The Joe Rogan Experience - #359 - Alex Grey

Episode Date: May 21, 2013

Alex Grey is an American artist that specializes in psychedelic art, a self-described "mystic artist."

The Joe Rogan Experience. Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day. Check it out. Jesus Louises. What are we doing here? We're sending emails. The person on, I'll explain who the person on the podcast is today. One of my favorite artists in the history of the universe. How about that? How about,

uh, there's a, a, a small handful of people that I would have liked to meet more than you. And so, uh, having you on the podcast the first time was a true honor and a treat. And,

uh, it's, uh, it's just cool to be in contact with you. I think you are, uh, you, you represent,

represent a very positive and a very unusual force in the world of art and in the world of consciousness as well you know your your artwork is so uh moving and so representative of the psychedelic state that it it actually has like an effect on people you know i think your artwork is probably like some of the the most accurate psychedelic artwork i've ever seen and i can't tell you how many people i've been with that have seen your artwork or seen one of your pieces for the first time and just went fuck you know like that's like the the the usual reaction when they see one of your crazier pieces like uh the one that's like the one that i always think of when i think of you is these three faces.

They look like Egyptian sort of pharaoh type faces and they're all three. One is facing forward and two on the sides. And it just seems like a DMT trip. It seems like you're tripping when you're watching it. Right. Yeah. to point to the embeddedness that we are in time, the flow of time, and yet that there is always a timeless being that we also are the witness of that being in time. Why is that so terrifying? Because we are in time and there's a countdown.

You know, there's a, you know, where none of us get out alive, et cetera, et cetera. Do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do. Yeah. Hey, Ray. Hey, we love you. Yeah. Yeah, he just passed. It's – it really is a weird thing though to see it so clearly captured in artwork.

weird thing though to see it so clearly captured in artwork and it's one of the weirdest things that people point to when they point to uh either ancient religious art or you know just various uh things that where it's hard to find you uh evidence of psychedelic use in their art like they didn't it's it's hard to find moments where they – like this is one. It's hard – there was nothing like this that came out of the old world. And it's fascinating to me because if McKenna was right with this idea of the stoned ape theory and that mushrooms probably shaped human culture, it's like clearly there were long periods of time probably where people weren't getting that. Yeah, but there was a continual evolution of the ability to express the dimensions of the world and of the imaginal worlds. And you can see it from cave art, which they now believe that even the Neanderthal may have had early form of cave art. So it wasn't just the Cro-Mags, you know, and the, but may have had uh ancestors who were also artists yeah it's the uh cave art is uh one of the weirder things about ancient man have you seen the

werner herzog documentary about uh the ancient cave art i believe is in france is that where it was yeah what is it called cave of dreams yes yeah I actually didn't see it and I've heard all about it and I really want to you know and I haven't yet so oh it's one of those things yeah did you love it yeah I only got a chance I was running out the door when it was on so I only got a chance to see it for about an hour but it was fascinating just the idea that they were painting these incredible things just 30,000 years ago 40,000 years ago something crazy like that and this is some of the oldest stuff just does the idea that you're looking at

something that someone 40,000 years ago drew it seems so insane but it also seems like a blip when you really stop and think about 40,000 years to go from that to us, from drawing on rocks as being your main form of expression, like drawing buffalo, to 40,000 years later taking pictures of yourself and sending them to people on the other side of the planet. It's not that far. 30,000 years is like really quick to do that. We're still making pictures. Yeah. And making pictures is becoming an even more important part of communication. What do you think that that is that feeling that you get when you see a piece of art, when you see something beautiful, when you see something, even if it's the same feeling for me, it's almost exactly the same thing. When I see nature, a beautiful scene in nature, as I see a beautiful human creation. So it seems to have no differentiation in my

imagination. When I see like a beautiful sunset or a beautiful forest, you know, in the mountains and a lake and that perfect classic scene, or if I see a beautiful painting or a beautiful forest you know in the mountains and a lake and that perfect classic scene or if i see a beautiful painting or a beautiful piece of art it's the same thing it gives you that wow that that's what we're looking for all the time this powerful expression we crave it i think it's actually something that um human beings you know either secretly or not so secretly crave in looking at other people and in finding it in their lives. I kind of think that's almost an aesthetic and spiritual quest

in itself. To find the beauty in the moment, in every moment, is actually quite a profound state to be in. Yeah. It's just such a strange thing to be able to do. If you looked at it if you were outside of human culture and you said, what are they doing there? They're creating beautiful things and they all

look at it and get a positive feeling from it. Huh. How strange. That image serves no other function other than to express themselves? No. They can't eat it. They don't make houses out of it. They just make it and they look at it and stare at it and they think it's awesome.

You know, in the back of the dollar bill, they have that somewhat Masonic-looking pyramid with the eye and the triangle floating above. And so it's an unfinished pyramid and I've heard it interpreted as the individual or the nation is incomplete without guidance by higher vision. Psychedelic art that aims at universal kind of mystical visionary experience and just kind of fantasy art. Because I think that with the widespread use of psychedelics, so many people have seen these realms that that's why that it causes a bit of a huh when people see it sometimes is because they've seen it inside themselves but maybe not outside themselves yeah it's almost like like a familiar image like even though it's so bizarrely outrageous and you still like wow, have I seen this goddamn thing before? What is it about? Especially that one with the three heads.

That one really knocked my socks off. Yeah. Yeah. You're going to make a whole building like that, man? That's what the Antheon is about. That's too much. I can't take that. Well, it's all the way around.

I know. 20-foot heads. It's going to be, it's all the way around. I know. 20-foot heads. It's going to be the coolest place on the planet Earth. That is without a doubt going to be the coolest building on the planet Earth. There's nothing cooler than that. You made an Alex Gray building and an Alison Gray building. Yeah. Exactly. And an Alison Gray building. Yeah. It's – exactly.

This is her sacred language that is the thing that binds the building together. That looks straight out of a piece of the wreckage from Roswell. That's what I would expect that writing to come from. That looks awesome. If human language – that looks like some like something someone would get tattooed on them they wouldn't even know what it meant just looks so cool well you know i thought you could you know if you had like one head here and then and then it could it could go completely around the body oh someone will do that now that you just suggested it someone will definitely do that or you could make a t-shirt or something.

Yeah, maybe that's a good move, yeah. Are you going to sell t-shirts for me? I don't know. Let's see. People would love to have this t-shirt, I guarantee you. Well, you know, there's an Entheon t-shirt that we're going to be working on. We should explain to people what Entheon is if they didn't listen to the first podcast. Essentially, you've created your own religion.

You're like – everybody has always said that wouldn't it be amazing if somebody created a religion that actually wasn't based on anything ancient or based on trying to get your money but based on the true principles of love and the word that you like to use all the time, God, you want to take that word back. You're trying to take that word back from the Bible bangers. But it's kind of an amazing thing to do because I know you and I know what you're about. You're not doing this for any nefarious reasons. You're doing it for the perfect reasons. And that's really rare where someone has a voice and they choose to just go all in like that. You've created religion, man. Well, it's an orientation toward the spiritual. And yes, we'll say religion because that's within the embrace of the expanding and evolving spirit of humanity. We have to start thinking as a planetary civilization.

to start thinking as a planetary civilization and the internet has helped us all to form an image of a networked kind of distributed intelligence that goes all around the world. Peter Robinson Yeah. That's happened before people even realized it. It's already crept up on people. Exactly. It's now kind of the ocean in which we swim. But by making note of it, we notice it. And so by the power of that community that connects virtually with each other, the Kickstarter campaign for the building of Entheon has been going strongly and just creeping upward every day and just today like broke the 100,000 mark and we're going toward 125 and we've got

about nine days left so where how do they get to this if people want to contribute to this Kickstarter well they can go to kickstarter.com uh-huh and go and Theon where do they put that? In the search. I just Googled Alex Gray. There you go. Boom. Alex Gray Kickstarter. Okay.

Just Google that. Google Alex Gray Kickstarter. So. And what you're doing is essentially you're building a temple. Yeah. You're building a work of art that it really – it's kind of fascinating because if a lot of people who believe that psychedelic drugs are at the heart of almost all religions and psychedelic experience and psychedelic imagery and ancient religious artwork where there's things that represent mushrooms and shapes that are mushrooms. These incredible buildings that have been built for religion. I mean if you really stop and think about some of the greatest architectural achievements, it's been like the most beautiful ones have been the ones that were created for religions.

It's like they – in wanting – whatever part of what they are that is good, wanting to achieve some higher level, they've done it with their art, with the architecture. You look at some of the ancient Roman architecture that's dedicated to the Catholic Church, it's staggering stuff. Outside of the creepiness of the Catholic Church, which is undeniable, and I came from it, the artwork, the architectural artwork is just masterful. It's stunning. It's like nothing else, you know. Michelangelo. Yeah, there you go. There you go. You know, the greatest of all geniuses, artistic, you know, architectural and his paintings and sculptures. Do you think that any of those guys tripped?

Well, you know, he was a neop new Platonist and what does that mean well that means he was an idealist and that he was he had just become familiar with the we're looking at the image in Socrates that is insane yeah yeah I'm sorry so keep going yeah exactly so you spun around a little bit and got to see all the heads. That's cool. That is amazing. And so all these works are going to be on view within Antheon. Dude, you could change people's lives just with these pictures. They're so trippy.

They make you like that one right there. That makes you go, okay, what is real and what's not real? That thing is too freaky. What is reality? Why is that image so familiar? Because we are connected with everything. I mean, look, all the mystic traditions talk about there's only one of us, you know? Right.

All of them, yeah. And so that's the foundation of the understanding is a sense of oneness. The idea of the networked self and of a planetary sense of humanity is I think wearing away the nationhood and nation-state ideal toward a hopeful and democratic but will struggle for some time with that. Yeah, I think it's a possibility. I have hope for people. I really do. And I think the internet is what gives me the most hope because I think that it's the first time people have ever had a straight pipe to the world. Everybody has a straight pipe to everybody else.

And information is settling and people are starting to understand. They have a greater understanding of what constitutes a happy life and how to achieve happiness and how to surround yourself with positive people and how to express yourself in a healthy way. And that's all the internet. The internet has given people, I think, a way better understanding of life itself than any generation has ever had before. And so to have this and to create it with the internet, it's kind of perfect. It's kind of beautiful. Yeah, like crowdsourcing sacred space. That is a – it could only happen today with friends. Well, because of people like you though that are doing things like that, that's one of the reasons why I have faith.

That's one of the reasons why I think that – I know a lot of people gravitate towards your stuff. A lot of people gravitate towards your words and they gravitate towards your artwork. And I think that gives me hope. I think that there's people that are trying to put themselves on a good frequency. There's people that are not. There's people that are just undeniably negative. They'll never let it go. Sure.

But they're at that phase of the alchemical journey of healing. Maybe. It's like – I don't know. It's all, I think... There's a spectrum, for sure. There's a spectrum of fortune, luck, the luck of the draw of where you were born and who you're associated with.

Oh, my God. Your family. That's an undeniable luck of the draw. I thank every day I grew up with the people I grew up with. I got really lucky with my parents. They were really nice. That's not the case with everybody and that's luck. So it's almost you can't make – some people have been fated and took them in a particular direction and

that really had become very important for them. And so it's curious because – I mean it was like that with meeting Allison. It was like that with taking LSD. It was their momentous and life-changing kind of occurrences. suicidal person to a person that has a love for life and a commitment to trying to leave the most – the gift that you've been sort of requested to perform the service you've been asked to perform. What do you mean by that? Well, Entheon is a sanctuary of visionary art, and that's always been our aspiration is to provide a more – on a more permanent basis. Of course, that's still an aspiration at this point. But that we did acquire the land of 40-acre property and we do have permission now after over a couple of years of negotiation and preparation of site plan and getting site plan approval from the town, we now have the permission to build Entheon.

And the Kickstarter has been a way of connecting with this net of beings that have also taken on the imagining of it with us and the financing of it. Where do you see this going? Do you see this becoming Entheon like once Entheon is built, what if a bunch of people want to like move into the property? Would you consider like setting up houses? We have a guest house. You have a guest house? Yes. We have a guest house to receive them and that is open now for business and uh we've been hosting uh numerous people that come and stay there already and we're open on a more

weekly uh basis now uh and but it's it's just a beautiful time of the year. And there's wisdom trails you can walk around and there's some art in the house. The cosmic Christ is there. How far in is the construction process? Well, we have done reinforcing of the carriage house around which this building is going to be – the heads are going to be clad. building is going to be the heads are going to be clad and for folks that are just listening on iTunes what Alex is

you can see it if you go to AlexGrey.com if you go to AlexGrey G-R-E-Y.com and go look at some of the images it's the weirdest, craziest coolest looking building I've ever seen in my life and if you do completely build it this way

it's really going to be one of the coolest things on earth I mean it's a building that's a work of art and it's a stunning work of art it really is badass it's very interesting because it makes a statement and I see it as

within a lineage of the development of different kinds of sacred architecture and just one other little bud on that tree. But it's attempting to point to the underlying unity of the quest for wisdom and compassion and all the different religious quests and that they have they share uh also in common uh the angel of the of creative expression which is the imagination and uh all world religions were born in the creative imagination with the visionary mystical experience. There was the founding of Islam on the journey of Muhammad to the seventh heaven and he encounters many visionary kinds of dimensions on the way and receives his wisdom. And you have Mary receiving an angel. You have Moses talking to a burning bush.

All of these are visionary, mystical experiences, and they're the foundations of many of the world religions. Mara is dispelled in the visionary experience with the Buddha. The soldiers, the Buddha turns the arrows into flowers. These are all kinds of visionary mystical contact with an infinite intermediate realm between the physical material world and the transcendental world. And all the really mystical traditions have them. we've just kind of lost track of them except now

we've recovered them through psychedelics Do you think that that was the heart of, you feel like that was the heart of all organized religion that originally it was some sort of a psychedelic experience? Well, a mystical experience. So it could have been like yoga or kundalini or something like that. It can happen on the natch and it has for many.

But for some, fasting and there are numerous kinds of austerities and things like that that could have been a natural part of life. Yes, I haven't been eating for three days. But the water is a little tasting funny and lo and behold, there's a vision and an angel appears. People would say, hey, yeah, you're about to die. You're hallucinating. Yeah. Or just eat this and you'll be OK soon.

So you can go to the edge and see the other world as well. Yeah, or just eat this and you'll be okay soon. So you can go to the edge and see the other world as well, and that can be valid as well. Yeah, people – one of the weird things about psychedelics is people always – even if it was one of the most profound experiences ever and one of the most amazing experiences ever, people will tell you, yeah, but it was just your mind playing tricks on you. Like, it doesn't matter. And you can go, okay, but it's, whether it was, whether I really did travel to another dimension and communicate with infinite beings

that were made out of love and understanding who told me the secret to life is positive energy and positive, even if it was just my imagination, I still experienced it. I experienced it as if it was real. So whether it was real or whether it wasn't real, I get the exact same result. Something happened that was unbelievably incredible. It took me to some place that was infinitely beautiful. And then something happened to me. Either that happened or it didn't happen. Well, it definitely happened. It doesn't

matter if it was imaginary. It doesn't matter if it was only inside my head. The whole world comes out of the inside of your head. When we're kids, I remember when I was a kid, they would say like, oh, he's got such an imagination. This one was talking about kids that were liars. You know, that's how people treated the imagination. The kids were just fibbers, you know, because that's imagination to some people you know some people they they didn't think it was something to be encouraged but it's really where everything comes from and that's the weirdest thing about it is the imagination conjures up an idea which becomes a laptop it conjures up an idea which becomes an airplane it all comes from the

imagination whether it's artistic whether it's a song whether it's a joke that's it's the weirdest thing ever it's and everybody wants to pretend that it's so normal it's so normally just thinking shit up out of the middle of fucking nowhere and creating nuclear power you know what did you do you sat down and you wrote some stuff on some a pad and then you figured it out where's this all coming from where's the idea to even do that coming from where's the idea that some some guy wants to be like a fucking bird and put wings on and figure out how to fly and eventually figures it out. Now we just travel all over the world. We don't think anything of it. I mean, the imagination is crazy. The imagination has done some amazing

things for human beings in this world. And yet we still don't give it the credit it deserves. It's kind of shocking. Imagination is like the most underrated thing of all time. And yet it's the foundation of all our advancement and evolution. People are like, what you need is to work hard. Don't have a fucking imagination sitting there seeing some shit that's not there. All right? Well, I think that that's the other thing that the visionary experience with psychedelics does is it convinces people of the existence of the realms. And if they suddenly find themselves in a DMT space, it's like very unsettling perhaps but then at least you can see that there is a

there there. There is an infinite there there. And so this inner consciousness experience the one self is having through us is something I'm just fascinated by. I'm fascinated by how the mystics get at the one. Do you think, and this has always been a very strange one amongst the mushroom connoisseurs of the world, some believe that in consuming that life form, which is really closer to animal than it is to plant, right? Yes. And consuming that mushroom, what you're doing is that's how it communicates with you. That's right. And then these visions that you're getting, this information that you're getting, just almost downloaded to you in a way that you can't understand or even comprehend most of it. I always describe trying to remember what you're learning on mushrooms like trying to grab fish in a river.

Like, oh, I can't fucking grab anything. I can't hold on to it. It's just too crazy. I'm seeing too much. I'm trying to calm down, but I'm seeing too much. And then you sort of go, oh, okay, this is where everything comes from. It comes from this crazy place. Yeah, the endless imagination and in flowing streams just like that.

And most of the big ones get away. Yeah. And then a few are just life altering and like the thing that really welded allison and i together uh because you know it was my first acid trip in her apartment that opened me up to uh um the the world of light and the world of uh a higher possibility beyond suicide and you know nihilism and all that was that how you were approaching life yeah yeah what do you think the cause of that is is that environmental is it behavioral is it pattern that you get into well let's see i was 20 21 and getting uh and probably there's something chemical going on horm Hormonal changes.

Possibly. I was wondering whether I was crazy. And I had a steady diet of kind of nihilist and existentialist authors, and it reinforced the sense of absurdity because I thought that was what sophisticated artists would want to put into their work was a healthy dose of nihilism and cynicism and sarcasm and all that. And yet that also felt very wrong. And so –

It's very competitive. I don't know. competitive? I don't know. And so I anyway, I was struggling with this kind of polarity kind of situation and, and prone to extremes and things like that. So, you know, with with a kind of my prayer in the morning was basically, you know, God, if you exist, you know, show yourself because I'm tired of life, you know. At 21, right. Oh, my God. That's so crazy. And so it was kind of like a challenge.

It was kind of like, yeah, right. Show me. Right. And so and I was nothing happened. It's art school. I was saying goodbye to my professor on the corner. Around the corner comes Allison in a VW. Says, hey, I'm having a party later tonight.

Hey, why don't you come on over? And the professor picks me up and says, hey, I've got some clue in acid. And so, hey, I was going to kill myself. The professor had acid? Yeah. What a cool professor. He was very cool. You don't get those kind of professors anymore.

Was that Columbus College of Art and Design? No. I was out in the museum school in Boston. In Boston? Yeah. That's where we met. Oh, wow. Yeah.

In conceptual art. Where's that? Of course. Let's see. It's on the Fenway. you know, near Gardner Museum, where the Museum of Fine Arts is. I grew up in Newton, the suburb. Oh, my God. Yeah.

And I went back recently. It was really interesting. We were driving around. I forgot, like, how historic certain parts of Boston are. Oh, my God, yeah. You know, when you look at graveyards graveyards that are from the 1600s and you know really old buildings like wow i forgot like this is this is a historic town well i always felt very much at home in boston did you hang around with any irish drunks

because that would change your mind with the quickness irish drunks on coke that's i knew a lot of those. Italian ones as well. I don't want to discriminate. The people that I liked was the kind of philosophical tradition that was there. I loved Emerson, for instance. Right. And Thoreau. And William James there at Harvard.

And then later Tim Leary and Ram Dass and those guys. And so there was a tradition of a kind of altered states and they did a lot of the experimentation, the original experiments with Walter Pankey when he did the Good Friday experiment. It's an amazing city as far as like education goes. I think it has more colleges per capita than anywhere else in the world or in the country rather and um i also think you think about like harvard and mit both in the same city what does i mean it's cambridge but what are the odds of that cambridge is basically boston it's the same thing it's like wow what a crazy town for smart people oh my god if they were so smart why would they be there it's so cold well it they hunker in yeah and work hard yeah that makes you a hard worker that's for damn sure you grow up with a work ethic you know i grew up i learned how to work hard because everyone around

me worked hard look at you i got lucky no you well for sure trust me there's a lot of luck involved but you know growing up with people in Boston, like, it really definitely – when that fucking winter comes, man, you got to be prepared. See, I love California, but there's something about it. Like, I even look at my kids and I'm like, you know what? It'd do you good to freeze your ass off every now and then. It'd do you good to realize that you got to get in the house because it's cold outside, you know, to know that that shit's out there. I think there's a humility that comes with having to deal with weather. And unfortunately, as we're saying in this podcast,

a bunch of people died in Oklahoma with a horrible tornado. Unbelievable. Deadly twisters. So, you know, we have to acknowledge how sad that is and how fucking crazy it is that there's a part of the world where the sky becomes an angry machine, monster spinning wind that picks up semi-trailers

and sends them flying through the air. That is horrific. Move out of Oklahoma by the way. What's that? Move out of Oklahoma by the way. Well a lot of them can't man. That's the problem. A lot of people are poor and you know, and they've been there for years and their family's there.

It's not that easy to just kind of pack up your shit. Just go to Michigan. It's cheaper. It's definitely cheaper. More bullets though. Yeah. Maybe.

Around Detroit apparently, right? Detroit is like the worst place in the world to be a book. They say that Detroit has a 47% illiteracy rate in Detroit. Did you make that up? I just made it up. That's hilarious.

It's crazy if you really stop and think about it. 47% illiteracy rate? What is going on? No one's paying attention to anybody. The government should absolutely focus on situations like that. The idea that we shouldn't intervene in places where it's gotten so out of hand that half the people can't read. Like that should be thought of as an epidemic because all of those people that can't read are going to give birth to children that probably can't read either. And you have thousands if not millions of people who can't read and then they're going to enter into the world unprepared, unprepared to communicate, to exchange information, to be able to find things out for themselves.

I have to take a bunch of people's words for things because you can't read things. I mean there's so much involved in being illiterate. The fact that there's like millions of potential crazy people that are going to go through life completely illiterate in 2013 and no one is up in arms about that. It's really kind of shocking. in 2013 and no one's up in arms about that it's really kind of shocking it is and it's uh something you know each one of us has to focus on in whatever way we can yeah it's it's hard to make a person it's hard to raise a human being it's not an easy thing and when we're looking at human beings that are being raised in like really terrible conditions and – I mean it should be like one of the first things like the whole world concentrates on. Before you concentrate on – I mean it sounds so hippie but it seems like if you really want to have a happy life, you've got to be doing more good than you are harm.

And there's got to be a way to do that first. There's got to be a way to say, look, there's X amount of people in the world that are starving. Let's all globally chip in to try to stop that from happening so that these starving people don't have starving children who never get a chance to get some momentum in life and be comfortable and happy. It never comes. It never comes. Just give them a chance. Wouldn't that be like the most important thing you could ever do as a race? It would comes. It never comes. To just give them a chance, wouldn't that be like the most important thing you could ever do? It would seem.

Like as a race? It would seem. To stop the worst conditions. To stop the worst conditions. But Sam Kinison had the best bit about that. Oh, it was so cruel, but it was so amazing. What did he say? He was talking about Ethiopian children.

Oh, they have those commercials. He's always like, you just fix yourself some dinner. He's sitting there, and it's a commercial. And he's like, won't you help him? Won't you send it? He's like like, just fix yourself some dinner. He's sitting there in this commercial and he's like, why don't you help him? Why don't you send it? He's like, why don't you help him?

You're only five feet away. He's the guy behind the camera who's got a Snickers bar going, not now, not now. Shut the camera. It was one of the best bits ever. He's like,

we have deserts in America too. We just don't live in them, asshole. Yeah, like he said that we, you know, I forget how it goes. It's something about,

we, yeah, we sent, we came over here with your food and occurred to us that we you wouldn't need food if you people would move where the food is like you live in a fucking desert and he grabs him when he puts his face in the sands who that is that's sand you know it's gonna be a thousand years from now fucking sand it's terrible mean bit so me see you're all in even though kinson's dead long dead still it's oh it's such a mean bit yeah but it was hilarious it was they'd crossed that line of being yeah fucking mean but so funny like oh you motherfucker oh god he was he was a wild motherfucker sam kinnison incredible We were talking about Hicks before the show started. We both thought that Hicks was

the first truly psychedelic comedian who had psychedelic ideas that he was putting forth. Some of them weren't even that funny. They were just incredibly profound. That it was in the middle of some other shit that was funny was what was so weird about it.

Right. That's how he would drop those meaningful mind bombs into your psyche so that they kind of melted and stayed. He knew how to kind of stain your consciousness with a new perception. And a lot of his stuff still holds up. Totally. Especially if you haven't heard it before. It still holds up because what he was saying about the Bush administration, the first Bush administration, by the way, that was when he was railing was you know railing against the machine it's just like you could just take it and substitute the words and it works today it worked with george

w it works with obama i mean it just it just the material works just substitute this guy for that guy and he was it's still relevant it's uh he gave birth to like a whole completely different style of comedian like that the style of comedian that came after him was like they wanted to educate you, which is really weird because some of them were idiots. So there was on the wall of the back, the green room at the Atlanta Punchline, there's a big sign that says, don't stop trying to be Hicks. Oh, quit trying to be Hicks. Yeah.

Because there were so many guys that were doing that. There were so many guys. Wow. Yeah, it was just so amazing to watch that he like, I mean, Dr. Admit Goswami, he's a physicist, one of those particle guys, had a funny thing to say about people that were sort of faking it. He was like, he goes, let them. He goes, I let them use the word quantum if they don't understand it

because maybe it will have them seek to understand it now. And I remember hearing that. I'm like, wow, that's so profound. That's interesting. I would have never thought that far ahead. He's like letting people fake it, not calling them on it, just so they just keep looking into it. If they're intrigued, then why should he be the stop? Exactly. Why should he be like, listen, bitch, you know you don't know what you're talking about.

Hicks made a lot of people aware of psychedelics too there was a lot of people that did not know anything about like heroic doses or any of that shit like hicks was like the first stand-up comedian to ever talk about things that way the other ones that would talk about mushrooms it would be like well we did mushrooms and you know we got all goofy and bobby thought he was a horse you know that's usually the story it was never like – it wasn't like what Hicks was describing. It was like, what is this guy seeing? Because how come it's different than everybody else that takes mushrooms? And I think just it was so interesting and fascinating when he would talk about it

that it just led a lot of people to explore that. I think he was another kind of apostle in a kind of nightclub setting. Yeah, I mean, and digitally he still is. We can still hear his words. Exactly, because we resonate with the authenticity and the rawness that he projected and with a psychedelic perspective that allowed him a kind of brutal honesty. And yet there was something remarkably magnetic because he was like a laser about the truth, it seemed. to be about even at the you know and to reveal a

kind of underlying darkness was something that he was an expert at yeah he really was and he had a lot of references that he would use in his material that would make you seek out other shit like what Terrence McKenna would call a heroic dose.

And I was like, who the fuck is Terrence McKenna? And then I started reading about Terrence McKenna. I go, whoa, this guy. Holy shit. I started reading Food of the Gods. And I was like, oh, my god. I'm like, where's this guy been? I mean, Hicks exposes people or did expose people.

Yes, he did. And then once you got into the McKenna door, then you were off to the races. Once you start listening to those McKenna MP3s that are available online, you want to talk about something that will just crack your consciousness. Those McKenna MP3s of some of those lectures that he gave, that guy had a very strange way of thinking. Yes. I used to think of him as the spokesmonkey for the mushroom,

you know, that he was kind of plugged in to that. But he and his brother are both extraordinary in their intersection with the plant kingdom and the fungal kingdom, and Cat McKenna as well, who continues the work at Botanical Dimensions. The, what is it, was it a story they told of La Chujera, where they took too much and Dennis kind of went, he went radio silent for a couple of weeks. Went completely crazy for a while.

Yes. That they're, you you know with like dinner plate size mushrooms and they're eating them all day would whoa would you like to interview dennis i've had him on oh you've had him yeah yeah you did oh he was great with the brothers of the screaming abyss yeah yeah we talked about his book and we just talked about psychedelics and we talked very specifically about the the actual science behind the possibility of psychedelics creating language, and especially, particularly psilocybin. And he was explaining how it would make sense that language was created through the use of psilocybin by virtue of the effect that psilocybin has in a very scientific way that I can't recreate.

Yeah, and I was like, oh, I never even heard anybody say it that way before. But that completely makes sense. Yeah. Obviously one theory and I don't understand really what he's saying. It just sounds awesome. I don't know whether or not there's some science to it where other people might disagree with it. Let's say that it's commonplace for people to want to express themselves creatively in the wake of a psychedelic experience. Yeah. I was going to ask you though, why do you think that is that people would dismiss that?

Why do you think it is that people would ridicule that? Like someone saying that you actually learn something from a psychedelic experience. You say that to the average person and they'll look at you with ridicule. Like how did that happen do you think? Well, I'd like the listeners to help us think of a word to place that in the same context as homophobia or misogyny or something like racism. Why do people who alter their consciousness or who speak of it inspire the hysteria in people that don't take them? That's a great great line um yeah well i i think that for a lot of folks they first of all they equate drugs with bad you know they think of drugs the problem is meth is a drug too and meth wrecks lives.

That's why – Cocaine is a drug too. Cocaine fucks people up. But then there's pot, which doesn't, and then there's mushrooms, which does. These are – they're all drugs though. Well, I mean you could look at some as a food and it's better maybe to classify some as a sacrament that have been a sacrament for longer than they were a quote drug. They were a way that people connected with the higher dimensions. What is the term entheogen? What is the actual translation of that?

Entheo. Theo, of course, is God or the divine. And entheo would be the divine within. A bunch of dudes that are really douchey just decided to name their son Theo after hearing that. That's my boy, the God, the God Theo. Fucking awesome. So that's what Entheogen means. Yeah.

So it's from the God? So that's what entheogen means. Yeah. So it's from the god? It's a way to discover or a substance that allows you to discover the god within or the divine within, the spirit within. I don't blame people that discriminate against psychedelics if they haven't had psychedelics. I think it's just an ignorance thing. I think people have a lot of bad ideas. And they don't necessarily think it's their responsibility to be right about something

that they haven't experienced themselves. And that is, you know, in society it's sort of looked down upon. It's looked down upon to alter your consciousness like that. That if you do it, you're probably looking to escape reality. That's like the standard take on it. Yet many of these people would consider themselves to be religious people. Sure. A lot of them.

So if you look at the foundations of all world religions as we've just gone through it, we can see that they were based on this visionary mystical experience, which is what we're saying is of value for everyone. Yeah, but Alex, that was thousands of years ago. We don't want it anymore. All right? If Jesus came around today, no one would believe him. There was some dude that was claiming that he was the son of God.

He was giving wisdom to everybody. They'd probably put him in Guantanamo Bay. There's no way they would let that guy just run around running shit. I think there's a lot of uh people uh god uh inspired people are on the loose you know for sure they're just like spores yeah absolutely but there's but the idea of the one a messiah coming back a magical messiah with power to bring back people from the dead did i did i already say my theory about the the second coming no okay i'd love to hear it you're smiling like a little kid right now okay because i thought Did I already say my theory about the second coming? No.

Okay. I would love to hear it. You're smiling like a little kid right now. Okay. Because I thought – I repeat myself endlessly. But – Welcome to the podcast. That's what we do here.

Okay. of Christ was the revelation of the connection of basically of the divinity of humanity. Right. That was the revelation. And the second coming through a kind of idiosyncratic tradition that is coming out of South America, a lot of ayahuasca churches all over the world are drinking and contacting this higher dimension through the ayahuasca. And I call – in no demeaning way, I call it the green Jesus because – and green Mary really because it's revealing the divinity of nature. Revealing the divinity of nature. And there's nothing more important right now than recognizing the divinity and the sacredness of nature and saving the life web in whatever ways we can. Somehow turning our ship around from a self-destructive species.

You know, this is the tight place we're heading into. It is, but hasn't it always been like this? Isn't this the yin and the yang that makes people human? Perhaps. The push and the pull. Sometimes we need to rally against an impending doom. Oh, God, I know. It's a part of being a person.

We're goofy. We don't want to cram for tests. We're adolescent species and wildly destructive. And we only exist through the grace of the kind of spirits that are tolerant because we're so creative, I think, that they hope that we will work on this together with the intelligence that's that's seeding today and we've also been born in a super lucky spot as far as the history of humanity we didn't have to go through the people trying to make it across the the West with wagon trains and we didn't have to go through any of that we're lucky we have internet perhaps we'll be floating in some astral dimension in the next lifetime. That's possible too.

Do you feel you have a responsibility from the fact that you have this voice and you're looked at as this sort of psychedelic visionary guy? Do you feel like you have a responsibility to try to get information out, things that you've learned, things that you think possibly could help people? Because you obviously have a vision of things and you obviously have a very well thought out view of humanity and of consciousness. Do you feel that you have an obligation to express these thoughts? obligation to express these thoughts? I think that anyone who experiences the deeper realms maybe has a turnabout in their conscience. It's not just about higher consciousness, but there's a sense that if you're connected with everyone and with everything, then what's your moral responsibility or your ethical response to your interconnectedness?

And so if – There's a bunch of hippies just took their pants off right now. It's like, I can't take it. It's too much love, man. Sorry. Well, I think that there's a natural resistance to allowing it to be as magnificent as it actually is. There's also a fear of the unknown too. Totally.

People that haven't had it, I think that's why I don't fault them, the ones who are anti. A lot of people associate drugs with ruining your life, not with saving your life. Exactly. But they're capable of both. Totally. In my case, it was the other. It was the saving my life and meeting my wife. And 39 years later, here we are.

Whatever seed was born in the saving of a life and giving a literal turning point and saying, can you see me now? Well, Switch literally was turned on and you became a different person. Like shedding a cocoon. Caterpillar becomes a butterfly or whatever

the fuck happens whenever you have a really profound experience. But some people don't do that. This is what I say. A really profound psychedelic experience is like control-alt-del delete for your consciousness where your brain reboots with a fresh operating system and there's only one folder on the desktop and the desktop folder says my old bullshit and you can either open it up and go right back into these predetermined patterns of behavior once the psychedelic experience has faded because it'll be more comfortable that way

than sort of reassessing the way you've been living your life. Or, you know, you can hit delete and try to keep going and do DMT again. Try to get right back there, right when it stops being fresh. Just reintroduce that mind. Oh, there it is. Okay, I got it. Okay, thanks. There's an evolutionary toehold that you can shine a light toward your future that you're headed toward rather than depend on the effects of past behavior. Wow.

Yeah, you know what's been really tripping me out is how many people that I know that are starting to have semi, at least, psychedelic experiences from doing yoga. I've had maybe one time in my life where I did yoga and I felt like I was high. I felt like I was high on marijuana. That's what it felt like. At the end of it, it was like, wow. It's just like whatever it is that you have that switch that you can hit when you do the right poses for the right amount of time with the right amount of energy, there's a weird switch that you hit at the end where I was literally high. But that's as far as I've ever taken it. I've never had a hallucination.

I've never astrally projected. from people that practice kundalini yoga that if i didn't know them really well and the way they were telling it to me is like so matter-of-factly i would say this guy's crazy he's just making up a bunch of shit except for the one time that i got myself high because i was really high i mean i was high i felt great i had love in my heart i wanted to hug people i I felt like colors were brighter. Sounds were cleaner. I really felt really high. And it was just from doing yoga. And I was like, if that's possible, I've never really continually practiced kundalini. But the people who really get into pranayamas and all that, they say that there's a wavelength that you can hit where you tap into that, whatever it is, the pineal gland,

whatever it is, the DMT factory, and you just, boom, open up the doorway and punch right through. And that you can do it through yoga. Yes, absolutely. Have you done it through yoga? Yes, and there are different kinds of, like the idea for Entheon. Let's be honest with you. You could have just been having a flashback. Let's be honest with you.

The idea for Entheon really came about first of all through Allison and I had a routine of yoga and then meditation. And during that period, basically, instead of like kind of forcing myself to imagine something, I was saying, well, God, what do you want? What would you like me to put on there? And so it showed this – the interconnected kind of Godhead type thing. It's perfect. God's on it. Okay. God nailed it. Just do something like that.

Yeah, come on. Here it is. Okay. Thank you. So, you know, that's on the natch, I guess. You're not on the natch ever, dude. Let's be honest. Exactly.

You're so psychedelic anyway from point A. You're naturally psychedelic. And then on top of that, all the things you've done, how could you ever pretend that you're ever on the natch? You've experienced too much to be on the Natch. Well, your reference point is now more cosmic than sort of isolated. Yes. And you feel more connected with people because – and it must happen to you. You have a community, you have met with

many of the people that come out to see you over your tour and things like that. How has your sense of community evolved in your understanding? That's a good question. Well, what I've found is that by doing something like a podcast, having conversations with people like you and my friends that come on, you're sitting, you're putting out the kind of conversations that we're having right now.

You're putting these out to people that live in places where they don't know anybody like you they can't get a guy like you to sit down for three hours i couldn't get you to sit down for three hours and just talk like this unless we're going to do a podcast i mean it probably could but this is the way to do it you know so everybody can be in on it as well but that's one of the best things for me about this podcast is that i'm getting to talk to like these people like chris r Daniele Bolelli or all these interesting people that I get to talk to on a regular basis. To me, that's a beautiful

little situation that I've stumbled into. And for me, I'm very, I feel very fortunate just to be able to have all these conversations with people. And then now there's a sense of obligation because I know that people enjoy these conversations and I want and I don't want to ever have them think that I'm not going to do it anymore we're going to keep this going like it's fun I know you enjoy it I enjoy it too it's totally mutual thanks a lot I'm glad you like it and I think with that it's with that attitude we've we've created this group of people that listen to the podcast and maybe they've never had like expanding the life that they live outside of this one realm of consciousness that they've inhabited their whole life. One way of looking at the world, whether it's racist or gluttonous or whether they've just been abusing their body or whether they've just been lazy about getting things done. done and when you you hear a podcast where you get a chance to see all these different people's takes on things you know from everlast the singer to my friend joey diaz and all these different

people's takes on things they're all different and dynamic and having access to that it's like having a bunch of like really smart friends around you all the time so if you can listen to these podcasts not everybody's really smart you know i'm not i'm not saying we're all really smart i'm saying some of them are really smart but you get a chance to have these interesting conversations and they enrich people's consciousness because you might be stuck in a bad spot i've been in a bad spot in my life where i didn't have a lot of cool people to talk to. You couldn't just tune into a podcast, you know? And so my sense of community is sort of, uh, it's one become a thing of obligation of on an, a happy obligation, but I definitely think we're obligated to continue to provide content. And it's, uh, you know, I, I remember being addicted to radio shows or, or different bands

when I was a kid and And you want more stuff. You want constantly more stuff. So we're, you know, that's a big part of community with me. But it's also one of the most, the happiest things that I've gotten from this podcast is people coming up to me telling me that it changed the way they think about things. Telling me that now they're happy. Telling me that now changed the way they think about things, telling me that now they're happy, telling me that now they eat healthy, telling me that now they just stop being an asshole to people, that they realize they were really just frustrated and they need to get their shit together.

It's over and over and over again. And that sense of community, I mean, it was completely accidental. We didn't set out to try to create some sort of a group that sort of tunes into we just hope people enjoyed the podcast we didn't think it was going to be I know it it's a very interesting thing when do a group of supportive listeners become a community and it's kind of like uh we see uh that today people uh would like to gather in a lot of different places and uh to uh coalesce for uh a few hours yeah and uh have a temporary community well i think we'd like to have a full community, but we don't trust people to not get fucking kooky. It's like not everybody has their shit together.

No, you can't just walk into my house. You might be nuts. It's true. And by the way, I'm tired. I just got home from work. I'd really like to just watch TV. I don't want you coming over my house. So there's a certain boundary that we all have to set up.

That's why the church model of the – there's a time when you devote some time to this other thing too that's going on that's more of a community thing. And that's why I ask about it because it's something that we've been thinking about a lot. It's going to happen on its own. People are going to gravitate. I told you. All the fringe people from all over the planet are coming to you, my friend. They're going to zoom in on you along with some cops probably. You're going to get some undercover cops that are going to try to pretend to be your friends and try to get deep into the organization and find out you're for real. And then eventually they'll admit it to you.

You'll give them some acid. They'll tell you they're a cop. They'll apologize. You'll say it's OK. Well, I don't – we don't give anything to anyone. I will give them some acid. They will tell you they're a cop. They will apologize. You will say it's OK and you will give them a thing. Aaron Ross Powell, Jr.: Well, I don't – we don't give anything to anyone or really advocate that much. We do tell the truth about what happened to us and I'm of the belief The discovery of LSD 70 years ago this year is quite a miraculous occurrence and probably of a religious importance to humanity in the great scheme of things. And I think 70 years after the crucifixion basically, it wasn't going so well for the Christians.

This is kind of like a civil rights issue that is pointing toward a higher freedom of consciousness and special places. I'm not saying these are not potentially dangerous substances and in the wrong hands at the wrong time and things like that. It can be a terrible – a weapon even. So they're definitely things that shouldn't be toyed with and some people should stay very clear of them. They happen to be something that gave us tremendous insight and I think many other people as well, not because I said so, but because people naturally have discovered this. It's part of contemporary

culture even. It's just a weird thing that we have. Once we write things down on paper, we say this is a law. Even when it gets to the overwhelming breaking point, and it's probably not there with psychedelics. I think it is with pot but to when it gets to the undeniable breaking point where people just they they're like no like 70 can say they favor legalization like sorry it's just it's not up for grabs the federal government's not really interested in what you're really oh 70 that's great call us when it's a million percent and we'll still tell you to fuck yourself. It's like they just – the laws don't make any sense. And it only points at this point – at this time to suppression.

It's the only thing that makes sense. They're nonlethal. OK? They're nonlethal, life-changing. And there's a lot of people that give it five stars on Yelp. OK? It's like – I mean some people have had some bad times on mushrooms that's a fact but if uh if mushrooms had a yelp page it would be a motherfucker this shit would be filled with stars and there would be like a link to it'd be every one of

those reviews would say more at the bottom so you'd have to click to get an extra pair how many infinite stars are there yeah you can't they wouldn would be – yeah. If you had less than five stars for mushrooms, you're an asshole. Give it five stars, stupid. It was the best thing that ever happened to you. I mean the Johns Hopkins University is now starting to public studies saying that just one mushroom trip 20 years ago has a profound effect on personality and improved people's outlook and their level of happiness. Like it makes – it can make people happier. That sounds so stupid that it's illegal. I mean,

it literally, how many people are like you? How many people are like, well, I just needed that reset. And with a loving person that I meet, I have a great time. And then all of a sudden,

boom, I'm off to the races on a totally different track. How many people have to say that before we, we as a culture go, well, isn't this, this Alex Gray is like way cooler. He's like a way better version. Look, he makes amazing art.

He's a nice guy. He's happy. He seems fulfilled. He's trying to create a center, a beautiful building where people can come and worship all this stuff. Like what is wrong with that? What's going on here? Like what are we trying to protect people from? It sounds like you're trying to protect people from enlightenment that would sound preposterous what kind of a what kind

of a benevolent leader would you be if you're trying to protect people from potential enlightenment or are you scared of potential enlightenment yourself and knowing that if you do take mushrooms you can't put on the bulletproof vest and tear gas the kids you can't you're not going to do it you're not you're not going to be the pepper spray cop when the kids are protesting because you're not going to be able to afford it. You have a conscience and you want to do...

You can't do that gig anymore. You've got to get a new gig. Well, if you do do it, you'll have nightmares. Imagine doing mushrooms and then pepper spraying kids. Oh my God, the demonic nightmares that you would have nightmares oh yeah yeah imagine doing mushrooms and then pepper spraying kids oh my god the demonic nightmares that you would have for decades it's uh and and then the habits that you'd uh form to avoid uh confronting them yeah oh jesus you'd become a fucking gambling

addict for sure three cigarettes in your mouth at the same time looking up looking a bet on a roach crossing a parking lot you bet on anything there's whatever to distract yourself from it's a lot of people out there that just got started off in a bad way that's true and very few things can help them except psychedelic experiences and they're one of the best ways to affect those and like we said it doesn't have to be a drug you can get psychedelic experiences through meditation through if you you've practiced it enough allegedly he says he's done it you know i've never got there other than getting high like you're saying like doing yoga and then meditation even not for a long time there are many different

approaches to meditation you know from the simplest kind of watching your breath to a kind of, Alison talks about an aesthetic kind of reception of considering each moment like a, you know, for the beautiful, special, unique thing that it is and like we listen to music you know we listen with a an ear of appreciation and things like that if we if we had an aesthetic scrutiny and could see the beauty of of of our cosmic situation you know that we evolved to this point where we can talk to each other through a network of intelligence and light and share potential connection, community even of a new wave of consciousness that's spread throughout the world. I feel like these podcasts and things like that are the mushroom fruit of a mycelial body of underground intelligences that interweave and then they pop out on these special occasions and uh well it's a door to open people up to people like you to new possibilities new ways new ways of thinking and sometimes that's all you need is just one unique idea that's put in your head by someone that you don't even know.

Just listening to them talk to somebody else and that thought sends you off in a different direction. A person's words can be psychedelic. There's a lot of different things. Childbirth can be psychedelic. There's a lot of different things that happen to you in this life that are – we think of psychedelics as being hallucinations and we think of them as being sort of a child's fair. But, you know, the reality is that there's a lot that comes out of them that it's very difficult to get any other way.

And the way it comes out so reliably, it's like no one, like mushrooms work for almost everyone on the planet like no one's immune like you could be out of focus and not really get there with kundalini you really just can never really get your shit and groove and you just have a bad class you take five grams of mushrooms you're off to the moon no matter if you like it or not you're gonna you're gonna get sucked into the wake and hopefully you can let go, ride it out and be okay. But you might just clench up and it might just go haywire. Yes. setting, if possible, and under ideal conditions, even those that you don't have to worry about anything about it, that you can relax totally and that you're supported by loving friends so that you feel that you can go as deep and as high as possible.

And with those conditions and your favorite music music we like to use a kind of a spiritually uplifting like bach and stuff like that kind of heavy for some people but i thought you're gonna say christian rock no no i but i like uh you know like uh we used to listen to musical offering all the time that's so eerie but it favored the tripping mind with all the fugues and things like that. The infinitizing is really there in Bach. I forgot to tweet people and tell them that we're live. Ah. We're fucked up.

Start over? No, we don't have to start over. We've been live for a while. Hold on. Live for a while with... Me too. Sorry. Sorry, folks listening.

No, it's good. So do you ever go back to Columbus, Ohio? I actually, all my friends went to CCAD, and that's actually the college I was actually supposed to go to, but I ended up not going. But do you ever go back? Do you ever visit? I mean, I bet you're like a superhero there now.

Well, I think the great return home has not really happened so much. But I do visit my mother and family and things there. The heartland, baby. Yeah. Well, we, baby. Yeah. Well, we'll see. There's some festival things that are happening in the region, and this year we're going perhaps to another part of the world, but then at some point I think we'll coordinate. Now, what part of the Hudson Valley are you – is it the Hudson Valley that you're putting this –

Yes. Where is it at? We're in the town of Wappinger, and Wappinger is a beautiful town that's right on the Hudson River, and it's related to Wappinger's Falls. And Wappinger is the name of the native people who inhabited the region 400 years ago. And they were a wonderful kind of series of tribes that went all the way down. How do you spell Wappingers? W-A-P-P-I-N-G-E-R. And not many –

That's a cool name it's amazing it's got resonances with many creatures and with a kind of good attitude they had a awesome

idea about the Hudson River we call it the Hudson now but it used to be the Mohicanituk, the great flow that goes both ways. And that makes sense. It's a tidal river and it goes up right to our town, right to around there and then it goes back to the ocean. It's just amazing. What kind of town is this? Well, it's been many things.

And it's a – right now I'd say it's an evolving town. And the place that we inhabit, it used to be called Deer Hill. And Deer Hill was a United Church of Christ congregation and also an interfaith kind of camp. So they had a very trans-denominational or interfaith kind of approach to spirituality. And they had it on the market for like seven years. And finally, when we found each other, we felt like we had a lot in common, that our message was an attempt at a universal message of spirituality and interconnectedness and using nature as a setting for this kind of soul renewing kind of surrounding in a creative environment so we do all kinds

of creativity classes there from dancing and and movement and yoga and meditation, things like that. So how much of the place is done? The outside is – the inside is done. It's just the outside needs to be completed with the artwork? With Entheon, what we have is an old carriage house, and it's been structurally reinforced. old carriage house and it's been structurally reinforced and we've actually put quite a bit into it already in sealing and shoring it up but then we have to take the roof off and we have to establish new steel foundations in all the corners and we're building the heads 16 feet away from the entry to the brick building. So what you'll have is a large atrium in front of the brick building when you walk into Entheon.

And with this, there will be the reception. There will be a bathroom and coat closet and things like that. There will be the reception. There will be a bathroom and coat closet and things like that. But there will also be a fountainhead there that will mount against the wall of this old carriage house. So you'll see this dramatic kind of 75 by 23-foot high wall of brick. Is this it right here? We're looking at it right now? Yeah.

It's up here as well. Oh, yeah. Pull it all the way back, Brian, for a second? The construction looks pretty in-depth. You guys did a lot of stuff to the place. Oh, yeah. It's been – And are you living inside of that as well? There's the brick carriage house and so we're going to – we've been shoring it up. We found a nearby construction companies that are specialists in ornamental casting of concrete. And so this has led to this kind of key to how we're going to actually build the building.

So that's all going to be concrete, those faces? Yes, but it's a skin, a thin skin of concrete, about an inch thick, and reinforced with steel and a glass fiber reinforced kind of concrete. It's a very special kind of permanent, and then it's going to be sectioned and like these heads there's very repetitive kinds of elements to it so they'll be made on some sort of a gigantic mold or something like that and there'll be several first it'll be uh first it was uh i guess seen in the imagination uh thank you transcendent uh visionary. And then I drew it. And then I showed it to Ryan Tottle, who's an amazing digital sculptor and visionary artist.

And he works at Disney perfectly to the building. So this will be printed out in sections and we'll have basically a foam printout that then will be corrected and things like that. And then a mold will be taken from that. corrected and things like that and then a mold will be taken from that then uh for in that mold we shoot uh this concrete uh thin uh kind of inch thick stuff it's got pins on the back that attach to a steel armature and that armature attaches to the building wow it's it's it's very exciting because it's a real and actual thing. It's incredibly ambitious. And, well, you know, look, people always did sacred buildings, you know, and it's up to – You don't have to justify it to me.

I think it's awesome. I'm just – I mean you're like, hey, they've always done this. Well, I mean this is tiny, tiny little expression compared to magnificent temples that are all over the world and things. I mean they're grand and huge. Well, there's no pope behind you with horse carriages filled with gold to pay for the construction. But there's people who are pledging $10 and $30 and $50. And I should tell them that they get something from that. You have a bunch of different tiers set up,

different things that you get, whether it's artwork. I think there's – how many different levels do you have of possibilities they can build? Oh, we have so many. We've got like even original artwork that has never been offered before and stuff. artwork that has never been offered before and stuff. So there's a PDF with all kinds of artworks and things like that and sketches. It's really cool.

These are worth admission for two to Entheon. That's your coin? Yeah. You're on money. Jesus, man. What are you doing? You're going too far. I need you to take it down a notch.

Whatever you do, nobody has guns, okay? No, no, no. No guns ever, right? You should really make that super strict. Yeah. Because you're going to have a bunch of loons that go, you know what? I love you. I love psychedelics, but I also love the Second Amendment. We're here to rock. And when it

comes it takes our compound well we covered we try to have you know intelligent security that that that just so that things don't always stay cool you know what it would be though it'd be the cop that pretended to be one of you guys that would freak out and pull his gun. So the real cops would come in and lock you guys down because you're violent and you had guns. That would be what I would do if I was a cop. So I was trying to shut you hippies down. Well, we actually have made friends with the local police because we're grateful. Oh, that's awesome.

For their service. That's a beautiful thing to say too. I agree with that as well. I get shit about that online. I always tell people that I like cops. But I think it's important to have police officers. We do. We absolutely depend on them as a community.

And there's a lot of good ones. Absolutely. The people don't want to address that. There's a lot of cops out there that are nice, despite all the shit they see every day. that there's a lot of cops out there that are nice despite all the shit they see every day i've we have uh friends who are sort of high up in that in the local region and and they're just some of the nicest people and most compassionate actually because they're they go to people who are in trouble yeah mostly and then you know they're absolutely your bad cops that's no doubt about it either sure you know no one one's making up for that.

We're just saying there's a need for it and a lot of them are good. And if you're in a community that's accepting you guys and – didn't you have a little weird thing where they didn't want you guys to be non-taxed? Well, we're still working that out. They don't want to accept you as a regular religion. Well, it's – the church status is a uh you see we're building sacred space right we hold uh full moon ceremonies every month we hold our church uh that sounds awesome i wish i was your neighbor and we have neighbors who love to come over and they love to uh participate and we have people from all over the world who come.

And also this is before Entheon really is there. Right. So there's a lot of – four years we've been waiting and so now we've got a loan from a bank that is helping us out. And we have the Kickstarter is coming. You know, we still have like nine days or something like that. Well, we'll try to pump it up for you. What kind of town is this?

Is this like a town that accepts hippies? Are they conservative? No, I wouldn't say that. I'd say that there's, I'd say there's a healthy mix. Okay. And what I find so really astonishing is the religious diversity. There's a Sikh temple, I believe. There's Hindu temples. There's a Tibetan Buddhist stupa.

All in your town? All in the town. How many people are in this town? Just – it's not a large amount. OK. Is it one of those vortexes? They're just? A little. I think that –

Like the comedy store? I think it's a little bit of a vortex of beauty and according to our Native American scholar, Evan Pritchard, he said that our land may have been held sacred by the Wapinger people as well. So it's always been kind of in this, you know, sacred tradition. And it was a church before you. And that's fascinating. I always wondered where they, how, you know, how you would pick a site for something like this. You know, I think it's really cool that you're doing it. I think it's really fun. It's exciting. I know you have good intentions. So it's really fun. It's exciting. I know you have good intentions. Yeah. We're hopeful.

And we met some of the neighbors, and we try to be considerate now about sound and things like that. And so it's – How close are you to the neighbors? You have 40 acres. Yes. What kind of sounds are you guys making, you freaks? Moans. What are you doing?

Imagine if Alice Gray was actually just a gun nut he's out there shooting this is all an act i love that one of your things it's music you know like uh sacred music we had a recent outdoor uh concert but there was also a fireworks display by the city that – by the town that night. And so it was perfect. Oh, so it was perfect. Yeah. One of your things on your Kickstarter is awesome. There's only five left though.

But for $1,500, you get a hand-drawn portrait of you or your beloved one. That's how awesome is that? That's amazing. I almost want to do that. That's amazing. Wow, that's so cool. Yeah, that's a good Kickstarter, man. You'll get some people

definitely from this show. And they get to it one more time. I feel like we're PBS, so I'm going to say this one more time. Oh, it's great Kickstarter. You know those gross

fucking PBS shows where every 15 minutes they would chime in and try to get you to donate? Like, why don't you guys just get some commercials so you don't have to do this?

This is disgusting. Stop interrupting the conversation, you freaks. So do you feel like you're already starting to have a gravity in this town? People are already starting to be drawn towards this thing that you're creating and putting together with all these ceremonies? Well, we did have a recent event this past week. Is that what the cops called it?

Well, there was a recent event at the Entheon. This new religion that just moved in. That's how they would describe a bunch of arrests. Well, here in L.A., we actually had

a safe event where Ott played and Ken Jordan from Crystal Method and OTT. He's an amazing kind of named after Jonathan Ott but Ott in terms of I'm not familiar. Who's Jonathan Ott?

Jonathan Ott is a translator of Albert Hoffman and also was one of the people who came up with the term entheogen with Dr. Hoffman. A translator, scientific translator? An author. You say he was a translator of Hoffman's? Yes.

What do you mean by a translator? My problem child wanted to come out in English. Albert Hoffman wanted someone who was responsible to his word and to his meaning. Oh, I see. Would translate his words for him. I'm so ignorant. I wasn't aware that Albert Hoffman didn't speak English. Yeah, no. He was Swiss. I figured if he's figuring out how to make shit, he's got to be American.

I mean, you know what I'm saying? He spoke pretty good English. Did he? But not to translate the book. Wow. That's fascinating stuff, man. Yeah. So Ott played and Jonathan Singer, who's a – I call him a light slinger and VJ extraordinaire,

And Vijay Extraordinaire had made a printout of the Entheon kind of altar DJ booth or I guess electronic musician station. And so these wonderful musicians played behind something, a console that looked a lot like the Entheon thing. So it printed it out and Ryan had made this model for the booth, and it was like a proof of concept of this is how we're going to print out the building. Right. So it looks really cool. Wow. You're doing raves.

You've got DJs up there. This is the best religion of all time. Everybody's ecstatic. Yeah. Oh, yeah. I get it. Visionary. Yeah, that's, oh yeah, I get it, visionary. Yeah, that's a beautiful thing, man. And you're, you know, you're going to have a positive effect

on a lot of people who come through those doors. That's everything you would ever want out of a religion, a center where people can meet, a community, and the ability to push something positive out those doors. You know, it's a beautiful thing, man.

Thank you. Well, it's really about inspiring the creative spirit in everybody. And so that's ultimately why it's there. In a dozen years or 2020, if possible, if we're able to sort of pay back some of our loans and various things over time, we look to build the actual chapel of Sacred Mayors in the meadow, if possible. and that if we're able to do that, that we would move our art out of the Antheon and have it as a sanctuary for visionary art from artists from around the world, many of whom have already come and done presentations there and actually some of them are in the collection already and stuff.

So it will be an active center for the promotion of this kind of new art movement, I'd say, that is worldwide and really is a product of seeing into these new dimensions. I think you need your own podcast, first of all. Absolutely. Why not? A great way to your own podcast. First of all. Absolutely. Why not? A great way to reach people. Super easy to do. Set it up.

Go to Libsyn. Get an account. Not hard. Really easy to do. And you could give people just weekly updates on where everything stands. That's a great idea. A lot of people would get into that. And then you could also have your thoughts on current events or your thoughts on current events or your thoughts

on you know whatever anything you know you don't it don't have to be married to any particular amount of time do it for 10 minutes if you like do a quick one just to keep everybody posted or do three hours do whatever the hell you want but but having something like that when you're doing something like this which is very you're you're you're creating this center for community. You're creating this center for sort of the distribution of psychedelic ideas. And in doing something like that, in creating that kind of a community, I mean, you're really like putting something out there into the world. You're setting forth a beacon

you know you're like there's going to be so many people that are influenced by that there's so many people that look at that and go what is he doing what's going on over there and they've got full moons what is the big deal about full moons what are these people doing wow that's pretty what is this fucking building and then they get sucked in

do you know you're doing that are you going to be comfortable as a cult leader or how's that that's uh it's tough i think that it's very tricky it's about uh as i said holding up a sacred mirror for people and uh if there's an element of inspiration in the – for their own creative lives, whatever it is, then we can see that that's a spirituality that works for you because you have a creative life that has meaning for you. So you're seeking to inspire other people to be more creative as well. You're seeking to start the spark. It's about transformation of the consciousness so that we can regard nature as a sacred ally that we need to learn from and to stop abusing and that we can save what we can of the life web and have a humanity that lives for hundreds of thousands of years instead of snuffs itself

out in a stupid – oops, I wrecked the planet. Like I'm just a teenager. What do you expect? But like i'm just a teenager you know what do you expect uh but you know like can we grow up can we mature as a species it's i think it's the most exciting and amazing uh time because it's like our kickstarter i have a kind of a wow boy there's some gravity in the timeline element. And of course we haven't got a united world where we say collectively, oh, you know what? That is too much carbon. Let's do the solar like really like hard. And so we can start to turn it around, you know. We're not there yet.

But people in general, I think, feel that, you know, and they start to feel like the, oh, wow, how can we turn it around? And so that's why I think that people like Paul Stamets and other visionary thinkers who understand more about the intricacies and intelligence of, say, the fungus, that we have a lot to be hopeful about. We have a lot to be hopeful about. And if we put to use the technology and the intelligence that is already available. You need to start a farm too. You need to grow your own food out there. Exactly.

Why not? You've got 40 acres, right? It's a great area. I'm sure it gets a lot of rain. Well, we're right next door to a great field and perhaps an organic farm coming in. So right now we're focusing on the temple, but all of those things are part of the, I think, overall permaculture plan. We're still mapping the land to see permaculturally what would make sense to develop.

That's going to be really fascinating when it's done, man. I really can't wait, and I'm really excited about it, but this goes to show you the negative thinking that some people just can't escape. Some people just can't help being negative, no matter what. No matter how positive someone else's message is, some people can't help being negative. Somebody

talked about your Entheon. Entheon? That's what it's called? Entheon, yeah. They said it was a shrine to your ego because you're creating a big piece of art, a big piece of beautiful art. That's somehow a shrine to your ego. Isn't that a strange thing that people will accept art, but if that art becomes a building, then something's ego about it. Like it can be the most beautiful thing as long as it's a painting or a sculpture. But when you make a house out of it,

then it's a shrine. It's a shrine to your ego. Like it can't just be a beautiful piece of art. A sculpture. Why does someone have to hate like that? That's got to be the way you were raised. That's got to be the people that you're around. There's no other way that kind of douchey thinking should be acceptable.

Hey, look, everybody's entitled to their reaction, and I think that that's inevitable. Yeah, but everybody's also entitled to be mocked for their reaction. That's an important part of culture. People need to feel the sting of other people going, bitch, shut up. What are you talking about? The guy's making a beautiful building. What's your problem? It's trying to his ego.

Negative. A lot of people need hugs. That's what it is. A lot of people didn't get them. A lot of people need them now. Well, the very idea is the idea that there is basically one face of, and it's all of us. And so there's a multiple, and then there's a one on the top of the roof. So you got the one and the many and the many and the one.

And through consciousness evolution, you can reach both. I like that you say that, and it doesn't sound goofy at all. Do you know what I mean? Well, it's like the plain facts. Yes, you're sincere. Wow. But it's one of those concepts where you start talking about the God is the one and the one is the Lord and people go, what is this crazy fuck going on about? But geez, okay, you take it from a scientific perspective. And people go, what is this crazy fuck going on about? Well, but geez.

Okay, you take it from a scientific perspective. Most are still on the Big Bang that 13.7 billion years ago there was nothing. And then kablam, 13.7 billion years ago we're talking about it. Right. And so that was a lot of evolution. That's a lot of development over a long period of time. And that's inherently the creative spirit brought us here. And consciousness itself is a miracle that we could understand each other.

It's fascinating, beyond fascinating. It is. i love that you're optimistic too like you you have hope for the human race like i think there's no reason to be anything but because despite all the crazy shit that's in the world a million nuclear weapons that could destroy every single thing we haven't done it yet i mean it's kind of amazing it's kind of amazing that we've done as little pollution as we actually have i mean that's really quite shocking that we actually toned it down a little bit los angeles there that's a little bit of like hey hey everybody settled down you know like apparently the the pollution was much worse in los angeles like in

the in the 60s and the 70s they said it was horrible because they had those lead cars. The gas was totally different. They cleaned that up a lot. I mean it still looks like shit. It's still crazy brown air, but it's better brown air, Alex Gray. It is. That's a symbol or a message of evolution. A little bit of it, yeah.

A little bit of it, yeah. and gay rights, the equality element started to come to the surface. So a sense of conscience about accepting more diversity and living up to our idea about we the people and who are all the people. And I think that the re-enfranchisement of people, like just by saying, okay, gay marriages, that's okay. So then other nations say, okay, that's okay. So suddenly a stigma and a prohibition on a group of people has been lifted and they're re-enfranchised into the society at no harm to the society,

even benefit to it. Likewise the cannabis user eventually I believe should be reintegrated into society and the world. This will show also an evolutionary step because this is the recognition of the divinity of nature. I think there's every reason to be optimistic and although there are some really bad things about the world today. The financial system is crazy and corrupt and it's too easy to manipulate and everybody knows it's rigged and we still have to use it and it's still the thing that pays off lobbyists and moves decisions that favor corporations instead of the general public.

We still know that there's a lot wrong with the world, but we're learning more about humans, about behavior, about just information itself, about technology, about our place in the universe. We're learning more about the cosmos. Every day, there's like some new discovery, a new thing, a new this, a new that. And it's just coming at us like a wave, wave after wave of information. I don't think it's possible to avoid all that. Without some gigantic, monstrous catastrophe i think if you just look at the if you were looking at a graph and you look at the head space of the

american person the average american person from 1960 and look at the head space in 2013 you're dealing with a completely different educated individual You're dealing with a level of understanding about the way the world works that's very different from at any other time, because almost any question that you've ever had could be answered on your phone within a matter of seconds. And although that seems so normal, that changed the whole world. And that's going on right now. And I think it's snuck up on us so fast we just got so used to watching movies on our phone that we don't even think it's weird that it's just coming through the air into this little thin wafer thing that's made out of glass and metal in your pocket that

you get to watch movies flying through the air and you don't even think about it. It just seems so normal to you and it's all psychedelic. Peter Robinson It's very much so. Peter Robinson It's very psychedelic. Peter Robinson That's what I guess Steve Jobs had to be interviewed by the Department of Defense and he had to defend his taking of psychedelics. Peter Robinson Really? Peter Robinson And he said it's – yeah, in order to get the highest clearance and things. So as part of his interview, he said that he still believed that it was one of the most

important events in his life and that his psychedelic experiences. And many of the people that they worked with, of course, they wondered how many times they had tripped and things and how far out are you, you know, and was part of the openness to new ways of thinking that it allowed. Just as you were saying that you, after a psychedelic experience, you have this folder that's called my old bullshit and then you have this possibility wide open in front of you. jump back in the bag that you already know or you can forge ahead into a new territory. So that's the evolutionary edge and you're always pushing it and artists and creative people are always pushing it. That's why I say everybody is kind of pushing that edge in some way and is inherently that awareness.

Yeah, I think it's unavoidable. And it's almost that biologically we can't keep up with all the technological evolution, although that's not the correct term to use, technological evolution. They want to use it biologically. But just that alone, it's almost like our access to information is too great for our feeble minds to process. We're still on some old school Pentium Celeron. Remember those Celerons? Weren't quite as good as the Pentium do.

Yeah, I mean we're like on an old machine. Our machine sucks. We have Dunbar's number. We can't remember more than 150 people. We fuck up. We can't remember phone numbers anymore because you don't have to remember them because they're on your phone you know so in that sense it's like we're almost becoming mush it's almost like what the the technology is doing is setting us up it's getting us to a point where it's just overwhelming us with data that we can't help i know you're

having a problem okay i'm gonna help you out we're gonna give you a chip we're gonna put this chip in your brain and once you do boom i mean the government knows where you are at all times but you have instant 120 iq you're gonna be able to see things you never saw before memorize things fairly quickly it's a total brain upgrade it's a little chip with gps in there and there's a kill switch send a fucking electrocution bolt into your brain if you say anything bad about the government. There's some movies being sort of made with that hypothesis I think and the – I always imagine the interconnection of everyone being the ability to control the net and the vision. Do you think at all about the technological singularity? Do you follow Kurzweil and all that singularity stuff?

Sure. Fascinating stuff. It is fascinating. fascinating we have friends Martine and Bina Rothblatt and Martine and Bina have been working on a robotic facsimile of Bina and I'm interviewing her are you yeah oh that's wonderful I'm interviewing her. Are you? Yeah. Oh, that's wonderful. Yeah, I'm interviewing her for my sci-fi show. Fabulous. Yeah.

She's got her lover recreated. Exactly. As a robot. Martine. Yeah. That's fascinating. Yeah, they're great. They're wonderful people.

And we love them. They're married. Yeah. They have four children. Yes. Yeah, that's amazing. Yeah. They have four children. Yes. Yeah, that's amazing. An artificial person. As close to it as what we have right now, right?

Well, and so, I mean, they're where the rubber meets the road. They're really trying to program the robotics so that we can have a closer facsimile. Can you hang with that? And of course, you know, the – Blade Runner style? Well, the thing that I found fascinating because I was very resistant to the whole idea and – Falling in love with the robot idea?

Well, just the idea that the – that there will be a time when this will be a problem, that you can not distinguish between a human being and a robot. That's coming, don't you think? I'm not sure. Perhaps. I'm naive to think that it isn't. But I have this feeling just like people have a gaydar or know who is Jewish and who is not and things like that. That having a – that's pretty subtle and like fact of your mechanicalness and inability to generate a subtle field even perhaps that's a heartbeat and things. These things are probably part of our unconscious awareness of a human being.

So I'll see as this – as it develops, artificial intelligence and robotics and things, I'm sure they'll – part of it will evolve toward that. I really feel like we're not giving technology the credit it deserves in that I think it might be alive. And I know that sounds completely ridiculous because we are so sure that life is like us. We're so sure that life has cells and has blood and it either consumes oxygen or it could be plant-based life. But we know what life is, and that's not life. No, that's just something we created. But no, because eventually when you turn it on, if it eventually gets to the point where it can reproduce on its own and think for itself and defends itself or knows how to stay alive or has instincts or knows how to repair itself, then what exactly is that? How come it's not life?

Why? Because it doesn't have what? It doesn't have skin? Is's not life-wide because it doesn't have what? It doesn't have skin? Is it not life? If it's reproducing and thinking and altering its environment and then moving forward and creating new energy sources and figuring out how to better use resources, if it becomes intelligent life and some crazy asshole says and programs in, hey, defend yourself and reproduce as soon as you can. Oh, you're doomed. The human race is they're gonna for sure that's a life form that's gonna be a life form and you're it's going to get to the point if this woman is recreating her wife it's going to get to a point where that's going to be indistinguishable there's going to be an

artificial you there it might even be an artificial you that's exactly you. It's your consciousness in another body. You might be able to live several lives at once. Just in case you fuck one of them up, you got a bunch of other good lives going on simultaneously. Well, if you do the right Tibetan Buddhist practices, I think you can do that anyway. You think so? Yeah. You can do that anyway.

You think so? Yeah. movement that they've been putting forward is that we can program as much of the information about our lives and about, you know, by filling out basically an elaborate questionnaire. And this also records our voice, telling stories and things like that and the way that we inflect and things. So these modulations and things become part of what could be a virtual being. It doesn't have to be a robot. virtual heaven, just a facsimile, a 3D model that's based on the sort of 3D mapping of the head and maybe the chest or something like that. So you have a sense of the person and you might ask a virtual grandma or grandpa who passed on several decades ago, but the great grandkids can now access them via this virtual grandma that can say, yes, when I was growing up, blah, blah, blah, and share a story or something. Now, what's wrong with that?

What's wrong with that? There's something crazy about turning grandma on. Hey, grandma, how's it great beyond? Oh, so, just knitting. Yes. There's something fucking creepy about that, man. I mean, maybe we need to let things go. Maybe we need to realize that, you know, grandma is the past and whatever great memories we had of her.

So are you going to close her Facebook account? Can you imagine if grandma's Facebook account becomes her? Well, that's what we're talking about. That's nuts. God damn it. But it's going to come, right? I mean, who the fuck saw Facebook a thousand years ago? Right.

It seems to me that a Blade Runner type scenario is inevitable, though, where they have a life that is artificial but acts so much like us that it itself doesn't even know it's artificial. Because if you're going to program a robot correctly to be an artificial person that acts like a person, you don't tell them it's artificial. You want them thinking they're real, right? Of course. It would be the Blade Runner scenario. Yeah. That was a goddamn brilliant movie.

It was. It was so amazing. But what it might mirror is this whole thing about the Neanderthal and our early relationship. Like as species, we, for thousands and thousands of years, cohabited the same areas. And what kind of Neanderthal genocide happened there you know like what what was the shadow of our species you know built on this uh relationship do you think they just naturally dart off oh no i think we definitely killed them have you ever seen the people there's a one guy it's a really sketchy theory but uh he he painted Neanderthal as like a gorilla-faced predator.

And he tried to say that Neanderthal probably hunted man, and that's why we drove it to extinction. And then we based our image of what Neanderthal looked like based on human skin. But we don't really have any skin from Neanderthals. We know that they were far stronger than people, and we know that they had a much thicker bone structure. They were smaller. They'd be like five feet tall, but they would weigh 200 pounds. They were really, really incredibly strong. Stocky.

Yeah. Well, they were more built like- Like orangutan. Yeah. More like a lower primate than like a human or a homo sapien. And so this guy- See if you can pull that up, Brian. It was pretty trippy.

It's mostly bullshit, but it's kind of fun bullshit this guy um what would you say um neanderthal predator yeah see if you find that and he had like a whole video where they they mapped out uh in his opinion what it would look like in in 3d imagery and so he had this really scary looking chimpanzee thing big giant eyes we don't have any eye tissue from the endotralls either and they have a much larger eyeball really humans yeah their body they're just they're built fairly differently so this guy drew him up like crazy gorilla monsters it's really I mean I don't think it's right but it's it's kind of cool to look at and it's interesting just to conceive of a –

Yeah, there it is. Wow. That's how he drew it. He drew it like they might have been hairy and they might have been like – but they were really muscular and he made them look more chimpanzee-like than human-like. Yeah. Yeah. Huh. Yeah, he did a whole documentary on it I think.

It's probably bullshit. Yeah, he did a whole documentary on it, I think. It's probably bullshit. Well, you could genetically imagine yourself into a Sasquatch. I was going to ask you about that. I've been hunting for Sasquatch. Not hunting like trying to hurt them. I should say searching for Sasquatch.

I've been doing this TV show. We went up to Washington State, and we stayed in the woods out near Mount Rainier. It's like a tropical rain. I mean, not tropical. A rainforest up there. A real rainforest. If you've never been up there, you have no idea what that's like. It's the weirdest environment ever. You park your car, you take a walk, you go

100 yards into the woods and you might as well be on another planet. You literally enter into a different dimension there's the dimension of of there's a dimension of highways and houses and that's all out there but once you go into a rainforest like you just you go a little bit in and then you're engulfed by this new reality and this reality is you see an elk running past you and they disappear in the trees because everything is so thick. And people start to see Bigfoot. They start seeing anything, man.

You don't know what the fuck is out there. You think Bigfoot is preposterous until you go to a rainforest like the Pacific Northwest. And you're walking around and you're like, fuck, maybe, man. Maybe. Yeah, it's there. Like what? But if you look at the earliest kind of human-animal hybrid cave art, you have something that looks oddly like a Sasquatch type thing because it's just a marriage of the stag and the human. And so it's got characteristics of the animal and the human together. They did a lot of that stuff really early on.

Yes. Well, look at all the Egyptian art. What was that? What do you think that is? The fusion of the creature, the animal, the therian morph. It's called therian morph? That's a term for it. Isn't that what those furries call themselves too?

They call themselves therians? Yes. I think so. I think that's uh probably a relationship not there's anything wrong with being a furry much love to my mascot friends if you have i accidentally stumbled into a furry convention once in pittsburgh it was you know what it's gonna sound stupid but i thought it was beautiful i thought it was beautiful that these people found a place where they could all get together and do this they obviously they like doing it they like doing it and where you know if you do that in your neighborhood people go what the fuck are you doing man why are you dressed up like a giant chipmunk

but for whatever reason i don't know why they like doing it but it doesn't seem like they're hurting anybody and we were walking they seem so happy we're walking down the street and all these these furry dudes and and gals were laughing and talking together all with their crazy costumes on nobody took their shit off and i was like this is the weirdest creatures that we're part of and it's acknowledging that we're part of a almost interdimensional web of creatures. And I think that the early stuff, the Egyptian and all the cave art and things like that really did come out of a place of higher awareness that that was the kind of nature mysticism. Well, like a lot of psychedelic drugs have animal ideas embedded in them. Absolutely.

Especially DMT or ayahuasca, there's the jaguars or leopards. Jaguars, right? Jaguars and snakes and those sort of things. They're commonplace. Absolutely. There could have been many different psychedelic compounds we don't even know about anymore that these people had found and that put them together with these ideas of combining animals and human into one form.

Yes. Yes. Well, it's an easy transfer. And the thing that I found refreshing in the Egyptian temples and things was how easy it was to transpose a head and stuff of one creature and another onto a human body and how they were considered the gods. Now, if your job is to sacralize the nature field, to give a sense of the place that we live in is a gift of a divine creator. And there are – then if your gods actually are different animals or they have animal characteristics, you're more apt to treat the animal with some respect or as being an aspect of that divinity.

And so the translation of the archetypal symbol of a particular animal spirit and a divine human form is to acknowledge our oneness with that kind of the field of the animal spirits. And it's a very shamanic kind of thing to do. And it was part of many of the – like the Mesopotamian, Babylonian, Assyrian, Egyptian, even the Greek sphinxes and things like that. There's this fusion from the very earliest cave art all the way through the great religious kinds of things. Angels have wings. They're animal and human hybrids. That's a really good point that I never even thought of until just now.

It's still part of the public imagination. It's crazy. Angels are part bird. I just thought they were people with wings but no obviously not they had a bird's head then you'd be like they're part bird as long as they have a human tag like it's not even a bird man yeah yeah cars and we accept it so much because we the the idea of there being a higher world that we ascend to symbolically, it's so transparent that we don't even notice it. It's just like there.

And I think that that archetype is part of the human psyche and you can find it in each sacred path, the bridging of the realms. That's what Hermes was. Hermes Trismegistus, the occult kind of foundation. How about Ganesh? Yeah. There you go. There are so many versions of the combining of a human and an animal and sacred religious artwork.

It's really fascinating. Like the Hindu stuff where there's a man with a lion's head and people have like octopus arms, six arms. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, a bunch of people trying to make sense of what they're experiencing, Soma or whatever it is. Exactly. What do you think Soma was? Well, it's very interesting. You know, I think Steve Hayter thinks it's cannabis.

Most people are like, it's a sleeping pill, dummy. What are you talking about? They don't know. Like Soma, the sleeping pill, they fucked up. They should have never named it Soma. Soma is like, it's a sacred psychedelic drug from – was it from – The Rig Veda. The Rig Veda.

6,000 years ago, the earliest human religious text is the songs in the Rig Veda, the Hindu text. And some asshole came along and turned that into a sleeping pill pharmaceutical sleeping pill what a bunch of dicks well there you go i mean that's like really rude you know that's like catholics would never take that if you had a sleeping pill that was called the sacrament the jesus sacrament they'd be like hey fuck head you can't call it that but people are like soma yeah that's in another country and we're america and we're just going to call soma because we like the name soma it is okay soma yeah but the original soma was supposed to be an amazing psychedelic right exactly and it put uh the uh person who imbibed it into a state of connectedness with the divine.

And Soma was also – it was recognized as the source of many things, including like clothing and stuff like that. But as an artist, why do you think that you were the first person to really encapsulate the tryptamine experience? Because all these other people that had these amazing works of art, the only people that came close to capturing the tryptamine experience to me were the ancient Egyptians. There's a lot of ancient Egyptian stuff like just Tutankhamen's headdress and the gold. That's very tryptamine-like.

And it's one of the only things in historical art to me that rings trippy. There's something about it. You can almost hear music, like some kind of tryptamine music when you're watching these hieroglyphs and you're seeing these images. You're like, the symbols, even if you don't understand what they mean, you're looking at these symbols run together your mind starts to try to form patterns and you start to try to think the way these people were thinking and see these incredibly complex geometric shapes that they had turned into buildings buildings like the temple in man this gigantic building where each segment represents different chakras and different energy points in the human body there's texts around each one explaining this part of the human

body like it's it's fucking insane yes we want to bring that uh idea to the land of Qasim and have been – the idea of the Neturu, the family of gods in Egypt has really made a strong imprint on me when we went over there. Allison and I have been back a couple of times. What is it called again? The Netaru is the family of gods that kind of opened up out of Newt, the night sky, who had an affair with Geb, the earth father. So the night sky mother held five children in her womb and had to find a special time to release them. But the one who was in there with his brothers and sisters decided he didn't want to stick around. He was the dark kind of lord and his name was Set. And he cut his way out of his mother and out tumbled the rest of the brothers and sisters including Thoth and Isis and Osiris and Nephthys, his sister.

So basically Isis and Osiris got together and they were the football hero and the cheerleader, match made in heaven and all that and they were just like celebrated and stuff and Set was kind of barren and he was kind of just probably a little jealous of And Nephthys wanted a child and so anyway, she fooled Osiris into an affair, perhaps Anubis, the dog-headed embalmer of the netherworlds was the result of that. as the result of that. Well, of course, Set was extremely disturbed and decided that he was going to find a way to kill Osiris, which eventually happened and he cut him up and threw him all over the Nile. And so Isis was extremely distraught and she went around finding around finding or remembering parts of the dismembered god. And each place where she found a hand or a foot or something like that, a temple was built. And so you would go down the Nile and remember the god. And that's the idea is just the – now I think that, of course, it's the goddess that's been lost, that's been dismembered, the mother earth.

And so the idea is to – we have different stations on the land where there will be a foot, there will be a hand and different things like that. They'll represent different elements of the dismembered mother. Wow. And so we go around to remember the mother they meant by that and the origin of that and how it led them to the society that was able to create those insane structures. They're amazing. I haven't been. The only really crazy place I've been to is Chichen Itza. I went to Chichen Itza once and that was one of those things where you're walking around going, how did they – what are they doing?

How did they do this? Why did they do this? Yeah. This is crazy. And no one lived here anymore? They just all moved out? They made this and then they left. Somebody left behind this.

Yeah. And you – and people returned there. You returned there. Yeah. We returned there. But You return there. Yeah. We return there. But nobody lives there. No. It would be funny if some dude said, this is my house now.

Put a door in one of the temples. Sometimes there are caretakers for these sacred sites. And so they're pretty happy. You heard what happened in Belize, right? They just mowed down one of the ancient Mayan temples or pyramids that was there. It's like a really, really old structure. Oh, I didn't hear that. Yeah, and they plowed it down because it was on private land just to use it for limestone. Good grief.

Yeah, and people are freaking out like, what the fuck did you do? Well, you know, there's different feelings in the different societies about these things. The Taliban just destroyed a huge Buddhist sculpture, which was a heritage-type site that had been there for thousands of years. Probably the CIA pretending to be the Taliban. Look what they did. These fucks. I didn't say that. I didn't mean it cia well i don't know at least that was

the story that got out and it and it was sad but it was most likely true i mean religious ideology is what gets people to do almost every really fucking crazy thing it's either money or religious ideology you know or ideology in general negative ideology. We were talking about the Boston bombings. We were like, you can't do that without ideology. Like no one is able to do something like that without ideology because you have to have something that allows you to think that that's the correct thing to do. An ideology of hate. Yeah, and not all ideologies are bad, but you don't get really insane acts of faith like that without an ideology. Right.

And insane acts of terrorism either. Both things come from – it's not always bad, but it's tricky. It's tricky when you just automatically subscribe to the patterns that are in front of you. We like to be in – it's like getting to that my old bullshit thing on the desktop. We feel really comfortable going down already tread paths. Yes, it's really true. And it's sad that the more widespread understanding of jihad as a holy war within the Muslim community is that it's something that the ego wages. We engage with our ego basically. Somehow the soul and the ego is in a kind of holy war with each other, that we desire the one true spirit to win out

and to have love save the day and all these things, to be a hero in life. And this is, I think, part of why we're called to life. Well, the original term was supposed to be like a war against your own vices, right? Personal vices. Yes. It was somehow or another corrupted. To become a better person.

Yeah. And it's a struggle to become a better person. In the same way that Yisrael means God-wrestler, we're struggling with this higher nature and without engaging it somehow, without struggling with it and to be activated in our creative pursuit of it, it's not real or tangible for us. It has to become a real practice. That's why I like any kind of art or creativity or any form of expression because that's what we're made of. We're made of creative energy. We're made of creative energy. Yeah, that's what we're here for. What is it? Marshall McLuhan said that human beings are the sex organs of the machine world.

That's what we're doing. We're just creating little computer babies. That's how computers get made. People create them. That's true. That's true. It's a new form of intelligence that we're living amongst. Are you going to download your consciousness into a computer when the time comes?

We'll have to see what's available. I loved Martine's response because I was saying, whoa, hey, I don't know about a soul and a robot and stuff like that. was saying, whoa, hey, you know, I don't know about a soul and a robot and stuff like that. But she was saying like, well, who's to say that a soul, if there were a disembodied spirit, wouldn't like hanging around a robot of itself for a while? Or who's to say you're not going to create a zombie in the next dimension because the person's going to be born without a soul because you put it in somebody's fucking computer. And so then all of a sudden the next dimension is like the dawn of dead you got a bunch of zombies running around that could happen damn it maybe that's the zombie apocalypse maybe that's here now yeah when we're seeing the walking

dead and this sort of thing this zombie theme keeps returning over and over and over again that's a warning telling us not to download our consciousness to computers we already have you know that. That's what Facebook is. That's MySpace, right? Yeah. Our Tumblr, our Instagram, our Twitter, all of these things are a virtual existence. And Wiki and various things like this, they give people maybe a sense of solidity. That's why it's weird to go to someone's Twitter page after they're dead.

Have you ever done that before? No. Or a Facebook page. I have a friend, a really great guy, who expired, and every now and then I go to his Facebook page. I'll read his posts and go, you know, I keep reading his posts. I'm still getting a little bit of him. Exactly.

You watch a video of him, you're getting a little bit of him. It's not new stuff. I listened to Ray Manzarek today. He died today. But I listened to him. He was like 72, right? Isn't that crazy? The doors.

He was in the doors and he's 72. It's like, wait a minute. He'll form the doors. What's going on? How old are we getting? Jesus. Well, there's something timeless within that. Maybe he downloaded himself into a computer right before he kicked off.

I think into all of our consciousness and the computers are just the external storage devices. What's really the cool thing is that we're connected with all of it, just consciousness-wise. What do you think the next stage of consciousness is going to be? Do you think it's going to be some sort of an ability to read each other's minds, to integrate with each other, to exchange information freely through the air like a Wi-Fi signal? What do you think it's going to be? All of that. All of that. It's coming, right?

Can't stop it. I think that it's an inevitable evolutionary development. However, some of it's going to take training and some of it's going to take an orientation toward it and an opening up. The ideas of clairvoyance and extrasensory perception and things like that can be trained in some to be enhanced. I have a completely uneducated faith in the fact that people far smarter than me are going to continue to do awesome work. I'm convinced that they're going to continue to come out of school and figure new things out. Even though I'm not placing – I'm like, wow, we're really coming up with some really fast computers. I'm not coming up with shit.

But somewhere, I'm convinced they're going to continue to do awesome stuff. So whoever you are out there, keep it up. Congratulations and thanks. Indeed. Thank you so much. Well, thank you, Alex Gray. And please go to alexgray.com, G-R-E-Y.com. Indeed. Thank you so much. that's going to have a beautiful cause. It's going to have a beautiful movement behind it. And you're already doing amazing things.

And I swear to God, if I lived up there, I'd be visiting you all the time. Maybe when this shit hits the fan, I'll move to the Hudson Valley. It's cool up there, right? Yeah, absolutely. It's cold in the winter though, no? Yeah, if you ever make it northeast,

we'd love to spin you out. How far is it from New York City? It's a car drive about an hour and a half. Oh, that's nothing. Oh, that's great. It's also Metro North. You can take the, from Grand Central, you can walk from the station there. I would love to come check it out.

And I absolutely want to come once it's all done just to see how crazy it's going to be. Oh, maybe you can help us kick it off. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, let's do some sort of a party or something. Yeah. But all you crazy hippies out there, keep it together. Don't get too nutty at this party. You know, Alex Gray took acid and changed him, so I'm going to take it all.

No, not at the parties. Find a nice, peaceful place. Find a nice spot in the woods. So it's alexgray.com. And on Twitter, your Twitter is alexgraycosm, C-O-S-M. And so please follow him on Twitter, AlexGreatCosm. Right now you've got 22,511. Let's see if we can boost that shit up to 22,600.

I'm PBS again. I went PBS again on you. I apologize, ladies and gentlemen. Please, but to support this, it's an awesome cause. If you've got the cash. If you don't, don't do it. Thank you, everybody, for tuning in. We really appreciate it.

Thanks, everybody, who's been coming out to these shows and all the cool people that I met when I was looking for Bigfoot. I had a great fucking time. We'll be back on Thursday with the great Graham Hancock. He'll be joining us. Thanks to Ting for sponsoring our podcast. Go to rogan.ting.com and save $25, you freak. Thanks to Squarespace, squarespace.com forward slash Joe. And if you want to use it, use the offer code Joe5.

Thanks also to onnit.com. Go to O-N-N-I-T. Use the code name Rogan. Save some money. Goddamn, I've got to record that shit because it sounds so repetitive. I'm broken. I can't say it anymore. All right, we love you guys, and we'll see you on Thursday.

Thank you very much. Bye-bye. Thank you.