:27:57.000 It's been...

01:27:58.000 And are you living inside that as well?

01:27:59.000 Well, no.

01:28:00.000 We are not.

01:28:00.000 There's the brick carriage house.

01:28:02.000 And so we're going to...

01:28:06.000 We've been shoring it up.

01:28:07.000 We found nearby construction companies that are specialists in ornamental casting of concrete.

01:28:18.000 And so this has led to this kind of key to how we're going to actually build the building.

01:28:25.000 So that's all going to be concrete, those faces?

01:28:27.000 Yes, but it's a skin, a thin skin of concrete about an inch thick and reinforced with steel and a glass fiber reinforced kind of concrete.

01:28:38.000 It's a very special kind of permanent and then it's going to be sectioned.

01:28:46.000 And like these heads, there's very repetitive kinds of elements to it.

01:28:51.000 So they'll be made on some sort of a gigantic mold or something like that?

01:28:54.000 And there'll be several of them?

01:28:55.000 First, it'll be...

01:28:57.000 First, it was, I guess, seen in the imagination.

01:29:01.000 Thank you, transcendent visionary source.

01:29:05.000 And then I drew it.

01:29:06.000 And then I showed it to Ryan Tottle, who's an amazing digital sculptor and visionary artist.

01:29:16.000 And he works at Disney, actually, during the day.

01:29:18.000 And so he took this into three dimensions and made the actual 3D model that's sized perfectly to the building.

01:29:30.000 So this will be printed out in sections and will have basically a foam printout That then will be corrected and things like that and then a mold will be taken from that.

01:29:45.000 Then in that mold we shoot this concrete, thin, kind of inch thick stuff.

01:29:53.000 It's got pins on the back that attach to a steel armature and that armature attaches to the building.

01:30:01.000 Wow!

01:30:04.000 It's very exciting because it's a real and actual thing.

01:30:09.000 It's incredibly ambitious.

01:30:11.000 Well, look.

01:30:12.000 People always did sacred buildings and it's up to … You don't have to justify it to me.

01:30:20.000 I think it's awesome.

01:30:21.000 I mean you're like, hey, they've always Well, I mean, this is tiny, tiny little expression compared to magnificent temples that are all over the world and things, you know.

01:30:32.000 I mean, they're grand and huge.

01:30:33.000 Well, there's no Pope behind you with horse carriages filled with gold to pay for the construction.

01:30:40.000 But there's people who are pledging 10 bucks and 30 bucks and 50 bucks.

01:30:43.000 And I should tell them that they get something from that.

01:30:46.000 You have a bunch of different tiers set up of different things that you get, whether it's artwork or How many different levels do you have of possibilities?

01:30:57.000 Oh, we have so many.

01:30:58.000 We've got like even original artwork that has never been offered before and stuff.

01:31:05.000 So there's a PDF with all kinds of artworks and things like that and sketches.

01:31:15.000 That's really cool.

01:31:16.000 These are worth admission for two to Entheon.

01:31:21.000 That's your coin?

01:31:22.000 Yeah.

01:31:23.000 You have your own money.

01:31:23.000 Jesus, man.

01:31:25.000 What are you doing?

01:31:25.000 You're going too far.

01:31:27.000 I need you to take it down a notch.

01:31:28.000 Whatever you do, nobody has guns, okay?

01:31:31.000 No, no, no.

01:31:32.000 No guns ever, right?

01:31:33.000 You should really make that super strict.

01:31:35.000 Yeah.

01:31:36.000 Because you're going to have a bunch of loons that go, you know what?

01:31:38.000 I love you.

01:31:40.000 I love psychedelics, but I also love the Second Amendment.

01:31:43.000 We're here to rock.

01:31:45.000 When it comes, it takes our compound.

01:31:47.000 Well, we try to have...

01:31:50.000 You know, intelligence, security, just so that things always stay cool.

01:31:59.000 You know what it would be, though?

01:31:59.000 It would be the cop that pretended to be one of you guys that would freak out and pull his gun so that the real cops could come in and lock you guys down because you were violent and you had guns.

01:32:10.000 That would be what I would do if I was a cop and I was trying to shut you hippies down. 1.00

01:32:13.000 Well, we actually have made friends with the local police because we're grateful for their service.

01:32:23.000 That's a beautiful thing to say, too.

01:32:25.000 I agree with that as well. 0.98

01:32:26.000 I get shit about that online because I always tell people that I like cops. 0.98

01:32:30.000 But I think it's important to have police officers. 0.99

01:32:32.000 We do.

01:32:32.000 We absolutely depend on them as a community.

01:32:36.000 And there's a lot of good ones, you know, and the people don't want to address that. 0.98

01:32:41.000 There's a lot of cops out there that are nice, despite all the shit they see every day.

01:32:45.000 We have friends who are sort of high up in that in the local region, and they're just some of the nicest people and most compassionate, actually, because they're They go to people who are in trouble.

01:32:59.000 Yeah.

01:33:00.000 Mostly.

01:33:00.000 And then, you know, they're absolutely bad cops.

01:33:02.000 That's no doubt about it either.

01:33:04.000 Sure.

01:33:04.000 That happens too.

01:33:05.000 No one's making up for that.

01:33:07.000 We're just saying there's a need for it and a lot of them are good.

01:33:10.000 And if you're in a community that's accepting you guys and Did you have a little weird thing where they didn't want you guys to be non-taxed?

01:33:17.000 Well, we're still working that out.

01:33:20.000 They don't want to accept you as a regular religion. 1.00

01:33:22.000 Well, the church status is a...

01:33:26.000 You see, we're building sacred space.

01:33:29.000 We hold full moon ceremonies every month.

01:33:33.000 We hold our church.

01:33:36.000 That sounds awesome.

01:33:37.000 I wish I was your neighbor.

01:33:39.000 And we have neighbors who love to come over and they love to participate.

01:33:44.000 And we have people from all over the world who come.

01:33:47.000 And also, this is before Entheon really is there.

01:33:52.000 So there's a lot of four years we've been waiting.

01:33:57.000 And so now we've got a loan from a bank that is helping us out.

01:34:03.000 And we have the Kickstarter is coming.

01:34:06.000 You know, we still have like nine days or something like that.

01:34:09.000 Well, we'll try to pump it up for you.

01:34:11.000 What kind of town is this?

01:34:12.000 Is this like a town that accepts hippies?

01:34:14.000 Are they conservative?

01:34:15.000 No, I wouldn't say that.

01:34:17.000 I'd say there's a healthy mix.

01:34:21.000 Okay.

01:34:24.000 Really astonishing is the religious diversity.

01:34:28.000 There's a Sikh temple, I believe.

01:34:32.000 There's Hindu temples.

01:34:34.000 There's a Tibetan Buddhist stupa.

01:34:37.000 All in your town?

01:34:38.000 All in the town.

01:34:39.000 How many people are in this town?

01:34:41.000 It's not a large amount.

01:34:43.000 Is it one of those vortexes?

01:34:45.000 A little.

01:34:46.000 Draws?

01:34:46.000 Like the Comedy Store?

01:34:48.000 I think it's a little bit of a vortex of beauty.

01:34:52.000 According to our Native American scholar, Evan Pritchard, he said that our land may have been held sacred by the Wappinger people as well.

01:35:04.000 So it's always been kind of in this...

01:35:07.000 You know, sacred tradition.

01:35:09.000 And it was a church before you.

01:35:11.000 That's fascinating.

01:35:12.000 I always wondered how you would pick a site for something like this.

01:35:18.000 You know, I think it's really cool that you're doing it.

01:35:21.000 I think it's really fun.

01:35:22.000 It's exciting.

01:35:22.000 I know you have good intentions.

01:35:24.000 Yeah, we're hopeful.

01:35:26.000 And we met some of the neighbors and we tried to be considerate now.

01:35:38.000 How close are you to the neighbors?

01:35:40.000 You're 40 acres.

01:35:41.000 Yes.

01:35:42.000 What kind of sounds are you guys making, you freaks?

01:35:44.000 Moans.

01:35:45.000 What are you doing?

01:35:46.000 Imagine if Alex Gray was actually just a gun nut.

01:35:49.000 He's out there shooting.

01:35:51.000 This is all an act.

01:35:52.000 I love that one of your things.

01:35:54.000 It's music, you know, like sacred music.

01:35:57.000 We had a recent outdoor concert, but there was also a fireworks display by the city that By the town that night.

01:36:06.000 Oh, so it was perfect.

01:36:08.000 One of your things on your Kickstarter is awesome.

01:36:11.000 There's only five left, though.

01:36:13.000 But for $1,500, you get a hand-drawn portrait of you or your beloved one.

01:36:17.000 How awesome is that?

01:36:19.000 That's amazing.

01:36:20.000 I almost want to do that.

01:36:21.000 That's amazing.

01:36:22.000 Wow, that's so cool.

01:36:24.000 Yeah, that's a good Kickstarter, man.

01:36:26.000 You'll get some people, definitely, from this show.

01:36:28.000 And they get to it one more time.

01:36:29.000 I feel like we're PBS, so I'm going to say this one more time. 0.98

01:36:31.000 You know those gross fucking PBS shows where every 15 minutes they would chime in and try to get you to donate? 0.98

01:36:39.000 Like, why don't you guys just get some commercials so you don't have to do this? 0.99

01:36:42.000 This is disgusting. 0.99

01:36:44.000 Stop interrupting the conversation, you freaks. 0.99

01:36:47.000 So do you feel like you're already starting to have a gravity in this town?

01:36:51.000 People are already starting to be drawn towards this thing that you're creating and putting together with all these ceremonies?

01:36:58.000 Well, we did have a recent event this past week.

01:37:02.000 Is that what the cops called it?

01:37:05.000 Well, there was a recent event at the Entheon.

01:37:09.000 This new religion just moved in.

01:37:13.000 That's how they would describe a bunch of arrests.

01:37:16.000 Well, here in LA, we actually had a safe event where Ott played and Ken Jordan from Crystal Method.

01:37:28.000 Ott?

01:37:28.000 Who's Ott?

01:37:29.000 OTT. He's...

01:37:32.000 An amazing, kind of named after Jonathan Ott, but Ott in terms of...

01:37:37.000 I'm not familiar.

01:37:38.000 Who's Jonathan Ott?

01:37:39.000 Jonathan Ott is a translator of Albert Hoffman's and also was one of the people who came up with the term entheogen.

01:37:49.000 With Dr. Hoffman.

01:37:51.000 A translator?

01:37:52.000 A scientific translator?

01:37:53.000 An author.

01:37:54.000 You said he was a translator of Hoffman's?

01:37:57.000 Yes.

01:37:57.000 What do you mean by a translator?

01:37:58.000 Well, when my problem child wanted to come out in English, Albert Hoffman wanted someone who was responsible to his word and to his meaning would translate his words for him.

01:38:14.000 I'm so ignorant I wasn't aware that Albert Hoffman didn't speak English.

01:38:17.000 Yeah, no, he was Swiss. 1.00

01:38:18.000 I figured if he's figuring out how to make shit, he's got to be American. 1.00

01:38:22.000 I mean, you know what I'm saying? 0.99

01:38:24.000 He spoke pretty good English.

01:38:27.000 Did he?

01:38:27.000 But not to translate the book.

01:38:31.000 Wow.

01:38:31.000 That's fascinating stuff, man.

01:38:33.000 Yeah.

01:38:34.000 So Ott played and Jonathan Singer, who's a – I call him a light slinger and VJ Extraordinaire.

01:38:42.000 had made a printout of the Entheon kind of altar DJ booth or I guess electronic musician station and so these wonderful musicians played behind something,

01:39:00.000 a console that looked a lot like the Entheon thing.

01:39:03.000 So it printed it out and Ryan had made this model for the booth And it was like a proof of concept of this is how we're going to print out the building.

01:39:13.000 Right.

01:39:14.000 So it looks really cool.

01:39:15.000 Wow.

01:39:15.000 You're doing raves.

01:39:18.000 You've got DJs up there.

01:39:20.000 This is the best religion of all time.

01:39:23.000 Everybody's ecstatic.

01:39:24.000 Yeah.

01:39:25.000 Oh, yeah.

01:39:25.000 I got it.

01:39:26.000 Visionary.

01:39:27.000 Yeah, that's a beautiful thing, man.

01:39:29.000 And you're going to have a positive effect on a lot of people who come through those doors.

01:39:35.000 That's everything you would ever want out of a religion, a center where people can meet, a community, and the ability to push something positive out those doors.

01:39:44.000 It's a beautiful thing, man.

01:39:46.000 It really is.

01:39:47.000 Well, it's really about inspiring the creative spirit in everybody.

01:39:51.000 Yeah.

01:39:52.000 And so that's ultimately why it's there.

01:39:57.000 We also see that in a dozen years or 2020, if possible, if we're able to sort of pay back some of our loans and various things over time,

01:40:14.000 we look to build the actual chapel of sacred mirrors in the meadow, if possible.

01:40:21.000 And that if we're able to do that, that we would move our art out of the Entheon and have it as a sanctuary for visionary art from artists from around the world, many of whom have already come and done presentations there,

01:40:38.000 and actually some of them are in the collection already and stuff.

01:40:43.000 So it will be an active center for the promotion of this I think you need your own podcast.

01:41:05.000 Absolutely.

01:41:06.000 Why not?

01:41:07.000 A great way to reach people.

01:41:08.000 Super easy to do.

01:41:10.000 Set it up.

01:41:10.000 Go to Libsyn.

01:41:12.000 Get an account.

01:41:13.000 Not hard.

01:41:13.000 Really easy to do.

01:41:14.000 And you could give people just weekly updates on where everything stands.

01:41:18.000 That's a great idea.

01:41:19.000 And I'm sure a lot of people would get into that.

01:41:21.000 And you could also have your thoughts on current events or your thoughts on whatever, anything.

01:41:28.000 You don't have to be married to any particular amount of time.

01:41:31.000 Do it for ten minutes if you like.

01:41:33.000 Do a quick one just to keep everybody posted.

01:41:35.000 Or do three hours.

01:41:36.000 Do whatever the hell you want.

01:41:38.000 But having something like that, when you're doing something like this, which is very...

01:41:42.000 You're creating this center for community.

01:41:46.000 You're creating this center for sort of the distribution of psychedelic ideas.

01:41:54.000 And in doing something like that, And creating that kind of a community.

01:41:59.000 You're really putting something out there into the world.

01:42:05.000 You're setting forth a beacon.

01:42:09.000 There's going to be so many people that are influenced by that.

01:42:11.000 There's so many people that look at that and go, what is he doing?

01:42:14.000 What's going on over there?

01:42:15.000 And they've got full moons.

01:42:17.000 What is the big deal about full moons?

01:42:18.000 What are these people doing?

01:42:19.000 Wow, that's pretty. 1.00

01:42:20.000 What is this fucking building? 1.00

01:42:21.000 And then they get sucked in. 1.00

01:42:25.000 Do you know you're doing that?

01:42:26.000 Are you going to be comfortable as a cult leader or how's that?

01:42:30.000 That's...

01:42:30.000 It's tough.

01:42:32.000 I think that...

01:42:32.000 It's very tricky.

01:42:33.000 It's about, as I said, holding up a sacred mirror for people.

01:42:41.000 And if there's an element of inspiration for their own creative lives, whatever it is, then we can see that that's a spirituality that works for you,

01:42:59.000 because you have a creative life that has meaning for you.

01:43:03.000 So you're seeking to inspire other people to be more creative as well.

01:43:07.000 You're seeking to start the spark.

01:43:09.000 It's about transformation of the consciousness so that we can regard nature as a sacred ally. 0.98

01:43:20.000 That we need to learn from and to stop abusing and that we can save what we can of the life web and have a humanity that lives for hundreds of thousands of years instead of snuffs itself out in a stupid Oops, 0.98

01:43:39.000 I wrecked the planet. 0.98

01:43:44.000 I'm just a teenager.

01:43:46.000 What do you expect?

01:43:48.000 Can we grow up?

01:43:50.000 Can we mature as a species?

01:43:52.000 I think it's the most exciting and amazing time because it's like our Kickstarter.

01:43:59.000 I have a kind of a, wow, boy, there's some gravity in the timeline element.

01:44:06.000 Of course, We haven't got a united world where we say collectively, oh, you know what?

01:44:15.000 That is too much carbon.

01:44:18.000 Let's do the solar really hard and so we can start to turn it around.

01:44:28.000 We're not there yet.

01:44:30.000 But people in general, I think, feel that and they start to feel like the, oh, Wow, how can we turn it around?

01:44:41.000 That's why I think that people like Paul Stamets and other visionary thinkers who understand more about the intricacies and intelligence of Say the fungus,

01:44:58.000 that we have a lot to be hopeful about.

01:45:04.000 And if we put to use the technology and the intelligence that is already available.

01:45:12.000 You need to start a farm too.

01:45:13.000 You need to grow your own food out there.

01:45:15.000 Exactly.

01:45:16.000 Why not?

01:45:16.000 You got 40 acres, right?

01:45:17.000 It's a great area.

01:45:18.000 I'm sure it gets a lot of rain.

01:45:20.000 Well, we're right next door to Great Field and perhaps an organic farm coming in.

01:45:26.000 So right now we're focusing on the temple, but all those things are part of the, I think, overall permaculture plan.

01:45:34.000 We're still mapping the land to see permaculturally what would make sense to develop.

01:45:42.000 That's going to be really fascinating when it's done, man.

01:45:44.000 I really can't wait.

01:45:45.000 And I'm really excited about it.

01:45:48.000 But this goes to show you the negative thinking that some people just can't escape.

01:45:54.000 Some people just can't help being negative.

01:45:56.000 No matter what, no matter how positive someone else's message is, some people can't help being negative.

01:46:00.000 Somebody talked about your Entheon.

01:46:02.000 They said it was a shrine to your ego.

01:46:08.000 Because you're creating a big piece of art, a big piece of beautiful art, then that's somehow a shrine to your ego.

01:46:13.000 Isn't that a strange thing that people will accept art, but if that art becomes a building, then something's ego about it.

01:46:23.000 It can be the most beautiful thing, as long as it's a painting or a sculpture, but when you make a house out of it, Then it's a shrine.

01:46:33.000 It's a shrine to your ego.

01:46:34.000 It can't just be a beautiful piece of art.

01:46:37.000 A sculpture.

01:46:38.000 Why does someone have to hate like that?

01:46:40.000 That's got to be the way you were raised.

01:46:42.000 It's got to be the people that you're around.

01:46:43.000 There's no other way that kind of douchey thinking should be acceptable.

01:46:48.000 Hey, look, everybody's entitled to their reaction, and I think that it's inevitable.

01:46:54.000 Yeah, but everybody's also entitled to be mocked for their reaction.

01:46:58.000 That's an important part of culture. 1.00

01:47:00.000 People need to feel the sting of other people going, Bitch, shut up. 1.00

01:47:04.000 What are you talking about? 1.00

01:47:05.000 The guy's making a beautiful building.

01:47:07.000 What's your problem?

01:47:09.000 Shrine to his ego.

01:47:11.000 Negative.

01:47:12.000 A lot of people need hugs.

01:47:14.000 That's what it is.

01:47:15.000 A lot of people didn't get them.

01:47:16.000 A lot of people need them now.

01:47:17.000 Well, the very idea is the idea that there is basically one face of God, and it's all of us.

01:47:28.000 And so there's a multiple...

01:47:33.000 And then there's a one on the top of the roof.

01:47:36.000 So you got the one and the many and the many and the one.

01:47:39.000 And through consciousness evolution, you can reach both.

01:47:45.000 I like that you say that and it doesn't sound goofy at all.

01:47:50.000 Do you know what I mean?

01:47:51.000 Well, it's like the plain facts, you know?

01:47:53.000 Yes.

01:47:54.000 You're sincere. 0.99

01:47:56.000 But it's one of those concepts where you start talking about the God is the one and the one is the Lord and people go, what is this crazy fuck going on about your wife? 0.99

01:48:05.000 But geez, okay, you take it from a scientific perspective. 0.97

01:48:09.000 Most are still on the Big Bang that 13.7 billion years ago there was nothing and then kablam, 13.7 billion years ago we're talking about it.

01:48:22.000 Right.

01:48:23.000 That was a lot of evolution.

01:48:25.000 That's a lot of development over a long period of time.

01:48:30.000 And that's inherently the creative spirit brought us here.

01:48:36.000 And consciousness itself is a miracle.

01:48:41.000 That we could understand each other.

01:48:43.000 It's fascinating.

01:48:44.000 Beyond fascinating.

01:48:45.000 It is.

01:48:46.000 I love that you're optimistic, too.

01:48:48.000 Like, you have hope for the human race.

01:48:51.000 Like, I think there's no reason to be anything but.

01:48:55.000 Sure. 0.98

01:48:55.000 Because despite all the crazy shit that's in the world, the million nuclear weapons that could destroy every single thing, we haven't done it yet. 0.98

01:49:02.000 I mean, it's kind of amazing. 0.97

01:49:04.000 It's kind of amazing that we've done as little pollution as we actually have.

01:49:08.000 I mean, that's really quite shocking that we actually...

01:49:11.000 Toned it down a little bit in Los Angeles.

01:49:13.000 There is some conscience there.

01:49:13.000 It was a little bit of like, hey, hey, everybody settle down.

01:49:16.000 You know, like, apparently the pollution was much worse in Los Angeles, like in the 60s and the 70s.

01:49:24.000 They said it was horrible because they had those lead cars.

01:49:26.000 The gas was totally different.

01:49:28.000 They cleaned that up a lot. 0.99

01:49:29.000 I mean, it still looks like shit. 0.98

01:49:31.000 It's still crazy brown air, but it's better brown air, Alex Gray. 0.99

01:49:34.000 Yes, it is.

01:49:36.000 It is.

01:49:37.000 That's a...

01:49:38.000 That's a symbol or a message of evolution.

01:49:41.000 A little bit of it, yeah.

01:49:42.000 A little bit.

01:49:43.000 And the consciousness that was born during the 60s, the civil rights era, the feminism really came on strong, even eco-consciousness, all of these elements and gay rights.

01:50:04.000 The equality That element started to come to the surface, so a sense of conscience about accepting more diversity and living up to our idea about we the people,

01:50:20.000 you know, and who are all the people.

01:50:23.000 And I think that the re-enfranchisement of people, like just by saying, okay, gay marriages, that's okay, you know, so then other nations say, okay, that's okay.

01:50:34.000 You know, so suddenly a stigma And a prohibition on a group of people has been lifted and they're re-enfranchised into the society, at no harm to the society, even benefit to it.

01:50:50.000 Likewise, the cannabis user eventually, I believe, should be reintegrated into society and the world.

01:50:58.000 This will show also an evolutionary step.

01:51:05.000 Because this is the recognition of the divinity of nature.

01:51:11.000 I think there's every reason to be optimistic and although there are some really bad things about the world today.

01:51:17.000 The financial system is crazy and corrupt.

01:51:20.000 It's too easy to manipulate and everybody knows it's rigged and we still have to use it and it's still the thing that pays off lobbyists and moves decisions that favor corporations instead of the general public.

01:51:34.000 We still know that there's a lot wrong with the world.

01:51:38.000 We're learning more about humans, about behavior, about just information itself, about technology, about our place in the universe.

01:51:49.000 We're learning more about the cosmos.

01:51:51.000 Every day there's like some new discovery, a new thing, a new this, a new that, and it's just coming at us like a wave.

01:51:58.000 Wave after wave of information.

01:52:00.000 I don't think it's possible to avoid all that.

01:52:02.000 Without some gigantic monstrous catastrophe, I think if you were looking at a graph and you look at the headspace of the average American person from 1960 and look at the headspace in 2013,

01:52:18.000 you're dealing with a completely different Educated individual.

01:52:24.000 You're dealing with a level of understanding about the way the world works that's very different from at any other time.

01:52:31.000 Because almost any question that you've ever had can be answered on your phone within a matter of seconds.

01:52:37.000 And although that seems so normal, that changed the whole world.

01:52:42.000 And that's going on right now.

01:52:44.000 Exactly.

01:52:45.000 I think it snuck up on us so fast.

01:52:47.000 We just got so used to watching movies on our phone that we don't even think it's weird that it's just coming through the air into this little thin wafer thing that's made out of glass and metal in your pocket that you get to watch movies flying through the air.

01:53:02.000 And you don't even think about it.

01:53:03.000 It just seems so normal to you.

01:53:05.000 And it's all psychedelic.

01:53:07.000 It's very much so.

01:53:09.000 I guess Steve Jobs had to be interviewed by the Department of Defense and he had to defend his taking of psychedelics.

01:53:21.000 Really?

01:53:22.000 Yeah.

01:53:23.000 In order to get the highest clearance and things.

01:53:27.000 As part of his interview, he said that he still believed that it was one of the most important events in his life and his psychedelic experiences.

01:53:43.000 And many of the people that they worked with, of course, They wondered how many times they had tripped and things, and how far out are you?

01:53:54.000 And was part of the openness to new ways of thinking that it allowed.

01:54:02.000 Just as you were saying that after a psychedelic experience you have this folder that's called my old bullshit and then you have this possibility wide open in front of you. 0.91

01:54:15.000 My goodness, a full new possibility there. 0.95

01:54:19.000 You can jump back in the bag that you already know or you can forge ahead into a new territory.

01:54:28.000 And so that's the evolutionary edge.

01:54:30.000 And you're always pushing it.

01:54:32.000 And artists and creative people are always pushing it.

01:54:35.000 And that's why I say everybody's kind of pushing that edge in some way.

01:54:39.000 And is inherently that awareness.

01:54:46.000 Yeah, I think it's unavoidable.

01:54:50.000 And it's almost that biologically we can't keep up with all the technological evolution, although it's not the correct term to use, technological evolution.

01:54:59.000 They want to use it biologically.

01:55:00.000 But just that alone, it's almost like Our access to information is too great for our feeble minds to process.

01:55:08.000 We're still on some, you know, old school Pentium Celeron.

01:55:11.000 Remember those Celerons?

01:55:12.000 Weren't quite as good as the Pentium do?

01:55:15.000 Yeah, I mean, we're like on an old machine. 0.99

01:55:17.000 Our machine sucks. 0.91

01:55:18.000 We have Dunbar's number. 0.99

01:55:19.000 We can't remember more than 150 people. 1.00

01:55:22.000 We fuck up. 0.98

01:55:23.000 We can't remember phone numbers anymore because you don't have to remember them because they're on your phone. 0.99

01:55:26.000 You know, so in that sense, it's like we're almost becoming mush.

01:55:30.000 It's almost like...

01:55:32.000 What the technology is doing is setting us up.

01:55:34.000 It's getting us to a point where it's just overwhelming us with data that we can't help.

01:55:39.000 I know you're having a problem.

01:55:40.000 Okay?

01:55:41.000 I'm going to help you out.

01:55:42.000 We're going to give you a chip. 0.95

01:55:43.000 We're going to put this chip in your brain. 0.96

01:55:44.000 And once you do, boom!

01:55:46.000 I mean, the government knows where you are at all times.

01:55:48.000 But...

01:55:49.000 You have instant 120 IQ. You're going to be able to see things you never saw before, memorize things fairly quickly.

01:55:57.000 It's a total brain upgrade.

01:55:59.000 It's a little chip with GPS in there, and there's a kill switch. 0.99

01:56:03.000 It's not a fucking electrocution bolt into your brain if you say anything bad about the government. 0.70

01:56:08.000 There's some movies being sort of made with that hypothesis, I think, and I always imagine the The interconnection of everyone being the ability to control the net and the vision. 0.81

01:56:30.000 Do you think at all about the technological singularity?

01:56:34.000 Do you follow Kurzweil and all that singularity stuff?

01:56:39.000 It is fascinating.

01:56:41.000 We have friends, Martine And Bina Rothblatt.

01:56:50.000 And Martine and Bina have been working on a robotic facsimile of Bina.

01:57:01.000 I'm interviewing her.

01:57:03.000 Are you?

01:57:04.000 Yeah.

01:57:04.000 Oh, that's wonderful.

01:57:05.000 Yeah, I'm interviewing her for my sci-fi show.

01:57:08.000 Fabulous.

01:57:09.000 Her lover recreated her.

01:57:12.000 Exactly, Martin.

01:57:14.000 Yeah, they're great.

01:57:16.000 They're wonderful people.

01:57:17.000 And we love them.

01:57:21.000 They're married.

01:57:23.000 They have four children.

01:57:24.000 Yes.

01:57:26.000 Yeah, that's amazing.

01:57:28.000 An artificial person.

01:57:30.000 As close to it as what we have right now, right?

01:57:32.000 Well, and...

01:57:34.000 So, I mean, they're where the rubber meets the road.

01:57:38.000 They're really trying to program the robotics so that we can have a closer facsimile.

01:57:45.000 Can you hang with that?

01:57:45.000 Can you go Blade Runner style?

01:57:47.000 Well, the thing that I found fascinating because I was very resistant to the whole idea.

01:57:56.000 Falling in love with the robot idea?

01:57:58.000 Well, just the idea that there will be a time when this will be a problem, you know, that you cannot distinguish between a human being and a robot.

01:58:17.000 That's coming, don't you think?

01:58:19.000 I'm not sure.

01:58:20.000 Perhaps.

01:58:21.000 I'm naïve to think that it isn't, but I have this feeling just like people have a gaydar or know who's Jewish and who's not and things like that.

01:58:38.000 That's pretty subtle and intangible things.

01:58:42.000 To say that all body armor and fact of your mechanicalness and inability to generate a subtle field even perhaps that's a heartbeat and things,

01:59:02.000 these things are probably part of our unconscious Awareness of a human being.

01:59:10.000 So I'll see as this – as it develops, artificial intelligence and robotics and things, I'm sure they'll – part of it will evolve toward that.

01:59:23.000 I really feel like we're not giving technology the credit it deserves in that I think it might be alive.

01:59:30.000 And I know that sounds completely ridiculous because we're so sure that life is like us.

01:59:36.000 We're so sure that life has cells and has blood and it either consumes oxygen or it could be plant-based life.

01:59:44.000 But we know what life is and that's not life.

01:59:46.000 No, that's just something we created.

01:59:47.000 But no, because eventually when you turn it on, If it eventually gets to the point where it can reproduce on its own and think for itself and defends itself or knows how to stay alive or has instincts or knows how to repair itself, then what exactly is that?

02:00:01.000 How come it's not life-wide because it doesn't have what?

02:00:05.000 Is it enough skin? 0.96

02:00:07.000 If it's reproducing and thinking and altering its environment and then moving forward and creating new energy sources and figuring out how to better use resources, if it becomes intelligent life and some crazy asshole says and programs in, hey, defend yourself and reproduce as soon as you can, 0.99

02:00:25.000 oh, you're doomed. 0.98

02:00:26.000 The human race is done.

02:00:28.000 For sure, that's a life form.

02:00:30.000 That's going to be a life form.

02:00:31.000 And it's going to get to the point, if this woman is recreating her wife, It's going to get to a point where that's going to be indistinguishable. 0.82

02:00:40.000 There's going to be an artificial you.

02:00:43.000 It might even be an artificial you that's exactly you.

02:00:47.000 It's your consciousness in another body.

02:00:49.000 You might be able to live several lives at once. 0.96

02:00:51.000 Just in case you fuck one of them up, you got a bunch of other good lives going on simultaneously. 0.59

02:00:56.000 Well, if you do the right Tibetan Buddhist practices, I think you can do that anyway. 0.97

02:01:02.000 You think so?

02:01:03.000 Yeah.

02:01:07.000 The other element of the virtual heaven that I love that Martine and Bina have talked about and the TerraSem movement that they've been putting forward is that we can program as much of the information about our lives and about You know,

02:01:37.000 by filling out basically an elaborate questionnaire.

02:01:41.000 And this also records our voice, telling stories and things like that, and the way that we inflect and things.

02:01:49.000 So these modulations and things become part of what could be a virtual being.

02:01:56.000 It doesn't have to be a robot.

02:01:58.000 It can be, for the virtual heaven, just a facsimile, a 3D model, That's based on the sort of 3D mapping of the head and maybe the chest or something like that.

02:02:17.000 So you have a sense of the person and you might ask a virtual grandma or grandpa who passed on several decades ago But the great-grandkids can now access them via this virtual grandma that can say,

02:02:36.000 Yes, when I was growing up, blah, blah, blah.

02:02:38.000 You know, and share a story or something.

02:02:40.000 Now, what's wrong with that?

02:02:42.000 That would be so weird.

02:02:42.000 What's wrong with that?

02:02:43.000 There's something crazy about turning Grandma on.

02:02:46.000 Hey, Grandma, how's the great beyond?

02:02:48.000 Oh, so I was just knitting!

02:02:50.000 Yes. 0.98

02:02:50.000 There's something fucking creepy about that, man. 0.98

02:02:52.000 I mean, maybe we need to let things go. 0.97

02:02:54.000 Maybe we need to realize that, you know, Grandma is the past and whatever great memories we had of her.

02:02:59.000 So are you going to close her Facebook account?

02:03:03.000 No.

02:03:04.000 Can you imagine if grandma's Facebook account becomes her?

02:03:07.000 Wow, that's what we're talking about.

02:03:09.000 That's nuts. 1.00

02:03:10.000 God damn it. 1.00

02:03:11.000 But it's kind of calm, right? 1.00

02:03:12.000 I mean, who the fuck saw Facebook a thousand years ago? 0.97

02:03:16.000 Right. 0.97

02:03:16.000 It seems to me that a Blade Runner type scenario is inevitable, though, where they have a life that... 0.97

02:03:23.000 Is artificial but acts so much like us that it itself doesn't even know it's artificial.

02:03:28.000 Because if you're going to program a robot correctly to be an artificial person that acts like a person, you don't tell them it's artificial.

02:03:36.000 You want them thinking they're real, right?

02:03:38.000 Of course.

02:03:38.000 It would be the Blade Runner scenario.

02:03:40.000 Yeah. 0.98

02:03:41.000 That was a goddamn brilliant movie. 0.99

02:03:43.000 It was. 0.99

02:03:43.000 It was so amazing. 0.99

02:03:44.000 Yeah.

02:03:45.000 What it might mirror is this whole thing about the Neanderthal and our early relationship.

02:03:55.000 As species, we, for thousands and thousands of years, cohabited the same areas.

02:04:03.000 And what kind of Neanderthal genocide happened there, you know?

02:04:07.000 Like, what was the shadow of our species, you know, built on this relationship?

02:04:13.000 Do you think they just naturally dart off? 0.93

02:04:16.000 Oh, no, I think we definitely killed them.

02:04:18.000 Have you ever seen the people, there's one guy, it's a really sketchy theory, but he painted Neanderthal as like a gorilla-faced predator.

02:04:27.000 And he tried to say that Neanderthal probably hunted man, and that's why we drove it to extinction.

02:04:34.000 And that we based our image of what Neanderthal looked like based on human skin.

02:04:39.000 But we don't really have any skin from Neanderthals.

02:04:42.000 We know that they were far stronger than people.

02:04:44.000 And we know that they had a much thicker bone structure.

02:04:48.000 They were smaller.

02:04:48.000 They'd be like five feet tall, but they would weigh 200 pounds.

02:04:51.000 They were really, really incredibly strong.

02:04:53.000 Stocky.

02:04:54.000 Yeah, well, they were more built like...

02:04:55.000 Like orangutan.

02:04:56.000 Yeah, more like a lower primate than like a human or a homo sapien.

02:05:00.000 And so this guy...

02:05:01.000 See if you can pull that up, Brian.

02:05:02.000 It was pretty trippy. 0.99

02:05:03.000 It's mostly bullshit, but it's kind of fun bullshit. 1.00

02:05:06.000 This guy. 1.00

02:05:08.000 Fuck, what would you say? 1.00

02:05:12.000 Neanderthal predator. 1.00

02:05:13.000 Yeah, see if you find that.

02:05:15.000 And he had like a whole video where they mapped out, in his opinion, what it would look like in...

02:05:22.000 3D imagery, and so we had this really scary looking chimpanzee thing with big giant eyes.

02:05:29.000 We don't have any eye tissue from the eonotals either, and they have a much larger eyeball than humans.

02:05:33.000 Really?

02:05:34.000 Yeah, they're built fairly differently.

02:05:36.000 So this guy drew them up like crazy gorilla monsters.

02:05:40.000 I don't think it's right, but it's kind of cool to look at.

02:05:44.000 And it's interesting just to conceive of a...

02:05:47.000 Yeah, there it is.

02:05:48.000 Wow.

02:05:49.000 That's how he drew it.

02:05:50.000 He drew it like they might have been hairy, but they were really muscular, and he made them look more chimpanzee-like than human-like.

02:05:59.000 Yeah, yeah.

02:06:00.000 Yeah, he did a whole documentary on it, I think. 0.99

02:06:04.000 It's probably bullshit. 0.99

02:06:07.000 Well, you could genetically imagine yourself into a Sasquatch. 1.00

02:06:13.000 I was going to ask you about that.

02:06:14.000 I've been hunting for Sasquatch.

02:06:16.000 Not hunting like trying to hurt him.

02:06:18.000 I should say searching for Sasquatch.

02:06:21.000 I've been doing this TV show.

02:06:23.000 We went up to Washington State, and we stayed in the woods out near Mount Rainier.

02:06:28.000 And it's like tropical rain.

02:06:30.000 I mean, not tropical.

02:06:30.000 A rainforest up there.

02:06:32.000 A real rainforest.

02:06:33.000 Like, if you've never been up there, you've no idea what that's like.

02:06:36.000 It's the weirdest environment ever.

02:06:37.000 You park your car, you take a walk, you go 100 yards into the woods, and you might as well be on another planet.

02:06:44.000 You literally enter into a different dimension.

02:06:47.000 There's the dimension of...

02:06:49.000 There's a dimension of highways and houses, and that's all out there.

02:06:53.000 But once you go into a rainforest, you go a little bit in, and then you're engulfed by this new reality.

02:06:59.000 And this reality is you see an elk running past you, and they disappear in the trees because everything's so thick.

02:07:05.000 And people start to see Bigfoot.

02:07:08.000 They start seeing anything, man. 0.99

02:07:09.000 You don't know what the fuck is out there. 0.99

02:07:11.000 You think Bigfoot's preposterous until you go to a rainforest like the Pacific Northwest. 1.00

02:07:16.000 And you're walking around, and you're like, fuck, maybe, man. 1.00

02:07:19.000 Yeah, like what? 0.99

02:07:21.000 But if you look at the earliest kind of human-animal hybrid cave art, you have something that looks oddly like a Sasquatch-type thing, because it's just a marriage of the stag and the human,

02:07:40.000 and so it's got characteristics of the animal and the human together.

02:07:44.000 They did a lot of that stuff really early on.

02:07:47.000 Yes.

02:07:47.000 Well, look at all the Egyptian art.

02:07:50.000 What was that?

02:07:51.000 What do you think that is?

02:07:52.000 The fusion of the creature, the animal, the Therian morph.

02:07:56.000 It's called Therian morph?

02:07:58.000 That's a term for it.

02:08:00.000 Isn't that what those furries call themselves too?

02:08:02.000 They call themselves Therians? 0.89

02:08:04.000 Hmm, yes.

02:08:05.000 I think so.

02:08:07.000 I think that that's probably a relationship.

02:08:09.000 Not that there's anything wrong with being a furry.

02:08:11.000 Much love to my mascot friends.

02:08:14.000 I'm right here, Joe.

02:08:16.000 I accidentally stumbled into a furry convention once in Pittsburgh.

02:08:21.000 You know what? 0.97

02:08:22.000 It's going to sound stupid, but I thought it was beautiful. 0.98

02:08:25.000 I thought it was beautiful that these people found a place where they could all get together and do this. 0.98

02:08:30.000 They like doing it.

02:08:32.000 They like doing it. 1.00

02:08:33.000 And if you do that in your neighborhood, people are going, what the fuck are you doing, man? 1.00

02:08:37.000 Why are you dressed up like a giant chipmunk? 0.99

02:08:38.000 But for whatever reason, I don't know why they like doing it, but...

02:08:42.000 It doesn't seem like they're hurting anybody.

02:08:44.000 And we were walking.

02:08:45.000 They seemed so happy.

02:08:47.000 We're walking down the street and all these furry dudes and gals were laughing and talking together, all with their crazy costumes on. 1.00

02:08:54.000 Nobody took their shit off. 0.99

02:08:55.000 And I was like, this is the weirdest thing ever. 0.99

02:08:57.000 But it looks so fun.

02:08:58.000 It's embodying a kind of Dr. Seuss-like zany truth about the world of creatures that we're...

02:09:12.000 And it's acknowledging that we're part of an almost interdimensional web of creatures.

02:09:23.000 And I think that the early stuff, the Egyptian and all the cave art and things like that, really did come out of a place of higher awareness, that that was the kind of Well,

02:09:38.000 like a lot of psychedelic drugs have animal ideas embedded in them.

02:09:45.000 Absolutely.

02:09:46.000 Especially DMT or ayahuasca, there's the jaguars or leopards.

02:09:51.000 Jaguars, right?

02:09:51.000 Jaguars and snakes.

02:09:53.000 Yep.

02:09:53.000 And those sort of things, it only kind of makes sense.

02:09:57.000 They're commonplace, absolutely.

02:09:59.000 And there could have been many different psychedelic compounds we don't even know about anymore that these people had found and that put them together with these ideas of combining animals and human into one form.

02:10:12.000 Yes, yes.

02:10:13.000 Well, it's an easy transfer.

02:10:16.000 And the thing that I found refreshing in the Egyptian temples and things was How easy it was to transpose a head and stuff of one creature and another onto a human body and how they were considered the gods.

02:10:36.000 Now, if your job is to sacralize the nature field, to give a sense of the place that we live in is a gift of a divine creator, then if your gods actually are different animals or they have animal characteristics,

02:10:59.000 you're more apt to treat the animal with some respect or As being an aspect of that divinity.

02:11:08.000 And so the translation of the archetypal symbol of a particular animal spirit and a divine human form is to acknowledge our oneness with that kind of the field of the animal spirits.

02:11:29.000 And it's a very shamanic Kind of thing to do.

02:11:33.000 And it was part of many of the Mesopotamian, Babylonian, Assyrian, Egyptian, the Greek Sphinxes and things like that.

02:11:44.000 There's this fusion from the very earliest cave art all the way through the great religious kinds of things.

02:11:51.000 Angels have wings.

02:11:52.000 They're animal and human hybrids. 0.89

02:11:55.000 That's a really good point that I never even thought of until just now.

02:11:59.000 It's still part of the public imagination.

02:12:03.000 It's crazy.

02:12:04.000 Angels are part bird.

02:12:05.000 I just thought they were people with wings.

02:12:07.000 But no, obviously not.

02:12:09.000 If they had a bird's head, then you'd be like, they're part bird.

02:12:12.000 But as long as they have a human's head, you're like, it's not even a bird, man.

02:12:14.000 It's an angel.

02:12:16.000 Yeah, of course.

02:12:17.000 And we accept it so much because the idea of there being a higher world that we ascend to.

02:12:26.000 Symbolically, it's so transparent that we don't even notice it.

02:12:29.000 It's just like there.

02:12:31.000 And I think that that archetype is part of the human psyche and you can find it in each sacred path.

02:12:42.000 The bridging of the realms.

02:12:46.000 That's what Hermes was.

02:12:48.000 Hermes Trismegistus, the occult kind of foundation.

02:12:55.000 How about Ganesh?

02:12:56.000 Yeah.

02:12:57.000 There's just so many versions of the combining of a human and an animal and sacred religious artwork.

02:13:04.000 It's really fascinating.

02:13:06.000 Like the Hindu stuff where there's a man with a lion's head and people that are like octopus arms, six arms. 0.97

02:13:14.000 Yeah.

02:13:16.000 Yeah.

02:13:17.000 Oh, a bunch of people trying to make sense.

02:13:20.000 Of what they're experiencing.

02:13:22.000 Soma, or whatever it is.

02:13:24.000 Exactly.

02:13:24.000 What do you think Soma was?

02:13:27.000 Well, it's very interesting.

02:13:30.000 You know, I think Steve Hager thinks it's cannabis. 0.94

02:13:35.000 Most people are like, it's a sleeping pill, dummy.

02:13:37.000 What are you talking about? 0.93

02:13:39.000 They don't know. 1.00

02:13:39.000 Like, Soma, the sleeping pill, they fucked up. 1.00

02:13:42.000 They should have never named it Soma. 0.98

02:13:44.000 Soma is like, it's a sacred psychedelic drug from, was it from?

02:13:49.000 The Rig Veda.

02:13:50.000 6,000 years ago, the earliest human drug.

02:13:55.000 You know, religious text is the songs in the Rig Veda, the Hindu text. 0.99

02:14:03.000 And some asshole came along and turned that into a sleeping pill. 1.00

02:14:08.000 A pharmaceutical sleeping pill. 1.00

02:14:10.000 What a bunch of dicks. 1.00

02:14:12.000 Well, there you go. 1.00

02:14:14.000 I mean, that's like really rude.

02:14:16.000 You know, that's like Catholics would never take that. 1.00

02:14:18.000 If you had a sleeping pill that was called the sacrament, the Jesus sacrament, they'd be like, hey, fuckhead, you can't call it that. 0.98

02:14:24.000 But people are like, Soma, yeah, that's in another country, and we're America, and we're just going to call it Soma because we like the name. 0.99

02:14:32.000 Soma it is. 0.99

02:14:33.000 Okay, Soma.

02:14:34.000 Yeah.

02:14:35.000 But the original Soma was supposed to be an amazing psychedelic, right?

02:14:38.000 Exactly.

02:14:39.000 And it put the person who imbibed it into a state of connectedness with the divine.

02:14:48.000 And Soma was also recognized as the source of many things, including clothing and stuff like that.

02:14:56.000 As an artist, why do you think that you were the first person to really encapsulate the tryptamine experience?

02:15:04.000 Because all these other people that didn't have these amazing works of art The only people that came close to capturing the tryptamine experience to me were the ancient Egyptians.

02:15:14.000 There's a lot of ancient Egyptian stuff like just Tutankhamen's headdress and the gold.

02:15:20.000 That's very tryptamine-like.

02:15:23.000 And it's one of the only things in historical art to me that rings trippy.

02:15:31.000 There's something about it.

02:15:32.000 You can almost hear music, like some kind of tryptamine music when you're watching these hieroglyphs and you're seeing these images.

02:15:42.000 The symbols, even if you don't understand what they mean, when you're looking at these symbols run together, your mind starts to try to form patterns.

02:15:49.000 And you start to try to think the way these people were thinking and see these incredibly complex geometric shapes that they had turned into buildings.

02:15:59.000 Buildings like the temple in man.

02:16:01.000 This gigantic building where each segment represents different chakras and different energy points in the human body.

02:16:09.000 There's texts around each one explaining this part of the human body. 0.98

02:16:14.000 It's fucking insane. 0.99

02:16:16.000 Yes. 0.99

02:16:17.000 We want to bring that...

02:16:19.000 idea to the land of Kazim and have been, you know, the idea of these, the Neturu, the family of gods in Egypt, has really made a strong imprint on me.

02:16:40.000 When we went over there, Alison and I have been back a couple of times.

02:16:44.000 What is it called again?

02:16:45.000 The Netaru is the family of gods that kind of opened up out of Newt, the night sky, who had an affair with Geb, the earth father. 0.73

02:16:57.000 So the Night Sky mother held five children in her womb and had to find a special time to release them.

02:17:08.000 But the one who was in there with his brothers and sisters decided he didn't want to stick around.

02:17:16.000 He was the dark kind of lord and his name was Set.

02:17:20.000 And he cut his way out of his mother.

02:17:22.000 And out tumbled the rest of the brothers and sisters including Thoth and Isis and Osiris and Nephthys, his sister. 0.51

02:17:33.000 So basically Isis and Osiris got together and they were the football hero and the cheerleader match made in heaven and all that.

02:17:44.000 And they were just like Celebrated and stuff, and Set was kind of barren, you know, and he was kind of, you know, just probably a little jealous of his brother,

02:17:59.000 maybe.

02:18:00.000 And Nephthys wanted a child, and so, anyway, she fooled Osiris into an affair, perhaps Anubis, the dog-headed, 0.97

02:18:17.000 The embalmer of the netherworlds was the result of that.

02:18:22.000 Well, of course, Set was extremely disturbed and decided that he was going to find a way to kill Osiris, which eventually happened and he cut him up and threw him all over the Nile.

02:18:35.000 And so Isis was extremely distraught and she went around finding or remembering parts of the dismembered god.

02:18:47.000 And each place where she found a hand or a foot or something like that, a temple was built.

02:18:54.000 And so you would go down the Nile and remember the god.

02:19:01.000 And that's the idea.

02:19:06.000 Now, I think that, of course, it's the goddess that's been lost, that's been dismembered, the Mother Earth.

02:19:17.000 And so the idea is to – we have different stations on the land where there will be a foot, there will be hand and different things like that.

02:19:26.000 They'll represent different elements of the dismembered mother.

02:19:30.000 Wow.

02:19:31.000 And so we go around to remember the mother.

02:19:37.000 Wow.

02:19:37.000 And to renew ourselves and to renew nature.

02:19:41.000 Trying to wrap your mind around Egyptian mythology and what they meant by that and the origin of that.

02:19:49.000 How it led them to the society that was able to create those insane structures.

02:19:55.000 They're amazing.

02:19:56.000 I haven't been.

02:19:57.000 The only really crazy place I've been to is Chichen Itza.

02:20:01.000 I went to Chichen Itza once and that was one of those things where you're walking around going, what are they doing?

02:20:07.000 How did they do this?

02:20:09.000 Why did they do this?

02:20:10.000 This is crazy.

02:20:12.000 And no one lived here anymore?

02:20:13.000 They just all moved out?

02:20:14.000 They made this and then they left.

02:20:17.000 Somebody left behind this.

02:20:20.000 Yeah, and people return there.

02:20:24.000 You return there.

02:20:25.000 We return there.

02:20:26.000 But nobody lives there.

02:20:27.000 No.

02:20:28.000 It'd be funny if some dude said, this is my house now.

02:20:30.000 Put a door in one of the temples.

02:20:32.000 Sometimes there are caretakers for these sacred sites.

02:20:37.000 You heard what happened in Belize, right?

02:20:40.000 They just mowed down one of the ancient Mayan temples or pyramids that was there.

02:20:45.000 It's like a really, really old structure.

02:20:48.000 Oh, I didn't hear that.

02:20:49.000 That's sad.

02:20:50.000 They plowed it down because it was on private land just to use it for limestone.

02:20:54.000 Good grief. 0.99

02:20:54.000 Yeah, people are freaking out like, what the fuck did you do? 0.99

02:20:59.000 Well, you know, there's different feelings in the different societies about these things. 0.99

02:21:06.000 You know, the Taliban just destroyed a huge Buddhist sculpture which was a heritage type site that It had been there for thousands of years.

02:21:17.000 Probably the CIA pretending to be the Taliban.

02:21:20.000 Look what they did! 1.00

02:21:21.000 These fucks! 1.00

02:21:23.000 I didn't say that. 1.00

02:21:25.000 I didn't mean it.

02:21:28.000 Well, I don't know.

02:21:29.000 At least that was the story that got out.

02:21:32.000 And it was sad.

02:21:33.000 It's most likely true. 0.98

02:21:34.000 Religious ideology is what gets people to do almost every really fucking crazy thing. 1.00

02:21:39.000 It's either money or religious ideology. 0.98

02:21:41.000 Or ideology in general.

02:21:43.000 Negative ideology.

02:21:44.000 We were talking about the Boston bombings.

02:21:47.000 We were like, you can't do that without ideology.

02:21:50.000 Like, no one is able to do something like that without ideology because you have to have something that allows you to think that that's the correct thing to do.

02:21:59.000 An ideology of hate.

02:22:01.000 Yeah, and not all ideologies are bad, but you don't get really insane acts of faith like that without an ideology.

02:22:10.000 Right.

02:22:12.000 Insane acts of terrorism either.

02:22:14.000 Both things come from...

02:22:16.000 It's not always bad, but it's tricky.

02:22:20.000 It's tricky when you just automatically subscribe to the patterns that are in front of you.

02:22:24.000 We like to be in... 0.97

02:22:26.000 It's like getting to that my old bullshit thing on the desktop. 0.97

02:22:29.000 We feel really comfortable going down already tread paths. 0.98

02:22:34.000 Yes, it's really true.

02:22:35.000 And it's sad that the...

02:22:39.000 The more widespread understanding of jihad as a holy war within the Muslim community is that it's something that the ego wages.

02:22:53.000 We engage with our ego, basically.

02:22:57.000 That somehow the soul and the ego is always in a kind of holy war with each other, that we desire the one true spirit to win out and to have love save the day and all these things,

02:23:16.000 to be a hero in life.

02:23:23.000 I think part of why we're called to life.

02:23:28.000 Well, the original term was supposed to be like a war against your own vices, right?

02:23:32.000 Your personal vices.

02:23:34.000 Yes.

02:23:34.000 To become a better person.

02:23:37.000 And it's a struggle to become a better person.

02:23:41.000 In the same way that Israel means God-wrestler.

02:23:46.000 You know, we're struggling with this higher nature.

02:23:50.000 And without engaging it somehow, without struggling with it, and to be activated in our creative pursuit of it.

02:24:04.000 It's not real or tangible for us.

02:24:06.000 It has to become a real practice.

02:24:10.000 That's why I like any kind of art or creativity or any form of expression, because that's what we're made of.

02:24:20.000 We're made of creative energy.

02:24:23.000 Yeah, that's what we're here for.

02:24:27.000 Marshall McLuhan said that human beings are the sex organs of the machine world.

02:24:34.000 That's what we're doing.

02:24:36.000 We're just creating little computer babies.

02:24:40.000 That's how computers get made.

02:24:42.000 People create them.

02:24:43.000 That's true.

02:24:44.000 That's true.

02:24:46.000 It's a new form of intelligence that we're living amongst.

02:24:49.000 Are you going to download your consciousness into a computer when the time comes?

02:24:53.000 We'll have to see what's available, you know.

02:24:57.000 I love Martine's response because I was saying, whoa, hey, you know, I don't know about a soul and a robot and stuff like that, but she was saying like, Well, who's to say that a soul, if there were a disembodied spirit, wouldn't like hanging around a robot of itself for a while? 0.98

02:25:17.000 Or who's to say you're not going to create a zombie in the next dimension because a person is going to be born without a soul because you put it in somebody's fucking computer. 0.51

02:25:23.000 And so then all of a sudden the next dimension is like the dawn of the dead. 0.98

02:25:26.000 You've got a bunch of zombies running around.

02:25:28.000 That could happen. 1.00

02:25:30.000 Dammit! 1.00

02:25:30.000 Maybe that's the zombie apocalypse. 1.00

02:25:32.000 The zombie apocalypse is here now.

02:25:34.000 Yeah, when we're seeing The Walking Dead and this sort of thing, this zombie theme keeps returning over and over and over again.

02:25:39.000 That's a warning telling us not to download our consciousness to computers.

02:25:43.000 We already have.

02:25:45.000 You know, that's what Facebook is.

02:25:47.000 That's Myspace, right?

02:25:48.000 Yeah, yeah.

02:25:49.000 Our Tumblr, our Instagram, our Twitter, all of these things are a virtual existence.

02:25:56.000 And wiki and various things like this, they give people maybe a sense of solidity.

02:26:04.000 That's why it's weird to go to someone's Twitter page after they're dead.

02:26:08.000 Have you ever done that before?

02:26:09.000 No, but I'm… Or a Facebook page.

02:26:11.000 I have a friend, a really great guy, who expired, and every now and then I go to his Facebook page and I'll read his posts.

02:26:18.000 Yes.

02:26:18.000 And you know, I keep reading his posts, I'm still getting a little bit of him, you know?

02:26:23.000 Exactly.

02:26:23.000 If you watch a video of him, you're getting a little bit of him, you know?

02:26:27.000 It's not new stuff.

02:26:28.000 I listened to Ray Manzarek today.

02:26:30.000 He died today.

02:26:31.000 Yeah.

02:26:32.000 But I listened to him.

02:26:33.000 He was like 72, right?

02:26:35.000 72, yeah.

02:26:35.000 Isn't that crazy?

02:26:36.000 The doors.

02:26:38.000 He was in the doors and he's 72. It's like, wait a minute.

02:26:40.000 Help form the doors.

02:26:41.000 What's going on?

02:26:42.000 How old are we getting?

02:26:44.000 Jesus.

02:26:44.000 Well, there's something timeless within that.

02:26:47.000 Maybe he downloaded himself into a computer right before he kicked off.

02:26:53.000 I think into all of our consciousness.

02:26:55.000 And the computers are just the external storage devices.

02:27:01.000 What's really the cool thing is that we're connected with all of it, just consciousness-wise.

02:27:06.000 What do you think the next stage of consciousness is going to be?

02:27:08.000 Do you think it's going to be some sort of an ability to read each other's minds, to integrate with each other, to exchange information freely through the air, like a Wi-Fi signal?

02:27:18.000 What do you think it's going to be?

02:27:19.000 All of that.

02:27:20.000 All of that.

02:27:21.000 It's coming, right?

02:27:21.000 Can't stop it.

02:27:22.000 I think that it's an inevitable evolutionary development.

02:27:28.000 However, some of it's going to take training and some of it's going to take an orientation toward it and an opening up the ideas of a I have a completely uneducated faith in the fact that people far smarter than me are going to continue to do awesome work.

02:28:00.000 I'm convinced that they're going to continue to come out of school and figure new things out.

02:28:05.000 Even though I'm not placing...

02:28:06.000 I'm like, wow, we're really coming up with some really fast computers. 0.99

02:28:09.000 I'm not coming up with shit. 0.71

02:28:10.000 But somewhere, I'm convinced they're going to continue to do awesome stuff. 0.92

02:28:15.000 So whoever you are out there, keep it up.

02:28:19.000 Congratulations and thanks.

02:28:21.000 Indeed.

02:28:22.000 Thank you so much.

02:28:23.000 Thank you, Alex Gray.

02:28:25.000 Please go to alexgray.com and please participate in the Kickstarter.

02:28:34.000 It's your chance to be a part of something really cool.

02:28:40.000 Beautiful building that's going to have a beautiful cause.

02:28:44.000 It's going to have a beautiful movement behind it.

02:28:46.000 And you're already doing amazing things.

02:28:48.000 And I swear to God, if I lived up there, I'd be visiting you all the time. 0.99

02:28:51.000 Maybe when this shit hits the fan, I'll move to the Hudson Valley. 0.99

02:28:53.000 It's cool up there, right? 1.00

02:28:54.000 Yeah, absolutely.

02:28:55.000 It's cold in the winter, though, no?

02:28:56.000 Yeah, if you ever make it northeast, we'd love to spin you up.

02:28:59.000 How far is it from New York City?

02:29:00.000 It's a car drive about an hour and a half.

02:29:03.000 Oh, that's nothing.

02:29:04.000 Oh, that's great.

02:29:05.000 It's also Metro North.

02:29:07.000 You can take the, from Grand Central, you can walk from the station there.

02:29:10.000 I would love to come check it out.

02:29:12.000 And I absolutely want to come once it's all done, just to see how crazy it's going to be.

02:29:15.000 Oh, maybe you can help us kick it off.

02:29:17.000 Yeah, for sure.

02:29:18.000 Yeah, let's do some sort of a party or something.

02:29:21.000 Yeah. 0.99

02:29:21.000 But all you crazy hippies out there, keep it together. 0.99

02:29:24.000 Don't get too nutty at this party. 0.99

02:29:26.000 You know, Alex Gray took acid and changed him, so I'm going to take it all.

02:29:30.000 No, not at the parties.

02:29:32.000 Find a nice, peaceful place.

02:29:34.000 Find a nice spot in the woods.

02:29:35.000 Find a nice spot in the woods.

02:29:36.000 So it's alexgray.com.

02:29:38.000 And on Twitter, your Twitter is alexgraycosm, C-O-S-M. And so please follow him on Twitter, alexgraycosm. 0.86

02:29:47.000 Right now you've got 22,511. 0.98

02:29:51.000 Let's see if we can boost that shit up to 22,600. 0.99

02:29:56.000 I'm PBS again. 0.99

02:29:57.000 I went PBS again on you.

02:29:58.000 I apologize, ladies and gentlemen.

02:30:00.000 Please, but to support this, it's an awesome cause if you got the cash.

02:30:03.000 If you don't, you know, don't do it.

02:30:05.000 Thank you, everybody, for tuning in.

02:30:07.000 We really appreciate it.

02:30:08.000 Thanks, everybody, who's been coming out to these shows and all the cool people that I met when I was looking for Bigfoot. 0.94

02:30:14.000 I had a great fucking time.

02:30:16.000 We'll be back on Thursday with the great Graham Hancock. 0.99

02:30:20.000 He'll be joining us.

02:30:21.000 Thanks to Ting for sponsoring our podcast.

02:30:24.000 Go to rogan.ting.com and save $25, you freak.

02:30:29.000 Thanks to Squarespace, squarespace.com forward slash Joe.

02:30:33.000 And if you want to use it, use the offer code JOE5. Thanks also to onnit.com.

02:30:41.000 Go to O-N-N-I-T. Use the code name ROGAN. Save some money.

02:30:44.000 Goddamn, I gotta record that shit because it sounds so repetitive. 1.00

02:30:48.000 I'm broken. 1.00

02:30:49.000 I can't say it anymore.

02:30:51.000 Alright, we love you guys and we'll see you on Thursday.

02:30:52.000 Thank you very much.

02:30:53.000 Bye-bye.

The Joe Rogan Experience - May 21, 2013

Joe Rogan Experience #359 - Alex Grey

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