Duncan Trussell Family Hour - 334: Shane Mauss

Episode Date: April 18, 2019

**Shane Mauss**, comedian, psychonaut, scientist, and documentarian joins the DTFH! Check out Shane's doc, Psychonautics: A Comic's Exploration Of Psychedelics, on Amazon Prime! **APRIL 19** - Celebrate Bicycle Day with Shane and some Scientists! Only at the Dynasty Typewriter theater. [Click here for tickets](http://www.shanemauss.com/club-dates-1/2019/4/19/los-angeles-ca). This episode is brought to you by [BLUECHEW](https://www.bluechew.com/) (use offer code: DUNCAN at checkout and get your first shipment FREE with just $5 shipping).

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podcast going. And if you happen to be in LA on Bicycle Day, which is the day we celebrate the discovery of LSD, why not head over to Shane's show, Stand Up Science. That's April 19th. If you want more information about that, you can get it over at ShaneMoss.com forward slash club dates and definitely check out his documentary, Psycho Nautics. All right, everybody, please welcome back to the DTFH Shane Moss. Please continue Shane. Yeah, so I often think about when the human race goes extinct eventually, maybe thousands of years from now, whatever, and then aliens eventually come down behind this planet

and our hard drives and everything still exists. And all of this stuff, they'll find like planet earth and like all of these BBC documentaries and be like, my God, look at all this life that existed here. What happened? And then they'll just see all of the codes DMT was trying to give us. Yeah, stickered on a bong. Wait, this can't be. They received our transmission, but they put it on that. No, let's look again. This isn't what we think it is. It looks like a plastic Garfield bong. We're sending them like the golden record or whatever, which is, you know that record that they sent into space is like, hey, maybe people will like Neil Diamond or some shit. Maybe that's

what the aliens want to hear. They're sending us transmissions to build time machines to jump through different dimensions. Here's the crazy thing. What happened is they got a hold of the golden record and they thought Neil Diamond was actually singing about how to build a time machine in their language and they built what he said and then sent us the transmission of that. It's just Neil Diamond. Yeah, now it's just Neil Diamond. But do you, I mean, have you, have you, Neil Diamond is, Shane, have you, welcome back to the show. Thank you for being here. Great to see you. Great to see you too. And thanks for doing this experiment with me, which is to record a podcast at night in my backyard. I haven't done this yet,

so we'll see what happens. And I'm looking at my audio file here and it looks like something fucked up. And hang on. Okay. Yeah, but, you know, as someone who has entered into, as they say, entered into the DMT realm countless times and seen things in there that many of us have, you know, infinitely wondered over. Don't you get this, do you, don't you get the sense that maybe it is actually some kind of technology in there? Yeah, I mean, but I, upon reflecting, because it's now been almost two years since the last time I did DMT, the last time I told you about the, you know, the whole experience. Can you summarize it for our new listeners? Yeah, I was making, I was making a documentary Psychonautics, a comics exploration of psychedelics, which is now

available on iTunes and Amazon and Google Play and a bunch of other places. And I, we were shooting on a short timeframe and a tight budget, and I was doing too many psychedelics in a short amount of time and not integrating. And I seemingly got messages that like all of this was kind of supposed to be happening. And I supposed to be some sort of communicator. And, and I eventually went into a manic state, which led to me not sleeping for a few weeks, which led to insane psychosis and paranoia. And everything the TV was talking to me, every billboard was talking specifically to me through the like this hidden language that other people aren't seeing and ended up in a psych ward. And just spent about a week there, the mood stabilizers knocked me down a little bit.

I was tripping for probably a couple months after that still, but and then Was, were those two months unpleasant or were there pleasant moments with it? No, they were like, I was, I was still, I was like kind of hypomanic those two months, which is like, that's the most ideal state you can possibly be in as like a nice hypomanic, not too out of control, but really energetic, enthusiastic about things. I felt real good to those two, but confused about what had happened. I look back on so many, you know, I kind of we had, if people see the documentary, there's this opening scene, which was basically me just like goofing around, putting myself in like this crazy looking body paint to do this like attention grabbing thing and then show people

that psychedelics like aren't actually like that, like kind of perpetuating the, the stereotype. But the body was made out of MAOI inhibitor that perpetuates the DM or prolongs the DMT experience and intensifies it a bit. And I smoked DMT on it and there's, you know, a couple cameras there and right away it was just like, okay, you brought the cameras. Now tell people what you're seeing, but DMT is so fast and so confusing that, you know, you can't, you can hardly talk. I thought in the moment that I was kind of articulating what I was seeing, I saw the footage afterwards and it's just like me going like, there's like these four things. Like it's not, it's not very good directions. Didn't translate. Doesn't translate. Yeah. I mean, I've seen people

like we had this animator, Sander Boss, who did some stuff for the documentary and I had him, I met him at this festival and he has done the best job of animating and painting the DMT experience that I've pretty much ever seen. Other than there's this Hakim Harshim guy. I think his, his name's something like that out of Turkey and he drew things like the purple lady that I, that I used to see on DMT. He, he painted her perfectly. He painted her from having a conversation with you. No, no, I, this purple lady that I saw all the time in DMT space, one day I was looking on, I was kind of like Google imaging physics ideas about there being different dimensions and, you know, because they say like some, some of the dimensions we can't perceive them because

they're like rolled up too tightly or too thin or going through. I can't remember what, so I was kind of just Googling that. And for whatever reason, in all these like Google images of like physics and astronomy pictures, this purple woman that I'd just seen like the night before on DMT popped up and I was like, what the hell is this? And I clicked on it and I find this, this guy that smokes DMT and, and paints what he sees. And it was just the perfect, and he paints all these things. He calls them universal transmissions. And you're just showing me pictures of these quantum computers, his universal transmissions. Man, we should look up some of those because it is spooky. So yeah, I don't know. There's people, I, I feel like I've done a decent job of articulating some

of these experiences, but I don't know how much I'm pulling out, but there's, I mean, there's definitely painters, musicians out there like spongle that, that is like somehow creating music that's perfect for these experiences. So it seems like, it seems to me like DMT, if it is like some sort of a thing that's like reaching out to us, it seems like it's not being terribly discerning on who it's picking and it's just like reaching out to anyone that'll listen. Well, it's like the radio. Right, right. It's not like the radio, radio frequencies are like, boy, let's find Michael Jackson fans and go into their radio and just a transmission. And if you're putting like a SOS out there or whatever, and you're just blasting some, some signal out into space, it's just

landing on whoever's receiving it. Yeah. And so if I send a signal and by some like a stroke of weird luck, a chimpanzee with a radio manages to somehow turn the radio on. And here's me talking about, well, here's how you make fire. Yeah, exactly. You need to rub them together. It's fine. The chimpanzee is going to try to eat the radio. It's breaking a shit on it. It'll probably throw the radio. Maybe it'll use the radio. I'm sure even the first human that was like rubbing sticks, like the guy that first discovered like how to make fun, you think he was just like some fucking nerd, like just getting shit on. Like, what are you, look at this guy rubbing sticks together all day. What a, what a loser.

To me, I imagine it had something to do with like, right. It must have been either they encountered fire. Yeah. You encounter fire and then you can see that you can grab a branch and kind of move it around and then you get it into a cave and you can sustain it there. But to start from scratch, that must have taken a little something extra. All you got to do is get some friction, right? So it's like, even if you're just sitting there trying to like design something or just make something, you're going to rub it, it's fucking hot. If I do this faster, longer, what's going to happen?

Oh shit, it's smoking. Yeah. But nothing else is making fire out there. I mean, it is, it's, it's incredible what a difference like the slightest amount of intelligence can make and even, even just the individual differences in humanity. When you look up, you're just showing me like these quantum computers that people are making who are like maybe 20 IQ points higher than some idiot that, that can't do anything useful. Yeah. You know, 20 points higher. At least useful technology. Right. Useful technologically. And I mean, just that little bit of difference. Imagine, imagine just some other species, alien, whatever,

that's another 20, 30 points higher IQ than it, all it is is, you know, quantum computing is just like potentially the next starting the fire, which you might look back on is like, yeah, you just rub the thing and you see it and it was like, it makes perfect sense. Of course, why didn't they think of it earlier? Yeah, all we got to do is just run particles in a way that they simultaneously exist and don't exist. And from that, there's a reservoir of data we could. The whole time they were making things just exist. Yeah. You're supposed to make things exist and not exist at the exact same time. Christ, come on. Seriously? Not what not exist and then not exist and exist again. I mean, it was right there in front of the sarcophagi

of how do you say what's the plural sarcophagus sarcophagi or sarcophagi like the near some creepy dude on a late night R show. I'm the sarcophagi. Welcome to my hell round. Welcome to the sarcophagi basement. I'm going to be spanking your ass. Have you guys been watching the sarcophagi? I was checking out some of his videos and I don't, I'm a little concerned about them actually. He seemed, he was cool for a while, but I don't know. I don't know if he's just out of things to say, but he's really taken things to a strange place. Wait, you're dating the sarcophagi? Are you fucking serious? You know he's a fucking sarcophagi. Oh, I don't know. He's just different. But this quantum computer, like as, you know, in my

very, very deeply, deeply rudimentary understanding of physics and especially like quantum physics or physics, why am I just trying to say especially any physics? Am I just lack of real understanding of? Yeah. I mean, I feel like I sort of get relativity and then once it gets to the quantum world, I'm like, what the fuck? I have no idea what you're talking about. Yeah. Yeah. It gets, I mean, it just gets into, you know, you're getting into like, I don't know what you call it, theorems. You're getting into like deep math that fills up white boards with stuff and, and Greek symbols that I will never in this incarnation know or try to know. Yeah. Because it's not what I'm interested in. But, but even with my very, very limited, limited understanding of it,

just from watching these scientists talk about it, I thought, wait, almost seems like it's like weirdly implying like immortality or something in this certain way. In other words, like, if we're doing the multiverse thing, if the body dies, it may just be that you flip over to the next version of you that's alive. And then I started and so I looked that up because I'm like, that can't be right. And sure as fuck, there was shit written about now, I don't know if the thing that was written about it was what I was saying. It was one of these like blogs. So it's probably wrong. But it's like implications of the multiverse theory or whatever. And one of the implications is you die here. Yeah. And I'm like, Oh, my fucking God. But you just pop over to the place where you

didn't die. Right. So, so I've, that's how it felt when I went through my big manic episode. That's, that's what I thought was going on. I thought that I, I thought that I just kept on dying. That's what was happening. Well, this is where you run into this like very fucked up version of the Schrodinger's. What's it called it? Schrodinger's cat? Yeah. This cat was it. Uh, the idea is like, you take a person, you put them in this box that's impervious to detecting what's in there. The person enters into a state of simultaneous existence and non-existence from the outside world. And then somehow you randomly kill the person in the box. The person gets killed. Yeah. But I don't know. The esophage. The car is this. You put the esophage in a box.

The esophage is a piece of shit. The sarcophage I like. The esophage is the sarcophage is fucking main enemy. It's like their YouTube. Anyway, it's just like crazy idea. And again, man, this is absolutely deep, insane, babbling, dumb bro science. But in a stone moment as I'm thinking about them, like, oh my God, holy fucking shit. The sarcophagus is the box. It's, they didn't, they weren't dead. They, like it was a traveling device. They went in there, extinguished themselves and like shot over into another realm. Like the way to travel, the way to go through the wormhole. I sound like Charles Manson. You gotta die, baby. You gotta die, baby. You know, it's like, it's that kind of like, but so that got me thinking,

like, in that sense. I mean, that's the, that is probably to this day, that's the scariest thing about all of this to me is I was very comfortable with the idea of death and not existing and having some DMT in ayahuasca experiences where I'm like, wait, death isn't a real thing. You just pop into this other existence and you got to be all the things at some point. And that is, that idea really terrifies me. I don't want to be, I don't want to like just pop into some other life and be living that. Oh, you don't want to, you don't want to get embodied again. Yeah. Right. Cause we're like, well, this is the, I mean, this is actually kind of the problem is not that we die. It's the, actually we don't die. It's like, that's, that is the problem. So it's, it's like,

essentially what's happening is we think we did. So it's almost like we get the worst of both worlds. We, we, you know what I mean? We get to worry about death for our entire lives. And then when we finally die and think we're going to get a break. Yeah. You don't get a fucking break. Yeah. You just pop over. Now there is like a possibility within this of some kind of like, uh, you know, again, this all goes into the route. Like, I guess before I say any of this, only because many people listen to this and I don't know that statistically maybe someone's depressed or something. And this is not an invitation to self-annihilation. I think in fact, it's, if anything, it's saying that ain't going to work, man. It doesn't work. I know. That's

actually not the way out. That's the creepiest, scariest thing to me is like, because in speaking of which, I mean, I have dealt with suicidal. Me too. Ideology, my ideology, my whole life, I've had a lot of suicidal thought, which is interesting that the brain even does that. Not to the suicidal ideology, suicidal ideology. That's socialism. No, I'm just kidding. I don't, I don't really like Bernie Sanders suicidal ideation ideation. Yes. Thank you for helping me with that. Um, and I, I definitely like it was always this comfortable like safety net that I had where that I'm like, well, I can always just check out and DMT has changed that philosophy for me now. Like, oh God, if I check out of this one, I think

the next one might be more intense than, than this one is. Well, yeah, I think because it's, you're sort of dealing with this like momentum as the problem. Like with suicide, like not, not only are you like doing a kind of like you're confused. Number one, it's a little bit like, um, you know, it's a little bit like punching the mirror. You know, it's like you're, you're, yeah, sure. Maybe you're not going to see yourself, but also you're going to want yourself. And then that's kind of where the descriptions I've heard, which are really interesting is that so it reminds me actually a lot of ketamine, which is that when you, when you take a very high dose of ketamine, you don't have a self anymore. You don't have the body anymore. You sort of dissolve into the

universe, but there is some sentience. There is some sense of a beingness. And in this being, feeling of beingness, you kind of go through this like never ending, kaleidoscopic, sometimes beautiful, sometimes terrifying, uh, landscape or non-landscape or however you want to put it. And, and, and at some point you get to return to your body. And it's like, oh good, I'm here. Yeah. Yeah. And so the idea of death is I've heard is like the, it's the similar situation. Mine is coming back to your body. Right. And so the, what ends up happening is you start wanting to become embodied because, and so that is the attachment, the craving, the longing, but add to that. If you enter into that place through violence to the self, you also are carrying the momentum

of all the despair, the ambivalence or whatever it was, the great agony, the pain, you're carrying that into that. So that's kind of like the wind in your sails. And so the, the sort of the prescription is, oh yes, the instinct, the idea of like, oh, the bar, I want to, this, I know this doesn't last, or I want to overcome my identity. Good instinct, methodology of suicide, bad method, not work. It's not, it doesn't work. And I think if it did work, and I think that if there was a sense of it working, the people who teach me, I think they're so compassionate that they would probably, well, they were probably like, advise it. They were like, yeah, that's, but, but the reality is that just doesn't work. Right. And,

and your despair and your suffering and the depression and all of it, it's like, god damn it, you've got to face it here. Yeah. This is where we do the work here. And then in that, then you kind of like lose yourself in a different way. Yeah, it's definitely a lot of avoidant kind of behavior, just to, I mean, I want, I went through a bit of a hellscape. I went off my mood stabilizers, I'm still off of them, but I wanted to get off of them and I knew I was in for a deep, dark depression as soon as I went off in January. Is a mood stabilizer as same as an SSRI, or is this a different, is this different? It's different. Yeah. What, what do you know the No, I have no idea what I was putting in my brain and it was that that's what I didn't like about

it. You know, they put me on them when I ended up in a psych ward and I went, I tried to kind of taper it down a little bit and then I went off them and then I had, and things were great. And then I dabbled in psychedelics again, had another manic episode and then, and that not, not nearly as bad, went on them again, had another, went off them again. And anyway, I just like, I was on them, couldn't take them anymore, went off them in January, went through, I'm doing great now, but I went through just, you know, it was awful. And I, but a lot of it, I was, I was so interested, you know, I look at things a lot through an evolutionary lens and, and how, how we've been shaped to behave in these different ways to perpetuate our genes, yada, yada. And I was, I was

like, how, like, I, you know, pain is an easy one to, if I stick my hand in this fire right now, there's going to be pain as a signal to be like, Hey, don't do that. But, but depression is such a, and suicidal thoughts are such a confusing, like, how is, how are these, even just having the thoughts, how are they helping perpetuate the genes in any way? Like when you, like, sometimes I just want to, like, fucking bash my head against the wall or something. And I think I never have clearly, my head's not all bashed in. But like, how is that thought even crossing my, like, that wouldn't help me. It wouldn't help improve my reproductive abilities. It wouldn't, it wouldn't increase my social standing around people. Like, what, what is that in, and it's also funny that it's, you know,

when someone hits, you know, the cliche, you do something stupid, you're like, dope, you hit yourself in the forehead. It is, it's interesting to me that that's like where the prefrontal cortex is, which does a lot of your impulse control, because it's almost like your monkey brain trying to take out the boss, because sometimes like, I'll go to hit myself and like, I'll stop just short, the prefrontal cortex takes a little bit longer to act on the, you know, the instincts. Don't check in with the prefrontal cortex, because sometimes there's no time to think, you just got to jump, you just got to move, you got to jerk that wheel to avoid the car accident. And, and so like, like my, my hand will just make a mad dash for my body, you know,

and the prefrontal cortex will stop it right before, like, well, what are you doing there? Hey, put it down. And that's one thing troubling about that to me is as you age, so the prefrontal cortex is the last thing to mature, which is around the age of 25. And then it's the first thing to degenerate as well as you age. This is why like older people often, often when they say like, these kind of wildly inappropriate things and people are like, Oh, they're just, they know themselves and they don't, you know, they don't care. It's, they don't have the impulse control anymore. Stop it. He just says whatever's on his mind. So, so I'm like, am I just going to start cracking myself? Oh, I know it sounds like he's denying the Holocaust, but he just says whatever's

on his mind. Yeah, exactly. They just can't stop it. So I'm hoping like my arthritis kicks in before my prefrontal damage, maybe to slow down the hand movement. But what a wild thing that like evolution hasn't weeded out such negative self-talk because it seems so incredibly destructive to a, to an organism, to an individual, to a group. And you mean like suicidal ideations and all that suicide in general and self abuse, self harm, you know, and the way we slap ourselves like psychologically by just looking down upon ourselves and in various ways. And I mean, this might be part of you need to get the message through to yourself like, Hey, you're fucking up. Stop fucking up. And this is maybe it's this feedback loop from the environment where

you see you get, you get spanked as a child or whatever, your hands slapped away and you're like, Oh, that's how you teach a lesson. And then you start teaching yourself those lessons through like punishing yourself in various ways. Whenever something like that, like the, you know, they like squeeze in when you're thinking all that shit. Usually, what's that? So, you know, people furrow their brow and to show that they're thinking. Oh, yeah. And it's like, oh, well, you wait, what do you squeeze in your brain there to get a little more action out of it? Well, that's, that's actually a pretty well studied thing that the cognitive ease they'll, they'll set up people. So you're, you're brought in, you're taking a test right now. And where I'm

sitting across from you, there's a slow motion camera capturing your face. And you take this test and there's a bunch of like math like questions or whatever. And some of them are really easy, but like a little bit challenging, but you're going to get them pretty quickly. And some of them are impossible. And they're trying to capture the micro expressions on your, on your face, but you answer these questions. And so you give someone like a pretty easy one. And a little smile, they don't even realize they're doing it. A little, just the corners of the mouth turn up a little bit like, Oh, I know that one. Okay. And then you give someone a difficult one. And they do, they start to scrunch up a little bit, they start chewing on the pencil a little bit,

because the brain just really hates thinking more than it has to it would prefer. What's the sample of that study? Is it just Westerners or did they grab people who didn't go to school? That's a good question. I have no idea. Cause that shit I heard was that it's like, actually it's because you're in hell at school and you feel absolutely terrified when you don't know the answer to things. Oh, right. Cause you're going to get called on. You got to read in front of everybody. That is brilliant. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But like, but when you, when you're just like educating yourself or, or listening, listening to two bros explain quantum mechanics and get your mind blown away. Maybe people don't need to grimace so much to understand this,

even though we are getting into some pretty heavy, complex ideas. Because people are grimacing because they do understand and they just shut up. God damn it, these idiots. But, but the, the, you know, I was talking to a friend the other day and I was, I just got, I bought some records and he's like, I fucking hate records. And I'm like, what? What do you hate records? You hate records. Like you hate the data storage, vinyl data store, musical data. What do you hate about it? What's the thing you fucking don't like about it? You know, there's records. It's like a neutral object of the universe. Yeah. And, and he's like, I don't know. I'm like, was there someone maybe you knew who had records that you

didn't like? He's like, well, my ex, my ex-girlfriend. You hate records. You hate your ex-girlfriend. Oh man. But that's like, that is, that's an interesting, you know, the trying to uncouple all of these associations that we have with things is incredible. It's liberating. It's liberating. Yeah. It's like every single thing that's been ruined, and I have a few, certain songs, certain like smells, certain things that have basically been like coupled to something painful where like, and that's where superstition kicks in. Now you've got this, you know, super, it's essentially superstition. It's like, you're trying to not go back to a bad situation by avoiding an essentially an object, what are they called a fetish totem that you have come to identify as somehow a

repository of suffering. Yeah. And so anytime you can uncouple from that, for me, it's like, right now I'm trying to cut down drinking. So I have to uncouple going out to eat from alcohol situation. Yeah. And so, so, so, because my body, when I go to a restaurant, it's not excited about the food. Yeah. It's like, hmm, get to have a couple of beers, you know? So, I know. So, but for me, just knowing that and like, kind of like watching the weird psychic saliva start forming inside of me is interesting. It's like, oh, whoa, holy shit. I'm like Pavlov's dog for booze. Yeah. Ain't a bell. It's this fucking restaurant I like. Yeah. I've been dealing with that lately. Yeah, man. Well, a lot of us are in the west, you know?

It's like alcohol is so prevalent. It's everywhere. It's wonderful. In the moment, it just fucks your brain up. And I just read this thing. And now that God, I'm so sorry, man. Like, literally, like, I found that, you know, I don't know if you know, if you found this like study that I think Oxford did it with some scientists from Japan. They used seismic waves. And basically, they found out that our understanding of the layers of the earth are not what we thought. And so, how this got picked up by blogs is... Oh, I think I heard you talking about this. There are mountain ranges under the earth. Yeah. Right. And so, when you hear that, you're like, wait, that's land of the lost shit. Yeah. Like, that's like, there's mountains

down there. Like, we can go down and like walk around mountains. So, I started yapping about on the podcast. And thank God, strangely, some scientists, scientific types do listen to this. And thank God, I got a wonderful correction. So, I was like, no. I think I heard you talking about that wormhole that you went through. I was listening to... So, when I quote these... Like, can you... Because we would have been having these like sinkhole. Well, you'll have to forward me the quantum mechanic email that you get from after they hear our episode today. Oh, boy, that'll be fun. I don't think I went deep enough into it. Well, I did. I ruined Schrodinger's cat. And then I said sarcophagi

or trans, like, teleportation devices for Ferris. Okay, fuck it. But the thing I read said that they did some kind of study. And the study they did, the sample was, I think, like, late-stage alcoholics. So, it doesn't apply to everybody, maybe. But, you know, so, like, you get a hangover. And you think the day after the hangover, when the hangover starts burning off, you're like, I'm better. But they've been... They, like, somehow were, like, scanning brains of people who are chronic alcoholics. And, you know, obviously there's chronic alcoholics, but the implication is that there is a possibility that just from a hangover, you're gonna be... You're gonna have mild brain damage for two months. It doesn't just get better

because the remission of the hangover symptoms, your brain is still altered in some way. God, that is so... I think about that all the time, how many... How much brain damage I've given myself from alcohol. I was such a blackout drinker and... Oh, God, you know... I was a wild man. And how, like... Oh, my God, if I was... I sometimes think about, like... You know, like, when I get my manic, like, time travel ideas and, like, all of this stuff had to happen for me to be here, that means that, like, something had to go through time, like, nudging me to, like, make me take beer bongs and stuff. Like, what an asshole. Wait, hold on. You gotta help me connect beer bongs. Like, something came through time and I was like, dude, you gotta... Yeah, like,

you know, when you look back at your life and you, like, find yourself in a moment and you're, like, every single thing that happened happened to get me here and I went to Ben here, had it not been for every mistake that I made and good things as well, all my accomplishments too. But, like, those mistakes are the hardest ones to justify and if it's like, wait, I needed to do, like, drink a fishbowl of alcohol in front of everybody thinking that it was cool and then throwing up immediately afterwards and then trying it again, like, I absolutely had to go, like, the universe, like, predetermined that that had to go, had to happen to me. Beautiful. I mean, that is horrifying.

It's beautiful. If that's the case. No, I think that's the path to compassion for yourself because it's, you know, this baby I have is now it's just like, when I look at him, I'm so in love with him and I think I get that swooning sense of, like, if I hadn't... So, wait, if I didn't go to the post office that day? Right. If I just didn't do that, there's a possibility this being might not have existed? Yeah. If I didn't... You know, every... Just what you're saying for me is, like, oh my God,

holy fucking shit. I... If I hadn't have done these things that I have regret over, if I had been a better son when my mom was dying, if I had, is there the possibility that this being that looks like my mom makes them with my dad, makes them with my wife wouldn't have existed? And then within this kind of mentation that's happening, there's infinite forgiveness for the past because you're like, oh wait, we don't necessarily know our role in the universe. We can't. There's not enough processing power in our brains and we certainly don't have enough data to understand what's going down right now. We don't know. And it reminds me of the conspiracy theories about the moon landing, which I think actually happened. But I have heard,

if you want to make a thing that is potentially technology that could get stolen, then that you want to protect and you don't want the people to know what it is, you break it up. So over here, people are making this gear. Over there, people are making that chip. Over there, people are making this thing and no one even knows what it's for. I think it's a similar situation to exist for me, which is... That's an interesting way of looking at things. Because we have to find a way to look at things. Because it's like, this is a thing that Krishnadas, he's been on my podcast, he sings kirtans and he was a Maharaj and even Krali Baba is his guru. And he came, did a live podcast and wonderful, brilliant,

hilariously, how would I say, real person. He's just completely who he is. And for him, that means just... I've actually seen one of his talks, he's talking about singing kirtans and he literally does, he doesn't steal it, but he reflects one of my great Bill Hicks joke, which is like, people, I'm not up here because laughter brings joy or any of that bullshit. He said something along the lines of, if this helps you great, but I'm trying to save myself by singing these mantras. It's very beautiful and really means it. But he's like, very open about his life in the 60s and very open about the wild times he had. And at one point, I think he recognized me resisting who I was as I am. And I put his hand on my shoulder and he goes, you know, you gotta

burn off all the karma, right? Every bit of it. And that's the idea is like, unfortunately, we have got to be who we are, as we are right now. I know, man. I was just like, especially when I went through the recent hell, I mean, coupled with seasonal depression and everything else, I was like, for some reason touring around Midwest in January during record low temperatures, wondering why the hell I did that to myself. And I was just like, why am I spending like the amount of time I waste thinking about the amount of time that I've wasted is just insane. You know, like on a daily basis, it's like you have to and trying to just, you know, it's not the easiest thing in the world, but trying to get myself to

just get my mind's eye facing forward again. It's hard. Well, you'd maybe like, I have it now. Like, you know, I feel it now and I feel great. And now I don't even, I have a hard time even attaching to those feelings. Now me telling you about like the depression stuff that I went to, it's like a trip report. It's like me telling you about like, well, my DMT experiences or something. I'm like, it's like kind of trying to rehash sort of what it felt like. I don't even remember, it seems so distant. And that, but that's the troubling thing is when you're in those states, like happiness, that's what happiness feels. You're like, I have no idea what it feels like to be a happy person or to have like the tiniest amount of hope or anything. Well, this is the

practice, you know, because that's why they call it a practice. I think you're practicing for those moments. It's like, you know, it's like anybody living in California who doesn't have, thinking how we don't have this, anyone living in California who doesn't have fucking water saved up knowing that we're on a fault line and there's going to be an earthquake that's probably going to start a bunch of fires and potentially make it so you don't have water for a couple of weeks, is basically living in a state of denial. And similarly, knowing that, you know, knowing the sort of the chips or the notches and the rudder of your psyche that from time to time cause your, the boat of yourself to do like, to get stuck out at sea. Right. It's, you need to have a little bit

of a plan for the, and so to me, that's like the practice, which is I want to start understanding my thoughts. Like what are my thoughts? What are these mutations? What is it that is happening here as I'm thinking and how much of my thinking am I? And this is the, you know, process of watching your thoughts and just seeing like, wait a minute. Oh wait, I'm not really that. That's a thing that's happening in my body in the same way I have gas. It's definitely happening. And it's certainly, if I pay too much attention to it, it seems to be a, it recreates itself. So it's like, if I think about thinking, or if I think I think I'm too much, or if I think I'm, oh, if I'm like, oh, wow, I didn't think just now, or if I, any of that shit, it's, it's like an, it's an infinite

echo chamber happening up there that seems to be also be evolving, devolving, transforming, transmuting. And so this is, has it's been explained to me is the sixth consciousness. There's, in one model, there's, I believe, eight consciousnesses. The first five of your senses, the sixth is your thoughts. And that's where most people hang out. And most people actually hang out in the sixth consciousness and they identify with their thoughts to the point they say, this is who I am. And that's our personality, our identity, our ego. It's the reservoir of reactivity. It's where you go. It's like the thing that you is going to like add to you. It's the thing when you wake up in the middle of the night.

Yeah. And that's the first thing you hear. It's not who you are, but for a lot of people, it's the very first thing they hear, which is this. And it's mostly just this, that is mostly just this story that you're creating to explain what you don't realize those other five senses are doing. I mean, there's more, also more than five senses. There's like a sense of balance and stuff like that too. But, but, but yeah, I mean, I think that that is much of our lot, much of when we are, um, I mean, just having anyone explain why they did anything and doing this to myself all of the time, I very rarely will people just be like, Oh, I don't know. You know, they'll be like, Oh yeah, I know exactly why I did that and have an answer for you. You

can walk up to anyone on the street and ask them about the meaning of life or whatever. And they'll just rattle off some answer for you. Except children are honest. So when you, when you see the child, my friend would use this example. When you see the kid, you walk in the kids covered in fucking paint and the walls of your house are covered in paint. The dogs are covered in paint. And you say, why do you, why'd you do that? The kid will honestly say to you, I don't know. And the kid beats it. It's like, you want to give you, you want me to give you a fucking rational explanation for why the, your poodle is now covered in fucking latex paint. I'm sorry. I can't do that, friend. I won't exist in four years. Whatever it is, right? So similar. So, so that, yeah, the, the,

this is the thing that we're doing all the time is just like, how many, how many times in our lives have we painted our, you know, done some ridiculously self-destructive, insane thing that requires a long cleanup process and then we painted our inner dogs. Yeah. And now we're trying to like make sense of why we did it. Why'd you fucking do it? Well, probably because we shot out of a fucking white hole 19 billion years ago and we've existed for like an infinitesimally fractional amount of time in this human body and we don't know what the fuck we're doing. We're propelled by our gut biome. We're propelled by random reactions, habituations that we don't even realize we have, conditioning mechanisms that have been DNA, epigenetics. It's somewhere in there. You're

going to try to make sense of why you fucking slam the phone down on your girlfriend. Yeah, good luck. I have a feeling you could sum it up though, which is that you're, you're, you're suffering. You don't feel good probably. And that's the one of the... That's actually the relationship one is like a great example of that. That's one of the, my favorite things that I ever heard is, is during a relationship fight, your, so your, your stress response system, the hormones that it releases into your body to enact, to like mobilize your muscles, that sort of thing, shut down your digestion, whatever it's doing to delegate energy in various ways for, for the stressful situation. It, it, it does all this when you're fighting about like who, who put the shoes,

you know, you didn't put the shoes by the door or whatever. And then you resolve that, okay, yeah, I guess I'm going to put the, here's this new thing I'm going to do. So I'm always going to remember to put my shoes by the door. And so then this parasympathetic, the, the calming response starts, but it takes 20 minutes for those hormones to dial down. So those are part of your brain going, we're still stressed. Why are you still stressed? Let's keep fighting. And then you make up other shit. And then you go like, well, this is like the last month when you did this with the car and the oil light. And it's completely unrelated things. You're just creating this conscious because you, you have, you're experiencing this physical stress that you, that you're kind

of, I guess you would call like sixth consciousness isn't privy to, and you're just creating this story. Well, you want, cause it's like, if I can create it, I can control it. If I can name it, I can control it. So it's like, especially when it comes to like mental illness, you want to come up with a reason you're feeling bad. Cause if you can come with a reason you're feeling bad, you could remove the variable from your environment and theoretically get better. And it's like, not just with fucking mental illness. It's the idea is like, if like we've become deeply fixated on a false sense of self, if we are clinging to a idea of what we are, that is not what we are at all, then we're not going to feel good. But to recognize like, oh, actually the reason we're

so freaked out is because we have become deeply absorbed into this tiny micro drama of our own personal lives. Like I got a call William back and I can't believe I fucking did that shit. I leave my dishes out. I don't mean to disrespect Aaron, but I want to show her that I love her. So I should clean the dishes. But why should I clean the fucking dishes? I'm super fucking busy right now. I mean, she should understand why doesn't she have compassion? You should have compassion for her. What's wrong with you? Are you a sociopath? Fucking that goddamn, Ted Bundy Netflix was good, man. I should go watch that. I'm going to go watch the Ted Bundy Netflix. Like this is the, this is the thing that's happening. All of it kicking the can down the

road. And the can we're kicking down the road, unfortunately is paradise. The can we're kicking down the road, which we think is evading this, you know, fixing the problem that's kicking the can. It's like the moment you stop trying to fix the problem. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. This just sucks. For example, like I call it putting lipstick on the fish. It's like, and I've done this so much, which is like when my ball got cut off, when my mom died, when my dad died, I tried to do the old, I'm learning so much from this experience. This experience has truly made me a human. Lipstick on the fish. Yeah. How about this? It sucks. Yeah. You got your ball cut off. Your mom's not going to hold your baby. Your dad's not going to hold your baby. It just

sucks. And something in that is the opposite of depression, because sinking into that suck. I mean, like, yeah, it sucks. You get all your power back, because you're being, you're, you're, you're honestly acknowledging, and then somewhere in there, it actually stops sucking. Well, there, I mean, there's also something real, really reassuring about the purity of that sensation and experience, when you can actually like fully feel and fully articulate what it is, which is just raw suffering in that moment, without trying to like dissect exactly, well, I mean, it sucks when you get to the end of the, when you did like discover the, at the end of that road, that there is like some simple solution to, I was just listening to

Aesop Rock on the way over, not to be confused with Aesop Rocky, but he's this very thoughtful linguist, and he has a, he has a song about going to a therapist's office for the first time, and then the song afterwards is about the cat that the therapist recommended that he get, and there's this lyric within it. He goes, 15 years of taking prescriptions now with shrinks like, I don't know, maybe get a kitten. God damn it. And there, there are like these things like that where, where we are trying too hard to like pathologize some of these life experiences. Yeah, man. And this is the prescription, which is, I'm so glad you brought that up with the cat. So the idea is, if you're stuck in the sixth consciousness and you're stuck

up in your head, it's so obvious, but it's like color. Just find a color and just look at the color. Like, look at, like, look at this blue. This is wonderful. This blue is, is this beautiful, bluish purple thing, no thinking, no, like adding to it anything. You're looking like, my God, man, that is really pretty. That's it. It's just pretty. And then like you touch something, you're like, whoa, wow, this feels, this is dusty, but the dust feels kind of good. It's kind of cold, and the fire feels good, right? So you drop down into your body again. And this is the concept, which I've heard not just in the way I'm being taught, but also in like, I think St. Augustine talked about it a little bit. Like it's a, I've heard various mystical traditions talk about this,

which is that existence is fundamentally good. And all the components of existence, or all of our senses that are allowing us to experience existence as it is now, are fundamentally good, non-corrupt, non-polluted, non-fucked up. And because these factors exist, I guess you could say beneath, though I don't know that there's actual like positioning here, the sixth consciousness, in the connection to that fundamental reality, it naturally liberates the thinking. So what ends up happening is you get the cat, now what are you doing? You're serving the cat. You're feeding the cat. You're loving the cat for no reason. You're connected to the primordial

essence of, hello, I'm going to give you something for you. Certainly if you have a fucking cat, good luck getting a return on that fucking investment. If you think the cat's going to like rub your back or some shit, the cat's like, fuck you. You know what I'm saying? But that's the answer. When we get, I'm sorry to keep going on, but when you get, when I get sucked into my thoughts, it just doesn't work, man. It doesn't really work very well up there. It's like, my thoughts are, I got mad at my wife. I'm going to just say it on the podcast because it's this embarrassing, but I want to say it. I'm hesitating because it truly makes me seem like a fucking monster. But this is what, but I'll tell you what, hopefully she's not listening. I'm going to make up for it,

man. It wasn't like even a big fight, but it was just like enough or I like had to like pause and think, I don't want to play this part and I don't want to be in this play. Yeah, but I got mad. God damn it. I shouldn't have gone down this. I'm very enticed now. I got mad at her because she wanted to go to fucking Six Flags, man. You know, like that, I mean, that level of like, I don't know, like literally like, that's if you're describing a shithead in a script, like if you're auditioning for a shithead, you're the type of person who doesn't want your wife to go to Six Flags. Who wants to play that role? But like, I followed my thoughts and my thoughts can like

created like essentially a bread crumb, a shit crumb trail into a dark forest where suddenly it made sense in that moment. Like, yeah, this, you know what? I mean, really? And then, you know, the childcare, like, what? What? She made a baby for almost a year and wants to write a role. I mean, first off, people have done worse things and relationships are difficult. Certainly, certainly. I wouldn't be too embarrassed by that one. But yeah, that is the, I mean, that's what happens if you listen to your thoughts. If you listen to your thoughts, your thoughts are like your bad friend at the bar, who's like, so Six Flags, huh? She wants to go to Six Flags? Okay. I guess, what? We're going to get chocked. Like, what?

Who are you? It's like the shining when he's, when Jack Nicholson's in the fucking bathroom. And Grady comes up to him and is like, you know, like, your wife needs correction. You know, it's, we, our thoughts will do that to us with every single fucking thing. That's all I'm saying. It's like, so beware. Yeah. Do you, I mean, you're, you're getting right now the least cynical version of me that you've ever had on the podcast. I've been real good spirits right now. And I love what you're saying. How, I'm curious what you think of, of like, how sustainable it, because when I feel good like this, I'm usually like, oh, did I figure things out? And now I'm wiser. And that's why I'm feeling better. And I'm not going to have to worry about

those, those falling into those same traps again. Or are these just like natural ebbs and flows? Because even when I'm like, when I was depressed, I, I thought I kept on reminding myself that this doesn't last forever. And for me, it feels like, I don't know if it's because I'm bipolar or whatever, but it feels like there's something when you're talking about like the pureness of, of the suffering or what I, you know, I was going just through my relationship was falling apart and everything too at the same time and work was, I have this new tour stand up science that's really good and promising way more work than I ever imagined it to be. And I'm like, did I bite off more than I could choose? That sort of thing. And, and, and it was just like, but I don't know if you ever have this

experience where it just like sinks to such like a comically, like eventually the suffering gets like a cartoonish kind of level where it just like can't feel any like worse. And then something about that like frees you in this way. And for me, I mean, it feels like a sink shop for me. It feels like I've been getting dragged down and down and down. And then it eventually like let's go. And in a rather like unstable fashion, my, my mood just soars and, and like all of a sudden I come up with all these incredible ideas and like the life is wonderful again. And, and I don't know if that's just like, Oh, did I come up with a solution to these problems? Like I went through a breakup recently and stuff. And I don't know if it was like, well, maybe that was, maybe it was a sign

that I just like needed to move on. And that's why I'm feeling lighter now. Or is it, or are these just like these natural states of like, you have so much serotonin being released at a certain time. And then eventually there's going to be less being released for a while, and then more again, and then we're just creating this conscious story. Or do you, or do you actually think that like as we're living, as we're learning, as we're talking these things out, we are improving our, ourselves and protecting ourselves against those, you know, kind of the, the, all of that negative self talking, talking overthinking, you know, like it's really great. And it seems like so simple when you're in that moment, like right now, I feel I'm in that moment, I feel like I'm in like

kind of those flow states and looking forward to life and like really living for what it is. But then like, I mean, I'm like tricking myself. I mean, who's the question is like, who's the fucking narrator here? It's like, on one level, you're experiencing joy, you're feeling good, life is going good, you're happy. On another level, it's like, you've got one of those golf commentators in your head is like, and how long won't it go on for? Yeah, yeah. So you have these two situations happening, right? And one of them is great. And the other one is literally antithetical to the situation. And they're happening at the same time. And, you know, if you look deeply into yourself, at least when I look deeply into myself, even in my states of joy,

I can still unfortunately find the chasm, the abyss, I can still find it. It might, it is, it might sort of like, I might have zoomed out a little bit in the same way we have a black hole in the center of our fucking galaxy that's just eating stars. We have one in ourselves, many of us do, I think maybe everyone has some part of themselves that's like that. And that's existing too. There's that, there's the joy, there's the narrator. And these are all simultaneously existing. So it's like, this is where you get into this cool fucking notion, which is like the idea is not to eliminate one or to imagine that one has gone away. It hasn't. It's still there right now, in fact, right there inside of you. But it's not all that you are, because all these states are

happening simultaneously. And then we're kind of placing our attention on one of them or the other. And then in that, there can be focus and there can be joy. But then also that where it gets really interesting is like suffering and pain are actually kind of the same thing. They're like the same substance in different states. One is like water frozen, one is like a cloud. But if you, the next time, when you start really looking at the ache and the pain, and then you look at your bliss states like coming or orgasm, you'll realize like, wait a minute, this shit is like same ingredients, different kind of like form, like one's a soup, one's a sandwich. And then that this is, this is known as like, well, it's whatever the opposite of

ignorance would be. It's the expansion of our awareness to not just encapsulate the fleeting joy states and not just to encapsulate the fleeting horrified states and not to be fixated on our minds, but to allow for the simultaneous existence of all of them at once. And then you, with that, you in a way create space. Because now you're not compressed into this like, okay, I'm happy. This is where I want to live. I'm in the room of the house where I'm happy. Right. It's like, well, no, you know, you know what's in the basement, man. You know, you still have the thing in the basement. And this is where we get to the seventh consciousness,

in fact. And the seventh consciousness is what we are in the West identifies the subconscious. And so that's the repository of all the forgotten moments that were the things that aren't that we, that happened. This is where we think we hate records and forget that we're in a abusive relationship. This is where we hit ourselves in the head and think it's because we're trying to reactivate our neocortex. Which one? I'm not sure what you said. Prefrontal cortex. Prefrontal cortex when trying to knock it out or maybe restart it. I sometimes think you're just like trying to, you know, the old school television sets that you got to slap on the side of the head.

Yeah. Probably someone hit you. And then like, and then, and then, and then similarly, like, so this is like the seventh consciousness. And then that, there's an eighth consciousness. And this is very interesting. I think this is what psychedelics bring us into. And this is known as the archetypical storehouse of all of everything. So this is like actually the sum total of all human experiences in the eighth consciousness. This is where telepathy happens. This is where the coincidence of trans where someone finishes a sentence for you. This is where you see the purple woman on DMT painted by a dude in Italy. This is where people come up with simultaneous ideas, completely separated and disconnected. But at the same time in human history,

that's the eighth consciousness also known if you're a hippie is the Akashic records. And that bleeds into the seventh consciousness. And that bleeds into your thoughts. So your thoughts are kind of what like the rain coming out of the clouds of your karma and the atmosphere itself would be the eighth consciousness that's holding the clouds. So this is where we get into that place again of like, when someone's like, why'd you do that? I don't fucking know. I've got the entire universe bleeding into my fucking thoughts, man mixed in with my own shit, my own karma mixed in. So so the idea is like spaciousness is a we have to have spaciousness before we can have compassion.

That's all that's the main takeaway. So to have compassion for ourselves, we need to make sure we know who we are. And to know who we are, we got to like recognize well, I'm certainly not my thoughts. I'm aware of my thoughts. Thoughts are a thing that's happening within the field of phenomena that is me. It ain't me. It ain't me. So what the fuck am I? And then within this wonderful and never ending, thank God, process some spaciousness can happen. And in that spaciousness, I think you can find some real peace and not peace that's predicated by a specific emotional state. But you know, also you got to be well, you know, you're going to eat shit. In other words, failure is going to happen. In other words, you're going to be, you're going to get,

it's going to, it will happen again, not in the same way. I know for me, it's an inevitability that I'm going to get caught and I'm going to hurt and I'm going to get compressed into my identity. But I also know it's not going to be the way I used to get compressed to my fucking identity. It's not going to be quite the same. There's going to be a little bit of like, I know what, I know what this is. Anyway, this is to me like the why in Buddhism, they say, and I'm sorry for going on and on here, forgive me, you're the guest, not me. Oh, it's fine. I mean, it's nice. It's certainly nice to hear you loosening up a little bit on your roller coaster stance, for sure. I feel like you've come a long

way. I still ain't fucking roller coasters. I mean, I didn't hate them earlier. The truth of the matter is I was just being a dick. It's like, yeah. And yeah, thank you though. You know, I am working on it. That's why I'm in therapy. I'm trying to reconfigure my feeling. Listen, really? You want to go to fucking Six Flags? You want to go and let fucking 20 year olds operating fucking insane machinery? That's what you're worried about? No, that's my rationality. No, that's when you're scrambling to try to come up with a reason to kill a monster. You're like, oh, it's because I'm worried. You are worried. You were just like, you were just in a bad fucking mood and you essentially like farted with your mouth. Like you spit out some,

you know, you just like, this is the, so we have to find compassion for ourselves. And, but man, this is what, I mean, not to, I don't know, a weird thing, but what is your plan? What's your plan? What's the memento writing on the wall? What's the note to yourself if you find yourself back in the basement, so to speak? I mean, I'm trying to, I'm trying to get my head focused on, on like, stability and routine for the first time in my life. So much of my life has been consumed by like, being this adventurer and this kind of like, wild man and like, and I like, you know, big philosophical ideas and chasing the next epiphany and like, just like needing that hit one way or another and really explore. Well, actually one

of the last times I did mushrooms, it was in, it was in Jamaica, where I just, I just came back from the myco meditations. He had Eric on. Yeah. Actually, there was a listener of yours there who gave birth to the universe. So I don't know how that exactly happened. I don't know if the universe existed before. Ouch. Yeah. Ouch indeed. And then how did, how did all of this, so she heard about this from you, but birthed all of this, you know, it's, it times a funny thing. But anyhow, the last time I was, that is beautiful. By the way, you're listening, I didn't mean to like, I didn't mean to out your great moment of healing and realization. Forgive me. I didn't do a simple crash. But, but I had a year and a half ago or so when I was dabbling

back into mushrooms, I had, they used to do these, they did these four, these retreats would be four trips. Now they're three. And so they're, they're like increasing level of intensity. And then on the fourth one's a laid back one. And I had this experience, you know, I was dabbling back into mushrooms again, because mushrooms had never done me wrong before. And I, you know, I was sure I'd be fine with them. And I had these really intense experiences and it was incredible. And it was like this group tapping into this universal consciousness, which as you know, I'm not necessarily talking about the universal consciousness very often, but I really felt this there and this group, you know, you get a bunch of people together taking high doses and really there for purpose and, and

taking this stuff seriously. And, and people are having these kind of collective experiences. And so I had these really intense experiences that were like, Oh my God, I saw like different dimensions and blah, blah, blah. And then on the fourth one, I had this really mild experience. And I remember I was bored for like an hour or so on a mild amount of mushrooms. And I just started like journaling about boredom and exploring boredom and exploring my whole relationship with boredom. And I was realizing it was the biggest takeaway of like, I saw aliens, all this, I don't remember any of that shit. I remember this boredom thing, which is like, I just went back in time and like explored all of my childhood aversion to like seeing my parents overworking themselves and

thinking kind of their jobs were boring or like their conversations and not wanting to be that. And so being this like rebellious kid and taking all these chances and being into like gambling and like every possible aspect of my life all of the time and just needing to like trying to stand out and be exciting and different and just how much trouble that has got me into in my life. And as I'm getting older and know myself better and don't have those same kind of insecurities that I was trying to overcome with all of that shit or trying to show off or whatever I was trying to do and just trying to and I was like, I want to be bored more often and you know, and like just sit and experience that rather than trying to like, oh, I'm bored right

now. What's like the most exciting thing on TV or can I plan on this trip or can I push the boundaries with my comedy and like say the edgiest thing or like whatever stupid thing. And it's all it's all kind of the same fix. And like what I want right now and what I think I have a real shot at because this stand up science is something different where I don't it's all it's all indie venues. I'm booking my own dates my own locations. It's completely like if it doesn't work out with one venue in one city, I just move to the next one. It's not I'm not like beholden to any clubs. I'm not necessarily going to have these streaks where like, I have a couple like good months and then if you bet, like it's a way of creating stability and routine in my life and

having days off for exercise and and and it's forcing me to like get my administrative stuff like having to like, you know, get better at using calendars and stuff like that for the first time in my life like my I've been working on my, you know, I've spent so much time just trying to be like, it's interesting of a fucking person as I can be that I that I've just let so many things slip. And I now I just want to like, you know, learn how to use an Excel spreadsheet and like shit like that and just feel just more balanced and hopefully within that that will come along with like exercise and those sort of things that are really protective against against depression. And you know, I'm still going to experience depression without a doubt. But maybe

maybe if it doesn't make me so immobilized in the future, if I have some good habits in place. Well, I think that's the idea is like, it's like, we know all of us, not just like people who have some diagnosis, it's like all of us, if you got a brain, tell you, man, you got a fucking really like wet hard drive up there that is like protected by a relatively thin layer of bone. And if you think that's going to like always work, man, come on. Come on. So we need a plan. And it and you know, and that's the practice. And it's and it's not a big deal. And it's beautiful to hear you talk about boredom because my teacher's teacher, Chogym Trumper Rinpoche, that was one of the things he said as a good sign. I mean, first off,

that's a real exciting name. Chogym Trumper Rinpoche. Yeah, nothing boring about that name. He was he was very, very, very, very, very boring and exciting at the same time. But he is his that was one of the good signs for him. It's like, if you start feeling bored, that's a good sign. And the other one, the other idea is hopelessness is pretty good too. Like, because you know, if you're, if you have hope, actually, what you're hoping for is a place of hopelessness by getting what you want. So that you know, to be getting what you want means you're not hoping for any more hopelessness. So it's like, also, this is what the other thing that you said reminded me something wrong. That's about when he was touring a bunch and how he

was doing this thing where he's like, man, I can't wait to get home. So he goes in the hotel and he's like, oh, I can't wait to get home. And it was tormenting his ass. And then he realized like, wait a minute, what is home? Why isn't this home? And then so he started setting up wherever it was that like in his home, this was where he lived. This is home. And that is the, I think, boredom. And because a lot of times people are like, I'm running away from home. I left home and then the adventure started, right? Yeah. And the reason then the bomb, it's boring. What do they do? They sit around and right, right? And it's like, actually, home is very, very psychedelic. It's a very psychedelic concept. And in fact, I think one of my favorite things about DMT, in fact, is the

sense of like, well, I'm home. Yeah. And and so that is, I mean, that's one of you have a different experience with it. I guess it's just like my unstaffably skeptical that when I have that experience. And I'm like, oh, I'm home. I'm like, what the fuck? Have I been here before? If I'm home now, then what was all that other stuff that I was doing? Well, you're there right now. Right. It's just that right now, because of the way your brain is, your senses are processing the phenomena that we are, it's like you're not seeing it in that way. Right. So it can seem very terrifying. And so this is where you get into the idea of the fundamental goodness of everything. And so that to me is like, I think kind of like the, at some point with psychedelics, I just recorded

a great podcast with Robert Thurman, who you should interview. Jesus Christ, he's brilliant. But with psychedelics, I think what ends up happening is you realize like, wait, this is an endogenous state that the chemical is allowing me is cutting off or shutting down or unfiltering or filtering or however you want to put it, things in just the right way that I'm experiencing my true self or my identity as it is prior to ego consciousness. And that's home. That's home. It's non dependent. There is no necessity of some structure. There is no need for an external thing. It's you can't, you can't escape from home because you're there all the time because this universe is your home. The universe is your home. This is where we belong.

This is where we are. And we are the universe. So to me, that's the story of the prodigal son, the wayward son returns home, beaten and battered, freaked out. And then, you know, the immediate acceptance into his inheritance, so to speak. And our inheritance, I think is that we're the fucking universe. Yeah, we could do an error. This is ours. This is us. Shared ours. Not your, I mean, you don't, I do own the universe. I copyrighted the universe. Lot of lawsuits right now. Sewing chlorophyll. Oh, man. I mean, I guess all of the it, it takes me, you know, more time to get used to these ideas than it does. You are our neck deep in them. I, I have a, I mean, is this like you and me

talking this thing, this earth that we're on, even this universe, is this to you just like a channel that's happening right now that we're perceiving and there's an infinite number of other channels going on at the same time that we are all at the same time? Yeah. Yeah. That's what it feels like to you. That is a spooky thought to me. I have been thinking about that more and more. And, and that is, I don't, you know, I guess I don't know why I'm so attached to thinking that this perception is real. But, uh, yeah, I mean, I, I guess I don't know what to, I still am wrapping my head around what real is exactly and what that means. And, um, you know, we've talked about this before, like, are we just

in a psych ward talking to catch up bottles right now? Like, is that what we're actually doing? Right now, the nurses are like, here they go again. Again. You are talking to catch up bottles? Yes, you're talking to catch up bottles. They're so close. Every time we get to the part where we joke about us talking into capture bottles, they're watching us again talking into catch up bottles. Like, oh, they're so close to getting it. And then they go off on the where they're touring plugging their dates again. And we lost them again. Catch up bottles like their microphones. Go ahead. Tell them. It's like everyone's like, people have tried various ways. They just won't listen. Oh no. Anytime you try to talk to them,

they say they're smoking DMT. It just doesn't work. Just let them fucking talk to the catch up bottles. It's just, we're going to let them do that for now. Well, I mean, it is a, you know, it is, I think it can be a little woozy, especially if in, in that you do spiritual bypass to try to get out of the white word, what we're in right now, which is we're doing human right now. We're doing human life, doing human incarnation. And we're doing some work here. And it's like, within that, it's like, listen, sure, maybe we're talking to fucking catch up bottles. And also, maybe we're quasars and also maybe we're Sadhu, Sadhu is sitting by a river in India meditating and like, well, we've been maybe smoking some ganja and we got really high. And

this is what happens when you're high and you meditate and you're, or maybe we're the Buddha or maybe we're Christ being crucified or maybe, but right now what's really happening is you're Shane and I'm Duncan and we're having this very temporary experience of human incarnation. And this is where we are. And so now what? Now what? And, and, and that to me is, is, okay, well clearly what's the next step here? If there is, if there is a next step, and I think it's like pretty logical and obvious, which is like, can we reduce our own suffering? And can we maybe help reduce some of the suffering of other people in a, in a real way? And I think the two go hand in hand. Because if I can figure out how to like reduce my suffering, if I can find some

space, then all the people that were like me, maybe they can find, you know what I mean? That we all help each other. We're all helping each other. We're all helping each other in the psych ward. That is definitely the universal kind of psychedelic experience message. I, as I just sat through a retreat and I wasn't doing mushrooms. You know, I was just helping other people, most of them, their first times. And that seems to be, you know, the first, first trip, some ladies like, I wanted to murder everybody. Second trip. She's like, I wanted to murder myself. Second, third trip. She's like, I just want to help people. Yeah. You know, by the end of it. It, but it always, it seems to, it seems to always eventually get to that. Well, we're interconnected,

right? Yeah. So like my, my baby, I say my baby, not literally my baby, it's the universe's baby, so to speak. My baby is a weird thing to say. Like it's a couch. Like he's a couch, but you know, he just figured out he's got, that his feet are his, you know what I mean? Like he just found his feet. So, and he's just gained the ability to grab his feet. But I'm pretty sure he's still a little on the fence about whether or not those things are his feet. Cause he'll like, look at them and then look at me and look at them and be like, are you kidding me? I got these. I'm like, yeah, you got feet. But, but similarly, I think that because as one of my friends said, we're being spaghettified by time and we have these gaps between each other that produce the sense of you, you, me, me,

that instead of hitting ourselves in the head, we're literally hitting other people, which is the same thing as hitting ourselves. So it's like, as we grow into this cosmic being that we're evolving into, I hope, I think part of that is the shocking realization of like, wait a minute, I don't, I know you have your own body. I know I have my own body, but I'm getting the feeling like we're sharing a mind. I'm getting the feeling we're sharing the, in the internet is actually the technological manifestation of that basic reality. And because of that, the logical step is help by helping others and naturally helping yourself. By helping yourself, you're naturally helping others. And by, I don't mean helping yourself to fucking more mashed potatoes.

I mean, by like figuring out like, how do we find some spaciousness so that we're no longer telling our wife that $65 might be a little too much to go to fucking Six Flags. The woman who, the woman who like, who like, who like the greatest thing in your life came ripping through a vagina. You know, this is just wants a funnel cake. So this is why we need to help each other. We need to stay in touch. We need to work with each other. And let me tell you, man, the next time you're looking for boredom, give me a fucking call. I will talk your ear off about Buddhism until you fall asleep. I'll bore you. I'll give you the most hardcore. You'll be so fucking bored. I'll give you a lifetime of boredom in 20 minutes.

Oh, you're my, you're my personal boredom drug. Whenever I need that hit. That I'm just going to be like chasing the dragon like, Oh, well, this wasn't, this wasn't as boring as the last time we talk. Dude, that's a good 800 number, man. Like the opposite of a sex line, like an 800 number you can call and just like talk to a really boring person. That would be so fun. What's up? Hey, what's up? Let's go play. Do you still want to play contagion? Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Pandemic pandemic, not contagion. Yeah. Well, contagion is an expansion of pandemic. Oh, is that contagion is adds the anti-vaxxers? That's, uh, I haven't played contagion. We're talking about board games

right now. It's a game that, uh, it's a cooperative game. We play against the board to save the world. Hell yeah. There you go. That's the game we all need to start playing. Hey, thank you very much. Tell people where they can find you. I think your tour is going to be a great success. It's been going really well. We've had about 40 shows so far. Um, it's, it's two scientists and two comics on each show. Uh, you can go to Shane Moss, MA USS.com to check out that schedule, adding more dates all of the time. If you see the city on there that I already passed through, don't worry. I'll be coming back soon. And, um, I have a documentary Psychonautics, the comics exploration of psychedelics available now for rent or to buy on iTunes and Amazon.

And my podcast, my science podcast is called here we are all the links will be at duckatrustle.com. Thank you so much, Shane. Thanks Duncan. Thanks for listening everybody. And I'm just going to say it at the end of this episode because the topic came up a little bit and I'm a dad now. And I'm, I'm too old to be as cynical as I used to be because I don't care anymore about being cool. I'm just going to say it. If you are having suicidal ideations, if you are feeling the woozy weirdness of a depression sinking upon you, go out and get some help. Ask someone to help get some therapy, call one of the numbers. I'm just going to say the goddamn number. It's 1-800-273-8255. There's no shame in it. I'm in therapy myself as much as I would like to be

so kind of bulletproof, neurologically sound, completely emotional, stable, balanced, equanimous, harmonious individual. I'm far from it and I love getting my head shrinked every week, even though when I'm super depressed, all that shit sounds like somebody is yelling from far away into the deep hole that I'm stuck at the bottom of. But if you find yourself stuck at the bottom of a very deep hole, you got to be the thing that gets you out of there. And I've found in my own life that if I just start talking about how I actually feel versus putting on a face that makes me seem a way that I'm not, things get better real fast. But sometimes things take a little longer to get better because let's face it, we got a fucking meat computer up there

and man, it can get wonky and wait till 5G comes out and you're all shitting and projectile vomiting and having crazy weird rage seizures and vomiting blood and eating each other's flesh and climbing to a simmering rotting pile of dead carcasses and sitting up there on a throne and giving the moon the finger while you bite the head off of a rabbit that you caught. Then it's going to get really weird, but since we're not there and we still have the use of phones and we haven't decided to know cannibal holocaust, you can reach out for help. I really recommend it. Also, thanks to Bluetooth.com for sponsoring this episode of the DTFH. Remember, it's great if you support our beautiful sponsors who've trusted their business with our podcast and what better

way to support Bluetooth than by having award-winning boners. Just go to Bluetooth.com, use promo code Duncan and please be sure to leave a nice comment over on iTunes and subscribe. Also, I'd really appreciate it if you guys would push the seven buttons of the Toad King and do a reverse indicator on the new Google Chrome reverse indication checklist page. Also, don't forget to upload an RSS link to 1.9210.92164 with a key phrase, subscribe to the DTFH in it. Also, if you could, it would be really great if you could send seven emails to the following people, Albert Lornell, David Cologne, Amanda Swine, Frankie, The Clown, Lydia Carrite, Sandy Beinhart, and Randy Wisk. In the subject line, please put subscribe to the DTFH and just put a smiley face

and send that as quickly as you can. I'd really appreciate that. You guys, remember, it's okay to comb your armpit hair. A lot of people forget to do that and they get tufted armpit hair and it rips their underarms and it causes a lot of rashing. There is one last thing you could do for me. The next time you find yourself at a wishing well, make a wish that there is a world peace for eternity and help us create the mandala effect so that a part of the multiverse that we are in splits off like a wonderful bit of chocolate chip cookie and slides over to whatever part of the multiverse where there is infinite energy, infinite resources, infinite abundance, and everyone has infinite abdominal muscles if they want them. Thank you so much. I'll see you real soon.

Next week, it's Bob Thurman. Hurry, Krishna. Alabama Indie Grand Prix this Sunday on NBC and Peacock at 3 o'clock Eastern.