DMT and how it might help with the big challenges we're facing today

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Episode Transcript:

Lian Brook-Tyler  01:10

Hello, my beautiful people a huge warm welcome back to the show. In today's crazy modern world, men and women are living shallow, disconnected and unfulfilling lives. So we created the path for those who are ready to reclaim their wildness and actualize their deepest gifts. The next week in the wild crucibles where you're putting will be waking the wild sovereign in early 2023. It always sells out so if you are feeling the call to sovereignty and actualizing, your inner king or queen archetype, then do go register your interest now and you'll be the first to hear when it opens for application. The link for that is at primal happiness.co/WTWS and now on to this week's show.  It's with Daniel Pinchbeck. Daniel is the New York Times best selling author of breaking open the head when plants dream and more. He hosted the talk show mind shift on Gaia TV and was featured in the 2010 documentary 2012 Time for Change. He has written for many publications, including the New York Times Magazine, Rolling Stone and much, much more. He is the director of liminal news an online course platform and publishes a regular newsletter. In this conversation, Daniel and I explored the fascinating topic of DMT, also known as the spirit molecule, we covered what DMT is its history, research that's done about it, and how Daniel sees its role in human consciousness, and the challenges of the world today. Such a deep, rich and wide ranging conversation. I thoroughly enjoyed it, and I really think you will, too. Let's dive in.  Hello, Daniel. Welcome to the show.

Daniel Pinchbeck  03:00

Hi, Lian. Thanks for having me.

Lian Brook-Tyler  03:01

Oh, my pleasure, my pleasure. So I'm really looking forward to this conversation, I've been really looking at the breadth and depth of your work. And I'm really interested to see how this kind of starting point of what I'm really intrigued to explore around DMT, how it weaves into lots of lots of different areas that I can already see, like your experience is so broad, I think it's going to take us to some interesting places. But first, I would love to know, what's taking you to explore what is, you know, really eclectic subjects that aren't, you know, not particularly mainstream, you know, aren't typically average. But what took you here? What, what, where did this passion arise from?

Daniel Pinchbeck  03:53

Throughout the short, medium, long or?

Lian Brook-Tyler  04:00

Okay, from medium place?

Daniel Pinchbeck  04:05

I mean, I grew up in Manhattan in New York, and my parents were artists, but everybody, you know, there was sort of no spirituality in a way like, my dad meditated a little bit. But there was a sense of, you know, materialism, scientific materialism was very much seems what was real. And therefore, along with that was this idea that consciousness was only based, it's like an epiphenomenon of sort of brain activity, kind of this random evolutionary process so that after we passed away, that would be it, everything was just annihilated into the infinite black void. And as I got older, I know this didn't sit well with me and I began to wonder, you know, was there you know, anything else or any other way to think about anything else so that I reminded myself that I had the psychedelic experiences when I was in college for few years that were very profound. The only mystical experiences I had had so I decided that I would explore psychedelics. This was in my like, late 20s I guess. And I started to get there as a journalist, I was writing for magazines, I started to get some assignments. I ended up going to Gabon in Africa to take eBoga a West African psychedelic, it's being used a lot to treat it addiction to drugs called Ibogaine. And then I also got an assignment to go to visit  Ecuador to work with a tribe called a Sequoia to take Ayahuasca. And then I also went to the Burning Man festival for Rolling Stone, I wrote about that back in 2000. And, yeah, I just had all these extraordinary experiences with these shamanic substances that over time began to change my worldview. Because I mean, I have psychic experiences, paranormal experiences. Yeah, many different things with what happened. And so yeah, that sort of led me to write the first book "breaking up in the head", which ended up sort of being my conversion story, in a way from materialism, to shamanism, or to Jungian archetypal psychology or something. And so yeah, that book also encompass my first experiences, both with Ayahuasca that contains Dimethyltryptamine. And also, with DMT, just as a smokeable form. That book led me to a second book 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl with yet because turns out that a lot of indigenous cultures around the world have prophecies, understanding of this time, which I think are seeing more and more compelling, considering where we go on every level. And so I wrote the book about prophecies, and it was basically, you know, understanding that these like visionary plants that these these indigenous cultures thought were very important, were actually very important to that there was something wrong with our modern civilization that, you know, couldn't see the value of these types of experiences. Of course, that's changed. Now, there's a big, psychedelic Renaissance happening, which I think my first book breaking open, the head could have helped instigate. So now we have like, how to change your mind on Netflix, the art of you know, billions of dollars going into research to psychedelics. So it's an interesting moment that fields there, I got into other areas. I was very concerned about the ecological crisis back in 2000. Going back to 2002, actually, to the first book. So after 2012, I started a company called Evolver, and we tried to build like a local community movement. And then I wrote a third book that came out from Watkins press, English press, 2016, called the house students now, which was an effort to kind of think through all the elements of systems change that would have to happen, you know, kind of radically for us to be able to deal with the psychological emergency that we were facing. And I had like staggered Russell Brand, right introduction. Throughout the book, didn't really pick up but it felt like people werent really able to think, in a system design way about the system. So since then, I wrote another book about ayahuasca with my friend, Sophia Rocklin, and anthropologist, Baldwin plant stream, and I write a newsletter, teach courses, do whatever else comes along. Hmm,

Lian Brook-Tyler  08:45

thank you so much for sharing that I was thinking, as you were talking, you've got what most people or many people listening would consider a dream job having these incredible experiences and getting paid to have them and write about them. And then I was also thinking, it's, um, I'm not an expert at all on journalism. So I'm just assuming this. But it's, you know, I guess in journalism, there's, I guess, sometimes a degree of objectivity that's valued. But when you're immersing yourself in these kinds of experiences, you can't help but be transformed by them. So I'm thinking that must be a particularly interesting, it's, you know, going into these experiences that are shamanic and transformative nature, they're going to like very much be the spirit of what you're writing, aren't they? You're not able to keep that kind of sort of journalistic objectivity in the same way.

Daniel Pinchbeck  09:41

Right. Well, yesterday, there sort of became a whole genre. You know, I wrote some early set of examples of of like, people exploring shamanism and writing about it for mainstream publication. It's like, sort of a self mocking humor, kind of like a self distancing from the experience. But um, yeah, but ultimately, you know, I'd say after I published my second book, where I was very solidly on the side of kind of the prophetic wisdom traditions, The Mystery School wisdom, and all that kind of stuff. By that it was very difficult for me to write any more for the mainstream publications. Because they have a kind of materialist ethos, in a way,

Lian Brook-Tyler  10:27

yes, it just doesn't fit with a worldview. And you're almost having to, yeah, I completely understand what you mean. So something that feels just isn't necessarily the focus of the conversation, but just felt like I wanted to mention it. I hadn't realized that the time it happened. But I had a kind of, I guess, almost like spontaneous, sort of spiritual awakening, I don't like to call it that normally. But it's the simplest way of describing it when my dad died in 2012. And so he, he was killed. And so it was a very kind of like, sudden, tragic event. And it just blew me open spiritually. And it was only sort of years later, I realized this kind of significance around 2012. And I was just looking at kind of what you'd said about, you know, these prophecies and recognizing that actually, a lot of people that I've spoke to, in this line of work and quote, marks often did have a kind of particular experience that happened in 2012, that I think we can take these prophecies like, really literally like the end of the world, rather than as I think you were suggesting, like, the end of a certain type of consciousness, or awareness or way of living, and an opening to something else. So before we go into the conversation about DMT, I'd love to know if there's anything that you've seen around that in terms of individuals having that experience in 2012, that would align with what I've just said.

Daniel Pinchbeck  12:07

Yeah, I mean, I definitely saw many people go through, you know, retrospectively, you know, recognize that as a very key point in their in their journey. I mean, you know, it's a 5125 year cycle. So, you know, it's kind of like the hinge point of a shift, but I wasn't really ever proposing that. That was going to be the moment, you know, that shift would happen, you know, so we're like 10 years in that's like nothing, we go through a 5000 year cycle. We, you know, the global ecological emergency is amping up, the geopolitical crisis is amping up, like our whole civilizational structure seems to be kind of like trembling if not crumbling, you know, which, you know, couldn't be the ends, or it could be the beginning of a new way of being. And hopefully, it's the latter. So yeah, so, you know, definitely, you know, many people felt that it was a hinge point for that for them personally. Hmm. Yeah.

Lian Brook-Tyler  13:09

Fascinating. It really is. So actually, that feels like quite nice segway into a conversation about DMT. In that, how do you see if we are agreeing there is this kind of shift or invitation or opening into a new way of being? How do you see maybe first, even just having a definition of how you how you would describe DMT, but, but I'd like to know, so is first, how would you define DMT? And then also, what role do you see it has to play in this shift into a new way of being?

Daniel Pinchbeck  13:48

Okay, yeah, I mean, obviously, there's a number of different psychedelic compounds that are pure in nature. Many of them produced by plants, some of them produced by animals, like the toad produces a form of DMT in Mexico. And the psilocybin, obviously crucified mushrooms, peyote, and Dimethyltryptamine, or DMT is produced by a wide range of plants, in the Amazon. And, yeah, it's the sort of one of the two main types of the Ayahuasca brew, which you find used across the whole Amazon Basin by hundreds of tribes, hundreds of different cultures and so on. And we've also learned that DMT is a chemical in our brain that we've found in the spinal cord also. One of the initial works in the field a few years ago was DMT, the Spirit Molecule by this guy, Dr. Rick Strassman, and he was one of the first to basically after the 70s You were not allowed to do Cuban tests with psychedelics anymore. For some reason, it was like 90's or early 2000s, he got approval to do a test with DMT giving it to subjects intravenously. But his hypothesis around that came from studying Buddhism, because he discovered that, according to Buddism of the soul reincarnates after death, seven weeks after death, that he discovered that the pineal glands, which is the sort of distinct organ, the middle of the brain, that De cart thought was like the seed of the soul. And actually, in other animals, like reptiles, and so on, it actually has like a, like an evolutionary third eye lens and accordions on pineal gland appears several weeks after conception. So that led him to this hypothesis that maybe there was like a chemical conductive medium that was produced by the pineal gland, which would bring the soul into the body when we're born, that released the soul at death. That's one hypothesis. Yeah.

Lian Brook-Tyler  16:05

That's,that's fascinating, a kind of slight segway. I was diagnosed with autism last year, so a year and a half ago. And around the same time, I was reading various research studies about autism and the autistic brain and the differences in it. And one of the studies said that it, it was looking at it much more from a kind of like medical, you know, what's wrong here? How do we treat it, but the thing that was really interesting was, they discovered that the autistic brain hyper metabolizes the DMT that's naturally found in the in the brain, you know, whether or not that also hyper metabolizes, if you intake it, I don't know that getting that wasn't the focus of the study. And it can be seen that in an autistic person's urine, the level of DMT present, and it's actually several types of DMT. It's, it's not just one kind either, it has, I think it's the same type as Bufo toad. And another kind, I can't remember what that is. But he's actually found like a higher percentage in the urine, which I thought was fascinating. I was like, So it clearly, as you're suggesting, you know, it has some kind of role in humans and the fact that in certain kinds of humans, it appears that it's potentially creating a different kind of human experience. And I find that fascinating, I, you know, I can make kind of various, you know, I've got sort of a hypothesis as to what that might mean. But I'd love to know if there's any thoughts you have on that? Because, again, that's, I think, fairly recent research, and again, It's, I think it's as you saying, it's not that long, that we've even known that DMT is naturally present in the human brain anyways.

Daniel Pinchbeck  18:02

Yeah, I don't know, when we learned that. I mean, I know I think the DMT was synthesized in the 20s. I don't know when they learned where, you know, the biologic, biological aspects of it. So that is interesting. I don't I don't really, you know, I haven't researched a lot into autism. So I wouldn't know what that would mean in terms of that. But, yeah, I mean, we don't really know like, what DMT does for plants? It might be for some insects, kind of a poison? Or, you know, maybe it's meant for us to find it and then chop it up and smoke it, you know, who knows?

Lian Brook-Tyler  18:46

Yeah. And it's fascinating when we look at something like Ayahuasca that requires the combination of two different plants in that way. And is, I find these things so fascinating. It's simpler when it's something Well, I remember reading recently, I can't remember where I read this, it was saying that actually, most most forms of DMT come with a kind of an element of, you know, challenge or danger. You know, so for example, with psilocybin, there's a all manner of mushrooms that are poisonous. And so you're kind of you needing to risk your life in order to find the ones that aren't and it was it was saying, you know, similarly, there's lots of other with each type. There's various challenges that come with it. Like for example, the peyote requires kind of pilgrimaging into the desert, which obviously is a dangerous environment. So it is an interesting thing, isn't it? Whether the plants it's with the design that they are meant to be consumed by humans or not, I don't know. But yeah, I find that a fascinating thing. It feels like  we evolved with them? But you know what they're how they consider that their role is it is a question mark.

Daniel Pinchbeck  20:08

Yeah. Let's begin with a little bit with Dennis McKenna was a bit of Terence McKenna, a botanist, and he was talking about mushrooms and psilocybin potentially being sort of like neural hormones. The psilocybin propagates itself through our use of it, you know. So it actually, it's found its own evolutionary pathway by creating these compounds that make us excited and delirious. Maybe stimulate, you know, language, other processes.

Lian Brook-Tyler  20:41

Hmm. Fascinating. So, coming back again to that second question, I asked, What do you see that role? And I'm kind of I'm saying DMT for, because it's the best way of kind of generalizable could be, I guess, saying, you know, psychedelic medicines, what do you see is, is its role in this movement to this opening to a new way of being?

Daniel Pinchbeck  21:12

Well, I mean, certainly, when I wrote breaking up in the head, I was I was extremely hopeful that Ayahuasca accomplish what LSD didn't accomplish in the 60s. Often, when people first take ayahuasca, you know, they definitely, you know, kind of level up in certain ways, they, you know, they see their patterns like negative thought patterns and behavior patterns. They also see their disconnection from nature. A lot of that, like, a friend who brings a lot of like, CEOs of startups to do Ayahuasca in Peru, a lot of lives have been changed, change what their company does, or changes their investment practice, or started, start a different company that does something better for the environment or something. So it does have that, you know, but then also, you know, people who do it a lot, learn how to sort of control control it in a way like they, you know, they figure out their own internal mechanisms. So if their ego and kind of simulated again, and certainly in the Amazon, you find a lot of black magic, a lot of shamans who use, you know, Ayahuasca to, you know, attack other shamans or sorcerers, whatever. So it's not, it's not that simple. But I still feel that I kind of, I've also had a slightly mixed interest. Now there's this huge psychedelic Renaissance, there's all this money for it, actually, I'm excited because the next few days, I would be spending with a lot of (In England actually), with a lot of people who are part of this field, the science side, and even on the corporate investment side, to hopefully get a much better sense of it, I've sort of stepped away from it for a while. But I was a little bit I've been a little concerned around what made was so weighted towards, you know, science and research into mental health, that they've kind of just been looking at psychedelics, either as a therapy tools to, you know, or as a micro dosage use for corporations for entrepreneurs to become more restful and innovative and so on. Whereas I think there's other levels of it, you know, that. Are you be interested, be more, I mean, both the fact that it can trigger these kinds of paranormal or psychic effects? Or the, you know, transcendent quality of the experience.

Lian Brook-Tyler  23:34

Yeah, and my own sense, is that what, I'm not saying this is wholly missing, but certainly the examples you gave with a sort of Therapy Focus, and that kind of, you know, Silicon Valley type microdosing focus is the relationship with the plants themselves with the medicine with the natural world. And clearly, they're finding that there's efficacy in using these substances in that way. But it feels as though there's a deeper, a deeper opportunity, a deeper relationship that's missed. When it isn't, then I mean, I guess, do those experiences then start to invite someone into that relationship? Or does that? Does that worldview almost need to come first? If that makes sense? Let me know if I've not made that clear. But that's what I've been pondering.

Daniel Pinchbeck  24:45

Remember, there's a lot of debate and discussion around that in like the larger psychedelic community with some people feeling very strongly that the ceremonial use of plants is really the crucial thing. and others feeling that it's actually a this sort of chemical molecular experience that can be conveyed without a lot of ceremony or to therapy context. What I liked about the ladder is that I personally believe that we're marching towards a global sort of economic collapse and ecological, you know, meltdown, and so on. And I think people who have been trapped in the mainstream materialists society are going to be very confused. And they're going to be looking for new answers in a way new ideas. And if you can make, for instance, Ayahuasca pharmaceutical products that a therapists can can give out, you know, with a license to, you know, quite a large number of people at one time, but any kind of group therapy context, having gotten through the, you know, legalization or whatever the right regulation process to get that legalized? I can't, I think that might be a great thing. Because it might convey enough of the experience. And I don't think it's in violation of like, the plant spirit or anything to do that. Cuz Yeah, I mean, Ayahuasca in particular, has an antidepressant quality to it. It also has this revelatory quality. So you could really imagine that I'm talking about this because I'm, you know, meeting people who were developing this Switzerland, like a sort of pharmaceutical grade, the thing about Ayahuasca, Is that you just drink the cup of it, you don't know exactly how much you're getting, it will be completely like, you'll be getting, you know, six milligrams of DMT and 12 milligrams of you know, beta carbonate or whatever it is that, that that potential as the DMT is will be able to do, I actually think that's sort of where we are now. If we can pull this into the framework of science and medicine, it's probably the best thing we could do.

Lian Brook-Tyler  26:57

Hmm, yeah, really hear you on those two different schools of thought about it. I guess the question I have is, it feels as though I'm not saying this is really simplified a very complex thing, admittedly. But for me, so much of how we've ended up where we are, is that disconnection with the natural world, and my, my own sort of journey to this point, it has been kind of like, I've my, so for example, my shamanic path has been much more around that first, that connection with the natural world, with the ancestors. And then the working with plants has been kind of like an evolution from that rather than the other way round. And the more time I have experienced, what, what that's given me, the more I feel as though that's really kind of, I don't know, I really get what you're saying, like we've got a kind of an acute, we're in an acute place, and maybe being able to kind of medicalize and sign to size. These substances maybe is what's really needed right now. But it feels to me that without one way or another, coming back into connection with the natural world, I don't know how much can really change. And so I suppose if for me, taking those, those medicines out of the natural world, and out of us being in deeper connection, the natural world feels as though is it is it really shifting anything?

Daniel Pinchbeck  28:59

I think I think it could, I mean, I mean, MDMA is a chemical compounds, although it relates to certain compounds found in plants, and, you know, they're, you know, doing stage three clinical trials that are showing a huge amount of efficacy for treating like post traumatic stress disorder, even in kind of a hardcore PTSD, where people have like treatment, adverse forms of PTSD. So they've had, like 60% success rate and like during treatment averse, PTSD, that's like unheard of, you know, so that can get out to all the veterans, you know, were suffering, you know, they could actually start their lives again and have a new vision and that's got to be great. I mean, LSD is also chemical compounds that related to compounds and other plants or fungi or whatever, but that was discovered in the lab, you know, the 40s. But you know, definitely inspired a lot of people to go back to the lands and a lot of the, the whole, you know, a lot of the 60s movements, the ecological movement, we're very influenced by, you know, even the synthetic psychedelic experiences produced or something like LSD. So I don't think, you know, I think we have to, you know, I mean, they're all given to us by the Earth in a way, like, you know, it'd be. So if we could figure out what tools are best to help people right now, I think that would be the right thing to do

Lian Brook-Tyler  30:21

Hmm, yes, you're right. There's a kind of, there's a systemic level, and then there's a kind of individual human level, but clearly, they're interlinked. And if we can help things that human level, ultimately, I'm guessing they'll lead to a shift in this at the systemic level.

Daniel Pinchbeck  30:39

Yeah, I mean, for me, one of the problems, for instance, with Ayahuasca at the moment is that, because it's a limited source, and most people do it with these sort of shamans, it's become a very elite kind of opportunity. Like, you know, Lisa, right now, and there are a lot of people here to explore Ayahuaska in ceremony and other things like that. But, you know, you're not going to find that in Detroit or the, you know, brixton or something, you know, what I mean? So, you know, how do we how do we, how do we get these kinds of elevating experiences that may begin people do context and help them address their life quandaries? Who are already part of like an elite group?

Lian Brook-Tyler  31:19

Hmm, yes. No, that that is a really good point. So this is this is quite a big question I am about to ask. What do you see is actually happening when someone takes some form of DMT? What what do you see is actually happening for them? Why? What's happening? Why is that happening? As it is like, what what do you see? And feel free to be as kind of, I guess, really, based on your own experience, it doesn't have to be kind of scientific. I'm just really interested in understanding your sense of this is.

Daniel Pinchbeck  32:02

Yeah, I mean, I guess I have my perspective, which is maybe more mystical. So I sometimes, you know, butt heads with people who are in the scientific community. I mean, you know, I think we're very young species. And, you know, there's a lot that we don't know, you know, you know, what percentage of the universe is made of dark matter and dark energy? Take a guess. Oh, my God,

Lian Brook-Tyler  32:24

I'm gonna keep because I'm gonna say something absolutely ridiculous. 88%

Daniel Pinchbeck  32:30

That's pretty good. Very impressive. 95% Yeah. So dark matter, dark energy, or mathematics don't work there or physics. So we basically know nothing about it, that's 99% of the universe. So this idea that we have science that we've almost got it all figured out and, you know, we're just about to figure out, you know, consciousness and how, you know, how, you know, the hard problem of consciousness, you know, that could be totally wrong. And there might actually be, you know, a lot of other dimensions of reality are hyper, inter dimensional, spatial, other things, astral planes, and etheric plane. So, you know, my feeling is that, at a DMT would take a high dose of it. It's like a hyperdimensional experience, you find yourself out another plane of existence, another plane of consciousness, and there seem to be entities many, many people that are there beings or entities there that are kind of watching or communication or give up if you don't really care. But, you know, it's the use of the sense of this. These these beings having tremendous power and wisdom intellect, it's on the other DMT, that's additivity, the five Meo, it's more of the void or the vada experience, the five Meo is the one that comes from the Bufo toad and other places. So there you will have like an ego dissolution, when you begin to come out of it, you might remember it as like, kind of looks a bit like Islamic pattern, mosques or whatever. It's like those types of they're going in all directions for eternity. These are crystalline white pattern eggs, but it's not like you're just looking at those patterns, you are of that like infinite thing. So you know, Buddhism talks about non duality being the ultimate basis of everything so that you know, when you smoke a 5-DMT, we'll get to the ultimate level of that experience. You know, there is experience there's this ecstatic bliss state, but there's no you having that experience there is just experience. So you can either take that as sort of shocking and horrifying. It's like oh, no, there's no such thing as the self. Or you can take it as like you know, acceptance and bliss for the base of the universe is love the well connected as one in this in this cosmic Nirvana and so on. So yeah, so I think that the five Meo is experiential confirmation of the Buddhist idea of the nirvana or the void. At the end DMT is kind of like, drops us into a subtler plate of devastation, like a different hyper Dimensional Reality. That's the best I can say, No, I love that. Yeah. So kind of different kinds. And we're like a doorway, into a different realm, different plane. There's really only those those two kinds of DMT as far as I Know.

Lian Brook-Tyler  35:38

So from how you see it, those those planes are there. And it's something that happens in like our usual consciousness that doesn't allow us to experience them. And when we take DMT, it opens us up to experience them.

Daniel Pinchbeck  36:03

That roughly summarize it. Yeah, I mean, a number of traditions have what are called Dark retreats, where they put people into a total black environment, like under a cave or something, but weeks. And it may be that that is sort of stimulates DMT production, but that leads them to, in meditations have like similar type of experiences. I think it's possible that you can reach those places, you know, just through intense meditation, different practice, breathing practices, so that we know a few days ago, I had an opportunity to chat with that Rinpoche. But he said, you know, he would never do these substances that they don't they don't feel that they would need them that they can reach these experiences of other ways. I think it's probably correct.

Lian Brook-Tyler  36:56

Yeah. So I don't know if have you ever come across any studies that? I don't know how you do this. But it'd be really interesting to be able to measure the metabolism of, of DMT in the brain of someone who's for example, long term meditator?

Daniel Pinchbeck  37:20

Yeah, that would be great. I mean, actually, my friend, is organizing right now, some studies at Imperial College, where they are sort of giving people DMT. And putting this whole, like, all these electrodes on their heads, like, looking at their brainwaves. What happens to the I assume that some of the people going through it are have dedicated spiritual practices, so on. Yeah, that's actually what I was suggesting. Because it's about Lama. I was like, Look, maybe you'd be you'd want to come and do this trait, you know, this experience, that he was like not for me.

Lian Brook-Tyler  37:53

Yeah, don't need it, which does? Yeah, we are,

Daniel Pinchbeck  37:57

we are getting a lot more data, like Imperial College has done all these like brain scans of people at high dose, LSD and psilocybin. And you can really see how profound these things are in terms of how they affect the brain. Like they light up all these areas of the brain that are normally dormant, they create these kinds of new connections across these these areas, so on. So it makes sense that they would maybe lead to breakthroughs like creative breakthroughs, way years, whatever.

Lian Brook-Tyler  38:26

Yeah, really does make sense. Actually, going back to what I was saying earlier about the studies on the autistic brain, there's two different things that were talked about in this study. One was that hyper metabolism of DMT. The other was what they called as a kind of overgrowth of the cortical as in like, there's almost too many connections. So it seems like one seems to link to the other, who knows what causes what, but that that kind of extra level of connectivity seems associated.

Daniel Pinchbeck  39:04

Interesting, it says verbally researched.

Lian Brook-Tyler  39:09

So what do you what do you see is next in terms of, as you say, there's this kind of psychedelic psychedelic renaissance and this explosion of studies and different forms of being able to access DMT. What do you see is coming next, what do you think is going to be a kind of, you know, some important milestones? We've We've got ahead, and I guess there's almost like, what, what would you like to happen and what do you think is gonna happen?

Daniel Pinchbeck  39:44

Yeah. I mean, you know, anything that's working through the system takes quite a bit of time. Right. Like, you know, I mentioned the sort of pharmaceutical version of Ayahuasca, you know, legally That would be like, you know, maybe five, seven years away? That's a big shame. Because, you know, I feel like we're entering the sort of crux of emergency, you know, in the next two or three years. But yeah, you know, what would I like to see it in which level? Which area?

Lian Brook-Tyler  40:24

Um, I guess we talked about this opening into, like, the very nascent start of this new way of being that came about in 2012. And then we've been exploring, you know, potentially the role of DMT in this. Yeah, so it's very specifically a kind of like, what's required to move us into assuming this new way of being is something desirable and beneficial. How you see, and you pick the timeframe, we could be talking over the next 5/10 years, we could be talking longer, but kind of, you know, milestones in DMT role in that.

Daniel Pinchbeck  41:05

Okay. Well, I guess, for me today, I've been writing a lot of a lot of my newsletter, which is Daniel Pinchbeck.substack.com, if people want to join, it has been kind of the need to kind of realize that the materialist, reductive scientific materialist model is obsolete. You know, as quantum physics kind of discovered the course of the 20th century, that actually, you know, there isn't really an observed unless there's an observer making a observation. And this is now leading kind of a new group of philosophers to explore what's called analytic idealism, which is essentially a kind of restatement of a lot of Eastern ideas. But essentially, the idea is that the consciousness is actually the reality, the underlying foundational reality, what we experience is like matter physical stuff is actually just projections of consciousness, like, you and I are like dreams that this consciousness is having, like, it can explore it's like, creative abilities and possibilities, by separating itself out and finding these fragments that can yet like reintegrate it, you know, what our little dream is, it's just as, like a dream character, your dream, when you wake up, you're like, Oh, that was interesting. That was me. And it wasn't bad. I remember that dream. So that type of realization, if it began to, you know, propagate itself, through society, I think would be very transformative, because the scientific materialism has also led to this idea that the only thing that's worth valuing are things that are, you know, like material goods, comforts. You know, it used to be that many societies, like indigenous cultures were, were really interested in comfort and warmth, that way they were, they were, you know, they more saw life as a constant test of their kind of initiatory discipline, or as an opportunity to, you know, become more psychic, you know, or more or more, you know, awareness like that. So, you know, as we go into this crisis, we could either be like, Oh, no, oh, shit this is terrible, or, you know, how could the world be doing this to us? That, well, you know, also like, Oh, I'll go for, like, fascist leaders, because maybe they can hold stuff together, I don't know what to do anymore. You know, or there can be more of like a movement towards like, self sovereignty, self awareness, realization. And I think this, this paradigm shift would be part of it, you know, from materialism.

Lian Brook-Tyler  43:40

Hmm. So, coming back to DMT your sense is, its role is one of the things that can most powerfully invite people into that world view, let's call it that, you know, nondual experience,

Daniel Pinchbeck  44:02

you know, definitely can help people become aware of, you know, I mean, there's, there's actually quite a big difference between, you know, smoking DMT or doing the Ayahuasca. I mean, it seems that the Boga ayahuasca and psilocybin ultimately all break down to DMT in the brain. So you get similar type experiences, but DMT is extremely fast, and its little bit cold. It's like, there's so much go go to that other world that you can't really take it in, but it feels like, you know, Ayahuasca or psilocybin, they're like, allow us to kind of interface like to have a slower, level interface with this with this phenomenon.

Lian Brook-Tyler  44:49

Yes, that makes sense. This is so fascinating to me. Going back to what you were saying about dark matter. It's kind of we started we set sail in a conversation this kind and there's, you know so much that we just don't know, it's fun to hypothesize. But yeah, there is so much deal that is yet to be known. So if, if you could, if there's something that we could I don't know, a way that we could use DMT, or study DMT, or something of that nature. What would you if you could have, you know, a genie, that's kind of like going to make your wish come true to very specifically about DMT? And what we can find out about it, what would that wish be?

Daniel Pinchbeck  45:45

That's interesting question. I mean, I do have this, I mean, next week, I'm going to this conference in England, and I have a friend who's actually sponsoring this research. And he's extremely interested in. A lot of times when people drink Ayahuasca or smoked DMT, as I said, they have a feeling that there's a sentient other like a presence of something else. Sometimes there's even a communication like you might be actually verbally told things, you get kind of instructions or whatever. So he's quite interested to see if it's somehow possible to establish some objective knowledge, you know, that some psychic will verify or validate that there are these these entities in this hyperdimensional reality, he feels that would be really a game changer for the world.

Lian Brook-Tyler  46:38

Yeah, I literally had the same thought like that really would be a game changer, because that would literally completely change the world view that mostly, I mean, there's clearly religions that do believe in, you know, there being particular entities, but certainly probably not that kind of entities, I think that would be incredible.

Daniel Pinchbeck  46:59

It's very difficult to figure out how you would create such an experiment that would satisfy you know, a scientific minded person. But I think just, you know, coming at it from different angles. You know, I mean, I'm also not like a even though I wrote about psychedelics, I'm really my interest is consciousness in a larger sense. So I'm equally interested in like, out of body experience, I'm working with a project where we want to send artists to go through this Monroe Institute, like out of body research, and a protocol that make art based on what they experience. I'm interested in like, interspecies communication, like, you know, could we learn to communicate with like dolphins or plants? I mean, Amazon culture is like the Shipibo. They have a lot of other plants, besides ones that have DMT that they that they say are, you know, have wisdom or master teacher plants that are conscious of level that you can do these practices, these diatas to gain knowledge from these other plants. So yeah, I think there's a lot of things out there that could that could really expand just how we think about our world. My 2012 book, I wrote about 100 pages about the crop circles in England, I spent two summers researching. And I think there's still good reason to think that there's some type of nonhuman agency that makes some of those formations and is clearly trying to communicate something to us, but we'd haven't really put the work in, figure out what that is, because it's ridiculed or mocked. I mean, that could be interesting, in combination with DMT, maybe, like, use the crop circles as portals, to experiments to see if that leads anywhere. They have to experiment, science, you know, like, like, apparently, you know, they discovered electricity at the end of the 19th century, that they didn't really know what to do with it, like Benjamin Franklin, put the kite up, but he got hit by lightning or whatever. So they knew electricity was there. And it took like decades of like, experimental research that they're like, oh, like, we could like, channel that. We could transmute it, we could like, you know, store at different places. And that would change the whole world. You know. So what idea that this scientest Dean Radar, psychic scientist,

Lian Brook-Tyler  49:32

he had come to mind just now funnily enough, I was going to quote something that he'd said he's been a guest on the show previously, but carry on.

Daniel Pinchbeck  49:38

Basically, his idea is that maybe we're at the place with psychic phenomena that we were at with electricity at the beginning of the 19th century, where we're going to become aware that there's like this incredible potential there, but we don't yet know how to make use of it.

Lian Brook-Tyler  49:53

Yeah, yeah. The reason he'd come to mind with I was thinking, it really does require People like him to be willing to kind of do things that others are gonna think is absolutely ludicrous. You know, others in that wider scientific community are going to ridicule, be incredibly skeptical of I remember him quoting, I cant remember who it is saying something, you know, like with extraordinary phenomena, extraordinary evidence is required, almost like when something's going beyond anything that we believe is possible, it requires this kind of extra weight of evidence. So you're kind of like, you know, scientists that are in this work need to not only be willing to do things that other people just think is is nonsense, that then, you know, if they are able to show that it has any sort of basis, it has to almost be like a double whammy of evidence compared to a different study. So it's still asking a lot, but you know, thank thank goodness, there's people that are willing to do that. Yeah. Yeah, really? I think needed right now. Yeah. So we are up on time. Where can listeners find out all about you and your amazing work and your books? Where can they find out all of that good stuff?

Daniel Pinchbeck  51:21

Sure. I mean, well, my most active kind of medium right now is the substack newsletter. And so I'd love it if people joined up for that Daniel Pinchbeck.substack.com. I also have a bunch of courses that I teach or archives of courses that's that liminal.news. And otherwise, you know, under my name, and Twitter and Instagram, and if you look me up on Amazon, there's tons of books there.

Lian Brook-Tyler  51:51

Wonderful. I thank you so much on your this has been? Yeah, it's such a pleasure. I've really enjoyed this conversation. Thank you so much for you, and also just the work you're doing more broadly really needed.  Hmm, wow, what a show. Here are my takeaways. Daniel described the two schools of thought around the use of psychedelics one ceremonial one purely focused on their medical use, given the wider benefits of modern humans reclaiming our connection to nature and the ancient practices of ceremony and ritual. If you're listening to the show, then I'd say you don't need to choose between those two options, you can have both. I loved what Daniel said about the ways that different spiritual traditions have practices such as darkness, immersion, and meditation, that open humans to the kinds of experiences that taking DMT can create. Ultimately, all of these practices appear to be giving us an experience of reality. Beyond that, about ordinary human consciousness. There is a renaissance in the use of DMT. And its various forms happening now. And we're discovering uses and benefits in all kinds of fields. As Daniel said, this could be akin to the period in which we discovered electricity, and how to harness it. If you'd like to get notes and links for everything we spoke about this week could do hop on over to the show notes, and there at primalhappiness.co/episode385. And as I said earlier, the next waking the wild crucible to be opening is waking the wild sovereign in early 2023. So if you are feeling the call to sovereignty, and to actualize your inner king or queen archetype, then do go ritual interest and you'll be the first to hear when it opens for application. Link is primalhappiness.co/wtws and if you don't want to miss out on next week's episode, head on over to Apple podcast stitcher or your app of choice. Hit that subscribe button and you will get each episode delivered automagically to your device as soon as it's released. Thank you so much for listening. You've been wonderful. Catch you again next week.

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